CONTENTS
Monday 11 February 1991
Child and Family Support Statute Law Amendment Act, 1990, Bill 17 / Loi de 1990 modifiant les lois relatives aux obligations alimentaires, projet de loi 17
Adjournment
STANDING COMMITTEE ON ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE
Chair: White, Drummond (Durham Centre NDP)
Vice-Chair: Morrow, Mark (Wentworth East NDP)
Carr, Gary (Oakville South PC)
Chiarelli, Robert (Ottawa West L)
Fletcher, Derek (Guelph NDP)
Harnick, Charles (Willowdale PC)
Mathyssen, Irene (Middlesex NDP)
Mills, Gordon (Durham East NDP)
Poirier, Jean (Prescott and Russell L)
Sorbara, Gregory S. (York Centre L)
Wilson, Fred (Frontenac-Addington NDP)
Winninger, David (London South NDP)
Substitutions:
Cunningham, Dianne E. (London North PC) for Mr Harnick
Elston, Murray J. (Bruce L) for Mr Chiarelli
Kwinter, Monte (Wilson Heights L) for Mr Poirier
Murdock, Sharon (Sudbury NDP) for Mr F. Wilson
Wessenger, Paul (Simcoe Centre NDP) for Mr Winninger
Clerk: Freedman, Lisa
Staff: Swift, Susan, Research Officer, Legislative Research Service
The committee met at 1308 in committee room 2.
CHILD AND FAMILY SUPPORT STATUTE LAW AMENDMENT ACT, 1990 / LOI DE 1990 MODIFIANT LES LOIS RELATIVES AUX OBLIGATIONS ALIMENTAIRES
Bill 17, An Act to amend the Law related to the Enforcement of Support and Custody Orders.
Reprise de l'étude du projet de loi 17, Loi portant modification des lois relatives à l'exécution d'ordonnances alimentaires et de garde d'enfants.
The Chair: I would like to call our meeting to order. The purpose of our meeting this afternoon is to start to look at Bill 17, An Act to amend the Law related to the Enforcement of Support and Custody Orders. We have with us the Attorney General, Howard Hampton, who will be speaking.
First off, if I could refer your attention to the gold agenda, this is the most updated agenda, which we will be following today and for the better part of the week, pending amendments to that agenda. I should also like to draw the committee's attention to the fact that after the initial presentation regarding Bill 17, the committee will be receiving the report of the subcommittee in regard to committee business.
So without further ado, if I could move on to Mr Hampton --
Mr Elston: Mr Chair, I just quickly did take a look at the yellow document which purports to be our agenda. While I note that there probably are some time problems, I would find it kind of disheartening if I happened to be, for instance, Margaret Buist from the London Status of Women Action Group and found that I was programmed in at 1045 and scheduled out at 1115, when she has obviously had a lot of work to do and she is travelling up here somehow from London. The guidelines for these things are really quite tight.
Cynthia Lucas starts at 10. She is replaced by Nancy Zinner at 10:15 and, while these items may be brought to your attention a little bit later on, you just cannot ask people to come into this place and speak here for 15 minutes and expect any kind of real presentation. I think perhaps we will talk about that later, but I wanted to get on the record early that there are people with things to say and it does not look like we are going to be really giving them any chance to say it. I just wanted to register my concern before the Attorney General began his remarks.
The Chair: Your concern is duly noted. I would certainly agree with you about the importance of the bill in front of us and the importance of thorough discussion. The way in which the time slots were given, I believe, was 15 minutes for an individual and half an hour for a group. In terms of extending the time limits, of course, that would require many additional days to hear adequately from these groups, but that concern is noted. Thank you.
Mr Elston: This is a new government with a desire to consult like it has never been seen in Ontario to consult before, so I just bring it to your attention early on.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr Elston. Mr Hampton.
Hon Mr Hampton: Thank you, Mr Chair, members of the committee, committee staff, ladies and gentlemen. First of all, let me introduce the Ministry of the Attorney General staff who will be here to help us this afternoon. Natalie Pilcow, is counsel in the policy development division; Linda Feldman, is also counsel in the policy development division; and Ellen Mary Mills is the new director of the support and custody enforcement branch, which we hope will soon be no more, or at least it will no longer be known in that name.
Mr Sorbara: You are doing away with the ministry or is it just the branch that you are changing?
Hon Mr Hampton: I will deal with Mr Sorbara's initial question, hopefully, as we move through the afternoon.
Mr Elston: It is an auspicious beginning. Let's go.
Hon Mr Hampton: I am very pleased to be here today to discuss what I believe is fundamental legislative change for the province. This standing committee is about to consider significant changes to the way child and family support payments are enforced in our province. The massive social problem of support default is not unique to Ontario. For many years now Ontario, other Canadian provinces and a great many foreign jurisdictions have wrestled with the devastating consequences which result when people refuse to comply with child and family support orders.
I do not believe this is a partisan political issue. Previous Ontario government administrations have tried to address this problem through legislation. The problem is that we are still facing a 75% default rate among support payers and it is this government's intention to strengthen the current legislation through a major innovation which would see support payments automatically deducted from the income source as soon as a support order is made.
It is our objective that over time the payment of support from income source will be seen as the way support orders are honoured. These payments should be seen as a legal, social and moral responsibility. It will be convenient and it will reduce the time a support recipient must wait until moneys are flowing. More important, this new system will help to ensure that the children of this province do not suffer because of support default.
This program is about children and families and, frankly, it is about ensuring a decent standard of living for the women and children of this province. I want to make it clear from the very beginning that passage of this bill will not totally eliminate child and family support default. It is, however, another tool, and a very important tool, in the fight against child poverty and this fight is a priority for the government of Ontario.
Social attitudes must change if we are to see a shift to a vastly improved support compliance rate. The failure to pay support must be seen as socially unacceptable. If this bill is passed, the Ministry of the Attorney General will launch a public awareness campaign to educate our community about the serious problems associated with support default. This campaign will be aimed at fostering an attitude that paying support is a moral, social and legal responsibility.
The existing support enforcement program has been in existence for three years. A rapidly increasing case load has resulted in a significant decrease in the level of service being provided to the public. The support and custody enforcement branch is mandated to enforce orders for support and custody and support provisions in domestic contracts. The branch consists of 260 staff in a head office and eight regional offices across the province. The current case load stands at 83,000 and is increasing at the rate of approximately 1,200 cases per month. It has been projected that this increase will continue for the next eight years, at which time it is expected to level off, but this will mean a total of about 136,000 cases filed with the program by 1998.
Research studies on the issue of support default are most revealing. An Alberta study showed that 80% of separated or divorced husbands have sufficient disposable income to meet their court-ordered obligations, but they do not. The consequences of these defaults are substantial. Without regular support payments, women and children are forced to live below the poverty line, relying on social assistance and food banks. When we consider the latest statistics, which indicate that one in five children in Ontario lives below the poverty line, this legislation seems all the more crucial.
This initiative will also allow the child and family support office to function more effectively. I think I just answered your question, Mr Sorbara. The timely collection of ongoing support payments would avoid the accumulation of support arrears, shift the emphasis of enforcement activity to more difficult cases where the payer is self-employed or difficult to locate, and increase the government's recovery of social assistance payments from support payers. The enforcement program now returns $12 million per year to the Treasury in social assistance payment recoveries.
Australia has had support deduction legislation since 1988. The United States has passed legislation requiring support deduction for all support orders being enforced by a state child support agency. The United States legislation further requires that all support orders be subject to support deduction legislation by 1994.
The Ministry of the Attorney General has consulted with a number of community groups, as well as the bar and the judiciary. As a result of these consultations, we will be introducing a number of amendments. Most of the amendments are of a technical nature and are designed to clarify the intent and language of some of the clauses.
I appreciate the input we have received and I look forward to further comments from individuals and groups appearing before this committee. I know all members agree with me that the failure to pay child and family support is totally unacceptable. It hurts all of us but, most important, it hurts this province's greatest resource -- its children.
I thank you very much and I want again to introduce Natalie Pilcow, who, if the committee wishes, will outline some of the major amendments that we have introduced today and the intent of those amendments.
Mr Elston: Does that mean we are supposed to go through these one by one, the 31 pages of amendments?
Hon Mr Hampton: No. I think you would agree, if you have had a chance to look at them even briefly --
Mr Elston: Well, we have not.
Hon Mr Hampton: -- that some of the amendments are merely changes in wording. But there are four or five amendments that are of major importance and I think it only fair that Ms Pilcow have a chance to outline those so that everyone understands exactly what they mean and why they are there.
The Chair: I am sorry, is it the wish of the committee to go through those amendments, if only on a brief level? Agreed.
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Ms Pilcow: As the Attorney General has just said, the vast majority of those amendments really relate to clarification of the drafting, more so than changing any of the substance of the bill. They were drafted in response to a number of comments that we got from members of the public, who wrote and who called us and said that various sections did not read exactly in a way that they were able to understand. So we tried to the extent that we could to clarify any areas of misunderstanding that we were aware of.
There are three amendments which go somewhat beyond clarification of drafting, and I will highlight those three for you. One is a proposed amendment to change any reference to "debtor" to "payer," and that applies both to the bill and to the act, the entire act itself, and that is the first amendment that will appear in your package.
A second change relates to section 3d of the proposed act, the clause which provides for the posting of security. The bill provides that the court may suspend a support deduction order in two situations. One is where it would be unconscionable and the other is where the parties agree and security is posted. The amendment provides for security only in the form of cash and it also provides for a minimum amount of security and that amount is four months of support. In the original draft of the bill, security is not limited in terms of its form and it now is in the proposed amendment.
Mr Elston: So rich people will be able to buy their way out and poor people will not. Anybody who can afford four months' deposit is the one who will benefit from that, and the poor people will not be able to. Right?
Ms Pilcow: I am describing the amendment.
Mr Elston: I was just asking the question, but it is pretty obvious.
Mr Sorbara: He is describing the effect.
Mr Elston: I was just wondering if the Attorney General really is wanting to bring the amendment in in that form, in the sense that it really does make sure that the well-to-do people can buy their way out of this thing and poor people, who are not always able to put together four months of --
Mr Fletcher: On a point of order, Mr Chair: Are we going in some rotation here or is this just everyone jump in and ask questions?
The Chair: With the indulgence of the committee, there are several ways in which this can be handled. Ms Pilcow could go through all the amendments and then we could discuss them, or we could discuss them with each amendment. I would suggest --
Mr Fletcher: Mr Chair, if you would like a suggestion, I would suggest that we go through it and then we allot time for each party for questions.
Mr Elston: If you want to have questions later, that is fine, but I resent the idea that Mr Fletcher would suggest that you allocate time for each party, as though you are going to ration us somehow.
I just thought that was a very good question. A person who can afford to put four months of payments together at one time can buy his way out. I just wanted to bring that to the committee's attention.
The Chair: You have an excellent question, but the point of order refers to the way in which those questions should be put and at which time.
Mr Elston: And I just merely was describing why I jumped in. If you want us to have all our questions later, that is fine. I just do not want it to appear like I am agreeing that there will be a rationing of time as among the parties.
Hon Mr Hampton: I think the member has raised a very good question and I think it is a question that Ms Pilcow and other members of the ministry staff will be quite prepared to deal with as you go through the clause-by-clause discussions.
Mr Elston: Clause by clause?
Interjection: That is Friday.
Mr Sorbara: Maybe.
Ms Pilcow: The third significant proposal for change is a change to subsection 3c(8) of the bill, and that change is in the total amount which may be deducted for an ongoing payment and arrears. The change is that the total amount deducted will be 50% of the net amount owing to the debtor. Currently there is a double cap; it is 50% of the ongoing payment, up to a maximum 50%. That has been changed now to the same maximum which can be garnisheed. So it is now 50% of the net amount owing to the payer.
Those are essentially the amendments which do not relate to clarification of previous drafting and it may be appropriate to go through the balance of them once members have had an opportunity to look at them.
What I propose to do now is to just go through some of the major elements of Bill 17. There are a number of changes suggested to the SCOE act by Bill 17. The most significant amendment is the introduction of a support deduction plan. There are a number of others and they include an improved writ system for the collection of support, a method by which a payer in default can be required to file a financial statement with the program and a mechanism for the resolution of disputes between the parties when a support order terminates. In addition to these amendments, there are a number of very technical amendments to the act, and those, I assume, you can go through during the clause-by-clause analysis.
The first provision that deals with the support deduction plan is proposed section 3a. What it provides is that every Ontario court that makes a support order will also make the support deduction order. It is intended that the support deduction plan will only apply where the court makes an order for periodic payments at regular intervals. One of the proposed technical amendments we will be suggesting is some language which will clarify that the support deduction plan will only apply where a periodic payment is ordered by the court.
The court will have the discretion to suspend that support deduction order in only two circumstances, and they are very limited. One is where it would be unconscionable to order support deduction, and the other is where the parties have agreed and where security has been posted. That is set out in section 3d of the bill.
The support deduction order will be a prescribed form, and it will be completed by the clerk or by the judge at the time the support order is made. The support deduction order will be filed in the court office immediately after being completed and will then be served on the director's office. The director of the program can then serve that order on the employer or other income source.
The court will be required to obtain particulars regarding the payer's employment or other income source at the time the support order is made, and that information will be completed as well by the court on the support deduction order to enable the program to serve the order immediately on the income source.
The support deduction order will bind not only the income source or the employer noted on the order but any subsequent employer or income source of the payer.
"Income source" is a defined term under the bill and it is defined in subsection 1(3). Support deduction will apply essentially to payments in the nature of wages or salary.
One of the amendments we are proposing is that we specify that the income source must pay to the payer on a regular and periodic basis. That does not currently appear in the definitions, but for clarification purposes we have added those in an amendment.
There are a number of other types of income in addition to wages or salary that are listed. They are: benefits under an accident or disability or sickness plan; a disability, retirement or other pension; an annuity; and commission income, provided that it is paid on a periodic and regular basis and provided that the funds are not recoverable by the employer should the payer not earn a sufficient amount to earn the commission. It is only a guaranteed type of payment we are looking at to apply to support deduction.
Subsection 3c(6) sets out the power of the program to add arrears to the support deduction order. The total amount, as I had mentioned earlier -- this is one of the amendments -- that can be deducted is 50% of the net amount owing to the payer.
Subsection 3c(13) provides that if an income source fails to remit the appropriate amount without a good reason, the income source can be found responsible for the payment.
Subsection 3c(15) imposes an obligation on both the payer and on the income source to advise the director regarding any interruption in payments or termination of payments.
Subsection 3c(16) also obliges the director and the income source to advise of any resumption of payments to the payer, and the payer will be obliged to advise of any new employment.
Subsection 3c(17) is an obligation on the income source to keep all information obtained as a result of support deduction confidential. Contravention of this section constitutes a provincial offence, and that is set out at section 12b of the bill. If an employer is found to have contravened this section, there is a fine of up to $10,000 which can be imposed.
Section 3e of the bill provides that the amount of the support which is being deducted on an ongoing basis cannot be varied unless the payer brings an application to the court to vary the original support order. The debtor can also bring under clause 3i(1)(c) a motion to reduce the amount of the arrears which has been added to the support deduction order on the grounds that he is unable to pay them. The amount of time during which the debtor has to pay those arrears can be lengthened, but the actual arrears cannot be rescinded on an application of that type unless the debtor brings the application to actually amend the support order.
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Section 3k of the bill sets out that the support deduction plan will apply to existing cases filed with the program and to domestic contracts in two situations. One is where the recipient requests this to happen, and the other is where the program feels that the best enforcement option for that particular case is support deduction. Where either of these two circumstances exists, the debtor will be given 30 days to bring a motion for suspension if the grounds for suspension exist. If the motion is not successful or if the debtor chooses not to bring that motion, support deduction will automatically apply in those cases.
Linda Feldman will briefly run through some of the other provisions of the bill.
Ms Feldman: Starting with section 3g of the proposed act, which is at page 18, it is rare to find a fixed termination date in most support orders. Support obligations often terminate when a child is no longer a child of the marriage within the meaning of the Divorce Act or when a certain non-specific event is reached. So section 3g provides for notice to be given to the director when a terminating event has occurred or is alleged to have occurred. If the parties to the support order then agree that the obligation has ended, the director must stop enforcement with respect to that obligation. If the parties do not agree, a motion can be brought to the court for a determination. One of the amendments the government is proposing is to clarify that if the termination of the support obligation is in fact on a set calendar date, the director shall cease enforcement.
Section 3g of the proposed act also provides that the director's jurisdiction to enforce the support deduction order extends even to the situation where the support order to which it relates has been withdrawn from the director's office. Another of the clarification government amendments being proposed is that that particular subsection of section 3g become part of section 3c of the proposed act.
Section 3h of the proposed act clarifies that the director is not a party to any proceeding to determine the entitlement of any person to support.
The other sections you might note are the proposed section 3j of the act, which allows the director to request financial statements and proof of income from payers who are in default or in respect of whom a support deduction order is being enforced, without beginning a court proceeding.
There is also a duty to correct any wrong or incomplete information provided within 10 days of that information, or the fact that it is wrong or incomplete being noted by the payer.
Section 3l of the proposed act imposes a duty on the payer to advise the director with respect to any change of address within 10 days.
Section 4 of the bill -- under the present act a person who was ever on an assignment with the Ministry of Community and Social Services had to have the minister's consent in order to withdraw their support order from the director's office. That section is proposed to be amended to require that that consent is only needed if in fact there are still arrears outstanding from a past assignment. So if a person has gone off an assignment with that ministry and there are no arrears owing to Comsoc, that person can withdraw without having the minister's consent.
Section 8 of the bill, which is the proposed section 10a of the act, deals with a new updating system with respect to writs filed with the sheriff's office with respect to a support order. The bill introduces a new system where the usual first writ is filed with the sheriff's office, but after that, statutory declarations can be filed from time to time specifying the current amount that is owing under the support order, and the writ is deemed to be amended to specify the amount appearing on the statutory declaration.
If the sheriff receives money or if there is a request made regarding the amount owed under a support writ from somebody who wants that writ removed from the sheriff's file, the sheriff has to notify the creditor or the director, if the order is in the director's office, of the chance to file an updated statutory declaration, so that the writ filed with the sheriff should remain updated with respect to the accruals under the support order from time to time.
You might also note the proposed section 12a of the act, where the courts can punish by fine or jail any wilful contempt or resistance to its process, rules or orders under Bill 17. The maximum fine is $10,000 and/or jail of up to 90 days maximum.
Section 12b of the proposed act makes the contravention of specific duties that are noted, the provisions noted in that particular subsection, an offence subject to a fine of up to $10,000. Again, the word "knowingly" is used. The duties include the requirement that the income source begin deducting payments at a certain time after being served with the notice; the requirement that an entity served with the support deduction notice give notice if they allege they are not an income source as defined by the act; the duty of both the income source and the debtor to give written notice of termination or interruption of payments; the duty on the income source and the debtor to notify a resumption of payments; a duty to keep information about a debtor confidential, as Natalie has noted; and the duty of a payer to deliver a financial statement within a certain period of time after the request has been made; and, finally, the payer's duty to notify of a change of address.
Ms Pilcow: Those, briefly, are the major amendments that are being proposed by Bill 17.
Mr Sorbara: I take it that we are going to follow customs that have characterized committees like this before, that I will have an opportunity to make some opening remarks about the bill and that the same opportunity will be accorded to my colleagues from the Progressive Conservative Party. I am not sure what happens with respect to the government party, but I do not mind if they want to make some comments as well. Then we will go into a question and answer session with the minister and his staff who are here. Is that correct, Mr Chairman?
The Chair: Feel free.
Mr Sorbara: I will begin my remarks by congratulating the minister on what is the first important legislation he has introduced into the Legislature and has now before this committee. It is also the committee's first opportunity to really get its collective and non-partisan teeth into a piece of legislation.
I was, I must confess, somewhat disappointed at the remarks of my legislative colleague the honourable the Attorney General, because there was some rhetoric within his remarks that I think was unnecessary and, in some respects, becomes deceptive and will not stand him in good stead once this bill is passed either in its current form or its amended form.
Just in passing, Mr Chairman, I should tell you that I had an opportunity a while back to read a document that came to my attention in these brown paper envelopes that are now starting to come our way. This is so refreshing. It makes opposition downright pleasant. It happened to be a communications strategy for the New Democratic Party, I guess both ministers and members. The gist of the document was: "Let's be honest and up front about what we're doing. If we make a mistake, let's say we made a mistake. If someone else deserves credit, let's give them credit as well. Let's not try and be pompous, like the former government tried to be pompous and all its predecessors before them through 125 years of Ontario history."
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Unfortunately, I guess the Attorney General did not read that document. Had he read that document, he probably would have said in his remarks, "This project is a project that was initiated by the previous government," or under the direction of the previous Attorney General. Let's not even give too much credit there.
It arises, of course, out of the support and custody orders enforcement branch, which the Attorney General should have admitted is in one hell of a mess. We know that as MPPs, and my colleagues in the New Democratic Party, when they get their constituency offices organized and working, will know that as MPPs, because there will be lots and lots of calls from people who are owed support money who have not received it. In quiet and sometimes not so quiet desperation, they will call your offices and say: "Would you please help me? I have not got my payment this month and I cannot feed myself and I cannot feed my children."
The branch is in a terrible mess. It is not able to do the job it is legislatively required to do. It has taken certain steps as a result of the problems it confronts: It has done some research and it has found that other jurisdictions confronted with the very same problems in the very same sort of branch have taken some rather severe steps. They have created a statutory right to automatically garnishee or attach the wages of the payer or the individual, generally the husband, who owes support.
On that score, I want to publicly thank Susan Swift, who is the research officer of the committee, who prepared a very good document analysing what other jurisdictions do. The minister mentioned Australia. There are several US jurisdictions now, including Wisconsin notably, which have adopted this rather intrusive measure -- the state automatically attaching wages is an intrusive measure -- and there has been some success. I want to repeat that. There has been some success. Not the elimination of child poverty, I say to my friend the Attorney General, not a dramatic increase in the number of support orders that are honoured completely, but some improvement. What was proposed, certainly in cabinet, by the previous Attorney General and what is now being proposed by the incumbent Attorney General is that Ontario as well adopt this strong medicine to deal with a serious problem.
The heart and soul of the bill is the right or the obligation of a court hearing a matrimonial matter to write and register an order for the automatic deduction from wages of the debtor spouse; as I said, generally the husband. All these other things are nice little fix-it types of measures, but that is really what we are talking about. The members of the minister's policy unit have referred to the few exceptions that exist for this kind of automatic deduction order.
It is interesting that we are beginning our hearings on this matter on the very day the Treasurer of Ontario has held a press conference to announce what his transfer payments will be to municipalities, to hospitals, to school boards, to universities and to colleges. I think some of us had an opportunity to listen to the Treasurer's speech. Most of his speech was about how bad things were out there and how low these transfer payments are going to be.
He said: "We're not even going to begin to try and meet our firm commitment to support school boards to the tune of 60% of their operating expenses. No, we're not even going to start to do that. The economy is too bad. The municipalities are going to be really angry, because we're only giving them five point something per cent," even though they are saying they are being crushed under the weight of welfare orders. He said the universities are only going to be able to hold their own, colleges are only going to be able to hold their own, because the province is in such a recession that we cannot do it.
He did not say that the government is going to be coming up with some plans to deal with the recession. He reiterated that it is all Brian Mulroney's fault, that it all has to do with high interest payments. He did not even suggest that maybe we will recall Parliament and begin to deal with that question. None of that, just that we are in a hell of a mess.
Last Friday, we heard the Treasurer actually predict that Ontario would lose its triple A credit rating because his deficit was going to be so high. But what does that mean in real terms? In real terms that means that this proposal we are looking at, at least for right now, is not going to have much effect because if you do not have a job, if you do not have an income, there is nothing from which to deduct.
This is all very nice and the Attorney General is going to be able to make a number of speeches about his first major success in his tenure as the Attorney General of the province of Ontario. I know that he is going to do that because his political staff in his ministry are going to encourage him to do that and he is not going to be able to resist.
But the fact is that if you lose your job, notwithstanding that there is an automatic deduction order out there against which you could have your salary automatically attached, there is nothing there. That is the real problem that we face in the province of Ontario.
We do have problems in this branch over here. As I think my friend Mr Elston mentioned at our little meeting on Friday, people phone up the branch and it takes them three hours to get through, then they are put on hold for 45 minutes or half an hour or so. Once they get through, there is not much the branch can do about it.
This is a very sensitive issue. We know as committee members it is a sensitive issue because there were a massive number of submissions made by the general public to the committee. I did not have anything to do on Saturday afternoon so I read through all of these submissions and I encourage those one or two members of the committee who have not read through them all yet to do so. If you do that, it really gives you a sense of what we are dealing with here, people coming from both sides of the issue.
What are those two sides? On the one hand, there is the perspective of the parent who has custody of children and who is the beneficiary or the creditor under the terms of an order for support and who is not receiving the money that she is supposed to receive. This creates havoc in the lives of those women and, let's face it, it is predominantly women. Maybe there are one or two men out there. There is one letter from a man who was supposed to get support from his female spouse and that never came through. But if you read these letters, you really get a sense of the agony and the pain out there.
Of course, sometimes when the wages are attached -- let's be frank, the wages could be attached now, garnish orders could be put it into place automatically now, it does not take much, you just do that -- you get the same result as we are getting here with this bill: the debtor, the payer, quits his job. He is so angry about what has happened in the marriage that he quits the job. "I prefer not to work rather than have my wages attached," he says. He leaves the province, leaves the country. So this is not going to solve all those problems. But if you go through the letters, you will get the sense of how this touches people.
The other side of the issue is from the perspective of the person who has to pay and who is now looking at having his wages automatically attached. There are a number of letters here from individuals who say:
"I am honest. l am law-abiding. I know my obligations. I meet those obligations. I do not want the state to administer this for me. I am outraged that now my employer's payroll system must be brought into this. For God's sake, leave me alone. I will honour my obligations. Go after the individual who is not paying. I support that. But I have a right to my privacy and I have a right to fulfil my obligations as best I can under the order that is made against me. I do not need your help, thank you very much. Besides, you need not spend my tax dollars collecting that money because you should only be spending taxpayers' dollars where that money is not collectable or not being paid."
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If I could, Mr Chairman, with your indulgence, just quote from a couple of these letters, the first one is from Donna MacDonald, who lives in Espanola, Ontario. She says she supports Bill 17, by the way. She says:
"This letter is to inform you that I am in favour of Bill 17 becoming law.
"I realize you will be receiving many letters concerning this and I am hoping you will take a few minutes to continue reading my letter. I will make my story as brief as possible and please take this as my consent that it may be openly read before the committee on 11 February." I thought I would grant her her wishes, although I am not going to read it all.
"My husband and I were high school sweethearts. We lived in a common-law relationship for seven and a half years. During those years, we had discussed marriage and children many times. We both felt that there was no need for marriage until we wanted children. Neither of us had much education. I had finished my grade 12, my husband had completed grade 11. Needless to say, we didn't have much to offer prospective employers. Therefore, we could not earn the income necessary to raise a child in the manner that we had wanted to. So in that case we practised birth control.
"Well, my husband returned to school to upgrade his skills, to become a stationary engineer, which was coming along quite nicely, so we had started to talk more seriously about children. We had agreed we would start a family but we would get married first. So we got married. At the same time, I was reinstated as a status Indian so school was now an opportunity for me as well. We had agreed I would continue working full-time and go to school part-time evenings. I enrolled at the Toronto School of Business in their medical secretary course. I wanted a more solid education behind me which I could fall back on when a child became involved in our lives. So we put off having a child for a year while I attended classes."
Donna goes on to say that her husband got a job and she was doing okay. They got married and she became pregnant and, as she says, "We started to plan our baby's arrival which will be around 7 February." This was the very day I was reading this letter and I thought, "God, I'd love to call her and see how she is doing and whether or not she had her baby."
Then she says her husband simply could not tolerate the idea of becoming a father and he left when she was four and a half or five months pregnant. She does not know where he is. There is no contact. She is about to have a baby. She thinks he is making money and she says:
"My husband has all these choices to make whereas myself and my child have none. So far, I've become a burden to my family but this child is not my family's responsibility. The responsibility belongs to myself and my husband. I am willing to take my share. Is he? Obviously not.
"Thank you for taking the time to read my letter. I realize there may be gaps, but it is the same old song and dance.
"PS. I plan to return to school so that I can make a living for myself and my child on one income as the only person I can depend on is myself.
"I also plan to make my husband's life miserable as often as I can. If he pays the support, I will leave him alone. If he does not pay the support, I have nothing to lose.
"Bill 17 -- I vote yes."
Mrs Cunningham: Mr Chairman, could you advise me -- I am sorry, I came in late -- what the process is this afternoon? Because I have a number of questions around the minister's statement and I have read that letter.
The Chair: I appreciate that. Mr Sorbara was making opening comments on behalf of his caucus. What you are concerned about is the amount of time that will be left over.
Mrs Cunningham: I do not know how long the minister is here, but I certainly do not want him taking off before --
Mr Sorbara: He will be here all day, l think.
Mrs Cunningham: What is all day? How late are we sitting today, and how much time are you planning on us using in comments and questions? Mine will not take that long.
The Chair: I certainly appreciate that the issue really is how much time is available to us and how best that time can be used. We also have, of course, as I mentioned, the report of the subcommittee as soon as the minister and his staff have left and those questions have been finished.
Mrs Cunningham: I do not think my colleague has said anything about what we expect out of this meeting. First of all, we expect some discussion around the committee process, because all of us have had a chance to read a lot of material, and it appears that the schedule is much heavier than what I thought it would be when we first got into it.
I am concerned about our work for Friday, so I want to have a talk about that with all of us present. I would like the minister to be part of that discussion, because I am sure he wants the best information he can get, not only to do with this bill, because there is a lot more that has come to us, but also other remedies that we can look at that will affect his ministry. I would like some discussion around that. I also would like an opportunity to talk to him about his statement this afternoon. I was hoping we could talk some process here so that we spend our time wisely this week. It is a much bigger job, I think, than what I thought I would be facing when I first came here today.
Mr Fletcher: On that point, I think I did make a suggestion earlier that the Chair allot each party a certain amount of time. I was thinking perhaps 20 minutes. I do not know what time the minister is leaving. Perhaps we could start from there, and find out when the minister is leaving and find out how much time we have, then divide the time up evenly between the parties.
The Chair: Okay, that is a slightly different means of doing that. Mr Sorbara, had you any idea how much longer you would have to speak?
Mr Sorbara: I can wind up my comments in about six and a half minutes. We could talk about process then or whatever.
The Chair: You have spoken for more than 20 minutes to this point. To encompass the concerns of the several caucuses here, if you could confine yourself to a few minutes, it would certainly be appreciated by the other members.
Mr Fletcher: Mr Chair, just one point. Can you allot some time? Do we know when the minister is leaving? Do we know how much time we have? If we knew that, I think we could allot so much time per party.
Mr Elston: That is not usually done.
Mr Fletcher: It does not matter if it is usually done or not usually done. Let's get some time here so that everyone has an equal opportunity.
Mrs Cunningham: Actually, I hate to disagree with the former minister, but it has been the practice after a minister's comments -- and I know because I have been sitting on a lot of committees -- for statements, for some sharing of the time, though.
The Chair: Okay. The suggestion has been, from Mrs Cunningham and Mr Fletcher, that there be an equal sharing of time. The minister informs me that he will be here or can be here until half past three of the clock. Would an equal division of time among the caucuses be agreeable?
Mr Fletcher: Yes, Mr Chair, that sounds good.
The Chair: It seems to be by consensus.
Mr Elston: I am not consenting to a rationing of time, no.
Mr Sorbara: Just to try and solve this, Mr Chairman, I can appreciate that the minister is very busy and must attend to other matters. I presume that the committee is sitting till 6 o'clock today. Is that correct? Perhaps the minister's policy advisers and the director of the program can stay here to answer detailed questions. I have a few more comments to make. I know that my friend Mrs Cunningham probably has some comments to make, or Mr Carr. Let's get on with it, rather than arguing these points of order.
The Chair: Indeed, Mr Sorbara, that was the point. Mrs Cunningham.
Mr Sorbara: I did not interrupt --
The Chair: Excuse me. Mrs Cunningham.
Mrs Cunningham: I just wanted to know how long the minister was going to be here. If he is going to be here for another hour and a half, that gives us some time. On the other hand, I think we all have questions, so it would be fair to give each party not 20 minutes and cut it off, but a reasonable, fair time to ask our questions. But I will remind Mr Sorbara that in fact it has been the practice at these initial meetings that we share the time as far as possible, and the reason he might not remember is because he did not have to sit on committees like I did in the last few years.
Mr Sorbara: I want to tell my friend the member for London North --
The Chair: Mr Sorbara, could we return to the earlier question? Is it possible for you to finish your statement, please?
Mr Sorbara: It is possible for me to wind up my comments in a reasonable time, and in doing so, I will remind my friend from London North that -- I am getting back to my comments now, Mr Chairman --
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The Chair: Could you please direct those comments at me, sir.
Mr Sorbara: Yes, I will -- that I brought a number of bills before committees like this, and I made opening comments and then listened sometimes, in the case of the now Minister of Labour, to remarks that went on for days.
Mrs Cunningham: I did not sit on those committees, though.
Mr Sorbara: I know you did not, but this is a public process. We have something to say about this bill.
The Chair: Could you return to what you have to say about this bill, please? Thank you.
Mr Sorbara: I think the minister should stay here for far longer than he is planning on.
The Chair: I am sure he would love to.
Mr Sorbara: In any event, the only other letter that I want to refer to is a very short letter, Mr Chairman, and I am not going to quote from all of it. But the writer says re Bill 17: "I have seriously pondered its contents and have -- "
Interjection.
Mr Elston: You had better not correct the Chair. You will cause problems.
Mr Fletcher: I am not correcting anyone. I just asked.
Mr Elston: You were.
The Chair: Mr Elston, please. You are interrupting your colleague's time.
Mr Elston: Mr Fletcher was giving you instructions.
The Chair: I did not hear them, sir.
Mr Fletcher: I was asking a question.
Mr Sorbara: In any event, this writer says:
"I have seriously pondered its contents and have concluded that I must protest most strongly what this bill proposes. There are many reasons for my strongest possible protest, among which are: this is one more encroachment of government on what is my business; it proposes once again to make the innocent pay the price for the guilty.
"For your and your government's information (and I have voted NDP since I was old enough to vote, a fact well known locally)" -- this writer is from Welland-Thorold -- "I pay child support and I did so for several months before the court laid it on me, and I have no intention of `welshing.' I know that I may represent about 15% of `loyals,' but I refuse to be penalized for the 85% or so that for one reason or another are guilty...that is a matter for the constabulary!
"Do you understand? You must not put through this bill. It is bad for those of us who are honest, and in the long run will be bad for the NDP." He is making a political comment. "Please communicate this letter's contents to all concerned."
The long and the short of it is that our party was prepared to move down this road. It seems now that the government of the day is prepared to move down this road. I have no idea what the Tories will do. They will do probably whatever is convenient. I think, though, under those circumstances, there is a possibility that this committee can actually do some real work on the bill, that instead of just digging ourselves into our positions -- that is, the members opposite saying, "Yes, we support Mr Hampton's bill 100%" -- we can try to work on finding the words that will allow us to do what we really want to do.
What we really want to do is to have an automatic deduction order in place in every one of the cases where, were it not for that order, the payments would not be made, and we want to have no automatic deduction order in place when it is clear that the payments would in any event be made. In other words, we want a solution only for those cases where a solution is necessary, and no solution where no solution is necessary. That would be fine-tuning this project in a way that I think other jurisdictions would want to emulate. Administratively we would be using the resources of government in the best possible way.
I want to conclude my comments on the question of resources. The folks over here, and the director in particular, who have to administer this program are going to take on a new workload of some very great significance. l want to say to the Attorney General while he is still here -- it is not 3:30 yet -- that unless he is able to squeeze out of the Treasurer resources far in excess of what exist now for this branch, he is going to find that he has the very same problem one year after this bill is passed that he has now, and that is an administration that is burdened with a workload it does not have the resources to properly discharge.
So I say to the committee members and to the Attorney General that we should direct our attention and our concern to the question of appropriately funding this branch. I know we are not in estimates and I know this is not a pre-budget hearing, but this bill is not worth the powder to blow it to hell, to quote a former critic of mine, unless the ministry and the branch have enough money to make it work.
If the Attorney General cannot give us that undertaking, then I have grave concerns not for the legislation, which will pass because we know who has the majority, but for the spouses who look to this bill as an opportunity to solve the terrible problems they have had thus far in collecting support.
Mr Chairman, my colleague Mr Elston will have some questions on the question of resources and the current state of the branch and how far it is backlogged and what resources it has and how it proposes to handle this additional workload, but for now these are my comments. Thank you for being so attentive and for allowing so few interruptions.
Mrs Cunningham: I am sitting in on this committee, Mr Chairman, in the absence of our justice critic, Mr Harnick, who is with the committee that is looking at constitutional reform, so I would just say it is a pleasure to be here. The subject is not new to me. I have sat in on other legislation pertaining to custody and access and enforcement and have spent a great deal of my adult life working in this area, so I think I bring a bit of expertise to a problem that all of us are very much concerned about.
To the minister, it is a pleasure to see you there, sir, and to know --
Hon Mr Hampton: It is nice to see you again.
Mr Sorbara: Just rub it in, Dianne.
Mrs Cunningham: Well, come on. Do not be so sensitive, Gregory. You used to be such a nice guy when you were a minister. Look at this --
Mr Sorbara: I am still.
The Chair: Mr Sorbara, please. Mrs Cunningham does have the floor.
Mrs Cunningham: He is so uptight. I wrote down the words that he used. He should relax.
Mr Sorbara: Yes, yes. Look at this.
Mrs Cunningham: "Whatever is convenient, the Tories." I should tell you, Mr Chairman, that we are here to do whatever is best for children and families, and I am not even sure what that is going to be with this legislation except to say that my colleague has put a lot of work into it and has already prepared amendments, some of which may be dealt with by the government today. I have not had time to look at it.
But I am, first of all, concerned about the process. It seems to me that -- and you might want to consider this, all members of the committee -- we have been entrusted with a tremendous amount of information, most of which we have not been able to read because it is not here yet, and when I take a look at the quality of the witnesses who are coming before this committee perhaps at some time during the week, I would urge you, Mr Chairman, to take a look at our process. I think there is more to this bill than simple amendments to make it better. I am not even certain if we can do that by Friday because I have not heard everything that is being presented. And, Mr Minister, I hope you will respond to what I am saying here.
The other issue for us -- and again the minister was very much a part of the discussions around supervised access and the need for programs -- I think the letters I have read so far talk about certainly a need to get the payments -- to enforce the payments that should be coming to mums and sometimes dads, but they also talk about the need for fathers to have access to their children. And if there is some way we can assist, not specifically through legislation but perhaps in making recommendations at the end of these hearings, I think it would be very helpful, because we do not have the opportunity in this process at Queen's Park sometimes to give recommendations to the minister, and I would like him to comment on that.
We just simply do not get the expertise we need before committees of this Legislative Assembly as frequently as what we need, and we have a great opportunity here to ask other questions. Therefore the 15 minutes -- and, Mr Chairman, I really respect the problem you have in getting people before the committee -- is a real concern to me, given the level of expertise that has volunteered to present itself, so you will see us asking questions about other issues that may be of assistance to the minister down the road.
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I would like to take a moment right now to ask the minister if he has considered one of his statements on page 2 and the kind of work that may have gone in or the advice that he may have had. The problem is that we are still facing a 75% default rate among support payers, and I have two questions. First of all, could you provide the committee, from your point of view, what a profile of a delinquent support payer might be? I would think there may not be one but there may be a trend in one direction or another. Second, are you aware of what the default rate was before the Support and Custody Orders Enforcement Act of 1985? Those two specific questions.
Hon Mr Hampton: Let me respond directly to the two issues Mrs Cunningham has raised. But before that, let me say it is nice to see that though some of the personalities have changed on the justice committee, it still behaves in very much the same old way.
Mr Elston: I was reading some of your old comments.
Hon Mr Hampton: They might prove helpful in the future. I am glad to offer them to you. If I am not mistaken, when I was on this committee, Mr Kormos sat in that chair and I sat in that chair, and I might say the personalities are quite the same.
Mr Sorbara: The campaign is over.
Hon Mr Hampton: I do not believe we can provide you with a profile. We will do our best to get some statistics for you. Second, we may be able to get figures back from 1985, which were pre-SCOE figures. We may not be able to get them for you until later on this week but we will do our very best to get that. Okay?
In responding to the other issue you raised about supervised access, I understand that you do have some process time later on this afternoon, and allow me to say that I would be very interested in any recommendations or advice the committee has on supervised access. I would very much appreciate whatever help you can offer in that area. I am certainly aware of how great a problem access is in terms of custody cases. In particular, you and I sat through this once before and I think we remember some of the submissions, so I would be very interested in whatever the committee has to offer.
Allow me just to respond to Mr Sorbara and his comments. I am sorry if I did not bring this out in my comments, but I did say that governments, not only here in Ontario but across Canada, the United States and elsewhere in the world have wrestled with this problem of support payments. I certainly recognize that the government that you were part of did wrestle with this problem and I appreciate the work that has been done in the past. I meant to signify that in saying that governments have wrestled with the problem.
I also appreciate that merely having support deduction is not going to turn the world right side up in this area; the problem is far more serious than that. But as I tried to say in my initial comments, this is a very important tool because what it will allow us to do is this -- and again, Mr Sorbara, I want to speak directly to your queries. At the present time much of the support and custody orders staff time is taken up with garnishments and enforcement procedures that we believe will be done away with in large measure by support deduction. In other words, we spend time now doing enforcement work where that enforcement work would very likely not be necessary if we had support deduction at this time. We think we can then take the staff time that is now spent chasing around after people who are employed and who do have an income, we think we can in the future take that staff time and apply it to the really difficult cases. By the really difficult cases I mean, for example, someone who is only employed half of the year, construction worker or other types of seasonal work, someone who is self-employed or someone who does change jobs frequently. This is an important tool in the sense that it will allow us to reach incomes that are readily available, easily, effectively and efficiently, and it will allow us to use our staff time in the most appropriate way to go after the most difficult enforcement cases.
Mr Sorbara indicated that there is a very large backlog. We know that and I know the former government knew that. We have already allocated an additional $2 million that is aimed specifically at hiring more staff to deal with the backlog that is there even as we speak about this legislation. And there is a further allocation of over $3 million which will come into place when this act is proclaimed, and I am assuming it will be proclaimed.
So we appreciate the need for more resources. We are supplying the additional resources but we also hope that by having support deduction we will then be able to use those resources now and in the future in a more effective and efficient way to go after the support orders that have traditionally been the most difficult to enforce.
But let me get to the heart of this again. When all of the statistics are looked at and when you look at the default rate and how many children are living in poverty, there remains a philosophical problem out there, an attitudinal problem. And the attitudinal problem is this: For too many people who have been ordered to pay support, the attitude is still there that paying support is somehow discretionary. What we are trying to do here, in the longer term, is to turn around that attitude. If I may make a comparison, it is a comparison with the drinking-and-driving campaigns.
Some of you were probably in university about the same time I was in university, and if I may say, when I was in university --
Mr Elston: None of us were in that long ago.
Hon Mr Hampton: -- and I assume it was even worse way back when Mr Elston was in university -- there were many situations where people thought it was acceptable to drink and drive. In fact it was sometimes socially popular to drink and drive. Now what we have done -- and it started when Mrs Cunningham's party was the government and it continued when the Liberal Party was the government and we intend to continue it even as we speak -- what happened is we turned around that social attitude and it became socially inappropriate to drink and drive, and it is becoming, I would argue, more and more socially inappropriate to drink and drive.
That is what we want to do here. Part of this legislation, the long-term scheme, is to have a system whereby it becomes the socially appropriate thing to do to pay support orders, and it becomes the socially acceptable thing, the social norm, that where a child or family support order is registered with a court, payroll deduction swings into action.
Payroll deduction will no longer be regarded as some sort of extreme measure. It will not be the exceptional measure; it will be the social norm and that is the long-term goal. I appreciate what Mr Sorbara has said. This cannot be done overnight. We may indeed have to come back to the Legislature a year from now and fine-tune the legislation, but we think it is a very worthy goal. We think it is a goal that will work in the longer term and, I might note, it is a goal that is being attempted not only here but in the United States and in Australia and, who knows, before long perhaps in other Canadian jurisdictions as well.
I hope I have addressed the questions and the issues that each of you raised in your opening statements.
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Mrs Cunningham: Well, if I could just continue on, thank you, Mr. Minister. The reason I asked the question about the profile, and I am not expecting any detail here, was with regard to one of your own statements, I think, towards the end where you talked about Alberta on page 7. Alberta studies show that 80% of separated and divorced husbands have sufficient disposable income to meet their court-ordered obligations. I am just wondering what our number would look like. That is what I mean when I am talking about the profile.
The other one is, I think if you look back pre-1985, you will see that the recovery was probably somewhere around 50%. Otherwise, we did better before the legislation of 1985, although even that was not good enough and of course that is why we enacted it. So in taking a look at the research, at the research staff, did I throw that number out? I could be corrected, but given my mind and the things I did before then, I think I am probably right on that, it is almost 50%. I am only trying to say that the jury is still out on whether this will work or will not work.
The research staff -- Susan Swift has said exactly that in her summary, that it is basically new, so I think anything we do is going to have to be done very carefully and we are going to have to track it like we have never tracked anything before, because what we do not want are people disappearing from our province or our country or people hiding payments, those kinds of things that in fact are being reported in some way or another now, and I think you said that. I think you reassured us about that.
I would like your comment on my concern about the time frame. You have sat on committees like this where we have had to stay up all night on a Thursday night around important legislation bringing forth other amendments or what not. This does not allow us a lot of time to do a good job. We will be better able to think about that maybe on Wednesday, but I am hoping you are not shutting the door around a time frame because of something that the committee structure is all about, if in fact we find we need more time. I do not know what the rules are in this committee on that, but I would like to hear about them and I would like to hear your thoughts.
Mr Sorbara: The minister does not set the rules. The committee sets the rules.
Mrs Cunningham: Well, maybe things are different, but I have sat on committees here. No matter how important the legislation has been, no matter what, a committee sets an agenda three months before it sits and, by God, you have to stay with it. Now I am saying I am not prepared to be part of that system any more. I do not think committees worked in the past and if we feel as a committee that we want to change the rules for getting the work done halfway through the hearings because we are all stressed, I would like the minister to reassure us that it may be possible. I am sorry, Mr Chairman. You could probably do that.
The Chair: Yes, if I could, thank you. As you know, all committees submit their requests through the House leaders and there is an agreement. We have three weeks to sit to discuss Bill 17, the conflict of interest guidelines and a standing order 123 motion from your party. In the event that we decide as a committee to extend hearings in regard to Bill 17, that would take precedence over your standing order request and it might be something you might wish to discuss with your own colleague on the subcommittee.
Mrs Cunningham: Of course I will. You are saying then that there is some flexibility. Mr Elston and I sit on the committee that makes up the rules, and the government has the final say. So the members are sitting on the committee and all I am saying is we want to relook at that. Then if this committee asks, that is a possibility. That is all I want to hear.
The Chair: Yes, we could certainly look at the allotment of time within that three-week period. In fact, hearings could extend, you know, into the end of March if our committee so wishes.
Mrs Cunningham: Actually, I am not even as concerned about the hearings as I am about our fair deliberations around some of the amendments. That is what I am more concerned about. And this thing about we will do it during standing order 123, quite frankly, I do not want any big sticks any more. I have listened to that long enough too. I want to get the work done. I figure I am sitting here for the next four years.
Mr Elston: You are so negative.
Mrs Cunningham: I an not negative, I am positive and I want to see something done in a different way from what I experienced in the past and I think the people of Ontario do too.
The Chair: Could we defer this discussion until after the minister has left?
Mrs Cunningham: No. I would like his comments before he leaves.
The Chair: He certainly is welcome to comment if he so wishes.
Hon Mr Hampton: To Mrs Cunningham, something that may help you. One of the things the ministry did before introducing the legislation last fall and has continued to do since then is talk to a number of groups and organizations. Going down the list, I think you will find that many of the groups and organizations that will appear before you over the next couple of days have already had extensive consultation with ministry staff on the legislation and in fact suggested many of the amendments that are appearing before you now; they may want to offer some explanation or some description as to why they requested those amendments. In the next two or three days, when you speak to groups from the public, I think you will find they are quite well informed and perhaps, in some cases, know the proposed legislation inside and out. I hope that is helpful to you.
I will do what I can, and ministry staff will do what they can, to make the amendments understandable, meaningful and to promote full discussion. Again, I cannot tell the committee what to do in terms of time limits. You have set those time limits. I will try to help you as much as I can and ministry staff will try to help as much they can to use the time as efficiently as possible.
Mrs Cunningham: But you are not saying no if we request further time?
Hon Mr Hampton: I am not saying no.
The Chair: Mrs Murdock?
Ms S. Murdock: Mr Chair, just a correction: It is Miss.
The Chair: Ms?
Ms S. Murdock: It is not Mrs, that is for sure, in any case. I had not planned on speaking to the bill at all, but listening to my colleagues I think it is important. As a former constituency assistant for both unemployment insurance and Shelley Martel, I had many occasions to deal in the constituency office with SCOE cases. I am sort of a guest here this week so I have not been privy to a lot of the conversations that have taken place on this, but I was sort of surprised that the Ombudsman was not on this list, mainly because through Shelley's office we had asked the Office of the Ombudsman to investigate the whole process of SCOE, and it took about six months before it did it. I was wondering, from the ministry staff, whether those Ombudsman proposals had been looked at and considered in the proposals to Bill 17.
Hon Mr Hampton: I am advised that no advice was received from the Ombudsman's office in the drafting of this legislation.
Mrs Cunningham: That was a great question.
Ms S. Murdock: I was thinking it may be a very good idea to have the Ombudsman present at some point to discuss it, for the simple reason that I know I was involved with many questions asked on that very subject, specifically of the things that were wrong with SCOE. That might be a backwards way of looking at Bill 17, but I think it is possible.
It is nice to hear from my colleagues that nobody disagrees with the idea of Bill 17. I just have a couple of questions. While I have you here, Minister, I will ask them of you.
Mr Sorbara's concerns have been with regard to tarring everyone with the same brush. I know we discussed that when it was in debate and so on. I was wondering if the legislation specifically dealt -- hypothetically here -- with only defaulted payers. Has the ministry considered the process in which that could be done, or is it just easier to do for everybody? Is that what the thought was? Was it only all payers you considered? Do you know what I mean?
Hon Mr Hampton: In fact, we considered who to include and why to include them very carefully. Again, I go back to the general concept we want to promote and want to see in place in Ontario: We want to arrive at a situation where the payment of support is seen, by and large, to be a social, moral and legal obligation. We believe the most effective way to get there at this time is to proceed by way of support deduction so that support deduction from the payroll cheque will be seen as the social norm for paying support in Ontario. For that reason it will not distinguish between individuals who have defaulted and individuals who are up to date in their payments in the future.
In the future, when a support deduction order is made in the family courts of Ontario, a support deduction mechanism will be automatic, with two exceptions. One exception is where the judge sitting on the hearing decides that a support deduction order would be unconscionable in the circumstances; there is case law under the Family Law Act as to exactly what "unconscionable" means. The second would be where both parties, the payer and the recipient, agree they want to opt out and security is paid. Other than that, the system will proceed by way of support deduction.
Again, I want to emphasize that the goal is to see the payment of child and family support as the social norm in Ontario, and we see payroll deduction as perhaps the very best way to do that.
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Ms S. Murdock: I agree with support deduction, particularly in that it will, hopefully, stop all the delays that occur with having cheques sent in and so on.
I have two other questions. Manitoba, I think, has a system whereby it either uses the social insurance number or some identification form for people who default. l think they have a reciprocal system with four other provinces in terms of locating people who quit their jobs. I do not know if that is correct. I am talking about a W5 program I watched one night a couple of years ago. I remember watching it and thinking, "Gee, I wonder why Ontario isn't using that system to locate people who intentionally quit their employment?"
The Chair: That is a question you posed to yourself. Do you now want to pose it to the minister?
Ms S. Murdock: I am asking.
Hon Mr Hampton: On the first question, Ontario has a reciprocal enforcement of support orders agreement with all the other provinces. The issue of locating those individuals who deliberately quit their job in order to avoid paying support orders is a more difficult one. I expect that problem will remain to a certain extent even with support deduction, but I would also suggest that the best way to counter that, again, is to try to create the social ethic that the payment of child and family support is a moral responsibility, a social responsibility, a legal responsibility in Ontario. I think we can do that. If we devote more attention to a public campaign -- and we intend to do that; that is part and parcel of the legislation -- I think we can elicit significant public support so there will be peer pressure for people to pay their support orders. That is probably the most appropriate way of dealing with individuals who may have in the past quit their job in order to avoid paying support.
Ms S. Murdock: I have a specific question relating to subsection 3c(8).
Mr Sorbara: We are going to do that in clause by clause.
Ms S. Murdock: Okay. I did not know whether I was reading it correctly. I figured since we had them here -- I can wait till clause-by-clause on Friday.
When this bill was brought up for debate, we were talking about $15 million being injected into the SCOE system to clean it up. How has that gone?
Hon Mr Hampton: Two million dollars has already been spent. That was the amount that was authorized -- a little more than $2 million, actually -- for spending on new staff, and we have begun to hire new staff around Ontario. There is a further $3 million that will be committed when the legislation is proclaimed.
Ms S. Murdock: Are those people being kept on once the new legislation is proclaimed, whatever the legislation is?
Hon Mr Hampton: We will have an opportunity to look at that when the legislation is proclaimed and do a further needs assessment. The hiring of new staff in December and January is aimed at dealing with the backlog. We simply felt that waiting until this legislation is passed and proclaimed, which might take until summertime, and it might take until September to implement it, was not acceptable. We had to bring on new staff resources to deal with the backlog now, and the $2 million has allowed the ministry to hire a significant number of people to help deal with the backlog.
Mr Sorbara: A couple of supplementaries on the comments by my friend from Sudbury. Going back to the comments the Attorney General made in response to the comments of the committee members, if you listen to what he said, I think you get the kernel of what is going on in this bill. It is not, ladies and gentlemen, about eliminating child poverty. My God, if you want to eliminate child poverty, let's get out and start creating jobs and providing opportunities for the poor. He said that too much of the branch's time is taken up with garnishment orders. The truth is that the branch could do everything it wants to do under Bill 17, it could do it under its current law, but it has to go through a procedure to register a garnishment order, which is the same thing.
Really, what is going on here, and I have it on good authority because a friend of mine used to be the Attorney General, is a way of dealing with the cost of enforcing this program. In other words, it is going to be cheaper to do it this way, to have an automatic order, than to make determinations case by case and go through the old court procedure to register a garnishment order against a particular individual. There could be a so-called automatic deduction order against all the defaulters if they had enough resources to go out and register a garnishment order, because once it is registered it is an automatic deduction order. But the case load is so huge that they said, "Well, let's get the courts to do it right away and then we won't have to spend resources doing this."
That is a pretty blunt instrument. I know why they are doing it, but to talk about child poverty and to couch it in suggestions that we are going to create a new standard in our society, that people are going to suddenly feel good now, that it is going to become a social and moral and legal obligation that we are very proud of: "Hey, guess what? I just got my automatic deduction order against me." Do people like paying income tax? Are they happy every month when they see the slip that says $200 deducted and sent to the federal government? No, they are mad as hell. They are not happy about that at all, but the government knows that is the only way it is going to get it so that is the way it is going to do it. To suggest that through an advertising campaign, suddenly people are going to start feeling real good about this stuff flies in the face of the terrible emotional trauma that often is associated with this whole business.
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Let's not be fooled by the minister's rhetoric and, frankly, by the rhetoric of his department, which needs this thing in order to keep costs down. This is about keeping costs down, not about fighting child poverty and not about creating a new drunk-driver standard in Ontario: We all abhor that now, and we all abhor this business of welshing on your support payments. That is not what it is about. It is about the problems associated with administering a cumbersome garnishment procedure in Ontario. Maybe really we should be changing that.
The other thing I want to say about that process --
The Chair: Are you asking a question?
Mr Sorbara: Yes, I am going to ask a question, as a matter of fact. We do not have to take up much of our time any more with administering to ministries, so we take up our time on committees and that is what we are here to do.
He suggested there are only two options to get out of this automatic deduction order: unconscionability, and the courts will figure out what that is on an ongoing basis, and the agreement as between the spouses and the payment of a security. What I want to tell the minister and what I want to tell this committee is that if we could find a better way of doing that, if we could just pretend for a little while that we are as smart on this committee as are the minister's policy advisers and the people in the branch, and I submit to you that we are, we could find maybe a third mechanism to make this system work more effectively to save the branch the money it is going to save by way of this bill, and to make life just a bit easier for people on both sides of that matrimonial breakdown.
I want to ask the minister whether he is going to be open -- I am talking about really open -- to amendments to this bill that will do what I have just proposed. I know that ministers are often not open to having their bills changed. l have on occasion been a minister who is not open to having a committee mess with his bill. l just want to ask him, in all sincerity: Are you open to it? Are you prepared to let this committee do some work around reshaping the exceptions to this new measure, or are you just going to let the people come before the committee, have their say and then, by God, have it passed the way in which you have presented it or else? Yes or no?
Hon Mr Hampton: Mr Chairman, you have a unique procedure here. People who come before the committee listen to a speech for 20 minutes and then are asked to say yes or no. I understand they used to allow this in the Kremlin.
Mr Sorbara: You have the floor. You can talk for as long as you want.
Hon Mr Hampton: Let me answer all of the questions that are inherent in Mr Sorbara's comments.
First of all, there is a very big difference between payroll deduction and garnishment. If you speak to family law experts, lawyers, judges, if you speak to the person on the street, the word "garnishment" carries with it a stigma, and a very big stigma. The word "garnishment" to an employer means: "We have a troublesome employee here. We have somebody who can't pay his bills or who won't pay his bills." When you have a garnishment order against you, you may find it is difficult to get credit, etc. So do not compare garnishment with payroll deduction.
Mr Sorbara: But I am saying change garnishment.
Hon Mr Hampton: Garnishment has a long-standing stigma attached to it, and for that reason it is just not a very good way to proceed.
Mr Sorbara: But you are the Attorney General now and you can change the law relating to garnishment. You can take away that stigma.
Hon Mr Hampton: I think I should point out something else to you. Under the existing legislation, garnishment orders are not difficult to achieve. In fact, under the existing SCOE legislation, garnishment orders are almost automatic. It is not the procedure we are worried about here, it is not that garnishment is time-consuming necessarily. That is not the problem.
I just want to point out that there are real problems with garnishment, but the procedure is not one of them; it is the stigma that is attached. That is what we want to move away from. We do not want people in the province to believe that paying support is a stigma. We want to move away as much as possible from all of the stigma that attaches to the word "garnishment."
Mr Sorbara: You are saying then that by levelling an automatic deduction order against someone who is going to pay anyway, that is taking away the stigma? Come on, you are dreaming in Technicolor if you think that is going to happen, or if you think that banks are going to give you a better credit rating because $200 is coming off under an automatic support order rather than $200 coming off under a garnishment. The banks want to know how much disposable income you have, not whether or not the word "garnishment" is there.
Hon Mr Hampton: I will answer the original questions and I will skip the editorial comments.
Again, the concept that we are trying to reach here is that if we set a target goal of, say, 60%, if we can achieve either total or partial payment by means of support deduction in 60% of the support orders, we will then, we believe, be moving away from the stigma that has attached. We believe, and we may be wrong, but we think this is a good enough idea that it is worthy of a try.
We believe that it will be socially acceptable, that there will not be any stigma attached if it becomes recognized socially that when you have a support order against you, it means payroll deduction, that when you look down your paycheque you will see so much deducted for income tax, so much deducted for Canada pension, so much deducted for UIC, so much deducted for your registered pension plan and so much deducted for support orders. We think we can move away from all of the stigma that is now there with garnishment orders and we think we will have found something that is much more socially acceptable and that people will respond to.
Mr Carr: One of the questions I have -- and I agree a little bit with Mr Sorbara; I thought the intention was to get the money into the hands of the children, not to set some social norm -- but when you look at the situation with the court backlogs and the rent review situation which gets backlogged and so on, I am looking at it from the standpoint that if we can eliminate those 25% who would normally pay out of the system, will we not be able to get the money that we are looking to get to the people most in need for that other 75%?
You talk about the number of cases. If we can eliminate 25% of those cases, is it not going to make it easier, or am I missing something in the process? I am thinking if we can eliminate some of them who would normally pay -- and you talked about the staff and how much time they have allotted -- would it not free people up if we can eliminate the people who get the money that would be coming in?
Hon Mr Hampton: What you will find as you go through clause-by-clause consideration of the legislation is that what we have tried to build in here is a system, for example, that the business community feels it can buy into. We have tried to put in place a system that will be relatively easy for the courts to deal with and a system that will in essence be a model that is computer-monitored, so that it will require very little staff time to deal with support deduction orders.
Once an order for payment of support is made by the court, it will be a simple form that can be checked off. That form immediately goes to SCOE where it is placed on the computer, and as well a copy goes to the employer indicating when the support deduction is to be made, how much is to be made and where it is to be mailed to. So what we believe we are putting in place here is a system that will simplify a great number of steps and that the child and family support office, the courts and employers will find very easy to comply with and one that is not at all time-consuming.
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Just to go back to your original remark, if we are able to move compliance up to 50% or 60% by means of using this system, we believe it will of course accomplish two things in terms of children. First of all, there will be a greater amount of money flowing in the aggregate, and second, the money will move more quickly. In other words, delays in terms of garnishment orders, delays in terms of tracing will not be as prevalent as they are now, and in that sense, I think those will be wonderful contributions to the welfare of children and dependent spouses in Ontario.
Mr Carr: Presumably, that is why 3b was put in there, though, to speed it up, and it includes your four months' security. Presumably that is to keep the people out of the system who should not be in there, I assume.
Hon Mr Hampton: If you want me to refer specifically to the four months, the finding in the past has been that, where you have had a default, it will take up to four months to get money flowing. So that four-month period is the time that we think that the child and family support office will need. Where someone has opted out -- let's assume someone does opt out in the future -- and then defaults, that will be the four months that we will need. So there should not be any interruption of funds in that case. That is the reason for that.
Mr Carr: I see. I guess the big question that I want to ask of you, which really speaks to the whole situation, is what your perception is of why people do not pay. Is it because they do not have the money or because, as you may have alluded to, a high percentage of them feel that they do not have to? How much of it comes into access? That is why I think Mrs Cunningham's question is very important: What are the reasons people do not pay right now?
I was just wondering if you could give us some thoughts, maybe list them in terms of one, two, three, on the reasons why people do not pay. Is number one the social situation, that people feel they do not have to pay? Is number two because most of the people or a lot of the people do not have the money to pay and they disagree with what the court has said? Does number three get into access, where somebody says, "I can't see the kid so I'm not going to pay"?
I am just trying to get overall the broad sense of why people are not paying.
The Chair: I am wondering, Mr Carr, since that question came up before with Mrs Cunningham's question, if it might not be possible for us to get materials that we could have on that presently.
Mr Carr: Yes. I was looking less for statistics, more just the Attorney General's perception. Obviously his perception is very important, and he can just maybe give us overall the rationale behind the legislation.
Hon Mr Hampton: I cannot give you the reasons in priority order, but I can say this: I recognize from discussions that have gone on around SCOE in the past and around Bill 124 in the past, that in some cases failure to pay support is related to access. As a government, we hope to be addressing that issue shortly, and I look forward to any points that you want to make on that in a helpful way.
Mr Carr: Do you think that would be very high, though?
Hon Mr Hampton: I cannot accurately say at this time. Put it this way: I have had discussions with audiences where I would come away thinking that it is related in 90% of the cases --
Mr Carr: And at other times --
Hon Mr Hampton: -- and I have had discussions that lead me to believe it is not a serious problem. We just do not have the statistics. But one of the problems that we see is that for too many people there seems to be the attitude that the marriage is over or the relationship is over: "They're not my kids any more. I don't have to pay support for them. I can go on about my business." That is a very large problem and it is a problem we think we can deal with significantly with this legislation and with the public relations campaign that we want to build into it.
The message we want people to receive is that you have to take care of your kids and that a big part of taking care of your kids is payroll deduction, so that in the future people will begin to recognize that even if a marital or spousal relationship has ended, the obligation to support children and to support a dependent spouse remains.
Mr Carr: I just wonder why we could not have done ad campaigns to try to change the social norm before we went to this stuff. It would seem to me we would try that, because you mentioned the drinking and driving and it did work in that case, and I was thinking that maybe something along those lines, if we put as much effort into it, we probably could. Your analogy about it being acceptable before was quite true. I went to university and it was acceptable. It is not now and what I was thinking was, before we put this law into place, we should try some of these things. I, as a father of three, find it very strange that anybody does not accept his responsibility, but I am just wondering why we did not do that first before we went to this mess of --
Hon Mr Hampton: What it boils down to is that we could deal with this type of family law reform piecemeal or we could deal with it altogether. What we are trying to do is to deal with it altogether. We are trying to, for example, change the name of an organization that has developed a not very good reputation. We are trying to improve the staffing level of that organization. We are trying to give them legislation which will give them significant, new and significantly different tools to work with and we are trying to do the public relations work necessary to give all of it a good chance of success.
Mr Carr: You see, where I am coming from is that we all agree we want to get it into people's hands, but every time we do something -- and Lord knows we do not need to tell you about court backlogs and what happens when we get involved in something like this. The rent review started out as a great idea and then we got into backlogs of six months. My theory is that we are going to do the same thing in this case and we are going to end up in the same type of, for want of a better word, bureaucratic nightmare.
I was just wondering if there is anything you can do outside of -- maybe even give us some of the facts and figures that could alleviate some of my concerns in terms of numbers of cases coming through, the amount of staff to handle them -- how are you going to make the members of this committee rest assured that we are not going to get into a situation where it gets ahead of us and then ultimately the children and the families do not get the money that we so desperately want to see in their hands?
Hon Mr Hampton: What I can tell you is that where this has been tried, for example, in Wisconsin state, it is proving to be successful. I am not going to tell you it is a total success, but it has improved the success rate. Information we have from Australia is that it has improved the success rate there as well. The fact that, for example, the United States is passing federal law which will require all states to introduce this type of legislation indicates that there is a fair body of opinion that says this will work.
Mr Carr: I have some more, but in the rotation, I do not want to take all the time at once. Hopefully, there will be some more time at the end.
Mr G. Mills: I suppose, like any of us here who do not support this bill, it is really like saying that you do not love your mother. We all support this bill, I hope, but having said that, I know that when I read it over and tried to digest it, I said that in some instances it was almost like sending a teetotaller to an AA meeting in that if he was paying, why go through this exercise?
I have a lot of agreement with some of the comments that have been made along those lines here this afternoon, that it would be wonderful if we could fine-tune something to be so wonderful that that would happen. But I guess my question is that the 75% we are talking about is not 75% of the people all the time, it is a revolving 75%, and I suppose, Minister, your answering that would answer my concern about all the sort of involvement with the ministry to collect from people who seemingly would be good customers, good people.
I suppose another concern I have is about the people who live secret lives. There are people out there and probably nobody knows they have got a child somewhere. It concerns me that the person could be sort of keeping that very much to himself and then, all of a sudden -- and I really have difficulty knowing how we are going to keep this payroll that secret, because people talk and once that is registered on there, you are done like dinner for sure where you work. I just think it would be kinder and gentler to people if some mechanism could have been built into this bill.
Do not misunderstand me. I am a supporter of it. If people could sort of come to grips with what they really wanted to do with their lives, I would be happier with that, but I know that we cannot. We do not live in a perfect world and we cannot have everything perfect. I just thought I would like to mention those things in a non-partisan manner here, but I do support the bill. I think it is a wonderful piece of legislation and the people who come into my office are fully supportive of it. I have not had one person phone me or write me saying that he or she does not like it. The input I am getting is 100%, and it is about time. We are glad it is coming. Nevertheless, I would just like to personally put out those couple of thoughts that I think about in my mind.
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The Chair: Do you wish a response?
Mr G. Mills: I think the minister has said the 75% that we are talking about is a revolving 75%. We are not talking with the same types all the time, and that is why, I suppose, this thing will not work unless we do it this way. Is that fair?
Hon Mr Hampton: Your perception that the 25% roughly who pay and 75%, more or less, who do not pay are not a static group is correct, and therefore, the support deduction aspects of this will help. It is important to realize that even people who have good intentions, who start out saying, "I intend to pay all my child support payments," sometimes fall off the wagon. That in itself can create problems that result in a lot of argument, a lot of frustration and a lot of fighting between former spouses that is unproductive.
In that sense, implementing support deduction may actually avoid a lot of that, especially if it becomes the social norm: "I pay support by means of support deduction. Some of the people who work with me pay support by means of support deduction, and other people that I know...." It then becomes the social norm and we think in the longer term again, in combination with some of the other measures we want to implement, this will work and it will be seen as without stigma and something that is a positive step.
Mr Kwinter: I would like to pose a question to the minister. In regard to this 75% figure, have you done any projections of what you expect that number will be when this particular Bill 17 is fully implemented?
Hon Mr Hampton: The target that we have been looking at, based upon information from the United States and elsewhere, Wisconsin, we think that achieving a success rate of 50% to 60% is possible within two years.
Mr Kwinter: So the 75% figure will turn to somewhere between 35% to 50% non-compliance?
Hon Mr Hampton: Now I should say to you that by better targeting the other enforcement resources we have, we may be able to reduce that even more, but talking about this specific legislation, we think that within two years a 50% to 60% success rate is achievable.
Mr Kwinter: I do not know whether you have done any analysis. Is there any correlation between the number of people who are regularly employed and the 75% who do not pay?
Hon Mr Hampton: What experience tells us again, and in part you are referring to the same question Mr Mills raised, is that the 25% who are paying and the 75% who are not paying -- people move in and out of those categories for a number of reasons, and employment or regular employment is one of those reasons.
Mr Kwinter: Let me tell you the reason for my questioning. I am trying to relate to a situation that is not identical, but creates some concerns for me. That is the issue of pensions in that because private pensions plans are not voluntary, generally speaking governments -- I was as guilty as anyone when I was the Minister of Financial Institutions and my colleague was the Minister of Financial Institutions -- because you can target those people who have pension plans, you implement measures to improve those and to make it more onerous for the people who have those, whereas because a lot of companies do not have them, you can do nothing about that.
What you do is you have people who have nothing to do with pension money, that do not want anything to do with pension plans, and the reason they do not want anything to do with them is they say: "Look, there is the reason. You see what the government is doing to the guys that have pension plans. I am not going to have any part of it." So what you have is a disincentive to get into a pension plan because the minute you do it, you are subject to those controls, whereas because it is not mandatory, as long as you stay away from it, you do not have a problem.
If you are going to be deducting child support payments at source, my concern is that immediately those people who want to circumvent it are going to set themselves up in a position where they are not getting any salaries per se. They are going to structure it in such a way that they are changing their jobs, getting to become casual workers, whatever it is, just so that it cannot be targeted in such a way. You may find that instead of getting a better response, you may get a worse response.
I know you have taken a look at Australia and Wisconsin and there seems to be some merit in doing this, but I am concerned that people who feel that this is a further intrusion on their ability to have control over their lives will immediately start working on ways to circumvent it. You may set up a level of frustration where instead of helping the matter, you may be in fact exacerbating the situation.
Do you have any feeling on that?
Hon Mr Hampton: Yes, I do. I disagree with you.
Mr Kwinter: There is nothing to disagree with. I was just telling you. I was just putting forward a proposition.
Hon Mr Hampton: Your point is well taken, but I think we disagree on the outcome. Again, the information we have is that there may be a minority of people, and we believe it is a small minority of people, who will quit their job or will arrange their income in such a way that it cannot be reached by payroll deduction. But we believe that over time the majority of people will accept this as the ordinary course of things. We also believe that by co-ordinating a well-targeted public relations campaign we can dissuade some folks who might otherwise think about that from doing it.
But also, you are going to see as you read through the clause-by-clause, that we have given, through regulation, the flexibility, we believe, to include other income sources in addition to what you and I might say is the usual income source; that is, paycheque arrives every two weeks or paycheque arrives every month. We believe that if we apply ourselves thoughtfully in the regulations, we will be able to widen the net so that the social acceptance of payroll deduction will be increased, and it will be increased across vocational lines and across income groups as well.
I have heard the comments here that this will work only against working-class people or people who do not have the highest incomes. We do not think that is so. We think that by using the regulations, as I said, thoughtfully and creatively, it will not be just a measure that deals with working- and middle-class people, it will be much broader than that.
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Mr Kwinter: Can I give you another hypothetical situation? Let us say that I was a payer or a potential payer or a supposed payer and I now see that this is going to be made a mandatory deduction from my salary. I go to my employer and I say: "I want to change the arrangement that we have, our terms of employment, and I want to have a personal service contract. In return for my services, I want to be paid X."
You cannot do it if you are working on a production line or something, which means that the point you were making that you want to broaden it out to include not just those people who are hourly rated employees or people of that kind -- what I am saying is that the minute you start creating greater sort of constraints on the person's financial flexibility, he is going to start thinking of ways to circumvent it. It is like every time the government brings in a new tax measure; the accountants immediately start to work on, "How do we get around this thing and how do we create some kind of structure that lessens our liability?"
I am acting as the devil's advocate. I am not proposing these things. I just want to know what happens. Do your amendments -- I have to apologize because I am just a substitute on this committee and I have not really gone through them -- contemplate dealing with those non-traditional forms of compensation or arrangements?
Hon Mr Hampton: Again, that is what we intend to do through the regulations. We may meet some creative avoidance techniques. We may; we may not. We believe the regulations will allow us to deal with many of those, but the goal and the objective here is not to be too concerned about the minority of folks who may, for example, quit their job to avoid paying support, or the minority who may have the inherent flexibility to change the way they receive income.
Our goal here is to build a mechanism that will be socially supportable and we believe by the mail we are receiving, for example, at the ministry, this is not only socially accepted but is very much socially supported. So we think we are meeting that goal. It will be socially supported and it will be effective and efficient in the majority of cases. We think we have that.
Once we have that, we can then fine-tune those other situations. Where we find someone, for example, who absolutely refuses to pay support to support his children or to support his dependent spouse, then you have all of those enforcement mechanisms that we have found to be not too effective in the past. We can resort to those in the future. They are more painful. They are a little bit more bureaucratic. They do carry with them a stigma for the person who appears in court under a garnishment order and that garnishment order is then served on his employer or served on whoever has a services contract with him. We can do those things and it may be that we will have to.
By and large we think this legislation and the other things that are complementary to it will allow us to do something that is both socially acceptable and will be effective and efficient in the majority of cases.
Mr Elston: I would first of all like some guidance from you, Mr Chairman. I had started out at the earliest stage wanting to ask a question about that four-month rule and I was told to wait until Friday, but I was propelled by the questions asked by the Tories on it and they were allowed to proceed.
The Chair: Go ahead.
Mr Elston: First of all, since you are asking for a four-month deposit for a buyout of this bill, do you not think that will offend the poor people who cannot put that much money together? They will never be able to put four months of money into a security account, it seems to me. Wealthy people can.
Hon Mr Hampton: I want to point out a couple of things that go along with it. First of all, before someone can come under that exemption, there has to be joint --
Mr Elston: A consent.
Hon Mr Hampton: There has to be agreement by both parties.
Mr Elston: No question. I agree. We will give that to you. There is a consent.
Hon Mr Hampton: Okay, so we think that you are unlikely to see agreement from both parties in most cases.
Mr Elston: It is not true.
Hon Mr Hampton: Well, we can disagree on that.
Mr Elston: Listen, somebody is going to go into the negotiations and say: "I really do not want to get into this thing. I'll give you an extra $25 a week if you'll let me get out of this bill. Will you take the $25 a week? My client really doesn't want to have his wages subject to this order. Another $25. Do you mind? And we will get out of it?"
Now if I happen to be a wage earner who is just making do, I cannot even ask for that consent. Even if I do get the consent, chances are, if I have already got myself piled up to here with obligations, I cannot find four months' worth of stuff. You are living in some kind of dreamland if you do not think that the wealthy are going to be able to buy themselves out of this thing and the poor people are going to be left trapped.
Mr Sorbara: That is not the distinction you want to make.
Mr Elston: Let's just say that I will take your point and we will disagree on it.
Hon Mr Hampton: That is just the first point. I am waiting to make the second one.
Mr Elston: You can make your second one now.
Hon Mr Hampton: The other point I think you have to recognize is that by and large, where you are dealing with an individual who is wealthy, the support payments may be appreciably more, and measured against income may be a lot more, so that paying four months in advance, even for someone who has a fairly good-paying job --
Mr Elston: It does not hold up.
Hon Mr Hampton: -- will simply not work out.
Mr Elston: Let's give you your dream on that one and let's move to the second part of it. I end up having a client who puts four months' worth of money into an account. What sort of interest is paid on that while it is sitting there as security against his default, or her default now?
Hon Mr Hampton: We may want to get into that in clause-by-clause in terms of --
Mr Elston: No, we do not.
Hon Mr Hampton: -- working out the details.
Mr Elston: So you do not know. Basically you have not worked that part out.
Hon Mr Hampton: Quite frankly, I can say this: We do not anticipate --
Mr Elston: Many being able to opt into this.
Hon Mr Hampton: -- that there will be many people opting out.
Mr Elston: Ah, good.
Hon Mr Hampton: That is the goal.
Mr Elston: Basically this is a false hope. Somebody looks at this and says, "You can buy your way out if you can put up four months' worth of stuff, if you can get your spouse to agree and you can afford the four months." But what you folks are really banking on is that to make sure there is an ease of administration, there will not be anybody either agreeing or being able to afford it. Is that not right?
Hon Mr Hampton: I think I have been quite upfront about that. We hope to have a situation in the future where the vast majority of support orders are paid by means of payroll deduction. We think if we can accomplish that, we will have something that is effective and socially acceptable, and indeed will become the social norm and no stigma will attach to it.
Mr Elston: I know what your counselling has been in terms of the right words to use in the committee, but you do not have to repeat them for every question. We will take them as a given in most cases, okay? Let's take a look at the 75%. We have 83,000 cases now and these questions that I am embarking upon now will actually comply more specifically with your remarks. They should not come as a surprise to most of the staff who are here, because we started talking about this last Thursday. I had asked for some more specific-type information, but it did not come out in your remarks and it has not come from any so far at all, although Ellen Mary has not been able to participate or whatever. But 75% of the 83,000 cases now are in default. Is that what you are alleging?
Hon Mr Hampton: To be accurate, are in default or in partial default.
Mr Elston: Or have been in default at some point, but may not now be in default. Is that right?
Hon Mr Hampton: I believe if you measure total compliance and partial compliance, you can get up as high as 35%, sometimes 38%.
Ms E. Mills: I think we would just like to point out that the 25% is a historical average. For the people who are fully complying, it can vary month by month. It can dip down to 20%; it can go back up to 25%. We are using the 25% as a relative average of those in full compliance.
Mr Elston: So what does the most recent month's statistics tell you?
Ms E. Mills: It is more like 20% in full compliance.
Mr Elston: By full compliance you mean no arrears.
Ms E. Mills: No arrears, and if you take those who are paying partial payments or there has been some payment made in the last 60 days, you take it up to 35%. The percentages are always varying slightly.
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Mr Elston: In using the 75% at the moment, it would lead somebody who was not aware of the circumstances to believe that three out of every four support payers were in fact in default at this very moment and that might not be quite true. Is that right?
Ms E. Mills: As I said, if you took full compliance, it is even less on the run in January.
Mr Elston: Okay, so we will say 20%; four out of five are not in full compliance, but there are fewer than four out of five who are refusing to pay, right?
Hon Mr Hampton: Yes, there are people --
Mr Elston: For one reason or another, I may end up having a client who in fact has a small amount owing as a deficit against his payment account and it may be because of illness or it may be because he lost his job; it may be now because he is laid off.
Hon Mr Hampton: Or it may be, and this is sad to say, but you reach the situation where someone has paid support payments, has been in full compliance and he decides, "Gee, I would really like to buy a new car." So they buy the new car.
Mr Elston: It could be any number of reasons.
Hon Mr Hampton: Yes.
Mr Elston: It may be that some of these people are not in compliance because they have experienced the very sort of basic human emotion of "I want to get even" or "I want to hurt somebody" or something like that. It is not that they do not find it socially acceptable or whatever other words there are or that they do not think they are responsible. Some just may succumb to the very human emotion, I take it.
Hon Mr Hampton: That is right.
Mr Elston: Okay. I want to talk about the child poverty issue, which you have brought in here to try and equate this with eliminating child poverty. How many children in poverty in Ontario are also subject to support payment orders? Do you know?
Ms E. Mills: Eighty-nine per cent of all the orders that are filed with us involve children and the number of children involved --
Mr Elston: So 89% of 83,000 orders?
Ms E. Mills: Eighty-nine per cent of all the orders filed with us involve children, and the estimate for the year 1991 of the number of children is 107,000 children.
Mr Elston: Okay. Will you be filing some of these statistical items, because we were hoping to get some of this material?
Ms E. Mills: This page we can definitely file because it was prepared for the estimates review in the committee that deals with the estimates.
Mr Elston: Are there some stats that you cannot file with us? Is that what you are telling us?
Ms E. Mills: Most stats I am working from are from here and some we have taken off our computer just today.
Mr Elston: What does the figure one in five children in Ontario living in poverty equate to in absolute terms? That is your figure. You say one in five children in Ontario is living in poverty.
Hon Mr Hampton: I do not think we have that, but I believe there is information that indicates that many of the children, many of the 100,000-odd children that we are talking about here, are in that situation.
Mr Elston: Do you know absolutely how many of the children --
Hon Mr Hampton: I do not know the absolute numbers, no.
Mr Elston: -- are subject to payments through Community and Social Services?
Ms E. Mills: Yes. Of the 83,000 cases we are speaking of at the moment, 23,179, to be exact, or 27.7%, are assigned cases, meaning with the Ministry of Community and Social Services.
Mr Elston: So it is 30,000 of the 107,000 children, roughly?
Ms E. Mills: I cannot equate. I do not know how many children in those cases. We are always looking at the statistics in different streams --
Hon Mr Hampton: We are talking about the number of support orders here?
Ms E. Mills: Yes.
Hon Mr Hampton: Eighty-three thousand --
Mr Elston: I understand that. Eighty-nine per cent of the 83,000 have children attached to the family unit. Of that, there are 107,000 children covered and now you are saying 27% of the cases, or 23,179, are subject to orders of assignment to Community and Social Services. But we do not know, of that number, how many children would be included.
Ms E. Mills: How many children are necessarily attached.
Mr Elston: I was just trying to get the direct correlation between your attack on poverty and this particular piece of legislation, since it is one of the planks upon which you rested your case. Can you tell me then how many children you expect or you guess will be assisted by this and in fact fall out of poverty -- or climb out of poverty might be better?
Hon Mr Hampton: We do not have the hard statistics.
Mr Elston: So is this just a little buzzwording?
Hon Mr Hampton: No. Again, the ministry went through a lot of consultation with a lot of organizations on this, and frankly I would be willing to say that the vast majority of the 107,000 children are not by any means financially well off. The majority of them are in difficult circumstances.
Mr Elston: Would you say 80,000 of 107,000 are actually covered by that 27%?
Hon Mr Hampton: Might be.
Mr Elston: Can your staff find that out? Can you find that out for us?
Hon Mr Hampton: Sure.
Mr Elston: You have built a case and you have made a very strong case and in a sense it is that if we are going to be doing something, this particularly is a place that we should put our efforts.
Hon Mr Hampton: Sure.
Mr Elston: So we should know exactly how to accomplish it.
Hon Mr Hampton: I think the other important part of this case is that statistics also show that the fastest-growing group that has income difficulties is single-parent mothers with dependent children.
Mr Elston: Yes, okay. I would not fight with that. I wonder if you could tell us about, as you talk about on page 6, the rapidly increasing case load. We heard on Thursday that there is a growth -- I think you repeat the stats in here -- of about 1,200 new cases per month, which will take you into a huge number later on. It is indicated here in page 6, first paragraph, that there is a significant decrease in the level of service being provided to the public. Can you tell us what that decreasing level --
The Chair: Excuse me, Mr Elston. Before the minister answers that question, Mrs Cunningham did have a question earlier, and we are running out of time.
Mrs Cunningham: No, this is fine. It is fine if we are running out of time. These are good questions. I am happy to have him pursue them.
The Chair: Thank you. Go ahead, sir.
Hon Mr Hampton: Yes, if I can answer that, there is a historical problem here, or a historical issue. When SCOE was created, it created some expectations in terms of public expectations and when you have a relatively small case load, you are able to meet that case load and you are able to do some excellent things. That attracts more clients and that also attracts more clients with difficult problems so that over the three years not only were there more and more orders being registered with SCOE but there were also more and more orders that you could term problematic in the sense that the individual perhaps did not have full-time permanent employment or the individual would not pay and so on. So over a three-year period that problem grew and grew and grew and that was one of the reasons why over $2 million was allocated immediately to deal with the backlog problem and hire more staff.
Mr Elston: Yes. That does not take me any place. l just asked you for what were the decreasing service levels. That was my question. l did not want to hear the rest of the stuff. You already told us that three times.
Hon Mr Hampton: The decreasing service levels?
Mr Elston: Yes.
Hon Mr Hampton: Simply you had more and more cases. You had more and more orders that were coming in that could not be gotten to.
Mr Elston: Actually, it is really along the line that Ms Murdock talked about earlier when she said she had people calling her office. Basically they called her office when she was a constituency assistant because they could not get through to SCOE presumably and they could not get a good result. I wonder, because I talked again on Thursday to your assistants here and indicated that one person had sent me a note wherein he complained he actually wrote a letter to the SCOE department saying that he called and it took him two and a half hours to get through. Then, when he finally did get through, he was on hold for 28 minutes and then when he tried to speak to somebody who had sent him the letter, he was told he cannot even get the name or he could not be referred to that person because she writes letters, she does not answer telephones. So I mean, he was a little bit browned off.
Hon Mr Hampton: If I can respond, when we became the government there was a large historical problem there.
Mr Elston: This happened three weeks ago.
Hon Mr Hampton: Oh, sure, sure.
Mr Elston: It is not just our problem.
Hon Mr Hampton: There were literally thousands of orders that were sitting in backlog that SCOE simply did not have the staff to even open the mail or even perform a telephone response on, and that is part of that backlog that had accumulated over three years.
Mr Elston: Yes.
Hon Mr Hampton: We found we had to hire more staff to deal with that backlog. So yes, it is true that we have cases there, orders that have been sitting there for I think six months.
Mr Elston: Okay. So if Ellen Mary Mills can talk to us.
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Ms E. Mills: If I can just respond to the telephone one, in addition to what the minister has said, I think you are all aware that in the past year we introduced the central inquiry -- which is the 1-800 number -- and it means that people can call in and if they are after the last action that happened on their case, when the last payment was received, very specific information, they can get it.
I do want to say that we are getting complaints because people as well do not like using it. They want to talk to someone personally. But the reason that was put in place is that the longer you take, the more time you take those enforcement representatives off what they should be doing, which is around tracing and locating and updating their cases. I wanted to raise that point, so sometimes it depends. We would have to look at the specifics of your case, whether he phoned the office or the central inquiry.
Mr Elston: Sure. He phoned and he has written a letter to, I do not know, the London office, where they told him, since he was so angry, that he should write to them. But he was really concerned about the person who wrote and told him such-and-such was going to occur and when he wanted to talk to that person, he was told: "No, you can't talk to that person. They write letters, they don't answer phones."
Second of all, he found that the people who were willing to talk to him were the ones who gave him the general information, who were of no help to him because they did not know any details about his particular situation.
Ms E. Mills: We will have to look into those situations, but generally speaking you find people who are objecting to what is in the piece of paper and wanting to give the extraneous circumstances, which in many cases do not alter the circumstances --
Mr Elston: True.
Ms E. Mills: -- of the garnishment going forward. But it is like the court, where you have your traffic fine and you want to go in and say, "Yes, I ran the red light, but."
Mr Elston: They can do that, actually.
Ms E. Mills: I know, but unfortunately in our situation it is not going to change the garnishment and it only takes away from our staff time to be able to hear that, but we are looking at it.
Mr Elston: It does not help the public relations side of it, does it?
Ms E. Mills: No, I know, and that is one thing we will have to work on. There is not a one-to-one case worker relationship and a lot of the public assume that.
Mr Elston: What is the case worker ratio now?
Ms E. Mills: Well, the overall staff is 263 for the program.
Mr Elston: Yes, but not all of those are case workers.
Ms E. Mills: No, they are not. Actual strict enforcement representatives -- it is about 114 across eight regional offices.
Mr Elston: So 114 for currently 83,000. You had started to get into some of the material that I was interested in earlier. I think Mr Hampton had mentioned that it was probably a six-month wait for even a brand-new case at the moment coming into your office. Is that a current statistic?
Ms E. Mills: It is not a statistic I have seen. We are trying to address that. I feel we need to address the new ones first and sort of nip them in the bud and not let them get into that cycle of default, where there is no response from the branch. So we are looking at how we can deal with that, without neglecting our other cases.
Mr Elston: So the 1,200 new cases per month --
The Chair: Mrs Cunningham has indicated that she does want a question, and we have run out of time.
Mr Sorbara: Mr Chairman, could we not indulge upon the minister's time to stay an extra 15 or 20 minutes? This is his only appearance before the committee and we have questions about the bill.
Mr Elston: Perhaps I could just finish this item and then let Dianne go ahead. I mean, it is in terms of the service level, because if they have 114 people now doing 83,000 cases and you are getting 1,200 new ones a month, how in the world are we going to deal with doing them all? We are already complaining about decreased work coverage.
Ms E. Mills: It is not quite that simple. Those are the actual enforcements reps. Behind them are mail file clerks and other clerks who do some of the initial data entry and the mail opening, etc. But if we are really looking at enforcing the provisions of ensuring that it gets paid, we are talking about the enforcement reps who are into the trace and locate, etc. Those are the key people if it is not a routine situation. I would have to look at the staffing and break it down some various ways for you, but those are the enforcement reps.
Mr Elston: Could you do that?
Ms E. Mills: Sure.
Mr Elston: I mean, not now, but you could go back and deliver us the material?
Ms E. Mills: That is right, and we were trying to do that before. It has never been done.
Mr Elston: If I might, after Mrs Cunningham has had her questions, perhaps I could go back on the list, or at the end of the list rather, please.
The Chair: We then have the question Mr Sorbara posed. Should we continue for any period of time, and if so, for how long?
Mr Elston: If Mr Hampton is unable to stay, certainly his staff is going to be here. We can understand he is busy.
Mr Sorbara: We could see the minister staying for another half an hour.
Hon Mr Hampton: If Mrs Cunningham has some questions, I will answer hers, because she was on the list.
The Chair: Thank you. Mrs Cunningham?
Mr Elston: This is her second appearance.
Mrs Cunningham: Yes, but I will let you go before me if you want to go by the list, Murray.
Mr Sorbara: We have lots of questions.
Mrs Cunningham: We are trying to be fair.
Mr Sorbara: Is the minister going to be able to stay until 4 o'clock?
Mrs Cunningham: Just on the issue of poverty, you yourself, Minister, raised this expectation thing, and the worse thing we can do is raise some expectations. So on this whole issue of child poverty, let's not kid ourselves. I think you would probably agree and certainly comment that even when we get people to pay up, I am not sure what kind of impact we are going to have. l am not sure it would be significant on poverty, and that is why my very first question of the day was, what is the profile of the person who is not paying? It is important that we know that to the best of our ability. But you are not saying this is going to have a significant impact on child poverty, I hope.
Hon Mr Hampton: No, what we are saying is that again, based on the statistics that we have, our own statistics, figures from Statistics Canada, studies that have been done in Alberta, about 80% of the support payers are financially able to pay support and that is the target group. We want to see if we can reach that group by means of payroll deduction. If they are financially able to pay, and the court presumably will make a support order that is in the best interests of the children and we can then find an effective and efficient and socially acceptable mechanism to reach that money, then we think we have something that will be very much in the interests of children and will very much improve their economic circumstances.
Mrs Cunningham: I think "very much in the interest of the children and improve their economic circumstances" I would agree with you on. But given the state of the economy and the levels of income even when people are working hard together these days, it will be more fair but certainly I am not sure whether you and I down the road will agree on the poverty. I bet we will. It is tough.
Hon Mr Hampton: To be fair to you, I think if we really want to tackle this problem, we would have to undo some of the things the federal government has done over the last eight years in terms of the redistribution of income.
Mr Sorbara: Oh no, don't blame the feds. It doesn't sound right on you.
Mrs Cunningham: From time to time, in fairness, so that you know I am interested in that, I am working with the federal government right now on apprenticeship programs, on English-as-a-second-language training, and I figure it is my responsibility to do that. I wish I had more hours in a day.
Hon Mr Hampton: I am well aware of your personal position on these things and I appreciate it.
Mrs Cunningham: Well, levels of government, there is too much government, and of course I think this is more government, what we are doing here, so I want to make sure it is going to be meaningful.
Going back to one of the statements you made in one of the responses, you talked about the case where we are at least going to go for the people who are not responsible. You know, they say, "I'm not responsible for my children, I'm not paying." If that is all we are dealing with, then I can support this legislation, because if that is what we are dealing with, I think this will be helpful.
The other two scenarios are where I have some concern, and one is the case where, and you raised it yourself -- you were not sure of the statistics and I commend you for being fair about it -- the case where somebody says, "You don't pay up, you don't see the kids." I am not sure this legislation is going to help there. There are other things I think we can advise you on. It may be helpful, but I really would not want to give anybody the impression that it is going to be that helpful. But maybe it will be.
Hon Mr Hampton: If I can respond, I would agree with you that these measures alone will not deal with those situations, which is why we have to do something meaningful in the area of access, and as I have said before, and I will say it again, if you have some advice in that area we would be happy to hear from you.
Mrs Cunningham: I think I do and that is probably why we will be coming forth with one of the amendments, but as I have not looked at yours I cannot say you have not already brought it forth. If you have been listening to the input, maybe they are there, I do not know.
Hon Mr Hampton: I should tell you we do not intend to deal with access in this legislation.
Mrs Cunningham: No, but one of the amendments we have put forth will not deal with access but it will deal with the cases where the access is a bigger problem, I think. I agree with you; I do not like having to deal with too much in one bill.
Now, the other one I am really concerned about is the case of the guy or woman who says, "I don't know what to do in this case because," and this is a very old term that goes back to the Depression days, "I don't have a steady job." People who are moving in and out of jobs right now, those are the ones who have difficulty no matter how we chase them, and I know the staff over here will say it. But getting back to the whole thing, I do not want to leave the impression, the raised expectations, that this is going to have a significant impact on poverty, because I do not have the profile and I do not understand how it will have a significant impact, but I think it will certainly make a difference.
The other part is -- and this is my last question -- you mentioned that you had consulted with certain groups. I am wondering if we could have that list so that we can see who you have already talked to, as well as who will be coming before the committee. That would be helpful to us. Thank you.
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Hon Mr Hampton: Without giving you the definitive list, I can tell you that we met with some employer associations to ask them if they felt this could work out. We met with the bar association, Mr Slan, in the family law section. The chamber of commerce was on one of the consultation groups; I think the Canadian Federation of Independent Business was on one of the consultation groups; the Canadian Payroll Association was on one of the consultation groups, and I think the social workers as well, were they not? No? Okay, the social workers were not, but social workers have had continuing input on this in the past in terms of some of their submissions.
We met with the Ontario Federation of Labour, I believe, and some of its member trade unions to talk about this, and we have had ongoing discussions with Support and Custody Orders for Priority Enforcement -- they are called SCOPE; I believe they are going to appear before you on Thursday -- the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, and we met with a committee of provincial court judges. So that is, to my memory --
Mr Carr: Can we get the definite list then?
Mrs Cunningham: If your staff has it, it would be interesting for us to know over and above what we see here. It would be helpful. But I thank you.
Hon Mr Hampton: I think we can put it together.
The Chair: We have, as I mentioned, exceeded the time we had initially allotted.
Mr Sorbara: I have a lot more questions. If the minister cannot stay in his first bill before this committee, then perhaps his staff or others would be able to answer the questions. Thank you, Minister.
Hon Mr Hampton: Thank you. I appreciate the comments that have been made today and I think you will find we are certainly willing to consider amendments you may put forward. But I hope you appreciate the general goals and objectives that we have in mind with this legislation; that is, particularly if you have something that will help us out with those, we would very much appreciate it. Thanks very much.
Mr Sorbara: Am I next?
The Chair: Well, you were. However, what I am wondering about is what the committee's direction is now. I believe we were to be meeting at approximately 3 o'clock or 3:30 to receive the report on other committee business. How long should we continue with this?
Mr Sorbara: I was given to understand that we were meeting at 1 o'clock with eight witnesses, at the top of the list was the minister himself, and that we were going to complete that business and then have a meeting to discuss some other things, subcommittee work or something like that.
Mr Fletcher: I thought at the beginning of this session we did agree that we were going until approximately 3 o'clock and then we would be talking about the subcommittee and also process. I am sure that is what we agreed upon at the beginning of this meeting. Is that not what we agreed upon?
The Chair: It was certainly stated at that time. At a later point Mrs. Cunningham raised questions around process and timing.
Mr Fletcher: I know at the beginning I also raised a question about process and timing.
The Chair: Okay. Well, we have Mr Wessenger.
Mr Wessenger: Mr Chairman, since we are going to be on clause-by-clause on Friday, perhaps a lot of Mr Sorbara's questions could be dealt with at that time in conjunction with the clauses.
Mr Sorbara: My questions deal primarily with the policy underpinnings of the act and where the government and the ministry and the minister are coming from as a question of policy. Clause-by-clause is another matter entirely.
The Chair: I would like to suggest then that we could extend questions with the staff here for another 15 or 20 minutes, rotating as we have before, as Mr Sorbara I think is quite right. If he is dealing with policy issues, this is the appropriate time to deal with them. Does that extension of time meet with the other members' approval?
Mr Elston: I had specifically said, when Mr Fletcher and a couple of others had talked about limiting our access to the people from the Attorney General's department, that I was not prepared to go into time rationing. We are scheduled to sit until 6 o'clock this evening. These people are available, and I think we should be able to go through our list of questions. Some of the material I am going to be asking about is contained in Mr Hampton's remarks, but I am sure the remarks were prepared by his assistants and staff, so they can answer some of the questions and perhaps undertake to bring to us some of the material that appears not to be set out here, just as they have when the minister was sitting.
I would find it quite strange, indeed, if the NDP caucus moved to restrict our access to the department of the Attorney General just when we are trying to understand the basis upon which it is proceeding with the construction of the Attorney General's remarks for this committee's opening day.
The Chair: I believe the representatives from the ministry will be here through the full week.
Mr Sorbara: But we have no time to question them during the week. We have witnesses.
Mr Elston: These are individual witnesses. You have them all stacked up now at 15-minute intervals unless they happen to be a group, in which case we get half an hour. The people are here to talk to us about why the Attorney General's department has constructed the rationale the way it has, and I suspect we should proceed on that basis rather than putting some limit on the flow of information out of the government to the opposition parties.
Mr Carr: I would just add that I am free to stay and have, as I mentioned earlier, quite a few questions. I would be prepared to stay. I actually have another engagement, but I would push it off if anybody else is prepared to stay.
Ms S. Murdock: There is no limiting to the information the government is willing to give. The purpose of a standing committee is for general information anyway. I think, as far as I recall, when Dianne was speaking earlier, that we did agree that there was some flexibility.
Personally, if the questions are related to policy, I have no objection to them being asked; mind you, on the proviso that we will be interjecting if they go astray, and Mr Sorbara does have a tendency that way. So we will make sure it is pointed, and as long as you clearly understand that I have no problems with it at all, as a personal view.
The Chair: So your suggestion --
Ms S. Murdock: We have the flexibility here, as Dianne said earlier, to go. We do have the afternoon, as l recall.
The Chair: Until what time approximately?
Mr Sorbara: Are we done now talking about process so we can get on with the issue that is before us?
The Chair: The issue that is immediately before us is how long we address these folks.
Mr Sorbara: I do not know. What I do know is that this committee is scheduled to sit from 1 o'clock until 6 o'clock with a number of witnesses, and when we are finished our deliberations in that regard we are to go on to subcommittee business. Why do we not just go along with that? What is our problem?
The Chair: What an excellent suggestion. And that has concurrence?
Mrs Cunningham: Why do we not just go and see what the questions are?
Ms S. Murdock: Yes, right, like I said.
The Chair: Next on the list is Mr Sorbara.
Mr Sorbara: Thank you. I will begin by saying that this committee does not need the Attorney General here in order to do its work. It can do its work just fine without the Attorney General here, and I am quite delighted that members of the Attorney General's ministry have agreed to stay and answer some questions.
About two and a half months ago the Attorney General delivered a speech in which he was reported to have suggested that he personally favoured the government guaranteeing support orders made by courts and enforced by SCOE. I would like your comments on that, including your comments as to whether I am accurately quoting what the Attorney General said and whether, as a matter of policy, the idea of the province guaranteeing these payments is a matter under current consideration.
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Ms Pilcow: The only response to that is that I remember the minister saying that and in fact it is something that is being looked at, but it is not something that is being looked at in the context of this bill.
Mr Sorbara: So it is not being looked at in the context of this bill, but it is being looked at.
Ms Pilcow: Yes.
Mr Sorbara: That is very important information for this committee, because if the government is considering that the public Treasury will guarantee support orders made by courts, that is far more significant than the work we are doing today, which gives you new mechanisms of enforcement.
Ms Pilcow: The intention would first be to find out exactly how those systems work and then to determine whether they are feasible for Ontario.
Mr Sorbara: Second, are you aware that in the US, where there is similar legislation, the major impetus for that legislation was to reduce the costs of social assistance borne by states and indeed, directly and indirectly, by the federal government? That is, in the US no high principles of, "We're going to change the dynamic of how people feel about this," was put forward as the public policy underpinning, but they wanted to cut down on welfare costs, because men were getting welfare and keeping it all and not honouring their support obligations. Are you aware of that?
Ms Pilcow: I am certainly aware that was one of the things that led the legislators in the United States to come up with their income withholding scheme.
Mr Sorbara: Okay. Under the legislation you are proposing here, an automatic support order is filed with the branch. I want to know what happens under circumstances where you still have a backlog, you have received the support order and it is part of the delay and it sits there and is not opened for six months; therefore, the receiving spouse does not get the payment. Who is liable for the income that is not deducted that ought to have been deducted pursuant to this bill?
Ms E. Mills: That is slightly different. I thought you were talking about the current situation. Which situation were you referring to?
Mr Sorbara: Let me give you a little background.
You have a six-month delay right now. Presumably, if you do not get the resources you need, you could have a six-month delay under this bill. That is to say, an order for automatic deduction is issued by the court and it does not actually get into the hands of one of your officials for six or eight months or a year. We are in a recession. We are in a depression. The Treasurer just gave some very bad news to municipalities and universities today. He may well give very bad news to you. You may be the subject of a clawback of several millions of dollars. You may not have the staff to enforce this. You may have a situation where you have an automatic deduction order and it is in a pile like this and you do not get to it for six months, so the spouse who was supposed to receive that money automatically does not get it. Who is liable? I realize that the spouse who is the debtor is supposed to be liable, but he might not have any money other than that paycheque. Who is liable?
Ms Pilcow: Until such time as the deductions are made from the paycheque -- and this is the subject of an amendment, actually, that you have before you -- the payer is obliged to make those payments voluntarily. If there is no money, the payer is still liable. The fact is that no one is going to pay it. But until the payments start to be deducted the payer will be responsible for making them directly to the SCOE office.
Mr Sorbara: Nevertheless, you are going to have a public relations campaign that says this is now going to happen automatically.
Ms Pilcow: That is true.
Mr Sorbara: Okay. Would you be prepared as policy advisers to the minister to ask the minister to submit the contents of that public relations campaign to this committee for its consideration prior to it being made a public relations campaign?
Ms Pilcow: We can certainly ask the minister and relay your request.
Mr Sorbara: But would you be prepared to advise that he do that?
Ms Pilcow: Advise that he --
Mr Sorbara: That he do that, that he submit the public relations campaign to this committee.
Ms Pilcow: No.
Mr Sorbara: Now why is that?
Ms Pilcow: I think we need to think about what you are asking.
Mr Sorbara: Well, there is a bunch of parliamentarians here who would like to see what you propose to tell the public about this bill before you actually tell the public about it. I know the ministry has to look at it. Let me put it this way. You certainly would not begin a public relations campaign without running it by the minister.
Ms Pilcow: Our advice to the government is a confidential matter and the government makes up its mind as to what it discloses and what it does not. I can certainly relay your request.
Mr Sorbara: Okay. I guess that is as far as we are going to get on that one.
My final two questions are these. First, in the research you have done about this moral, legal, social obligation to pay support, is it your view that the majority of men -- l take it for these purposes that it is always men who are subject to the support order --
Ms Pilcow: Mostly.
Mr Sorbara: -- that the majority of men do not now see that they have a social, moral and legal obligation to pay support notwithstanding the court order?
Ms Pilcow: What we know is that approximately 75% of people who are ordered to pay do not pay.
Mr Sorbara: Just to interject there. There are times when I get very nasty letters from my Visa account because I have not paid. Sometimes I have forgotten. Sometimes I do not have any money. Sometimes I am just mad as hell. If you ask them I would be a defaulter in your terms under those circumstances, but I know clearly that I have a social, legal and moral obligation to pay and in fact I want to pay, I want to be in a position to pay. Is your view that most men feel they have a social, moral and legal obligation to pay and want to pay?
Ms E. Mills: I do not think we can give you a definitive answer. It is going to be a subjective answer, first, because I do not think we have statistics on why people are not paying.
Mr Sorbara: Do you not need those before you write this sort of bill?
Ms E. Mills: Hang on a minute. Subjectively, we can look at some of the cases, which will give you what I might call a bit of a trend analysis. In cases where we go after garnishment and where we have to go into default hearings, etc, you eventually get them paying but you have to take them to the point of where you force them. That says something to me about their willingness to recognize that as an obligation. I cannot tell you how many cases, but there are clearly a great number of cases, and in the advisory group in Ottawa that has recently formed made up of creditors and payers, when we were just down meeting with them in Ottawa, they are talking about those cases where, "We get them right up to the default hearing and he'll come in and pay up the arrears and he'll do it that day." But we are dealing with a number of cases where they do not do it until it comes to the edge, and you are either going to garnishee their wages or you are going to seize something.
That says to me that there is an ability there. I do not have all the statistics to track it, but it says to me there is a resistance, that is, either not accepting the moral, the social or the legal obligation. We do not have the same research in Ontario as the statistics being referred to in Alberta.
It is a subjective judgement. I have seen it enough in the month I have been here, the letters coming in where they are saying, "Yes, he just paid up the arrears." In one case in particular last week: "Now it is 1 February. Where are we again? I don't have the payment." We say, "Yes, we don't have the payment." It goes the cycle until we force it.
Mr Sorbara: I think one of the things we asked for last Thursday was an analysis of how many of that type of case there is as compared to the total number of support orders issued.
Ms E. Mills: I know. We are looking at it, but our computer system, as you can imagine, is detailed enough keeping track of payments coming in and payments going out and status of action on the case. It does not give the profile data that you are after. You can only draw some correlations between where you have instituted the garnishment and then it is taken off, etc. I do not think we can give you those statistics, but we are looking at it.
Mr Sorbara: Can you not appreciate our problem?
Ms E. Mills: Yes.
Mr Sorbara: This matter has been under consideration by governments in Ontario for over a year. The former Attorney General said, "We need to do this because it's the only way SCOE can operate efficiently." He did not make speeches about legal, moral and social obligations and creating a new dynamic. He said, to me personally: "The system won't work well unless we do this. It's too cumbersome. Garnishments don't work well. We need automatic deduction."
He also wanted a system, I tell my New Democratic friends, of getting people out -- kickout, he called it -- when it was working well. The new government has chosen not to put that in and that is up to it.
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But surely if this thing has been under consideration for a year, a government that wanted to market this to a Legislature would have statistics about how many real problem cases we are having. Surely the real issue of poverty is men and women who do not have enough money. They do not have steady jobs, they are on welfare, and, superimposed on that, the anger and anguish of separation. You are asking us to approve this intervention into the lives of individuals without any real data. The government of Ontario is not short of money to do this kind of research and I plead with you, before we get to third reading, to actually do the research.
Ms Feldman: If I might, the support enforcement agency is just that. Its mandate is to enforce, and what it enforces is the subsisting support order made between the party. If the parties have changes of circumstances, this bill does not purport in any way to change the way things have always been, how people can get changes in the underlying support order, how people can rescind arrears if, for whatever reason, a person is unable and convinces a court that he is unable to pay those arrears. This is an enforcement mechanism support deduction. It is a tool for enforcement.
Mr Sorbara: I agree with you.
Ms Feldman: In so far as that is concerned, bearing in mind that the parties can agree -- they may not return to court but can agree if need be -- that there should be a rescission of all or part of the arrears or that there should be a change depending on their changes of circumstances, the fact that 75% of the orders filed with the program are not in full compliance is a very strong statement, quite apart from whatever statistics may or may not be available in Ontario, simply because the parties themselves can return and settle their affairs vis-à-vis what the support order purports to do between themselves.
Mr Sorbara: Okay, let's get to that, then. You are saying that in 75% of the cases there is not full compliance. I am one of those, if you transpose it into paying other bills that you have a moral, social and legal obligation to pay. After this program is in place two years, that is, after you have the right to deduct from everyone's salary, what percentage do you project is going to be in full compliance? You are going to move from 75% down to what per cent?
Ms E. Mills: I think the minister answered that; he gave it to you in reverse. He said that at the moment 25% is in full compliance and roughly 35% has some moneys flowing. He would hope to see that category of moneys flowing to move to 60% and may even hope that that 60% would also mean full compliance, which means he is moving that up to in the neighbourhood of 50% to 60%. Therefore, the 75% is moving down to 35% or 40%.
Mr Sorbara: So you expect to have within two years only 40% of the cases --
Ms E. Mills: Between 35% to 40% of the cases.
Mr Sorbara: -- that are not in full compliance, and you are going to report to us in two years on that.
Mr Carr: He just sat here and told us he does not even know the reason they are not complying, but when this program comes in it is going to change it up to 60%. He sat here and said: "I don't know the reason they are not complying. I couldn't tell you the reason." Yet this program comes in and he says it will go up to 60%.
Ms E. Mills: We are giving you some indication. As I said, I think part of it -- it is a subjective judgement, granted -- is that at the moment the payment happens when those actions are taken to force them to pay. This system is removing that, the forcing them to pay is happening up front as opposed to making them go through the various steps. Also, the various steps we go through have to be instituted again. After you go through the first step and manage to get him or her to pay up arrears, they do not pick up on the periodic payments again. It has to go through a cycle; in a certain number of days our system kicks it out and we start all over again. This is not providing a continuous flow of moneys to the creditor. The support deduction hopefully will address those who are not paying just because they are waiting till the system catches up with them, much like the parking fines.
Mr Sorbara: Except that this directly contradicts what the minister said.
Ms E. Mills: I do not think so.
Mr Carr: He said one of the reasons he is doing it is because 75% of the people do not pay.
Ms E. Mills: I know. They do not pay.
Mr Sorbara: What the minister said was that garnishment is real easy. He said we can garnish very easily. Garnishment is basically the same thing as an automatic deduction order except that it has a stigma to it, and we want to get rid of the stigma.
Ms Pilcow: There are two things. Garnishment is very similar, and doing garnishment is not substantially more difficult than doing a support deduction. The very big difference is that the payer is before the court and the information is before the court. You do not have to wait until there is a default, until arrears have collected --
Mr Sorbara: I hear you.
Ms Pilcow: -- and then chase after and find him. What this will do is give you the information up front, when the debtor is there; it also prevents that person from going into default for so long as he is employed, which right now is a problem.
Mr Sorbara: My point is, the thing that you are really eliminating is the administrative cost of waiting for a default and then going through a garnishment proceeding. You have all the information there. You can lodge the order right away. This is going to solve a great number of administrative problems in the branch. Am I right or not?
Ms Pilcow: Yes, you are right. It will increase compliance as a result of that.
Mr Sorbara: That is what the former Attorney General said and I think that is fine. I hope that in this committee we can fine-tune it. I just object to some of the rhetoric about child poverty, because the rhetoric about child poverty is about jobs and incomes and a whole bunch of other things in our society.
My final question relates to that very issue. Would you, as a policy adviser, be prepared to recommend the very same thing in a family -- husband, wife, children -- where the husband is making all the money and he is not giving enough to the wife and the children for their support? The same thing can happen in a family. I can take a paycheque home and spend it all on myself and my wife says, "I don't have enough."
Ms E. Mills: That is beyond the parameters of this legislation and this program.
Mr Sorbara: It is not beyond the parameters of the policy advisers of the minister.
Ms Pilcow: In fact, either party is entitled to go and apply for support during the currency of the marriage under the Family Law Act.
Ms Feldman: Without separation.
Mr Sorbara: Yes.
Ms Pilcow: So that is currently available. We do not need to amend any legislation to enable that.
Mr Sorbara: And those orders would be enforceable under SCOE, is that right?
Ms Feldman: They would be support orders which would be enforceable under SCOE, yes.
Mr Sorbara: Okay.
Mrs Cunningham: I guess I am going to go back to the reason we are here. We are here for public hearings and hopefully to improve the legislation. Although we have heard from the administrative staff who have been involved, I expect that we are going to hear from people none of us has had the opportunity to hear from before, who may in fact have more expertise than most of us, at least on the practicalities of the real world.
I say this as a person who has worked out there in the field and whose constituency office has been very active in the last three years. In fact, we have kept some records of both this and -- no one in this room will be surprised -- the Workers' Compensation Board people.
We know why they are there, how many times they have been there, and in many instances we know why they are not paying. Most of the people who come into my office who are not paying are not paying because they have not got any money or they are between jobs or they are in and out of the country. It is not a simple solution and most of the people who come into my office are paying something.
I do not know where they fit into the statistics. I guess they are a part of the 75% who pay something. They come in and they are very unhappy. They have not got the physical strength to keep going back to have their orders changed, nor do they have the knowhow to get through the system, and that is why they come to me.
I am thinking, when I spend my time down here, there seems to be so little time. If you take a look at four or five years to change things, it sounds like a great deal of time; but it just is not. If I had to fix something first, my bias is I would get out there and help with the access system, help with it in any way I can and make this part of it. But that is not what we are doing. I hope we will be able to finish this by the end of the week and will be able to make the kinds of amendments so that we can give it a chance and measure what is happening, for a change, even within the offices so we can fix them.
I hope what we are not doing here, in trying to fix this system, is making more legislation and not helping the people who have to enforce it, because if we do not give them the support to do the work, the law is no good at all. So you cannot do one without the other and I will be here to remind the minister down the road.
I have a great deal of objection to the use of the word "debtor." If somebody is sitting around here, the government hopefully can come forth with a new word.
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Mr Elston: They have changed that.
Mrs Cunningham: They have changed it? Great. I did not read the amendments. I had no intention of reading them until this evening. If they have done it, great. That means they have been listening. Nice to see it before we get in public. But my point is that if we come up with the same people we have not heard before giving us some good suggestions for improvement, I want to see that happen. I am just advising you of my bias based on past experiences. I do not want to be rushed into making good law.
Mr Wessenger: I would just like to comment on some of the prior comments made. First of all, with respect to the reasons for non-payment of support, I think it is clear that the failure to recognize the obligation is a major factor. I have done some family law practice during my period and I also have had consultations with many members of the family law bar. There is a clear subjective view in members of the bar that the failure to recognize the obligation is a major factor.
As far as statistical studies go, sometimes they only prove what is the obvious, what you have already learned from consultations, so I do not really think statistical studies would particularly add that much in this case.
On the second aspect I would say that with respect to the question of non-payment, it is often used as a weapon, as we have known with respect to the difficulties between the parties.
The third aspect, of course, is the inability to pay. If we look at the Alberta statistics, when they say that 80% of payers have the ability to pay, that would indicate that the figure based on inability to pay would be around 20%. So if we are looking for a 60% pay figure, then we are really saying that those who could come under this type of program, the regular people receiving wages or salary, is 60% that we feel we can collect from. The others probably are those in the situation of refusing to pay, where they are self-employed, where they are using devices to avoid. That is where, of course, hopefully the new program will be able to even raise it above the 60% by having resources concentrated on that enforcement.
The other thing I would like to comment on is the whole question of an ad campaign. I do not think we can consider submitting an advertising campaign or the proposed structure of it until the bill is passed, so we know the contents of what we are going to advertise.
Mr Elston: Oh, I think we have a pretty good idea of what is going to be there. Great place to pick up, actually. I want to talk for a second on the advertising, just to pick up on where the previous speaker was. Have you determined at all what type of message will come out? Is this going to be one of those heavy, negative-type campaigns?
Ms E. Mills: It has not been finally determined at all, Mr Elston, honestly. I am new but I am seeing the various approaches that are being considered and not one or two have been nailed down at this stage.
Mr Elston: But you probably are running the options all the way from a pretty negative piece of work that says, "If you do not pay up, you are going to get it," or something that would be called soft-sell, which would be, "You have an obligation da-de-da-de-da."
Ms E. Mills: First, you have to remember there is a difference between public awareness, public education and then specifically a campaign targeted to try to actually change people's behaviour. I think the initial steps are going to be around public awareness and public education, of the magnitude of the problem as it exists at the moment.
Mr Elston: Something similar in that case to the type of advertising about wife assault, for instance?
Ms E. Mills: Yes.
Mr Elston: Yes, which I think is under your category. It would be described as public awareness, would it not?
Ms E. Mills: Public awareness and public education. That is the initial --
Mr Elston: So you would consider perhaps something along those lines.
Ms E. Mills: Yes, at first to get the magnitude of the problem --
Mr Elston: That is the type of advertising.
Ms E. Mills: -- the number of defaulters, the impact it has on society, the impact non-support has on the children and the barriers that puts to their potential, if not to their basic needs. I think those will be the initial themes of the public awareness. There will have to be specifics if you can call it an ad campaign that would deal with the employers and what this means to them. But as I said, that is the general --
Mr Elston: Something along the lines of Bill 162 advertising about that or a checkoff or something for employer health tax, which is really just the mechanics behind it, right?
Ms E. Mills: Yes, so there will be a portion of it geared to employers.
Mr Elston: I presume you are probably quite familiar with the Wisconsin efforts. I understand they have done some public awareness campaigns. Can you get us copies of any of that? Is that possible?
Ms E. Mills: That is a little before my time. Maybe the policy people can respond to that.
Ms Pilcow: We have some.
Mr Elston: If you have some of that, it would be interesting just for our purposes to see the type of material you will be considering.
Ms E. Mills: We do have as well the state of Florida. We have a video that you can see. They have just embarked upon a campaign.
Mr Elston: Perhaps we could ask for the video after hours or something. I do not want to take up the time of the committee necessarily.
Mr Sorbara: Why does it have to be after hours?
Mr Elston: Basically it has to be after hours because we have too many people coming in and I think we should do our homework outside.
Ms E. Mills: For instance, it is one that has moved from the heavy, as you called it, to the more positive side.
Mr Elston: Okay. That would be helpful.
The Chair: That is an excellent suggestion. Perhaps you can have someone available for consultations.
Mr Elston: Maybe sort of after 6 or after we finish with witnesses one night we could do it.
Mrs Cunningham: Some of us get up before 10 in the morning.
Mr Elston: I do not know who you are because I have not seen you coming in when I come into the office, but anyway that is another problem.
Can I deal with the issue of research studies? The only paragraph on page 7 of the prepared text of the Attorney General indicates research studies on the issue of support default are most revealing. Then you go on to talk about the Alberta study which says 80%. Can you give us first the Alberta study, and second of all, could you provide us with the other studies which have come together to create this first opening line in the paragraph? I think, Ms Pilcow, you probably put this together.
Ms Pilcow: I did not, in fact, but the Alberta study is one that is referred to in a paper that was written by Freda Steel on maintenance in Canada, I think. We do not actually have a copy of that study. We have a reference to it in another paper. You can see the reference to it in that paper. We can get you that paper if you like.
Mr Elston: But you have not actually seen the study yourself to see how it determined 80%?
Ms Pilcow: No.
Mr Elston: What about the other research studies that you talked about here, or at least the Attorney General was asked to speak of? Can you tell us which studies those are?
Ms Pilcow: No, I cannot, actually; but I can think about that and get an answer to you. I really do not know. I did not write this.
Mr Elston: Can you also tell us what your thoughts are as a policy adviser? The policy department probably constructs this and someone in your department probably knows about this stuff, I take it, Ms Pilcow. Can you tell us whether your thoughts would lead you to believe that in Ontario our figure is exactly 80% as in Alberta, or if it is lower, or if it is higher?
Ms Pilcow: I have no reason to believe that it would be any different. One would think that it would be roughly the same, but I really have nothing to --
Mr Elston: You suspect, though, that there are studies which would correspond to this in Ontario?
Ms Pilcow: I have no idea if there are any studies. If there were any I would like to be aware of them.
Mr Elston: They should have been set out here to identify the Ontario situation if they existed, you mean?
Ms Pilcow: I would have thought so. I am certainly not personally aware of any studies in Ontario on this point.
Mr Elston: Okay. So on the research studies you will get back to us. Can you talk to us just a wee bit about the idea of enforcement which suggests that the person who for whatever reason is not paying his/her money to his/her spouse at the current time should be subject to paying $10,000 as a punishment to the government of Ontario or, failing that, be incarcerated by the government so he/she cannot make money to pay to his/her spouse? Can you tell us the discussions from a policy standpoint around telling people, "You are going to be paying the government $10,000 if you do not pay your kid and your wife or former spouse $200 a week," or whatever it is?
Ms Pilcow: First of all, it is up to --
Mr Elston: Oh, I understand that. But the $10,000 is the key because you want people to sit up and take notice, presumably, right?
Ms Pilcow: That is true.
Mr Elston: Because this is punitive, and who is it punishing, l guess, is really my question.
Ms Pilcow: The difficulty is that if we have provisions requiring people to do certain things in the legislation and then have no way of enforcing those, they are really of no help to us. Certainly in my experience, from what I have seen, courts tend to be quite lax in situations like this where a payer could have defaulted on numerous occasions, and all that happens is that he continually comes back on a default hearing time after time. The intention here is to allow the court in situations where it is clear that the payer knew what he had to do and did not do it, to do it. Now my experience is that the payers are very infrequently fined or jailed in situations like that for that very reason.
Mr Elston: But it really is a bit of an illusion in terms of a provision.
Ms Pilcow: No.
Mr Elston: You will probably never use this as an enforcement tool --
Ms Pilcow: I do not think so.
Mr Elston: -- and it will never be given -- oh, so you expect it to be used?
Ms Pilcow: We expect it to be used in a situation where somebody can afford it and in a situation where that is the only way that you can possibly enforce the order. I think the courts will use it and we hope that they will.
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Ms Feldman: What would generally happen, Mr Elston, in practice, I think, is that the courts on one of these offence or prosecutorial visits to the court under sections 12a or 12b might do an order that the person perform the obligation that he is there for failing to perform. First, within a certain number of days and only after that condition, if it is not fulfilled, will they consider whether a fine, or in the worst cases a jail term, is appropriate.
Mr Elston: But in any case if the person actually goes to jail or has to pay $10,000, you are defeating, really, the single, foremost goal of this legislation which is to get the money out of the person who has defaulted, right?
Ms Pilcow: Except if you are not getting the money in any event, perhaps it is the only way to do it.
Mr Elston: Throw them in jail. Okay. I want to go back to the 75% not in full compliance, because that really is troubling. I know Mr Sorbara has mentioned it, and Mr Carr has as well, and actually Mr Mills raised the issue about the 75% rotating.
I know you do not have a lot of stats out here, but when you say 75% are not in compliance, it can be read as though three out of four are just not paying. Can you sort of quantify for us in a range the number of people who may owe from $1 to $500 or $500 to $2,000 or something? I practised law very little, and it is now almost 10 years since I did any sustained practise at all in the Unified Family Court, but it is my sense that often we were talking about people who were defaulting on $5-a-week things, very small payments, because the judges, when they made the order, may very well have been tempted to say, "He cannot pay, but you have got to hold it open" -- that type of stuff, so you say $5.
Those people do not pay any of the $5 and they are part of the defaulting debtor crew that comes back. Then there is a group of people who sort of agree, or have a consent order, and then they fly away and do not bother paying. Those are the people who are really the worst offenders, l guess. They say, "I will do whatever it takes to get out of here in one piece," and they go and they leave.
Can you tell us the magnitude of default we are talking about under the 75%?
Ms Pilcow: I wonder if I could just make a preliminary remark and Ellen Mary can tell you about some of the statistics. The difficulty is that the program is charged with the responsibility of enforcing orders and there is no enforcement agency that can look at an order and say, "Should this one be enforced or not?" This is the kind that really --
Mr Elston: No, I am not asking that; I am just talking about the construction of some of the orders made by judges. You have no control over that, I appreciate that fully, but I am just looking at the magnitude.
Ms Feldman: It is also only one side of the equation. If somebody is $1 to $500 in default or $500 to $1,000, of course we do not know -- well, we cannot say, if we give you those statistics, how much the other person's expenses are, what it means to the recipient, so it is --
Mr Elston: But the other part is, you said that if there is a change to be made, then an application can be made, either to pay less or to pay more, by each of the parties, and you have no control over that. I appreciate that side of it and I fully appreciate that even when an order is made, it may not sustain the receiving person. It is not that. I just want to understand the magnitude of these 75% not in full compliance.
Ms Feldman: Somebody who is $500 in default could be in default for 10 years. Somebody who is $250 in default could be in default for 10 years. There are so many variables.
Mr Elston: Or for one week.
Ms Feldman: Exactly.
Mr Elston: I understand that. I can appreciate what the stats will tell us. I just want to know the magnitude, because if there is a $250 outstanding default from a person from five years ago, but the person now is paying $400 a week, it is a different statistic, but I want to understand.
The Chair: Do you have a specific question about those? I am wondering, do you have the answers available?
Ms E. Mills: We do not have the information here and I am not even sure if we will be able to give it to Mr Elston. I will go back and see if we can do a run, but I do not know if we can do a run that tells you of those defaulting. These numbers have orders that fall less than a thousand. These are periodic payments. These fall into this category. We may be able to tell you of those in arrears because we were looking at the amounts in arrears and we may be able to tell you some relative breakdowns of those in arrears in terms of magnitude of dollars, but I do not think we have the first, which is breaking up the --
Mr Elston: I appreciate that, and if that is the best you can do, that is fine.
The Chair: There is a lot that will be useful too, will it not?
Mr Elston: Sure, I think that is right, Mr Chair. The other interesting item about your process here as it is brought forward to us is that as I indicated earlier, by consent people can make arrangements as it now stands; they can make arrangements to vary their orders. Once this bill is in place, the only way that the enforcement or the automatic deductibility of this payment can be altered will be by a visit to the courts -- is that true? -- and any payment which a person expects to be credited against his/her payments can only be credited if in fact it is arranged through the courts?
Ms Pilcow: I missed that.
Mr Elston: Sometimes people make ex gratia payments almost. They sort of say: "Listen, it's holidays, you know. The kids need some shoes. Can you help me out?" and: "Yeah, okay, I'll do that, but is it okay if I decrease next month's? I'll give you a little bit extra this month for next month." Some people actually do that, but in this situation, that type of informality is not possible. I would have a client in that case who would be in arrears, in fact in default, if he made an arrangement something like that.
Ms Pilcow: That is a problem even now, because all payments flow through the program and that actually causes a lot of difficulty for people.
Mr Elston: I actually had a case where that was the problem -- not a legal case, but a constituent case.
Ms Pilcow: It is difficult for everyone in those circumstances because you certainly want to encourage people to make those kinds of payments if they are going to, but no enforcement agency can operate by asking every month, "Did he make the payment on his own?"
Mr Elston: So really that type of coming together of the spouses, a reconciliation not inside the marriage but a reconciliation of the two people living separate and apart yet having the moral and legal and social obligation to make those sorts of arrangements, cannot be credited inside this system, which is highly bureaucratic obviously, which it just has to be. As a result, this becomes an instrument that will militate against that kind of coming together, against the social and moral resolution of disputes as between the two parties. Is that not right?
Ms Pilcow: I agree that it would militate against people making payments outside. As to whether it militates against a social and moral responsibility, I am not sure that it leads to that conclusion.
Mr Elston: Well, sometimes I have had people who have come in and said: "Listen, we paid early. Here is the receipt in hand for my spouse, and it is okay by us. I don't have to send the stuff in next month. You make sure you send it on to her lawyer just so that he knows." All that stuff is by the board and if the spouse wants to have an advance payment, it will not and cannot happen unless he gets permission from the courts and the filing of an order that will allow your people to not raise the issue with the payer.
Ms Pilcow: That is no different, though, from what the system is now, because the payments flow through the program.
Mr Elston: Oh, I understand.
Ms Pilcow: The only difficulty is that, the way the system is now, the payer can choose not to make the payment.
Mr Elston: But the other difference is that at the moment I can file an agreement on behalf of a client and not ask it to be enforced. In fact, we can still be informal, we can still have a resolution so-called informally, even if it is done formally between legal offices on behalf of clients. As soon as this is in, that is all out the door.
The Chair: Could you give us an indication of how many more questions you have, Mr Elston?
Mr Elston: I have about three or four more topics, but I will try to be quick. I have been trying to be quick.
Ms Pilcow: Once the order has been made, it is true that they cannot make those arrangements. Parties can choose to enter into a domestic contract in the initial stage, but that is once the order has been made.
Mr Elston: So it will probably be done with difficulty. The question now for me is this: A person who wishes to make an application to the court to vary an order will pay roughly how much, do you know?
Ms Pilcow: A rough guess based on my experience would be $3,000 for a whole application. If it had to be actually heard through to a --
Ms Feldman: It really depends on what region you are bringing the application in as well.
Mr Elston: Let's say it is simply done through family court; let us not try and vary decrees nisi or absolute or anything like that. Let's just say it is a family court matter up in good old Walkerton, which I happen to know; Judge MacKenzie sits there. Let's say a client comes to me and says: "I have lost my job. I don't know whether I can pay or not, but I have given my spouse an extra couple of months here because it is time for summer and the kids are heading off here and there. I've given her half the deposit towards the camp they used to go to. Elston, you go and apply so that I can have the order varied." I am going to tell him probably, let's say, $1,000, right?
Ms Pilcow: I do not see that being a situation where someone would go and vary his support order.
Mr Elston: He is going to be in default and you are going to chase the living daylights out of him.
Ms Pilcow: I think your earlier comment was more accurate, that people just cannot do that. They cannot make side arrangements and have support deduction in place. I think that is so, and if they choose to do that, the cost would far exceed any benefit to any of the parties.
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Mr Elston: I actually had a constituent who called me, his problem being this. He was making the payments directly through your organization. When I say your organization, it was not even Ellen Mary Mills at that point either, but he made the payment through SCOE. He made the payments on time but his spouse did not receive them on time. She did not have enough money for rent so she was completely undone by all this. The landlord was a little bit pushy so the gentleman went over and paid the landlord to get him off his former spouse's back and leave her and the children alone. He then phoned to try to straighten this out with your organization and was told: "You don't have anything to say and, by the way, how long it takes for us to pay it out is our business. That is our money." It was a pretty gruesome and aggressive piece of work. All he had done was, he had paid the rent to take the person out of it.
Basically, what places this into a problem type of system is now that type of payment made will penalize him and in fact will penalize his former spouse and children in a way which we cannot recoup. Is there any way that you can see that we can soften this legislation that would allow some of that, where there is obviously goodwill, where they obviously have agreed that there is a legal, moral and social responsibility to do that kind of thing and --
Mr Sorbara: They do not need the advertising campaign.
Mr Elston: Yes, and what is more, the family does not need any of that stuff. What they need is the help, and the person has responded, so we are really going to penalize him.
Ms E. Mills: I just want to make a couple of comments. I think what you are addressing, first of all, is even the first act and not this bill when you are --
Mr Elston: Oh, sure. I agree. No question.
Ms E. Mills: -- and the issue of whether the payments need to be made through the agency. Someone asked the minister when he was here what has been the dropoff in service that has occurred with the increase in case load.
Mr Elston: It was actually me.
Ms E. Mills: Okay, I think you are alluding to one of the fallout items of not having the resources there to be able to deal with the current case load and so perhaps the payments have not flowed as quickly as they should.
I think, even before my arrival, the program has looked at some measures to see that that is minimized to the extent we can, and clearly that will be looked at whether the new bill comes into place or not. There is a lot of administrative streamlining that has to be done to make sure that the current program does not become a hindrance but more what it was intended to do, so we have to look at things that deal with the delays.
Again, it is only one thing we are looking at, but we are looking at whether, as opposed to mailing cheques to the creditors, we can do the electronic transfer of funds. But that too is fraught with a whole host of difficulties: whether it should be mandatory or voluntary, whether all creditors have bank accounts etc. We will be looking at wherever we can to make sure we minimize the delay to the extent possible just in the basic --
Mr Elston: That is a particularly difficult situation, electronic wiring of funds, just because, as you noted, there may be creditors with attachments on account. You are a very brave person, I might add. As I said Thursday, this is a tremendously difficult problem, just a practical problem in trying to get this money where it is supposed to be.
I want to move quite quickly, Mr Chair, because I know there are other people, but I want to ask about the $12 million that has been found now and returned to the Treasury. This is the type of money that the Treasurer likes because he pays it out, credits it over here and then it comes back on the other side and he keeps it. Right?
Mr Carr: He has already spent it.
Mr Elston: Yes, he spends it once but he gets it back the same year, and he keeps it and he hides it away and he can pay it off to little favourite programs somewhere, usually not Community and Social Services and usually not the Ministry of the Attorney General. In fact, as I recall, the Attorney General's ministry was always trying to find a way to stake itself a wee bit of extra of this so it could get some people in place to enforce it even better.
The Chair: Do you have a question?
Mr Elston: What is your new estimate with this bill?
Ms E. Mills: We will have copies of this for you tomorrow, as I said. It is really the material that was prepared for the estimates review, and this is 1990-91. Cumulatively, since the program began in 1987, we expect by the end of this fiscal year to have brought in in the neighbourhood of $314 million to be returned to the Treasurer. We have three years of actuals here and one year of forecast, so that the actual at the end of 1989-90 was $206 million and we are looking that in this fiscal year of 1990-91 --
Mr Elston: So what in the world is this $12 million per year to the three years?
Ms E. Mills: Well, they have averaged it. They have taken what is expected over the cumulative period and they have then said, "Okay, on average." The first year was $19.9 million and the next year was about $102 million as we go cumulatively, and I think they have just averaged it.
Mr Elston: So you are looking at then under the auspices of the new bill --
Ms E. Mills: This was the current bill.
Mr Elston: Yes. That is current. With this one?
Ms E. Mills: Again, you see, it is like a circle. There are these pockets of cases and they overlap. If you take what I said before, we got 83,000 cases and 27% of those are assigned. I do not know how many of the default will fall in the assigned and how many --
Mr Elston: So we have a maximum of 27% of the cases that you can aspire to, that you will be recovering on.
Ms E. Mills: Hopefully, yes.
Mr Elston: Okay. But no information.
I had an interest in following up on the stuff in the United States on page 9, just for people who are following along with me, and I have some other things but I will stop after this. The suggestion on page 9 is that, as is always the case, Ontario ought to do this because other places have done it, and really we are not being too farsighted if we refuse to go along with things that have happened in Australia and places that are so socially responsible as the United States of America. We want to always follow along. John Crosbie and Howard Hampton now are of sort of a feather, I guess.
Interjection.
Mr Elston: That is unfair to Howard, I agree. That is being provocative, but when you use a paragraph that sets it up as though, you know, how can you refuse to do something that they have done in the states --
Mr Sorbara: After all, Wisconsin did it.
Mr Elston: Basically, I want to know -- it says, "The United States has passed legislation requiring support deduction for all support orders." Are you saying this is the federal --
Ms Pilcow: Federal legislation.
Mr Elston: And is it passed on the basis that they will require this legislation if there are resources to be obtained from the federal authorities?
Ms Pilcow: There is a cost-sharing arrangement between the federal government and the states, and what they have done is --
Mr Elston: This is like the old Canadian federal tool which was, "If you don't do it, you are not going to get the dough to support it." Right?
Mr Sorbara: It is welfare moneys that are being withheld, I think.
Ms Pilcow: They have no option but to do it.
Mr Elston: Sure. So that it why we are going then by 1994.
Ms Pilcow: In fact, by November 1990 each of the states was required to enact legislation for immediate income withholding for those cases being enforced by the state child support agency. Now in fact some of them have not done it, even though they are required to do it, and 1994 is the date for all orders, not only those that are being enforced by the child support agency.
Mr Elston: Can you give us some of the states that have led the way in that -- I know Wisconsin has already been mentioned and Florida, I guess, in terms of the advertisements that we will take a look at later -- some of the ones that have also implemented that?
Ms Pilcow: There are quite a number of them I can give you. I do not have that with me now.
Mr Elston: Maybe you had better give us the ones that have not. That would help us because it would show us a little bit about those, but I presume that states like California, New York and Michigan would probably have proceeded to put this legislation in place.
Ms Pilcow: Frankly, I cannot remember off the top of my head. Some of them have done it in advance of the dates required by the federal legislation; some of them have not done it yet.
Mr Elston: Is it possible, having seen that they have moved to do this, at least in some places, that we could get some preliminary statistics as to the before and after to see whether they really were able to affect positively the number of defaulters?
Ms Pilcow: We have some. Wisconsin has had what is called "immediate income withholding" in place since 1983 on a pilot project basis. They have some preliminary findings. The problem with them is that none of their studies are pure analysis of support deduction because they have done a number of things alongside of support deduction which have really tainted their numbers.
They have tried to compare counties where they did not have support deduction to counties where they did, and what they found was that, even in the counties where they did not have support deduction in place, judges were doing it in any event, so that the studies really are not accurate according to the people who have even done them. But what they tend to show is an increase of somewhere between 15% and 30%. This is one study in Wisconsin. I am not aware of any others that have been done.
Mr Elston: Just to finish that line off, could you give us, for instance, from Wisconsin and Florida, just as a couple, the number of people that they have working and the case load that they are experiencing? They must have surely that basic data.
Ms Pilcow: We have the numbers for Wisconsin. We have them for Georgia, I think, as well. I do not think we have them for Florida.
Mr Elston: Okay, Georgia. Can you give us a sampling of states which might be helpful in terms of the amount of resources that they have put against that type of legislation to see how they respond? Maybe even Australia has something, I do not know. But it is important, because their experience will instruct us as to how far we will have to go in putting together the resources. I know that Ms Mills will find this very helpful in the long run, and it may make the difference between a system which is going to languish and a system which will perform.
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Ms Pilcow: I wonder if I can just comment on the last point that you made. The problem with comparing some of these enforcement agencies with our own is that they do a lot of different things. For example, in Wisconsin their child support enforcement agencies are very involved in variations of orders, which we are not at all. So --
Mr Elston: So they would do custody stuff?
Ms Pilcow: No, variations of support orders. In fact l think they are all going to be required to do modifications by some date, I cannot recall which one. So they do a whole lot more --
Mr Elston: So in fact you could come to the court and say, "I will agree to pay, but my reason for not technically at the moment is this."
Just one last and final point. I do not particularly want to put anybody on the spot to answer this one, but during my time as minister, and I expect also Mr Kwinter and Mr Sorbara, we were really harped on any time there was a broad regulation-making authority in a piece of legislation.
This bill has one of the broadest ever, and I realize the need to be rather flexible in allowing the people to go ahead and make regs, whatever they feel that they have to do without coming back to the Legislative Assembly. But the New Democrats, even the Conservatives on occasion but particularly the New Democrats, any time we had a bill that had a broad regulation-making authority that would actually require a semi-substantive part of the bill to be enshrined in regulation, raised a big, big problem with us. We always had to file the regulations before we ended up doing clause-by-clause on some of the bills. If we did not file the regulations, there was a big blowup: "Boy, you guys are really conspiring against legislative authority."
There are two more things really; one is the first point, and I think that should be answered by the parliamentary assistant if the parliamentary assistant is able to talk to us some time, because I presume the Attorney General will not be, and that is not an issue which you can talk to me about.
The second is, have you got regulations that will fill in some of the blanks that you will be able to share with us by the end of the week? Because if there are substantive parts of this legislation that are going to appear in terms of enforcement, even for this legislation, then we should know about it as we prepare to do the clause-by-clause.
If there are areas in which people are not prepared to share substantive parts of legislation but will remain hidden until the regs are done, then I can tell you that this party or at least this member of the party -- I think this party -- will proceed to raise some pretty strenuous objections and we will probably demand that the regulations be shared.
They should be shared with the committee to be sure that we are going to have substantial completion of our work before clause-by-clause. If it cannot be done, it should be done before third reading, and it may be then necessary for us to come back as a committee and review the regulations in the context of the reported bill that goes through to third reading in the House.
So if you have got some stuff on regs, it will be helpful to share it with us; if you have not got it, then I think we should probably as a committee have a sustained effort to get the draft regulations and make sure that we can semi-approve those before this bill is completed.
Ms Pilcow: On the regs question, I can tell you for sure that we will not have them completed by the end of the week. We do not have any of them drafted. We have a good sense of what is going to go in them, but nothing in particular. What we can try to do, if we have got the time to do it, depending on the other things we have got to do between now and clause-by-clause, is to get you some general sense of what is going in there.
Mr Elston: That would be helpful. It may be, when we see the general sense, that may be enough, or it may only lead to a few more questions when we do it clause-by-clause, because we may end up being uneasy or ill at ease with the way the provisions read except, when you put them in the context of the provision with the regs, it may help us.
Ms Feldman: I suppose this will not give the comfort that you are probably seeking, and other parties may have said this in the past, but we hope that we put all the substantive law in the bill itself. If you review the amendments, you will see that whatever we thought was not completely clear we have hoped to clarify by those amendments as well. But subject to that, we appreciate the concern you have raised.
The Acting Chair (Mr Fletcher): The fire alarms are going off in the building, but not on this side. We are not asked to evacuate the building yet.
Mr Elston: This side of the building burned down several decades ago so it is their turn.
Ms S. Murdock: Just an aside, first. I am a loather and detester of the central telephone system, and it is interesting to note that the two areas that use this system are now SCOE -- hopefully, another name later -- and the Workers' Compensation Board, and both of them are so well loved by the public. I just wanted to say that.
Listening to what everybody has said this afternoon, including myself, no matter what words are used, rhetoric or otherwise, I think part of our job is to get past the rhetoric. Whether it is motherhood and love and kisses and all of that, the reality is: Will this bill do what we hope it will do; that is, clean up the SCOE situation?
Something that really was not emphasized today but is really important to note, that I think is really important based on the constituency work I did, is that it takes a lot of the personal aspect out of the orders. The payer cannot sit there and say, "Well, she's just getting even with me, so she's taking me to court again," or whatever. Correct me if I am wrong, but under this bill, first, the choice of whether the order is registered is out of the people's hands. Whether there is any variation is out of her hands; they cannot make deals. So there is no personal aspect to this, correct?
Ms Pilcow: That is true. That is one of the benefits of it.
Ms S. Murdock: That is how I see it. You cannot stop payment because you are angry with the spouse. It is the children who suffer. The spouse suffers too, but the children are the ones who are not getting the money.
Ms Pilcow: That is the flip side of Mr Elston's concern, that for those people who are able to agree and who are friendly and able to make their own arrangements, it is not a good thing. But for the majority of people that is not the situation, where they are making ex gratia payment. We are trying to deal with the people who are not.
Ms S. Murdock: In a seven-week period in Shelley's office we had 38 SCOE complaints. That is what initiated the Ombudsman thing. Of those 38, only two had to do with the federal interrelation of legislation. The rest were split evenly between Comsoc FBA cases and general maintenance payments.
It is interesting. I do not know whether this is considered, but I am hoping. I read all the legislation, everything we have been given so far. It says Comsoc can withdraw as long as there are no arrears, right? But is there any kind of relationship between payment -- here is an example: The court order is $200 per month per child; two children, $400. FBA is $718 per month. Because the court order is for $400, FBA only pays $318. But with all the delays in SCOE and so forth the mother and children do not get the money, and neither has the spouse paid.
It is like a waiting period before Comsoc comes in. This is out of your bailiwick in a sense, but it is not, either. Comsoc waits before it ends up giving an assignment for the $400, and l am wondering whether or not any consideration has been made in the AG's office on that.
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Ms Pilcow: I am not sure I understand the question.
Ms Feldman: I understand: whether any consideration has been given to making the assignment between Comsoc and the recipient quicker, so that Comsoc pays the full $718 a month rather than making the recipient do this with a shortfall until the assignment is actually made.
Ms S. Murdock: Right.
Ms Feldman: I am aware of no -- not in this context of Bill 17 --
Ms S. Murdock: You must have discussed Comsoc's relationship with SCOE legislation to have come up with the clauses that related to Comsoc being allowed to --
Ms Feldman: Only in so far as our interest -- when I say that I mean strictly Bill 17 and the old SCOE legislation -- starts after the support order has been assigned to Comsoc. What happens prior to that date, or any delay constituents might be experiencing in getting an assignment of the support order really has not come into play at all.
Ms S. Murdock: All court orders are going to be automatically registered under this bill.
Ms Feldman: All support orders made after July 1987 under the old legislation are automatically registered. They all have an operative clause requiring the filing with the director's office. The difference is that people can withdraw those support orders from the program.
Ms Pilcow: Are you talking about registered with the SCOE program or support-deductible?
Ms S. Murdock: Support deductions.
Ms Pilcow: Support deductions will only apply -- actually, this is the subject of an amendment -- where the support order itself provides for payment of support on a periodic basis.
Ms S. Murdock: Say that again?
Ms Pilcow: It is only where the court order itself provides for the payment of support on a periodic basis. If you have one lump sum payment of support, that is not support-deductible, but where there is a periodic payment, the court will be obliged to make a support deduction order in every case.
Ms Feldman: That lump sum payment is enforceable, but not through support deduction.
Ms S. Murdock: Okay. I know Mr Elston was talking about the cost of taking a case for a variation order, for instance, to court. If everything was amicable it would not be $3,000, but nevertheless there is a cost. As it comes under your bailiwick as well, it is something that legal clinic might even be considering to look at. I had not even thought of that aspect, but it is a consideration, to make it so that the onus is not on the payer or the payee, as the case may be, if she or he wishes to take it and get a variation. There should be some way through our system to do that.
Ms Pilcow: If they do it on consent it can be very inexpensive. All you have to do is file a consent order. That is not the problem. The problem is where it is very hotly contested. If you have absolutely no money, legal aid will of course pay you, or if you go up to the limit.
Ms S. Murdock: I know. But even that is a pain.
Mr Elston: I do not want to butt in, but if you have any lawyer prepare an application, even on a consent, they are not going to take it for $25 or anything. It is still a relatively expensive exercise, particularly for the person who is marginal and cannot even maintain their obligation.
Ms S. Murdock: I have agreed with your point. It is a valid point and something I think the ministry should be considering.
Last, and then I will quit, is that SCOE's attitude has been a real problem in terms of people calling, even when you did get through and talk to a human being -- rude, really unacceptable, even when an MPP's office would call. After the Ombudsman's investigation, our office made a deal, at least locally, I do not know whether it has been applied provincially. For instance, no one would ever tell you their name. If I called about my case, I would talk to Suzy and Jane, because they all seemed to be women. I would be talking to all these people and each time would be a different person, so there was no continuity on a file. Plus the fact that they tended to give you next to no information and what information they did give you was not very pleasantly given.
One of my suggestions to the Ombudsman was that they should all go and take a course in how to treat the public. I am hoping that with this new bill, with the reduction of workloads that are to be expected, there will be a change in that too.
Ms E. Mills: I do not suppose you asked for a response.
Ms S. Murdock: No. A year from now I am going to ask you for a response.
Mr Carr: I want to agree with Mr Elston's comments about the regulations. I would suspect we are probably too soon into it to have any forms we would be looking at. If we are not even into the other, we are too far along for that, I would suspect.
Ms Pilcow: We were hoping to get them done, but because of the number of the comments we got on the second reading draft, we were working on amendments to those drafts as opposed to doing the forms and the regulations. That is why they are not done, but we want to do that.
Mr Carr: As much midnight oil as could be burned would be much appreciated by the members of the committee.
Ms Pilcow: It is burning.
Mr Carr: You do not look too tired.
I know it has been gone over a little, but in terms of this 75%, I was one of the ones who sat in the House and, honestly and truly, maybe being a naïve rookie, when the Attorney General said 75% were in default, I immediately thought they had been totally in default. Just to clarify it, you are saying you have not kept any statistics on those people. We are throwing out sometimes your guesstimates from family law of what they would be, we take the Alberta study and then that is it. Is that where we are at with statistics for this?
Ms E. Mills: Not exactly. I can get, as I told you, that 75% figure down to a 65% figure if we look at cases where, when we ask the system, there has been some money flowing in the last 35 days. The 25% system tells us where on an average it is full compliance. If you add where somebody has made a payment, maybe a lump-sum payment on arrears or whatever, that now takes it up to 35%, which still leaves that category, 65%, where there is no money flowing and therefore in default.
The only thing I can do to reduce that figure is look at some cases where the support order has been filed with us and the parties have not come forward and given us the information on a filing package so that we can do anything with it. They have not officially withdrawn from the program so we have to keep it on our books; there is some 16,000 in that category, which would take the per cent down a little. But on the remainder, I cannot give you a profile as to why they are defaulting. We just know there are no moneys flowing, and that tends to be the definition of default.
Mr Carr: On that also, how do you propose to go back into -- for want of a better word -- the system to clean up what is there now? Have you thought of how you are going to proceed along those lines?
Ms E. Mills: Yes. Some of the computer tools were not even there a year ago, and as of April this year we have a better case management system that allows us to look at our cases, when was the last action taken, etc. We are trying to move through our cases in a more systematic fashion. You heard the minister mention that there was a backlog a while ago on initial registrations. We are now trying to keep that current, so that there hopefully is not a backlog on the new ones coming in, while we look at all the other cases and systematically go through them.
At the same time, we instituted at the beginning of January what we call hot tips. With the inquiry lines there, if people call in and give us some information about their ex-spouse or payer, the central inquiry is immediately faxing that to the regional offices. We are trying to act on all those hot tips we can on a daily basis, as opposed to putting it in the file and when we got to that case. We are trying to reorder our priorities in terms of how we are dealing with the cases. Again, it is still a bit of a backlog in that not all cases have the attention they should have up to date.
Mr Carr: But you fully agree with trying to go back. It is not going to be like our court cases across the street, where we are going to throw cases out. You believe that we should go back to those. Because the Attorney General, when it comes to that case, says: "We should start fresh. Let's not go back into it because it'll just clog the system more." Do you think you have the capabilities to do it?
Ms E. Mills: The minister mentioned these resources. They are just coming on board. It will take till December 1991. The $2 million he is talking about is allowing us to fund some extra staff on contract one time to try to get the current system a little more current.
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Mr Carr: So in December 1991 you will have that "backlog" cleaned up.
Ms E. Mills: That is the target. I do not want to make the guarantee, because there are a lot of factors effecting in there, but we are going to make a serious attempt.
Mr Carr: Are you confident as the director that $2 million is enough to do that or do you have --
Ms E. Mills: I cannot say at this time whether I am confident. In a couple of more months, I might have a better reading.
Mr Carr: Because you know where we are at now. We are now talking about including back cases, yet we still really do not have, I would say, a concrete plan on how to do that. The committee is going to have to agree to take a look at these backlogs, and really the plan in place is not all that definite, is what you are saying.
Ms E. Mills: Yes.
Mr Carr: One last question, if I could. Maybe you could just run through the steps very simply, not take a lot of time, realizing it is 5 o'clock. I am an employer. I get a notice. How does it work?
Ms E. Mills: I am going to let the designers --
Ms Pilcow: The employer will get a copy of the notice from the SCOE office. They get served with a copy of the notice. They then are obliged to remit the payments. The notice will set out who gets the money, which is the office, and how much and from whom. They will also be given some information on what to do if. What if you are not the income source of the debtor? What if the payer is no longer employed or becomes unemployed during this period and simply has to pay? The employer is going to be obliged to comply only with the directions of the program, as opposed to with what the debtor may want to do.
Mr Carr: Is this going to be a file this thick for somebody coming through, or how simple is it?
Ms Pilcow: It is going to be the notice, with the amount of money and the period during which it has to be paid.
Mr Carr: Because what I am thinking -- as you know, most people are in small businesses. General Motors has a payroll department, but I am thinking in the small businesses, where I am an owner-operator, is it going to be as simple as you are laying it out here, so that you can follow it?
Ms Pilcow: Our intention is to make it as user-friendly as possible. We have had a lot of offers of assistance from various employer groups to assist us in drafting the materials for the employers, and we will have an employer hotline for them to call and ask questions. Our intention is to make it as easy as we possibly can. I think we should be able to do that. I do not think that is an unrealistic goal.
Mr Carr: Plus the employer knows that if there is a mistake he gets a penalty, which is what again?
Ms Pilcow: It is not just if they make a mistake; it is if they knowingly contravene one of the provisions of the act. For example, they are obliged to advise of an interruption in payment. It is up to $10,000.
Mr Carr: We appreciate that in a big company you can do that. In a small company somebody misses it and then all of a sudden gets hit with whatever. I did not follow it, and I am just worried about how that will work, knowing that a lot of these are going to be in small businesses. I just wondered what the planning was. How far down the road are we in planning for this with the businesses?
Ms Feldman: That is why the word "knowingly" is in there, that particular provision.
Ms Pilcow: The intention is also to give them some basic information when they come on board, to tell them, "These are your obligations; you should know that you have to -- " and do a pamphlet for them setting out all the obligations they will have.
Ms Feldman: I think we are fortunate to have the type of consultation and input we have had from the employer groups to date and to hopefully be able to get their assistance on the preparation of forms they can live with and understand.
Mr Carr: I presume the groups that will be coming in over the next little while, which might not have been included when the Attorney General met, that information could be forwarded as part of this process.
Mr Sorbara: As long as we are putting in our requests for information, if the policy branch, in looking at the other jurisdictions it has compared, will compare the opt-out provisions in other jurisdictions as compared to the two opt-out provisions we have here under the bill as proposed. As I understand it, one is when it would be unconscionable -- I cannot imagine where it would be unconscionable, but you said you put that in -- and two, where there is agreement between the parties and security posted and the judge agrees as well.
Ms Pilcow: What the bill says is that the judge will agree upon what is an adequate amount of security, but what I said earlier was that we were proposing to change that to provide for a minimum amount plus security only in the form of cash, so the judge has less discretion.
Mr Sorbara: Suffice it to say that I view these provisions as very strict, and very few people will actually be able to opt out of the system.
So if we could take a variety of jurisdictions, say, five jurisdictions and compare the opt-out provisions, that will be helpful to us. As I said earlier, l think that is one of the main issues we are confronting.
The other thing I am concerned about a little bit is something that both Mr Carr and Mr Elston alluded to, and I think I did as well later on, and that is the figures, what the figures are going to look like down the road; that is, 100% or 90% compliance. In other words, the good guys. I hope that we are not going to make those figures look good by bringing into SCOE all of the people who are complying now outside of the system; that is, those who are able to opt out of the system by way of an agreement or those who are providing support under a domestic contract that is not the subject of an order.
Under your act, number one, those people who could mutually agree to leave the government out of this will not now be able to do that, absent security; and, number two, a domestic contract can be filed with SCOE under your bill, so that adds more people into the system.
If, as it turns out, you are improving your figures by way of bringing into the government-administered system a whole bunch of people who would have complied anyway, that would be a terrible fraud on the people of the province to say that we have really improved it, really improved the payout rate. "Look at our statistics; we're down to 40%." But you do not tell them that you have done that by bringing in a whole bunch of people who would not be in under the law as it stands now. What measures are you going to put into place to ensure that that is not the case? Is there any way of doing that? Your record will look much better, would it not, if you could bring in?
Ms Pilcow: First off, domestic contracts will not be filed. First of all, you can file them now if you want to and you can file them with the new bill, so that is not really a change.
Mr Sorbara: Oh, I thought that was a change. I am sorry.
Ms Pilcow: The difference will be, those people who previously had an option to not file their support order with SCOE by filing a notice not to enforce will not have that option any more.
Mr Sorbara: That is right.
Ms Pilcow: Frankly, we do not have the numbers on how many people do that. We do not keep statistics on how many of those people there are.
Mr Sorbara: I think that should be so easy to get. The courts know how many orders are filed in the court. These, after all, are orders of the Supreme Court of Ontario or the Ontario family court or Ontario Court (General Division) now, and you know how many cases you have. So it seems like a simple subtraction --
Ms Pilcow: I am not sure, frankly, that the records that are kept by the courts break it down to isolate those cases that relate to a support order and those that relate to other relief under the Family Law Act. I can check that to see if we know that number, but we will not know -- mind you, we might know, we might be able to tell how many. We can look at the numbers.
Mr Sorbara: Do you see what my problem is?
Ms Pilcow: I understand the problem.
Mr Sorbara: The problem is that you are going to be bringing in a whole bunch of people who are not now in.
Ms Pilcow: Potentially.
Mr Sorbara: I am separated from my wife, we agree that there has to be a support order from the court, but we agree that we are going to apply to keep out of your hair, right?
Ms Pilcow: You can agree in a domestic contract, though.
Mr Sorbara: Yes, but now under the new law that is not going to be able to happen any more; it has to go to my employer.
Ms Pilcow: No. If you choose to enter into a domestic contract you can keep it out.
Mr Sorbara: If there is going to be a court order.
Ms Pilcow: You do not have to agree to that. If you are agreeing, you can choose to agree on that in a domestic contract and have the rest be into it in an order.
Mr Sorbara: If it is going to be the order of a court, it is going to result in an automatic deduction order, absent --
Ms Pilcow: Right.
Mr Sorbara: -- that little category. It is those statistics that I would like to be able to get a handle on, because if really you are improving your record by diluting the base with the good guys, then God, where are we, where have we gotten to? Absolutely nowhere.
Ms Pilcow: Certainly the intention is to improve compliance in those cases which are not complying.
Mr Sorbara: I hear you, and we would all like to do that. If we could agree that that is all that this bill did, I think we would agree with you on it. Anyway, Mr Chairman, I do not have any more questions.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr Sorbara.
Mr Sorbara: I would like to see those comparisons.
Ms Pilcow: I am not sure that we can do that, frankly. To the extent that numbers are available --
Mr Sorbara: I would like to see the comparisons as to what other statutes say about opting out --
Ms Pilcow: Oh yes, I am sorry.
Mr Sorbara: -- as compared to what the Ontario statute says.
The Chair: Are you finished, Mr Sorbara?
Mr Sorbara: Almost.
The Chair: Thank you very much. Any further questions of the ministry staff? Seeing none, thank you very much for attending.
Ms Pilcow: Thank you.
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The Chair: There were a couple of items we should look at in terms of the agenda in front of us, the yellow agenda. Mrs Cunningham was particularly concerned about the depressing amount of time and the priority of this bill. I think you were also concerned about other legislation which may well be parallel to this but not dealt with under Bill 17.
Mrs Cunningham: Well, I just thought it would be an opportunity for us to at least draw to the minister's attention some of the priorities that come out of the discussions in the way of a report, rather than just walking away from an amended piece of legislation. I know research does do this, but I think it would be nice if the committee chose two or three priority areas as a result of the public hearings where the minister could do other work.
For instance, it is frustrating for some of us to sit here and look at this small, little piece that may or may not make a difference down the road -- hopefully it will make a difference -- and at the same time to know that we are not giving the same kind of time to really solving the problems of child poverty and taking a look at how the Social Assistance Review Committee is working and all those things. Not maybe the work of this particular committee, but certainly the work of those of us who are elected and I find myself in that position. So I think we will have an opportunity from public hearings to pass on some recommendations or concerns to maybe even chairmen of committees who can make it their business to look at it during the course of this government.
The second thing I was concerned about, and I will not really know probably until Tuesday or Wednesday, until we have started to hear some of the input and had a look at the recommendations for amendments from the government today, is how well prepared we will be to put forth the necessary amendments.
I just say that because we are so busy right now. We may be just fine, but I just wanted to put the committee on warning -- and probably from everybody else's point of view too -- that I hope that if we need a day later on, or two days later on, we will choose to do that. Not so much in public hearings but getting our work done. I just do not want to be rushed, that is all.
Mr Sorbara: Can I support that and, to be specific, suggest that we not intend to do clause-by-clause on Friday.
The Chair: I should hear Mr Fletcher before you.
Mr Fletcher: We are discussing the yellow copy also?
The Chair: We are, yes.
Mr Fletcher: I agree the time thing for some of the groups is kind of short. I would like to see it a bit longer myself. Also, I am looking at the Tuesday 12 February 2:30 slot. Are these, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business and In Search of Justice, in the same group?
The Chair: The clerk just drew to my attention an error here. I believe the 2:30 spot, the first one should be 2 o'clock. That is on page 2, referring to Tuesday 12 February. The first 2:30 should in fact be 2 o'clock, so there is a full half-hour for the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, not a zero time allotment.
Mr Fletcher: I do share some of the concerns of Mrs Cunningham as far as the 15-minute time slots are concerned for some of these people and some of the travelling that they have to take. The London Status of Women Action Group, which was already mentioned, 10:45 to 11:15, that is a long way to come for a submission like that.
Mr Sorbara: With respect, Mr Chairman, you, as Chair, and the subcommittee agreed that this would be the procedure for this committee and I do not think it is appropriate for a government member now to be questioning that. It was the committee's decision a long time ago.
The Chair: Mr Fletcher was only echoing the comments of your own colleague Mr Elston.
Mr Sorbara: My colleague is a visitor to this committee, was not aware of the subcommittee's deliberations and is subbing here. The fact is that we are not in a position now to change this, to say that individuals should be given a half-hour. We decided that as a committee.
The Chair: Surely when someone is a sub he is still fully informed.
Mrs Cunningham: I am. I just want to say I do not think that was the intent.
Mr Elston: I am not. I could ask a whole series of other questions now since that point.
Mrs Cunningham: Mr Chairman, just on that point, l just think that Mr Fletcher was saying that we had some concerns around that and I think maybe even when it was struck we had some concerns but we had a time frame. Now that we see what is before us, my bigger concern is the one that Mr Sorbara is talking about, and that is, to even begin to take a look at the amendments in one day I am feeling now -- I may feel differently -- but it may be an impossible task, given the importance of what we are trying to do and the complications and the questions today, for which we are all grateful.
That is all I am saying -- let us not go away from here with it carved in stone that we are going to finish this thing on Friday. That is all I am saying.
The Chair: Thank you. I am reminded that Mr Fletcher did have the floor beforehand.
Mrs Cunningham: I am sorry.
Mr Fletcher: I was not in any way, shape or form going to amend this or change this. I was just expressing a concern that some of the other members had expressed and I agreed with them. So I was not about to go and change anything. I do not know where Mr Sorbara got the idea that I was trying to change anything. Thank you.
Mr Sorbara: Can I suggest that we not consider doing clause-by-clause on Friday? I have a very personal reason for doing that: I cannot be here on Friday. But besides that, we are going to be hearing people up until 6 o'clock on Thursday night. There are a number of government amendments that we have to meld into the bill. There are a number of items that we have asked to be provided in terms of research, and if we have the public hearings and then we look at the amendments and also are able to see the additional research, then we maybe can get our head around a good day or a day and a half's clause-by-clause consideration of the bill.
The Chair: Mr Sorbara, would you like to put that in the form of a motion?
Mr Sorbara: Okay.
The Chair: Mr Sorbara moves that the committee not sit on Friday 15 February 1991 and that clause-by-clause consideration of the bill be set over to a date to be determined by the subcommittee in consultation with the clerk.
Mrs Cunningham: Could I ask that the motion be dealt with perhaps on Wednesday, when we are better able to know how -- is that fair, Greg?
Mr Sorbara: Yes.
Mrs Cunningham: I have not even looked at the amendments.
The Chair: Mrs Cunningham, there were two other hands here, but we will return to you in a moment. Mr Mills?
Mr G. Mills: I would just agree with that motion, because on Friday I will be on the drug strategy tour and I do not think that it is fair for my replacement to come in here, after I have sat here, and deal with clause-by-clause. I think that he would be lost. So, if you are looking for support, I think that I can give that very well.
Mr Wessenger: I have some problems with respect to the day you are going to schedule it for, because I certainly, I think, should be available on the clause-by-clause hearing. I believe the day suggested was Wednesday and I think that is --
Interjection.
Mr Wessenger: No clause-by-clause this Wednesday?
Interjection: No.
Mr Sorbara: My motion was to the effect that we set a date in consultation with the subcommittee.
The Chair: Thank you. Ms Murdock.
Ms S. Murdock: Actually, this is in relation to what Mr Mills has said, because I was specifically asked to sit this week on this committee because of my knowledge of SCOE. I sit on other standing committees and this week I happened to have free. Although I would prefer to be in my riding on Friday, I set it aside to do clause-by-clause on Friday. It would be very dependent on the day that was chosen as to whether or not I would be available to do clause-by-clause and given that I am sitting here for the whole week, I think it is imperative that I be here for clause-by-clause. So I do not know whether I agree, unless it is going to fit into my schedule, and you cannot do that.
The Chair: My understanding is --
Mr Sorbara: Can I just comment on that?
The Chair: Excuse me. My understanding, as well, is that clause-by-clause may not finish on Friday, even if it starts then. Mr Sorbara.
Mr Sorbara: It is clear from what the Attorney General said that the ministry is not going to be in a position to actually proclaim this bill for quite some time. Even if we were to pass it tomorrow, they are looking at September and maybe December by the time they have all the machinery in place, including regulations to proclaim it.
So I think it would be perfectly acceptable to set over clause-by-clause to a day that is convenient to the people who sat through the hearings. I think we should accommodate Ms Murdock and find a day when she is available, but I think the subcommittee can do that. It may be April, it may be May, it may be June, but I am sceptical about considering clause-by-clause after three solid days of hearing submissions. I certainly will not be able to get my head around what I really heard and be able to incorporate that into an amendment that I would want to propose.
Mr Fletcher: I was just wondering, this agenda was set up by the subcommittee, is that right? I am just going by what Mr Sorbara said, that everyone should know what was on, that the subcommittee did recommend this. Why change what the subcommittee has already done?
Mr Sorbara: Excuse me. We are not here to fight with one another. I was on the subcommittee. I think I proposed it.
The Chair: Excuse me, Mr Sorbara.
Mr Sorbara: I have just made the motion now.
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Mr Fletcher: As far as what the subcommittee has done, I am willing to go with it, but to find a date that everyone is going to be available may be a little more difficult as we get closer to some of the things that are going on.
Mrs Mathyssen: I am quite amenable to looking at clause-by-clause on another day, but I think that it should be fairly soon, because all of the information that we have acquired in this week will become more and more remote if too much time passes. So I would not want it to be put off until April or May. Second, I wonder, if we do decide to defer the clause-by-clause for another date, could we set that date here now, while people are present, and avoid further complications by having it go away to the subcommittee and then come back?
The Chair: So you are suggesting essentially an amendment to Mr Sorbara's motion.
Mrs Mathyssen: Well, just some added input.
The Chair: Whereby the date is determined now and not by reference to the subcommittee?
Mrs Mathyssen: I thought that might be a little easier for the people. Since we are gathered here, that might be easier than a subcommittee determining a possible date, coming back and finding that it is not a good date.
Mr Sorbara: Can I speak to that?
The Chair: I am sorry, Mr Elston is before you.
Mr Elston: I just wanted to indicate that the committee does not have to concern itself necessarily about the time in between now and March. We could sit when the House is back. We are generally then all around this place. That, I think, is still soon enough, and in fact for some of us who used to do the committee work quite a lot, it was always helpful to get a compilation of recommendations that we got from people who were presenters, and you could give the people in legislative research a bit of time, rather than pressing everybody to come up with the stuff the next day. I think it is a more humane way of doing the work, and then you can sit and you can ponder it. As soon as we got back to the House, if that was the time that we needed to do it, we could set a day when most of us would be around, I am sure. I for one would be in favour of discharging our clause-by-clause duties at a future sitting.
I am a little bit reluctant to tell you that I am going to be available on 19 March or whatever. House leaders sometimes end up being taken out of the play a little bit because of other things that have to be done. I am prepared to make myself available as flexibly as I can, but if the government House leader calls on us, we opposition people are at her every beck and call and, you know, we aim to please. But I would suggest that just for the sheer volume of work we are going to get into here, it would be a rational thing to do, to postpone it until later, and in fact maybe the early part of March is quite good -- sorry, when we get back after March in the House, the early part of the House.
Mr Wessenger: Mr Chairman, I do not have your agenda for next week in front of me, but it would seem logical if we could extend from the Friday to Monday, include Monday as consideration of clause-by-clause. That gives us two days and plenty of time.
Ms S. Murdock: The Premier would probably have some --
The Chair: There is a small difficulty with that. We do have some items already scheduled. Being a legislative referral, this would take precedence over even the Premier's referral.
Mr Elston: What sort of protocol is it if the Premier is scheduled to appear? I would hate to be the Chair who sent him the note that said, "Don't bother showing up, Bob."
Ms S. Murdock: Yes, "We'll schedule you another day."
Mr Elston: His schedule is less flexible than ours, believe me.
The Chair: I think that might be true.
Mr Wessenger: Why could we not do this Friday and Tuesday, then?
Mr Sorbara: We have all next week.
The Chair: I am sorry, Mr Wessenger. Your suggestion is Friday this and Tuesday next?
Mr Wessenger: Yes.
Mr Sorbara: Well, again, my motion says give it to the subcommittee. There is a practical reason to do that. The fact is that it is etiquette and appropriate to have ministry staff here when you do clause-by-clause and when the amendments are going to be proposed. So there will have to be a parliamentary assistant here, or somebody is going to -- if you are the parliamentary assistant -- introduce the amendments. We need to have everyone's agreement on a possible day, so to try to figure it out here and now I think is really inappropriate.
If you really want to push it, you are going to defeat the motion and then we are going to come here on Friday to do clause-by-clause and one of us or someone, I hope from our party, is going to talk the clock for a long time, because I cannot be here. I do not think you can do it in four hours reasonably in any event. Look, you are the government. You are in the majority. You are going to make the decision, But I put the amendment not as a political tactic but to set over some time where we can actually do a good job of clause-by-clause on this bill.
Mr Wessenger: Could I just make a suggestion that we defer a decision on this motion until we have had a chance to discuss it further? I think that would be the logical --
Mrs Cunningham: If we could come back with some ideas.
Mr Sorbara: Wednesday is fine. Vote on it whenever you like.
The Chair: So you are suggesting voting on Mr Sorbara's motion on Wednesday?
Mr Wessenger: On Wednesday.
Ms S. Murdock: Table the motion till Wednesday.
The Chair: Table the motion till Wednesday?
Mr Wessenger: Yes, so we can have a chance to try to hopefully resolve the matter.
Mr Sorbara: I will abandon my motion and I just want to put the committee on notice that I intend to move it on Wednesday.
The Chair: At which time, Mr Sorbara?
Mr Sorbara: The top of the morning.
Mr Elston: Which Wednesday he is not prepared to tell you yet.
Mr Sorbara: You can check with the minister and see if it is all right and he will say it is okay and --
The Chair: Are you suggesting at the tail end of the day, sir?
Mr Sorbara: -- your caucus will have decided whether or not you are going to support it. I am going to move it on Wednesday.
Mrs Cunningham: Look at them. They are absolutely open to this, Greg. Come on, think.
The Chair: This is an open government. Mr Sorbara, please.
Mr Sorbara: But why are we tabling it? That is what I do not understand.
Mrs Cunningham: Because none of us knows when we are going to be available. At least it gives us a chance -- for instance, the reason I am glad it is tabled is because I can speak to Mr Harnick, who would love to be here, and say, "What do you think?" and "When can you be here?" That is why I am tabling it.
Mr Sorbara: But my motion said in effect that we will not have it on Friday, but we will have it on the date when it suits everybody.
Mrs Cunningham: Oh, I am sorry. All right. Fine.
Mr Sorbara: That is the subcommittee.
Mrs Cunningham: No, that is fine. If that was your motion, I do not have a problem with that.
The Chair: So we are tabling it until Wednesday at some point.
Mr Sorbara: No, I am going to move it on Wednesday. I am withdrawing it now and I will move it on Wednesday.
The Chair: Okay.
Mr Sorbara: Just to add, I think Murray is right. It should be some time after we are sitting again, one of our meetings, and we can do it then. It will probably go far more quickly. It will go much more quickly than it would on Friday in any event.
The Chair: Okay. Report of the subcommittee:
"The subcommittee met Wednesday 16 January 1991 to discuss committee scheduling.
"It was agreed that the following people be invited to appear before the committee on conflict of interest:
"Premier of Ontario, Attorney General, Deputy Attorney General, Conflict of Interest Commissioner, Doug Ewart, Ministry of the Attorney General, and all ministers."
Any discussion? Mr Mills.
Mr G. Mills: Mr Chairman, I just think I would like to remove that "all ministers." I think we are just going to sit here and listen to the same thing over and over again. What are we going to achieve by going through all that? So I move that we listen to the top five people on that list and remove the words "all ministers."
The Chair: So you are moving an amendment of the subcommittee report?
Mr Elston: I think really the reason that the ministers are asked to come in here is that we would like not to go through some repetitive pro forma questioning of these individuals, but to really look at the conflict of interest as it applies to the people who have different types of holdings and backgrounds and the whole works. We can talk to them about the practical problems with conflict of interest, about how the compliance has either hindered or helped them, I guess, if that is the case.
I can tell you from past experience that each minister in our time as government met various problems and actually found different types of experiences. In fact for some people, because of their particular backgrounds, it became a very heavy and onerous obligation. As we look at the type of regulation that is being proposed here, each individual minister will have his or her point of view for us to consider as members of this committee.
I should not speak too long on it, because I am not going to be here sitting as a member of the committee when conflict of interest is done, but I can provide you with a little bit of my view on it because I have experienced it. I have experienced what it does in terms of the family requirements to fill in all kinds of documents, the type of outrage that I felt, for instance, when I had to divulge the location and the amount of money in my four-year-old son's bank account and give the numbers. It is very instructive for people going through this.
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Remember that the conflict-of-interest guidelines have a very particular perspective from which they are formulated, and they are formulated by bureaucrats generally. It is, I think, hazardous to the health of anybody who is looking at running for elected office; furthermore, much more hazardous if you are invited to become a member of the executive council. Now you are not always asked to join, but if you are asked to join, there are sometimes some very onerous regulations that are being proposed here.
I think that the reason we like to see the ministers is to see the types of snags and problems that they have encountered. I am not going to be here, but for some of us it is -- I have a point of view that we have ridden the pendulum about conflict of interest to such an extreme degree that it is preventing some people who would otherwise be publicly interested in running or seeking election or even becoming members of executive councils from actually considering it.
It is the balance that we want to construct. For me, it is not some kind of inquisition so we can point to minister X and say, "Aha, caught you" or "You're being secretive." That is not the point. This whole exercise speaks to whether or not people are going to feel like they can reasonably run and represent an area of the province and reasonably be comfortable in a position of a member of the executive council. That is what this is, for me in any event. I can tell you that each person faces the conflict of interest from a very different point of view. The politics of it are neither here nor there in a sense, because what are you going to do in a committee like this as you examine each individual minister?
We are honourable members, that type of thing, and we are not going to be asking people to take their shoes off so that we can see their toes, things like that. It is a very fundamental problem that we are wrestling with as elected officials. All three parties now have been in government in the last six years, just to take the most recent history, and none of us can point and say we will put in this type of clause to embarrass those people, because all of us are quite reasonably now expecting that we will be taking another turn at government soon.
After 43 years, some of us never thought it would happen. It has happened. Tory, Liberal and NDP governments have been elected here. All of us, as elected officials, can now reasonably expect to be faced with the prospect of conflict of interest. If we are prepared, as elected officials, to sit here and put in guidelines which restrict people from running or even thinking about running, then we are doing the province a disservice. It has nothing to do with the partisan nature of this, because we are all in it up to our eyeballs.
The Chair: Mr Elston, at the outset of your comments you made reference to your own knowledge and interests and how you would be willing to comment on that. Were you asking that the subcommittee report be amended to include yourself?
Mr Elston: No. Well, listen, I can come and tell you my reaction. I just gave you part of the reaction and I can give you personal anecdotes. But it is the personal side. If you want me to come and testify, I will try and make my way here. I do not have a problem with that. Include me there with the list if you wish, but it is from the point of view of ministers. They now are the current people who are most subject to this. I do not make the same type of filing. Mr Rae did not ask me to join the executive council -- an oversight on his part of massive proportion, I assure you. I do not do it under his regime, but I do have a reaction. If you want me to, I will try to make some time but it is more important to talk about the people who have just gone through it.
In fact, today is what is currently called D-day, that is, disposition day. Parliamentary assistants will have had to have declared and done all their stuff by today's date. The ministers will have all had to have divested their materials to the best of their ability by today. So it is an interesting day to be talking about this. But it is particularly instructive, I think, for those people to tell us what they incurred.
Just one other little anecdote: One person who was a member of our government incurred a substantial cost in setting up his blind trust, for which there is no reimbursement; not just one, one I know more about. But there is no reimbursement to that person's cost of having set up the blind trust to manage his affairs while he was doing the stuff in government. So while he was paid a princely sum of -- what is it? $44,000 basic? You get $12,000 or $13,000 tax-free and then you get about $20,000. I guess it is $30,000 or $31,000 as a minister.
A substantial amount yearly went to pay the administrative charges of the blind trust set to manage the affairs of that person's family. On top of that, he could not do anything with respect to managing personal business and, as a result, when a person comes out of a business which he has helped to generate the income level towards, he loses on that.
I just want people to understand the context of the types of questions I am sure that the committee should ask. If you are going to make it so onerous and such a personal cost for individuals, then people quite frankly are not going to be tempted to run and, as a result, you are really not going to have a satisfactory representation in the Legislative Assembly.
I am not trying to tell people that you should have all sorts of wealthy people. I am not wealthy, you know. My assets are so poor that I almost got a donation from the Conflict of Interest Commissioner, I am sure. It is the type of thing where you have to be so careful that you do not poison the possibility of the general public being involved in politics because of the types of things you set up.
Mr Carr: The only point I want to make is that the intention was not to embarrass any of the ministers because none of them have had a chance to do anything yet. I remember when Mr Sorbara --
Mr Elston: Just a minute --
Mr Carr: Yes, I will not get into that. As I recollect, when the subcommittee talked about it, what we said is we wanted to give all the ministers the option. I think the analogy was that maybe one would like to come and talk about it but one has no particular concern and problem and that if we left it open-ended we might get eight, seven or whatever come in.
But I can tell you, as Mr Sorbara will do, that the intention was not to embarrass anybody because there is nothing to embarrass, although we did have a little bit of fun with a couple of people we could have called. But the intention was not to embarrass anybody and, if we leave it at that, I personally think it is a good idea if we leave it open so that some that may want to talk about it can come in. I do not expect we are going to get everyone, but we may have four or five that do want to come in.
What we are saying is we do not want to leave it so that the Premier comes in, talks about the way he sees it, but then the reality might not be there. So my intention would be to just leave it as it is. I do not know if we can even find out from the clerk what we would probably end up with. But I just feel that it is something that we should look at.
The Chair: I believe we had most of the ministers already scheduled, did we not?
Mr Sorbara: So why the motion?
The Chair: Okay. Mr Mills.
Mr G. Mills: Well, thank you, Mr Chairman. I looked at this list --
The Chair: I am sorry, Mr Mills, I recognized you out of order. Ms Murdock is next. Excuse me.
Mr G. Mills: You jumped someone. Yes, sure.
Ms S. Murdock: Actually, I was going to say, if the point was to have all the ministers here, then all the PAs should be here too. I have nothing to divest, so it has been an interesting time. I do not know how much they would have for input, given that it is so new and the situation is so new. I guess the impressions of the whole thing, their experiences with the conflict of interest thus far would be pretty limited given their time. Actually, in truth, the previous government would probably have more information --
Mr Kwinter: That was the point I was going to make, yes.
The Chair: You will have the opportunity when she is finished.
Ms S. Murdock: So we agree. But it is really true that we have no experience from which to give -- so I do not know how beneficial it would be to have the present ministers here. But former ministers who have not only the experience of it but the hindsight of it, I think would be much more beneficial to the committee. I too will not be sitting, so it is just an observation I am making.
The Chair: I think Mr Elston offered his advice. Mr Kwinter.
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Mr Kwinter: Well, that was the point I was going to make. If you are trying to get ministers here -- and I will not be sitting at the committee either, I am just here as a substitute -- it would seem to me that if the purpose of the ministers is to get some input as to their reaction, you should get previous ministers who have spent five years under the conflict-of-interest guidelines to say: "Here's what it has done to me and here's what I would recommend in hindsight. I am no longer there but here is what I think you should do." If you bring the new ministers and the new PAs, what are they going to tell you? They are just going to say, "Hey, I filled out the form." It would seem to me that that would be a more beneficial use of the committee's time.
The Chair: The clerk brings to my attention the fact that after we have dealt with this amendment, we could certainly add more names to that list such as you have suggested, Mr Kwinter. Mr Mills.
Mr G. Mills: I was not trying to cut anybody off or anybody out because being a new parliamentary assistant I could not see such great difficulty in the process. It is just a question, as you said, of filling in a form and getting on with it.
Why I suppose I moved this was that the ministers were all named, and what I am trying to say is that if a minister wants to come, then we should hear him, but we should not have him named to appear. That was really my intent, not to force that great big stream of ministers to keep coming in here and saying the same thing over and again because, as you say, they are all new. It made a lot of sense to me to hear the experiences of the former ministers and all the pitfalls. That is really who should have been on that list, in my opinion.
I would be prepared to withdraw that motion, Mr Chair, and perhaps someone would like to introduce some sort of wording that will permit ministers at their choice and ex-ministers at their choice to appear. I do not know how you are going to handle that.
Mrs Mathyssen: I would basically like to reiterate what has already been said. I like Mr Kwinter's idea very much because I think that bringing in new ministers one after another is redundant. They have very little to tell us. We need to, I think, draw on the experience of those who can give us information because this is an important bill.
Mr G. Mills: Why do you not make a motion to amend it?
Mrs Mathyssen: All right. I would like to amend the report of the subcommittee and have the Premier of Ontario --
The Chair: Wait a second. Before you do that, I just want to clarify that Mr Mills has withdrawn his amendment.
Mr G. Mills: Yes.
The Chair: So yours is a different amendment?
Mr G. Mills: Yes. It is an amendment to --
The Chair: Thank you. Go ahead.
Mrs Mathyssen: It is an amendment to the report of the subcommittee. I would suggest that we have the Premier of Ontario, since he is the initiator of the guidelines; the Attorney General, since he will be enforcing the guidelines; the deputy minister; the Conflict of Interest Commissioner, Mr Ewart, of course; if Mr Elston would like to be a witness, I think that would be quite appropriate, and any ex-minister who would like to come before the committee or former minister, and perhaps even some academics who have written on the subject. I am thinking now of people such as Desmond Morton and Ian Greene. They have written extensively on conflict of interest and the ethics thereof, and they might be able to shed some light too.
The Chair: That is a fairly substantive list. The clerk brings to my attention the question of ex-ministers. Would they all be invited? In what way would they make their intentions known to the committee or would the committee make its intentions known to the ex-ministers?
Mrs Mathyssen: Can they not be contacted?
Mr Carr: How do we normally do it for some of the other bills? Maybe the clerk would let us know how it would be done when we lay it out to the general public.
Clerk of the Committee: I think the question for clarification was simply that, when she said ex-ministers, that could go back over a number of years, even decades. Perhaps there should be some clarification on ex-ministers, the government, those that were being referred to.
Mrs Mathyssen: Ministers for whom it would not be an onerous task to come and testify before the committee? From the last government?
The Chair: We are still, I think, too vague. The difficulty is that we have a universe of ex-ministers, and how would you select a number of ex-ministers who would be interested and whose testimony would be of value, other than Mr Elston, who has already agreed to offer his wisdom?
Mr Sorbara: If I can try to be helpful, it appears that a number of the incumbent ministers have agreed to appear. The motion invites them, it does not summons them. The subcommittee, over the next few days, can work on paring down that list and freeing up some of the ministers for whom this is grave inconvenience, but I think we should hear from the incumbent government about these guidelines. After all, it will apply to them. The fact that we invite all ministers does not mean that all ministers will choose to attend. Some of them can say, "Thank you, I prefer not to." So that is why I do not think your amendment is helpful, Gordie.
I do not have any problem at all if you want to add to the list ministers from the government of Ontario from 1985 to 1990 or even before that. I would love an opportunity to testify about living under the conflict-of-interest guidelines. I would love an opportunity to tell you how unrealistic your Premier's guidelines are.
Counsel, if he has done any corporate and commercial work, will know what is involved in selling a business and what is involved in the capital gains that accrue if you sell a business in an untimely fashion, like 60 days. Anyone who would do that for the right to sit at the pleasure of the Premier for perhaps a month or a week -- when you make a mistake as a cabinet minister you are gone, and your business is gone too because you have had to sell it. I would love to, and I think a number of my colleagues would love to talk about --
The Chair: Mr Sorbara, are you moving an amendment to her amendment?
Mr Sorbara: Yes. I am going to suggest that the amendment add "to invite MPPs and former MPPs who have served in the government of Ontario from 26 June 1985 to 1 October 1990." They will come or will not come. My only problem with that is that it is an awful lot of work for Lisa, to get in touch with all those people --
The Chair: Between now and Monday.
Mr Sorbara: I wish we could just leave it like this and we could try in an ad hoc way to arrange to have some people come and testify and fill in. Murray would do it and I think my friend the member for Wilson Heights would be interested in doing it as well.
The Chair: It sounds as if we have a willingness to open the amendment up slightly. However, your amendment still was a little loose in the wording. Is it possible to present it in a more acceptable fashion? Then it could be referred back to the subcommittee or come back for further discussion.
Mr Wessenger: Can we not just say, as Mr Sorbara has said, that ex-ministers be invited to attend to give testimony at the discretion of the Chair?
Mr Sorbara: I can undertake to the committee to try to arrange for a variety of ministers acceptable to the Chair and prevail upon anyone that he suggests. Would that be all right?
Ms S. Murdock: At the discretion of the subcommittee, because then you can go back to your own parties and ask and set it up, and then do it through Lisa or the Chair.
Mr Sorbara: If we agree not to have a motion, I will agree to try to arrange for two or three ex-ministers to come and testify, and I will agree to try to prevail upon any others you would like to hear from. They will come if they want to. It does not help to invite them by way of a motion. I will try to prevail upon them if you have an additional list; I will see if they can come. I will volunteer two or three.
Mr Fletcher: What are we discussing? Are we discussing the amendment to the amendment or the amendment to the motion?
Mr Sorbara: We are discussing not having any amendment whatever and just working on an ad hoc basis.
The Chair: Mr Sorbara, you did suggest an amendment to the amendment. Are you withdrawing that?
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Mr Sorbara: I suggested that we not change this, that we adopt this, but that in an ad hoc way I will undertake to provide two or three ministers and work on any other ministers the Chair or any member of the committee wants to hear from.
The Chair: By "this" do you mean we adopt the amendment or the subcommittee report?
Mr Sorbara: This is the subcommittee report. I propose that we adopt this, and do not amend it.
Mr Fletcher: Am I hearing that all we have right now is an amendment?
The Chair: That is what we should be voting on as soon as it is properly presented.
Mr Fletcher: I am just wondering how far we are on the amendment.
The Chair: We could have it read back but my understanding from the clerk is that, very simply, as it is worded it would be very difficult to effect.
Mr Fletcher: Do you have other wording?
Mrs Mathyssen: I would like to make a motion to amend the report of the subcommittee to the justice committee regarding conflict-of-interest guidelines, and that the following people be invited to appear before the committee on conflict of interest: the Premier of Ontario, the Attorney General, the Deputy Attorney General, the Conflict of Interest Commissioner, Doug Ewart, from the Ministry of the Attorney General. I would also like to include Mr Elston, Mr Sorbara, and he suggested that a third former cabinet minister could be included. Shall we list those three?
The Chair: Mr Scott authored the last bill, did he not?
Mr Sorbara: He is going to be subbing on the committee so he is available to you, anyway.
The Chair: So will you be.
Mr Sorbara: I will be sitting on the committee.
Mrs Mathyssen: Should we, for the sake of time, say "three former ministers" so we can hear what they have to say?
The Chair: Three former ministers, as with the arrangements of --
Mr Sorbara: As proposed by the Liberal whip? How is that?
Mrs Mathyssen: Well, we do not need --
Mr Sorbara: You want to leave off incumbent ministers?
Mrs Mathyssen: Yes, because I do not think they have much to add, being new. I think the former ministers would be far more able to speak to the problems.
Mr Sorbara: Well, we have already agreed to attend.
The Chair: Anything further with that amendment? That is the end of it: "Three former ministers, as provided by the Liberal whip."
Mrs Mathyssen: Yes.
Mr Carr: A point of clarification: "all ministers" is left out? No "all ministers." You do not want them in.
Mrs Mathyssen: Yes. Leave that out, because that is far too many people. I do not think they would be able to shed any light on it.
Mr Sorbara: Any ministers. You want none of your ministers to appear?
The Chair: Mr Sorbara --
Mr Sorbara: I do not want to hear from any of them, honest to God, or the Premier. I mean, it is ridiculous that they have agreed to attend --
The Chair: Mr Sorbara, please. Is that your intent?
Mrs Mathyssen: To exclude the part that says "all ministers," yes.
The Chair: Okay. Thank you. Any further discussion?
Mr Sorbara: They do not need your protection. Some of you voted against this. I thought you were looking for an opportunity to make this an open process. We will not hurt them badly. You will just ask them honest questions and you will get honest answers.
Ms S. Murdock: I do not believe Mr Sorbara has the floor.
The Chair: I believe you are right. Mr Fletcher is next.
Mr Fletcher: Thank you, Mr Chair. I am calling the question on this.
The Chair: All those in favour of calling the question?
Mr Sorbara: We are even using closure now.
The Chair: All those against calling the question? We have a tie vote. With a tie vote, it is incumbent upon me as Chair to maintain discussion. The calling of the question is defeated. We will proceed with debate on the amendment.
Mr Sorbara: Can I make some statements on the amendment? I think it is a good idea to have former ministers here to reflect on the present guidelines and the future guidelines. I am very surprised indeed that the New Democratic members of the committee would be attempting to protect their ministers even from the invitation to come to the committee. Read the motion. It says "be invited to appear." Some have already agreed to appear, at least it appears they have agreed. Their names are scheduled to appear at certain times. If you think the list is too long, I would be perfectly happy to say, "Okay, let's hear from 10 of them, a cross-section," and we can negotiate that. But at this late date to say: "Next week we're not going to hear from any of the ministers to whom these guidelines apply. We'll just hear from people who are has-beens," I cannot believe it. I do not know why you would want to do that.
The Chair: I am not sure if they are has-beens at the moment.
Mr Sorbara: I regard myself as a has-been.
Ms S. Murdock: I recognize the fact that both amendments had eliminated "all ministers," but my understanding in the previous discussion, before we voted on the motion, was that we would have incumbent ministers, who wished to, appear and that we would have former ministers, and then a big discussion on whether or not we would have three. That is what I understood.
Mr Sorbara: That is fine.
Ms S. Murdock: I know the hangup that is occurring on the opposite side is the fact that the word "all" has been excluded in this.
Mrs Mathyssen: It is redundant.
Ms S. Murdock: Yes. But I think the question to be put is: Is there any objection to "some" ministers being called?
Mr Sorbara: If you want an amendment to say "the ministers who have agreed to appear or appear on the schedule," that is fine.
The Chair: Excuse me. Mr Kwinter?
Mr Kwinter: It may hopefully bring some clarity to this thing. I think the discussion really zeroed in on the fact that it said "all ministers," who are the incumbent ministers. It was my feeling that you cannot get the full flavour of what the conflict-of-interest guidelines really are from those people, but that does not say that some of them may not have something to say about it. All I was suggesting is that you should not remove the incumbent ministers and replace them with former ministers, but just have some former ministers to give you the benefit of their experience. It would seem to me that if you just leave it open, ministers and former ministers, and let the subcommittee decide the numbers it wants or who is available and then just structure it, that would solve the problem for you.
The Chair: Any further discussion on the amendment?
Mr Sorbara: Can I ask the proposer of the amendment if she would be interested in an amendment to her motion which would include the former ministers she talked about, and those ministers who have already agreed to appear before the committee and who appear on the schedule submitted to us by the clerk? Is that reasonable?
Mrs Mathyssen: The schedule has listed all the ministers --
Mr Sorbara: No, it has not.
Mrs Mathyssen: The schedule we received listed all the ministers, did it not?
Clerk of the Committee: The schedule lists the ministers who responded positively to the invitation that was extended to them.
Mrs Mathyssen: Would it be possible, as there are three former ministers, to balance it with three current ministers, and provide a balance there; three new voices without the redundancy of having all the ministers?
Mr Sorbara: You are going to win the vote, because you have the numbers. The reality of the situation is that ministers have already been invited to come. They have agreed to come. We have a week to consider this matter, and I am not sure why now you are trying to dramatically reduce the number. Do you only want three? Do you want time to caucus? Do you want me to counter with 10? I do not know.
Ms S. Murdock: It is unfortunate. Given political situations and the way things have worked, interestingly enough, we are doing this very openly. There is no agenda here. Actually, we just did not know. I do not think it is protecting the ministers or reducing numbers. It makes sense that we do not need a whole pile of present ministers coming in who know nothing about what the conflict-of-interest guidelines entail. It makes a lot more sense to talk to those who have already experienced it. If there is a big hangup here on the numbers game, then what I would suggest is that perhaps Lisa as the clerk could call those who have already agreed to come -- nothing like giving you another job, Lisa -- and just see how many of them will still come. Even so, with a minimum of three or a minimum of five. You want us to have more? Fine. But there is just really no profit in listening to new ministers talk about something they really have not experienced.
Mr Sorbara: Can we say perhaps a minimum of three?
The Chair: Ms Murdock, you are suggesting three or five.
Ms S. Murdock: For a little point like this, I do not care. Do you want to make it five people?
Mr Sorbara: Can we say a minimum of three and a maximum of 10, among those who have already agreed to appear?
Ms S. Murdock: I have no objection to a minimum of three, a maximum of 10. However, there is some discord on my side of the table and I would like to ask for a recess.
The Chair: Okay. A five-minute recess. Is that agreeable?
The committee recessed at 1801.
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The Chair: Mrs Mathyssen?
Mrs Mathyssen: All right. Will I read from the top?
The Chair: Please.
Mrs Mathyssen: All right. I would like to make a motion to amend the report of the subcommittee to the justice committee regarding the conflict of interest guidelines: "That the following people be invited to appear before the committee on conflict on interest: the Premier of Ontario, the Attorney General, the Deputy Attorney General, the Conflict of Interest Commissioner, Doug Ewart of the Ministry of the Attorney General, and a minimum of three and a maximum of five ministers from the former cabinet and the current cabinet; and that the ministers chosen be the choice of the opposition regarding the former ministers and that the government choose the current ministers."
The Chair: Okay. You are suggesting then there be three to five ministers from the previous government, from the loyal opposition.
Mrs Mathyssen: A minimum of three, a maximum of five, yes.
The Chair: And the same number, three to five, from the present government?
Mrs Mathyssen: Yes. The former ministers that they think could best provide information, and we will choose the three to five ministers over here.
The Chair: So the method of choosing has been selected.
Mr Sorbara: I have a terrible headache and l think it arises from what you people have just done to a committee hearing on conflict of interest that was going to be interesting and informative. But you have the majority, so if you have caucused and you have agreed to do that, I think we should all go home and get some dinner.
I think it is unfortunate that even at this early date, even at a date when as you say they have not got anything yet to hide, you do not even want them to come. It may well be that we will finish up early and we will be able to do our clause-by-clause analysis of Bill 17 then, but do not count on it, because when you start to do that sort of thing, you start to poison the atmosphere of a committee.
Now this is not a fatal poison. It is not so terribly offensive. In fact it is typical of what governments do that have been in power a long time. You guys are learning even more quickly than most. What is surprising is that you would want to do that even after ministers have agreed that they do not mind coming, personally contacted. So you are going to win the motion. But count it: One, two, three, four, five is more than one, two, three, four, but I just want to tell you, because maybe Gordie will vote with us, that you poison the atmosphere when you do something which appears to us to be so arbitrary, where we have offered to bring forward our own ex-ministers, who went through hell, I want to tell you, on this stuff trying to comply.
Interjection.
Mr Sorbara: Hold on a second. I have the floor. I have a headache and I want to give each of you a little bit of a headache before you go.
I had thought that having seen the list of ministers who agreed to come before, that the Premier's office would not try to run interference and scoop the subcommittee by bringing forward that kind of motion, although I am not surprised. Under some circumstances maybe we would have done the same, but let me tell you that if that is what the motion is going to be, that is what the motion is going to be, and I would really like to go and have some dinner, so I do not have anything more to say about it except that I am really disappointed.
The Chair: Are we going to be able to vote? Any further discussion?
Oh, I am sorry, there is one significant point the clerk brings to my attention which is that we have a reference to the former government. We have of course all three governments.
Mrs Mathyssen: The last government?
Mr Wessenger: No, I think we should say "former government." Why should --
Interjections.
The Chair: Are you going to caucus on this or should we -- so we are looking then at the previous government, usually designated the Liberal government or the Peterson government.
Mr Elston: I have a question. How do we determine how many of each is to come? Is it in the motion? What is it, three?
Mr Wessenger: Three to five.
Mr Elston: I understand that, but some are supposed to be Liberals and some are supposed to be New Democrats.
Ms S. Murdock: Three to five of each.
Mr Elston: Three to five of each?
The Chair: Before the clerk asks the question, we already have two ministers, so is this three to five in addition to the Premier and the Attorney General?
Mr Wessenger: Yes, definitely.
Mr Sorbara: Would you be amenable to letting us choose who we want from your government, and you can choose who you want from our previous government? Would you be amenable to that?
Mrs Mathyssen: No.
Mr Sorbara: Oh, so you are even going to protect the ones that might be --
The Chair: Mr Sorbara, please.
Mr Sorbara: It is outrageous. This is not the open and accessible --
The Chair: Excuse me, Mr. Sorbara. Mr. Kwinter?
Mr Kwinter: On a point of clarification, Mr Chairman: I do not know who makes up our committee, but there is a good chance that every member is going to be a previous cabinet minister, and they will not be included, I assume.
The Chair: Mr Poirier and Mr Chiarelli are on the committee as well, but Mr. Scott is subbing for Mr. Chiarelli, so two of your three would be ministers.
Mr Kwinter: But they would not be included in this.
The Chair: They could be. It is certainly at their discretion. I am sorry. Did I see someone's hand? No? Any further discussion on the amendment?
Mr Sorbara: Yes, just to let --
The Chair: I do not see your hand, Mr. Sorbara.
Mr Sorbara: Our committee moves to keep ministers from conflict-of-interest hearings. You are going to have to live with that.
Mr G. Mills: A point of clarification, Mr Chairman: Three to five, does that include the ministers that we have already named, the Premier, the Attorney General?
The Chair: We just heard the agreement that it does not include; that is what Mr Wessenger and Ms Mathyssen said a few moments ago.
Mr G. Mills: Does not include.
The Chair: So we are talking of actually five to seven ministers from the present government and three to five from the previous government.
Mr Elston: The Attorney General is the one who is responsible for the guidelines anyway, so he has to be here to talk to the particular provisions, and the Premier is the one who is putting them together, so how can you possibly decide that you want those two to be included among your three to five?
The Chair: They aren't.
Mr Elston: I understand that. But that is how ridiculous you were becoming, because at least a couple of your members want it.
The Chair: The point I was making earlier, Mr Elston, simply for a point of clarification, was that those gentlemen are certainly ministers and are already being called, so we are talking of three to five in addition. Any further discussion? Question, please.
All in favour of the amendment? I see five. Opposed, if any? Four opposed.
Motion agreed to.
The Chair: All in favour of adopting the subcommittee report, as amended. Opposed? Four opposed.
Motion agreed to.
Mr Fletcher: Is there any more business here? I will make a motion to adjourn if you would like. There is? Okay, I will not make that motion.
Mr Elston: I just want to raise one item. During the presentation by the Attorney General's staff, there was a fair bit of runthrough of various sections of their amendments and other items, taken down by Hansard. I was wondering if it is possible that the Hansard copy, the draft, rough copy can be made available to us as soon as possible. I do not want any special pressure on Hansard, but since there is such a long list of items contained in the presentations today, without any copy of the remarks given to us. It would help us prepare.
Clerk of the Committee: We will try to get it as soon as possible.
Mr Elston: I am not asking for the next day, but if it is Wednesday or so, that would be helpful.
The Chair: Lisa also, I am sure we can all appreciate, has a great deal of work in the next few weeks. We would appreciate as soon as it is possible -- she is hoping this evening -- to have those lists of ministers and ex-ministers for next week's hearing.
Mr Elston: This evening? You have got to be kidding.
Clerk of the Committee: To be invited.
Mr Fletcher: I would like to make a motion to adjourn this.
The Chair: That is Lisa's request. Mr Fletcher moves to adjourn.
The committee adjourned at 1817.