KINGSTON ACTION NETWORK KINGSTON AND DISTRICT LABOUR COUNCIL
BARRIE ACTION COMMITTEE FOR WOMEN
HEART AND STROKE FOUNDATION OF ONTARIO, CORNWALL AREA OFFICE
CONTENTS
Wednesday 12 August 1998
Prevention of Unionization Act (Ontario Works), 1998, Bill 22, Mrs Ecker /
Loi de 1998 visant à empêcher la syndicalisation (programme Ontario au travail),
projet de loi 22, Mme Ecker
Kingston Action Network; Kingston and District Labour Council
Ms Natalie Mehra
Mr John McEwen
Ms Claude Laperrière
Anti-Poverty Project
Ms Linda Lalonde
Barrie Action Committee for Women
Ms Sherrie Tingley
Heart and Stroke Foundation of Ontario, Cornwall area office
Ms Susan Adams
STANDING COMMITTEE ON ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE
Chair / Président
Mr Jerry J. Ouellette (Oshawa PC)
Vice-Chair / Vice-Président
Mr E.J. Douglas Rollins (Quinte PC)
Mr Dave Boushy (Sarnia PC)
Mr Bruce Crozier (Essex South / -Sud L)
Mr Peter Kormos (Welland-Thorold ND)
Mr Gerry Martiniuk (Cambridge PC)
Mr Jerry J. Ouellette (Oshawa PC)
Mr David Ramsay (Timiskaming L)
Mr E.J. Douglas Rollins (Quinte PC)
Mr R. Gary Stewart (Peterborough PC)
Mr Bob Wood (London South / -Sud PC)
Substitutions / Membres remplaçants
Mr John C. Cleary (Cornwall L)
Mr Frank Klees (York-Mackenzie PC)
Mr John L. Parker (York East / -Est PC)
Mrs Sandra Pupatello (Windsor-Sandwich L)
Clerk / Greffier
Mr Douglas Arnott
Staff / Personnel
Mr Avrum Fenson, research officer, Legislative Research Service
The committee met at 1014 in the Best Western Parkway Inn and Conference Centre, Cornwall.
PREVENTION OF UNIONIZATION ACT (ONTARIO WORKS), 1998 LOI DE 1998 VISANT À EMPÊCHER LA SYNDICALISATION (PROGRAMME ONTARIO AU TRAVAIL)
Consideration of Bill 22, An Act to Prevent Unionization with respect to Community Participation under the Ontario Works Act, 1997 / Projet de loi 22, Loi visant à empêcher la syndicalisation en ce qui concerne la participation communautaire visée par la Loi de 1997 sur le programme Ontario au travail.
The Chair (Mr Jerry Ouellette): I will call this meeting of the standing committee on administration of justice to order to discuss Bill 22.
Mr Frank Klees (York-Mackenzie): Mr Chairman, I have a motion that I'd like to --
The Chair: Ms Pupatello.
Mrs Sandra Pupatello (Windsor-Sandwich): Thank you, Chair. I'd like to put forward a motion, please. My motion is to move to cancel further public hearings on Bill 22 given that we have realized since yesterday that they are a complete waste of time.
The government members have indicated they are not prepared to change one word, phrase or sentence of this one-page bill, which has already cost the taxpayers $700,000. It is simply the result of government members sleeping through the section 73 clause last fall during the clause-by-clause passage of Bill 142. This one-page bill is receiving more in public hearings than the original Bill 142, which was over 300 pages. This bill is simply a rewrite of section 73 of Bill 142, which has been politicized to use government money instead of the PC Party money to unfairly slam labour groups in Ontario and propagandize workfare, which is the single largest failure of the Harris government. This Sleeping Beauty bill has cost Ontario taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars, money that should be repaid to the government by the PC Party.
The Chair: Further discussion?
Mrs Pupatello: Can I debate this now? Do I have the floor?
The Chair: Yes.
Mrs Pupatello: I'd like to put this motion forward because, as we realized yesterday, those of us who were in Sudbury, all of us were very concerned to see that we are spending an inordinate amount of time and money to traipse this committee around Ontario when, as was displayed yesterday with those who presented to us and the response we got from government members to those who were presenting, we found the presenters subjected to being patronized, practically ridiculed. There was no respect shown to those who were presenting. They obviously had a different point of view from the government members. We see this as fairly offensive to those who take the time to come and volunteer before the committee to give their opinions.
In those responses given by government members, it's obvious that they see this as just one more way to take government money instead of Progressive Conservative Party money to propagandize workfare as a program that actually works, when in fact 97% of welfare recipients are not in supposed workfare. Unfortunately the public is being led to believe that workfare is working when in fact it is not. The lion's share of the program is carrying on in the ways that it always has.
We saw evidence yesterday from the parliamentary assistant who was there to again use the committee to go traipsing around for potential photo ops in different communities. We are opposed to that. We're opposed to using these people as some kind of publicity stunt for the PC Party. If they choose to do so, they are completely entitled to do that, but they ought to use the funds of the PC Party. From the reports we're seeing, you don't have a money problem in your party so you ought to spend your money propagandizing on your own.
But when we get to committee and we see that you're spending the Ontario government's money just to propagandize, slam labour, give the impression to the public that labour groups all of a sudden are the cause of the failure of workfare, instead of taking responsibility for a failed program due to policies that cannot be written on the back of a napkin, such as workfare was written, that in fact is the cause of the failure of workfare.
To that end, I hope the government members, who purport to be those who want to save taxpayers' money, stop the charade before it continues. We have two more cities, supposedly, to travel to, and back to Toronto for clause-by-clause. You've spent an inordinate amount of money already. We had 19 people come from Queen's Park via airlines to Sudbury yesterday, on to Ottawa, back to Cornwall, to spend part of the day today.
I don't want to see the people here being patronized. We're prepared certainly to listen to those who truly want to present to us, not to be subjected to what they were subjected to yesterday. So I would ask for those government members especially to be very supportive of this motion and, frankly, to look within their own party for money to spend on propaganda.
The Chair: Further debate?
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Mr Peter Kormos (Welland-Thorold): I'm going to be speaking in support of the motion. If the Chair wants to solicit a contra view prior to that, obviously that's the Chair's prerogative.
Interjection.
Mr Kormos: Thank you.
I've got a whole bunch of considerations here. Let's take a look at how meaningful this process is when Bill 22 -- which is, as Ms Pupatello has characterized it effectively, a cleanup bill. It's because the government members screwed up big time during the course of committee hearings and what was supposed to be section 73 was not passed but rather was defeated.
But in fact Bill 22 goes far beyond that. Bill 22, a one-pager, very clearly says that people who are workfare participants in so-called community placement are not entitled, notwithstanding what the Charter of Rights and Freedoms says and notwithstanding what precedent has been in free and democratic societies for hopefully at least decades, to freedom of association. They are not entitled to join a union, which also means an association.
You know full well, Chair, the bugaboo about Ms Ecker when she appeared before the committee to introduce this bill and talked about the intimidating labour leaders. She may feel intimidated by them. Quite frankly, when push comes to shove, I'd rather stand shoulder to shoulder with the Sid Ryans, the Earl Manners, the Buzz Hargroves or the Leah Casselmans of this province than I would with the Janet Eckers of this province or, quite frankly, any of her parliamentary assistants.
But please note that this bill not only means that a workfare participant can't join, let's say, the Canadian Union of Public Employees or OPSEU, but that they also couldn't even form an organization like the association of workfare participants. That is the most crass, vulgar, blatant and violent attack on a deeply rooted democratic right, the right of freedom of association.
The bill goes on in the same section to say nor can they collectively bargain, nor can they strike. Interesting point raised yesterday in Sudbury: "What's the problem, guys? If we as workfare community participants are not going to be taking over any other workers' jobs" -- which is what I believe workfare is all about. That's been the American experience and this is modelled on the American experience, tens of thousands of New York City municipal workers displaced, their jobs eliminated, replaced by so-called workfare non-voluntary participants, compulsory participants.
But the wonderful point was made yesterday, "If we're not taking any real job away from a worker, what do you care?" Because too, every worker who goes on strike knows that they don't get paid. They understand that. Workfare participants, were they to collectively bargain and determine strike action, know that they wouldn't be collecting the entitlement which workfare supposedly entitles them to.
So what's the government's beef? I can't figure it out. The point was made so critically and acutely yesterday in Sudbury by the last presenter. We're being bamboozled here. There's no two ways about it.
Look, the PAs are playing tag team. Who's going to carry the message forward? Mr Carroll was in Sudbury yesterday, Mr Klees is here today. Mr Klees may well respond by assuring us that he'll read the transcript of yesterday's proceedings, but you and I both know that Mr Klees is incapable of obtaining a copy of that transcript because Hansard is so short-handed that it takes them longer and longer to get around to -- you thought I was going to say something else, didn't you, Chair? I set you up a little bit. I saw the body language. You figured there was going to be a personality attack against Mr Klees's intellect, that I was going to accuse him of being stupid or illiterate, and I didn't. I said Mr Klees is incapable of obtaining a copy of the Hansard of yesterday's proceedings because of the backlog that Hansard has and the short staffing and the incredible pressures that your government has put them under.
One wonders if this is a show trial that makes --
Mrs Pupatello: Government funded.
Mr Kormos: It's a show trial. I mean this is Stalinesque in its show trial quality. Well, it is. It's putting on a show to the public: "We're having committee hearings." Oh, give me a break.
Mr Parker titters. Mr Parker wasn't there yesterday either.
Mr John L. Parker (York East): Mr Kormos, who's putting on the show?
Mr Kormos: How can you have effective input from committee members as a result of hearing participants by way of witnesses, when they keep switching around? Ms Pupatello has been here from day one. I've been here from day one.
Mr Klees: What about Mr Cleary?
Mr Kormos: Mr Cleary is here visiting, as he's entitled to, as Ms Martel did. We're in his riding. But the government members are tag-teaming. There's no consistency here. So we are very suspicious about any real serious intent on their part to listen to what's been put to them.
I'm from Welland down in the Niagara region and I'm pleased to be here in eastern Ontario. But let me tell you the state of things with your government and its members. I've got a copy of the front page of the Welland Tribune. The mayor of Port Colborne --
The Chair: We would wish you to speak to the motion.
Mr Kormos: Quite right. The mayor of Port Colborne, Vance Badawey, wants to give your colleague Bart Maves, the Tory member for Niagara Falls, a spanking. That's what things have deteriorated to. "Bart Maves should be taken out and given a spanking," says Vance Badawey, the mayor of Port Colborne.
The Chair: How does that relate to Bill 22?
Mr Kormos: Vance Badawey, the mayor of Port Colborne, says that Bart Maves, your colleague the parliamentary assistant for the Ministry of Labour, pulled a political stunt on the heads of constituents in the region.
The Chair: I don't believe this relates to Bill 22 or the motion at all.
Mr Kormos: This government is pulling a political stunt on all of the well-meaning participants in these hearings, people who come here and try to speak logically and analytically about how silly Bill 22 is, how undemocratic it is and how there must be some sort of ulterior motive.
Bill 22 is getting more hearing time than Bill 142 did, the Ontario Works bill and its companion piece. How many pages long was that?
Mrs Pupatello: Over 300.
Mr Kormos: That was over 300 pages long. That was a complete turning on its head of the welfare system. Bill 142 received less public hearing time than Bill 22 is receiving.
Bill 22 has been used to attack democratically elected labour leaders in the province and to attack the trade union and labour movement. It's been used to attack the poorest people in our communities, inevitably because of the nature of who's poor, the elderly and women, and Bill 22 also is being used because you know that the only reason this committee -- this is the justice committee. This isn't the committee that considered Bill 142, the workfare bill. This isn't the committee that should be considering Bill 22. This is the justice committee.
The only reason Bill 22 is before this committee was because we had brought a notice to require the committee to consider and investigate the involvement of Premier Mike Harris, his office and others into the assassination of Dudley George at Ipperwash park over two years ago now. The only reason this committee was given Bill 22 and the only reason it was given so many hearing days -- not by agreement of House leaders but by a closure motion brought in the Parliament to shut down debate on Bill 22 and to preclude this committee from utilizing its power under the standing orders to investigate Premier Mike Harris's involvement and his office's involvement in the assassination of Dudley George at Ipperwash. That's why the bill is here: because it knocks out our as-of-right hearing because it finally put some business or a government agenda before the committee. That's the only reason this bill is here.
The bill, at the very least the right to free association, the right to join a union, is going to be struck down by the courts. I'm confident of it. And tell me about your government's track record in the courts. You haven't done too well so far, have you, Chair?
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The Chair: It's not my job to report on the actions of the courts.
Mr Kormos: You haven't done too well so far. You have acquired a litany, a history, of brutal defeats in our courts, and you persist in spending taxpayers' dollars in defending the government's undemocratic action time after time after time, be it Bill 160, be it the pay equity issue, Bill 26 etc. It's a scam.
Once again, the Welland Tribune this morning -- I'm grateful to my staff for faxing it up to me, and I know you appreciate as well that I can refer to local events while I'm out of town. But the regional municipality of Niagara notes that when the province downloaded child care on to the region, they didn't include the administrative costs in the funding formula, so Niagara region was looking at new taxes of at least $200,000 to cover the administrative costs of the downloaded child care -- another mere oversight.
I'm supporting Mrs Pupatello's motion. I think it's illustrative of the fact that we're prepared to listen to people, and we have.
Yesterday the parliamentary assistant brought a silly motion to visit workfare sites, and he finally withdrew it, not even putting it to a vote. When Mrs Pupatello refers to the desire for photo ops, we invited him then -- because we heard later during the day that in the one workfare activity in Sudbury, the reforestation one which displaced real workers with real jobs, one of the complaints they have been making is they don't even have toilet facilities, washroom facilities. Do you understand what that's like, to not be able to use a toilet to relieve yourself during the course of an eight-hour day? That was raised in front of the parliamentary assistant yesterday. He was invited to make a commitment. The opposition members of the committee invited him to make a commitment to ensure that was rectified. That would have demonstrated some sort of response to what he heard during committee. He refused, declined, failed, neglected to make that commitment, as much as brushed it away.
I'm supporting Mrs Pupatello's motion for all of the reasons I have stated and for a whole lot more that I don't have time to state because your government imposed gag orders on debate in committee as well as in the Legislature.
Mr R. Gary Stewart (Peterborough): I wasn't going to make a comment on this, but I feel obligated to do so with the comments I have heard from the last two speakers of what went on in Sudbury yesterday. I take great exception to words like the presenters were being "ridiculed." They were not being ridiculed. They were not being intimidated. They were being listened to.
Mr Kormos: You heckled them.
Mr Stewart: When somebody comes up and grandstands in front of people who are here today, legitimately coming to make comments, and makes comments that they were ridiculed it's absolutely ridiculous.
Certainly people who come today, as well as in future hearings -- I take great pride in these hearings, and I probably have served more on committees over the last three years than anybody has, because I like to get out and hear the people. For some people who don't show in certain areas and who don't listen to certain people --
Mr Kormos: You're silly, Mr Stewart.
Mr Stewart: Please don't laugh, because if you want to compare attendance, Mr Kormos, we'll compare.
I guess what concerns me is the type of comments that were made in front of people who I believe have come here very legitimately to make presentations. There were some comments regarding the project in Sudbury. The project in Sudbury did not replace real workers in any way whatsoever. What we were trying to suggest to many of the people, and I would suggest to many of the people in this room, is to go out and talk to some of these people who are on workfare. If you would like to come to my riding, I will take you and let you talk to people who are very supportive, who finally are being helped to maybe get off the system. I think they have a great deal of pride.
Mr Kormos: Talk to the expectant mothers who have had their pregnancy allowance taken away.
Mr Stewart: I'm going to wait with bated breath, and I say that very honestly, for the report from Hansard yesterday, for a couple of comments that were made by Mrs Pupatello regarding names that she suggested people on workfare wear. I asked to find out if Hansard was done today; it was not. I'm looking forward to that, because if there was anybody who was being ridiculed, it was done by the other people. So again, I take great exception.
Instead of trying to embarrass these people and intimidate those who genuinely want to get on this workfare program, We should be complimenting them and working with them to hopefully assist them in any way possible to get off the system, because they want to be. They've got some pride. But when we embarrass these people, whether it be those who are from special interest groups or indeed people who are totally against this program, I take very great exception to that, and that is exactly what has happened. It's a good program; it's a program that will develop if we finally all work together on it. Under no circumstances do I accept what was said this morning, and under no circumstances would I support this amendment.
Mr Kormos: Motion.
Mr Stewart: Whatever it is.
Mr E.J. Douglas Rollins (Quinte): Mr Chair, to hurry this along -- we've got presenters here -- can we call the question on this now?
The Chair: There are no others on the list. I will call the question.
Mr Kormos: Recorded vote.
Ayes
Cleary, Kormos, Pupatello.
Nays
Boushy, Klees, Parker, Rollins, Stewart.
The Chair: I declare the motion defeated.
Mr Klees, you're next on the list.
Mr Klees: I'm sorry I missed the proceedings yesterday. Had I been here, I certainly would have enjoyed participating in the discussion.
On the motion put forward by my colleague Mr Carroll, the fact that I wasn't there -- I'm not privy to all of the discussion, as Mr Kormos said. I don't have access to Hansard to have seen for myself, but I can tell you that particularly in light of Ms Pupatello's comments this morning, as well as Mr Kormos's comments, I am bound to bring a motion before this committee, because it's clear to me that neither Ms Pupatello nor Mr Kormos understands the Ontario Works program. I believe it would benefit them greatly if they had the opportunity to observe at first hand what takes place on an Ontario Works project, what Ontario Works participants in community placement do, what the benefits are to them, and to hear from them personally how it is benefiting them.
I move the following motion:
That the committee take the opportunity to visit Ontario Works sites in the cities where hearings are conducted for the purpose of observing first hand how the program is being implemented and to hear first hand from participants in the program; that these visits be coordinated, wherever possible, with lunch hours or time slots not scheduled for deputations; and that these visits be coordinated so as to minimize costs.
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Mr Kormos: I am opposed to that motion, and I'm going to tell you why, succinctly, in view of the fact that, again, the rules have been changed. Your government doesn't want opposition members speaking in the House, doesn't want opposition members speaking in committee. Your government rammed through the rule changes just like it's going to ram through Bill 22.
Mr Klees's motion is virtually identical to that of Mr Carroll yesterday. The issue, you see, is not whether or not retraining, adult education, adequate child support, counselling and assistance are effective in helping people get out of poverty and into a position of economic equity. It's whether or not the real jobs are there, whether or not there are real and meaningful, permanent, career-style jobs available to people to pursue.
The fact is that down in Niagara region -- Mr Cleary may be able to help us in terms of unemployment levels here in eastern Ontario, but down in Niagara region we're struggling with in the area of 10% unemployment. Mr Cleary indicates that that's about it here as well. Yesterday we heard in Sudbury that the north endures at least 10% unemployment, and when we talk 10%, we know that among young people it's probably double that.
The fact is that there aren't the jobs there. We've heard a lot of, quite frankly, poppycock about the nature of the system, as the Tories have attacked the social assistance system here in the province. The fact is that adult education is non-existent in increasing numbers of communities because of the defunding by this government. Yes, adult education was one of the ways for people to get back into the workforce when they, for whatever reason, and again particularly -- take note, Chair. Who were the primary participants in adult education? Once again, women. It was as likely as not women who were required to terminate their education without achieving a GED, never mind anything beyond that, because of the responsibilities of child rearing, child care, among other things.
Heck, Mr Klees, why don't we go talk to the 80 workers down at Fleet manufacturing in Fort Erie who are going to lose their jobs permanently? Why don't we go talk to the 307 GM workers in Oshawa who are going to lose their jobs permanently? Why don't we talk to the people who used to work at Mott's that made the clamato juice? Quite frankly, we shouldn't be drinking Mott's any more, and we don't, but President's Choice clamato juice. We're boycotting Mott's because Mott's pulled out of Mike Harris's Ontario, leaving those workers in St Catharines stranded and dry. Why don't we go talk to the hundreds of GM workers in St Catharines who now find themselves laid off with no likelihood of return to work, with seniority of 12 and 13 and up to 14 years' employment? Why don't we go talk to the women who had their modest allowance of $30-plus a month during pregnancy so that they could supplement their nutritional intake denied to them by this government?
Why don't you come with me to soup kitchens and food banks across this province and talk to the folks who are forced to utilize those, not willingly, not because they want to, not because they think they deserve it, but because, by God, the prospect of a kid going to bed hungry is just too intolerable for that parent or those parents?
Why don't we go talk to the people who one moment thought that they were going to do well and that their careers were going to carry on, careers in, let's say -- why don't we talk to some of those community college graduates from the social services programs or the teaching assistant programs or the child ed programs who now find their positions terminated because of this government's cutbacks in educational funding and who thought they were doing all the right things, who went to community college, often as not part-time instead of full-time, and struggling, maybe taking care of kids, who figured that, by God, they were doing the right thing. Yet those are the people who find themselves on welfare, on social assistance.
Why don't we go talk to the mothers on social assistance who are now being scammed out of their child tax credit provided by the federal government because it's being deducted from their social assistance, and talk to them about how this government has created a culture of the deserving poor versus the so-called undeserving poor?
There was a time when a social services department had enough case workers who had enough resources available to them in the community that they could work on a one-to-one basis with recipients of social assistance, where they could help steer those people and assist them with getting child care so that they could go to adult education classes and upgrade themselves, so that they could assist them in steering them to other resources in the community, any number of which could be related to job availability.
Why don't you want to talk about an economy and governments that are committed to maintaining high levels of unemployment? You know it. You know full well what happened in the fall of last year when unemployment stood a chance of dropping below 9%, I think it was, in this country. The Bank of Canada immediately raised interest rates. God forbid that unemployment should drop below 9%. It's a very specific policy of maintaining high levels of unemployment. Why don't we talk about that policy, a policy of maintaining high employment but a policy of driving wages down? You and your government have committed yourselves to effectively reducing the minimum wage.
The Chair: And this comes back to the motion?
Mr Kormos: You bet your boots.
Interjection.
Mr Kormos: Mr Klees wants to talk about people whom we should be visiting and talking to. I'm making a list here of alternatives, because I've talked to poor people, and not just poor who are unemployed but increasing numbers of people who are working, because your government has a perspective on jobs that's one of McJobs or jobettes, of lower and lower wage jobs, of telling people: "This is as good as it gets. Be happy, be grateful, be thankful." You see, that's what maintaining high levels of unemployment is all about, so that people will be competing more and more for lower and lower wage jobs. That's what it's all about.
Why don't we talk about the fact that two of your colleagues in the course of this government have brought in, in one instance, a private member's bill and, in the other instance, a resolution, both of them seeking to abolish the Rand formula. Because you know that the courts of this country will never tolerate legislation that would forbid membership in a union or an association. You also know, or you ought to, that the abolition of the Rand formula will effectively do, going in the back door, what the courts will preclude you from doing by going in the front door.
Nobody's doubting for a minute the fact that meaningful -- and quite frankly all of us have always supported participation in job training on a voluntary basis. We've always supported that. There's never been anything but total support for voluntary participation in any number of types of work placements. There's never been anything but total support for that.
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You know that the purpose of Bill 22 is because workfare hasn't been working in its present state. You haven't had enough so-called hosts. You fudged the numbers. You won't talk about how many people are actually doing the so-called community participation because everybody who's on Ontario Works is a workfare participant. They are either required to do job searches or seek educational upgrading, which isn't available to them. If it is available to them, the child care isn't available to them. If both are available to them, the allowances that you've reduced them to make it financially impossible to do it.
Your talk about Ontario still being higher than the average of all of Canada is fine, that type of rhetoric. Let's go talk, to see what it means to live on those sorts of incomes, to a family with children. I don't care whether it's in Toronto or whether it's here in the Cornwall area. Quite frankly, there may be lower housing costs, as there are in Niagara, compared to Toronto, but then there are higher costs when it comes to things like transportation because small-town Ontario doesn't have well-developed public transit systems. It's six of one, half a dozen of the other.
I'm no more enthusiastic about your motion than I was about Mr Carroll's. I've seen and talked to people who have been involved and I know there are critics of so-called workfare and there were those who -- whether they're actors or real people, we don't know, but you featured them in your ads. Remember those ads that were revealed when we were in leaky London? Leaky London. We were down in the basement of that leaky hotel because the water pipes burst. It was the sewage pipe, which is most appropriate, in view of the crap that was being put forward by the parliamentary assistant for Ms Ecker. It was very symbolic.
But the $800,000 ad campaign showing smiling workfare participants, and whether they were actors and actresses or not, I don't know. I do know that Stalin used to distribute photos of happy little collective farm workers. You're not old enough to remember that stuff but I certainly do, the stuff the Soviets used to publish, the happy little kerchiefed collective farm workers. That's what your ads reminded me of. "Smile, be happy." Whether they were actors and actresses or real participants, who knows?
I have no doubt, we all agree, that training programs have validity and a role. But you don't want to and you never have from day one wanted to discuss the most fundamental issue, and that is that there are no jobs. You and your government can talk about creating 100,000 or 200,000 or 300,000, but the fact is that unemployment in this province has barely budged in the three years that Mike Harris has taken power and that the new jobs have tended to be part time and temporary -- that's what StatsCan tells us -- and the jobs that are lost were the career jobs and the ones with decent incomes.
Let's talk to Dudley George's family, because that's the real reason why we're having this many days of hearings on Bill 22. Let's go to Ipperwash, where this committee should have been, had it not been for the phoniness of the closure motion which displaced our bid to have the Premier's role and the office of the Premier's role in the killing, the murder, the assassination of Dudley George investigated. Let's go to Ipperwash. That's where we should be. You want to visit a site? Let's visit Ipperwash. Let's talk to some of the aboriginal people, some of the native Canadians who were in Ipperwash park, their land, which the federal government has finally acknowledged but the province still wants to hold its cards close to its chest.
I'm not going to support your motion, Mr Klees, with no apologies to you.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr Kormos. Mrs Pupatello.
Mrs Pupatello: I think he was ahead of me.
The Chair: No, he wasn't, but I could put Mr Cleary ahead of you, should you like. Mr Cleary.
Mr John C. Cleary (Cornwall): First of all, I would like to welcome each of you to Cornwall. It's my understanding that your photo op for noon is already set up, the information I have, on visiting some of the sites or people who are participating.
I just have one thing I would like to say. I would have liked to see some of the government members here earlier in the week when the restructuring commission was in Cornwall, especially when the Premier said in the 1995 election campaign that it was not his plan to close any hospitals.
There's a lot to talk about in this community in health care and education and municipal restructuring. I just wonder how workfare will play there, and all this issue that goes with it. There's lots to talk about in the community, what's happened here this week. I get kind of upset at promises that were made and promises that weren't kept. I'll stop there.
Mrs Pupatello: I would like to refer to the Standard-Freeholder, today's newspaper, for Cornwall. It gives in detail some of the public response to the hospital restructuring decision. That is a very valid topic for MPPs from the government side, who of course were part and parcel of the creation of the hospital closing commission to begin with. That is the kind of site visit that the Cornwall people would like to see you do at your lunch hour.
To have the parliamentary assistant come here this morning to advance a motion, as though you need one, to go and do whatever it is you want to do at lunch time, when it's already on the front page of the local newspaper that you're anticipating going to this site -- the thing is already organized. As my colleague, John Cleary, states very clearly, this point is moot. It had already been organized. You already knew you were going to do it. We had this discussion yesterday about how we feel about you spending government taxpayers' money to propagandize so that you can go out into communities and lay your hand on the heads of the poor for the benefit of the PC Party. Get your own damn party to pay for that crap. Ontarians shouldn't be paying for that kind of propaganda.
Second of all, as my motion was defeated earlier, we have said time and time again that we are opposed to this blatant expense of over $700,000 for your own tactical errors, tactical in that you chose to sleep through the most critical clause of Bill 142, from your perspective. You desperately needed section 73 to pass. One was doing correspondence, another was reading the newspaper, a third was out of the room and a fourth, from London, was asleep.
That is not our problem. That is your responsibility. You have the majority on a committee here. You could have passed any clause you wanted and you failed to do. Because of your error, you choose now to spend over $700,000, traipse 19 people from Queen's Park around Ontario, and now during the lunch hour you want to take the justice committee -- which is what this is. As Mr Kormos pointed out, this bill was sent to justice, when it's a social bill, because you're trying to do yet another cover-up. Ipperwash is indeed the appropriate site to visit if you're going to visit, because that's what justice was supposed to deal with. You've used this bill just to block the advance of the discussion of the Premier's role in the killing at Ipperwash, so let's say it the way it is.
We have a government member this morning suggest that we want to come forward and grandstand. What on earth do you call a motion put forward today go on a visit that has already been organized by the parliamentary assistant, who has done site visits with the minister, traipsing around Ontario without the justice committee? It is totally inappropriate to bring the justice committee out to a workplace site.
As I say, for those of the government members who want to lay their hands on the heads of the poor, please, go and do it on your own time. I might also suggest that all of you are in the wrong business.
The Chair: Seeing no further discussion --
Interjection.
The Chair: Mr Kormos.
Mr Kormos: How much time do I have left, by the way?
The Chair: You have six minutes.
Mr Kormos: I simply want to reinforce the observation that this isn't Bill 142 that's before the committee. It's Bill 22. It's about the right of workfare participants, community placement participants, to belong to a trade union or an association -- the two words are interchangeable in terms of the language of the bill -- and/or to collectively bargain, and/or to strike, to refuse to do their placement, to withhold their labour in an effort to have a grievance addressed if they feel aggrieved.
Yesterday we heard from the Tory candidate in the by-election in the riding of Nickel Belt and his comments, well-prepared, echoed the government's line on workfare and Ontario Works welfare in general. I suppose that's fine. Who can fault him? Good for him.
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We had another fellow come forward who indicated that he was a little upset because he was supposed to have received materials before he made his submission. You would have enjoyed this, Mr Cleary. He was supposed to have received materials, but he didn't want to say who he was supposed to have received materials from. I think the Tory caucus staff screwed up. Clearly he was supposed to have received briefing notes from the Tory caucus staff so that he could make a submission supporting Bill 22. But he did quite fine.
Mr Rollins: He did a good job without them.
Mr Kormos: He did quite fine. Now, mind you, he wasn't pleased about not having received his briefing materials. Don't set people up like that. Don't send them about into the trenches without bullets, for Pete's sake, Mr Klees. He'll end up -- I'm sure he's Reform federally. I was going to say he'll end up with the Reform Party, but I'm sure -- well, some of your own caucus members are Reform members federally. I suppose, if your bylaws allow that, it's fair enough to belong to two or more political parties.
But the issue here is Bill 22 and the right to unionize, the right to bargain collectively, the right to withhold work. So what is your promotion? Once again, nobody disputes that work training and on-site training can be valuable and profitable. We've always disputed that involuntary placements lack value, we've always disputed that painting park benches lacks value and we've always disputed that workfare should never displace real jobs.
Yet as often as not, workfare -- where's that newspaper clipping, Ms Pupatello, that front page of the local paper? God bless John Cleary for bringing the Standard-Freeholder here this morning, because here it is. Your people did a good job on it. They issued a little local press release.
"The parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Social Services is in Cornwall today. Frank Klees, MPP for York-Mackenzie, will be in Cornwall with the standing committee." I don't think your colleague Mr Carroll did as well with the Sudbury Star. He's going to be ticked off.
Mrs Pupatello: He's gunning for leader. You guys had better be watching this.
Mr Rollins: You mean Frank? We know that.
Mr Kormos: "The committee is holding hearings to receive input" -- listen to this -- "on an act to prevent unionization." Fair enough. "Klees will also meet with the community selection committee over lunch to hear about successful community placement opportunities in Cornwall under Ontario Works." Fine.
Mrs Pupatello: Go.
Mr Kormos: Yes, go. Eat lunch. I don't want to break bread with you. Do you understand? I'm more careful about the friends I pick. But go, have lunch with these people. We're not talking about workfare any more. We're talking about -- look, those of us who were opposed to mandatory workfare, we lost. We understand that. The bill was passed.
Now we're talking about the right of these people to freedom of association, which is only denied by fascists and totalitarian governments. Only a fascist would deny somebody the right to free association and only in fascist or totalitarian countries is freedom of association denied people. Try visiting some of those and look at the similarities.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr Kormos. Seeing no further discussion, we will call for the vote.
Mr Kormos: A recorded vote, please.
Ayes
Boushy, Klees, Parker, Rollins, Stewart.
Nays
Cleary, Kormos, Pupatello.
The Chair: I declare the motion passed.
KINGSTON ACTION NETWORK KINGSTON AND DISTRICT LABOUR COUNCIL
The Chair: At this time I would like to call on our first witness, the member or members from the Kingston Action Network and Kingston and District Labour Council. If you could come forward and identify yourselves for Hansard, we would appreciate it. Just so you know, there is a total time allocated of 25 minutes. At the conclusion of your presentation, any time remaining is divided equally between the three caucuses. You may begin, please.
Ms Natalie Mehra: My name is Natalie Mehra. I am a member of the Kingston Action Network and I am presenting this submission on behalf of the Kingston and District Labour Council.
I'd like to take this opportunity to introduce John McEwen. He is the president of the Cornwall and District Labour Council and he is on the executive of the Eastern Ontario Training Board.
The Kingston Action Network is a social justice coalition that includes social service agencies, political action groups, interfaith groups, advocacy organizations, community activists, social assistance recipients and academics, among others.
The Kingston and District Labour Council represents over 9,000 working people in the greater Kingston area. Central to our work is a commitment to social justice and equity in public policy.
In her introduction to Bill 22, the Prevention of Unionization Act (Ontario Works), 1998, Minister Janet Ecker stated: "This government will not stand by and allow some labour leaders to stop...valuable and productive reforms to our welfare system." Her government's removal of the rights for workfare workers to join a union, to bargain collectively and to strike are ostensibly based on this assessment.
We take issue with the minister's statements. Flaws in the design of Ontario Works have been the main barriers to the implementation of workfare to date, and the welfare reforms instituted by this government have been neither valuable nor productive. Moreover, the Prevention of Unionization Act stands in opposition to our principles of social justice and equity by violating fundamental rights of freedom of association, of life, liberty and security of person, and of equality.
In the context set up by Bill 142, including the Ontario Works Act and the Ontario Disability Support Program Act, and in the context of dramatic cuts to supports and advocacy for workers and marginalized people, and given historical and contemporary evidence of mistreatment of people in the workplace, we hold that third party advocacy for workfare placements by the labour movement and others, including organizing, collective action and the right to withdraw labour, is a necessity.
Refusal to allow such intervention will increase the likelihood of abuse and injury for placements. Sadly, even if Bill 22 is not passed, we predict that there will be abuses of community placements under the Ontario Works system, as has been experienced in other jurisdictions, due to its very design.
These are the issues I'll address today. First, barriers to the implementation of workfare.
As noted earlier, Minister Janet Ecker has attributed the government's lack of success in implementing its workfare system to the actions of labour leaders. Although we do not consider the prevention of workfare's implementation to be negative, the minister's comments do not address contentious issues in the design of Ontario Works that have led to the non-profit sector's reluctance to take part.
In Kingston, as of June 1998, no community agencies had volunteered to take placements. In fact, in Kingston, as has been the case across Ontario, many non-profit agencies have gone on public record with their opposition to the program. Their concerns have been echoed by other community groups, faith leaders and members of organized labour.
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Contentious issues raised by agencies in the non-profit sector include (1) the coercive nature of Ontario Works; (2) the punitive nature of Ontario Works; (3) potential negative impact of Ontario Works on agency clients; (4) the negative impacts of Ontario Works on agency-client relationships, agency-volunteer relationships and staff-board relationships; (5) Ontario Works' contravention of the accepted principles of volunteering; (6) Ontario Works' potential impact on agency volunteer programs; (7) concerns about staff employment protections; (8) administrative and reporting requirements, among others.
We believe the government's recent expansion of Ontario Works to the private sector is further evidence of their inability to find placements in the non-profit sector. We are deeply concerned that no new initiatives to assist people on welfare with finding meaningful work placements are being undertaken while the government is pursuing the implementation of the troublesome and flawed program of Ontario Works.
Reforms to Ontario's welfare system: In her statements, Janet Ecker refers to valuable and productive reforms to Ontario's welfare system. Since 1995 these reforms have included a 21.6% cut to social assistance; spouse in the house legislation; introduction of the fraud hotline; a cut to the food supplement program for pregnant women on social assistance; the introduction of Ontario Works and the Ontario Disability Support Program Act.
The effects of these changes have been well documented by non-governmental organizations. The 21.6% cut to social assistance has deepened the hardship of the poorest in our community. Hot meal programs have proliferated, organized by concerned citizens to meet an ever-increasing need for food, especially at the end of the month when welfare cheques run out. Spouse in the house legislation has been widely criticized and is now under challenge in the court system. As of March 1997, the fraud hotline initiative had yielded just nine convictions out of 18,655 calls, and concerns about vindictive calling have not been addressed.
A 1998 report by the Social Planning Council of Kingston and District entitled The Quality of Life in Kingston and Area found an increase of 138% in the number of people on the waiting list for social housing over six years, a 50% increase in the number of suicides and a 50% increase in the incidence of low-birth-weight babies in Kingston over seven years. Cuts to social assistance, cancellation of new non-profit housing, cuts to food supplements and stressful coercive initiatives will inevitably exacerbate the serious situation evidenced by these statistics.
Ontario Works has not been implemented in Kingston, but overwhelming amounts of evidence from other jurisdictions show that workfare does not create jobs, is expensive, deepens hardship and increases the number of people living below the poverty line. For these reasons, we conclude that the government's welfare reforms are neither valuable nor productive.
Bill 22 and human rights: Bill 22 stands in clear violation of fundamental rights set out in Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms, in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in covenants of the United Nations, in the constitution of the International Labour Organization and in principles affirmed by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. I know you've heard about these issues before, so I won't go into them at great length. However, I will go over them briefly.
Bill 22 violates the principle of equity by targeting one identifiable group for removal of rights. It denies freedom of association and the freedom to organize and bargain collectively. Repeal of these rights is tantamount to disenfranchisement for an entire class of workers and flies in the face of accepted standards of democracy. We will support challenges to this legislation based on its violation of these fundamental rights.
Organizing, collective action and the right to withdraw labour: Ontario Works, by its design, puts community placements in an extremely vulnerable position. Under it, social assistance recipients are expected to sign participation agreements, employers are expected to report on placements, and those who refuse or are unable to meet the terms of their placements face losing the only money they have for food, shelter and basic necessities. The design of Ontario Works does not include proactive and rigorous health, safety or security protections for placements. In fact the government has actively attempted to avoid health, safety and injury compensation for placements and has allowed enforcement officers new freedoms for search and collection of information on participants without the requirement of a search warrant.
Recent examples of the kinds of abuse we fear are not hard to find. Despite health and safety regulations, every year hundreds of Ontario workers are killed on the job and many more are injured. A recent study, widely cited in Canadian newspapers, released by the International Labour Organization revealed a substantial incidence of sexual harassment and harassment in Canadian workplaces.
Welfare News by the Center on Social Policy and Law, New York, February 1997, contained the following report regarding New York's workfare system:
"Legal services officers and advocacy and community groups have found many people suffering greatly. Participants are exposed to industrial, biological and medical wastes including asbestos, animal carcasses, human feces, and discarded syringes without protective gear. Students in high school or other approved education programs who were willing to carry both school and workfare are told that their workfare hours were in conflict with school; many drop out of school and others lose all welfare benefits. Participants are denied access to toilet facilities, and are made to work in bitter cold weather without warm clothing."
At the same time, support and advocacy organizations for workers and marginalized people have been dramatically cut. Since 1995 we have seen the gutting of Ontario's Advocacy Commission, cuts to legal aid funding, drastic reductions in funding for community-based organizations through a variety of cuts and municipal downloading, cuts to programs for abused women, cuts to workers' health and safety centres, and cuts to government ministries that deal with complaints. The system of organizations to which workfare placements would have turned in the past has been seriously denigrated.
In this context, the rights to organize, to bargain collectively and to withdraw labour are in more need of promotion than ever. People on workfare will be placed in extremely vulnerable positions. Options for support and advocacy are diminishing. Abuse and mistreatment are inevitable. Organization, collective bargaining and withdrawal of labour are tools that should be available to workfare participants for protection from abuse or injury.
In summary, if the government meets its targets for work-for-welfare placements under the Ontario Works Act, many social assistance recipients will find themselves in extremely vulnerable positions. Bill 22 serves to limit these peoples' options for security and safety. The rights violated by Bill 22 are fundamental and should not be attacked, on principle. Moreover, in the current context, the rights that are attacked in Bill 22 are the very rights that workfare placements will find necessary to help prevent abuse and injury. For these reasons, we urge that this act be repealed.
John McEwen would like to speak.
Mr John McEwen: My colleague has observed that Bill 22 violates the basic principles of equality under the law and exposes individuals to various hazards, injury, harassment, exploitation.
I'd like to put things in a local focus, if I may. In the five counties that make up Stormont, Dundas, Glengarry, Prescott and Russell, the employment ratio, the ratio of people of working age who are employed to that entire cohort, is less than 60%. The average ratio in Ontario is closer to 75%. That means that approximately 40% of the people in this area exist on either pensions or some other transfer payment from either a corporation or one level of government or the other. So there would be an obvious interest here in ensuring or setting up a system whereby people could move away from dependency on transfers from the government to some form of gainful employment. However, I think, as has been said by others, Bill 22 misses the boat entirely. From my experience and my studies, I have to concur with Mr Kormos that the problem is not so much preparation for a specific job as it is the availability of jobs.
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That said, the international adult literacy study identified the three counties, Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry, as having lower levels of adult literacy in the mid-employment years -- that is, 30 to 40 to 50 years of age -- than was true in the rest of Ontario. That has to be a concern, because if we are going to engage in economic development, we probably have to recognize that today knowledge is the new wealth, and good jobs likely will involve some ability to gather information, manipulate information and use information. Quite clearly, a large part of the population of this area is shut out from that process because of low levels of literacy and other things.
Let us look at what has happened to our ability to meet those needs. Our local alternative education system, which produced large numbers of successes among the adult population, is under extreme stress. They've had to reduce -- that is, lay off -- most of their certificated teachers and make do with other kinds of programs which they're trying to make work. Quite frankly, if you spend $5 on something, chances are you aren't going to get the same result that you will get if you spend $15 on something.
In the same fashion, we have reduced access to those kinds of programs that would provide disadvantaged young people at the front end of the education system with some sort of head start. I'm referring of course to things like junior kindergarten and senior kindergarten.
Then we also have the problem that our young people face in going off to post-secondary education. Cornwall has traditionally sent a larger proportion of its young adult population off to post-secondary than the rest of the province. However, our community college, which is the chief reason for that, is under attack. It may not survive as a viable institution because of government cutbacks. That would mean that young people would have to go off to another community to get further education, incurring a doubling or a tripling of the annual cost to them at a time when it's harder for them to earn the money to do that and when it becomes even impossible to get loans, loans which, if they were successful in achieving them and they were able to graduate from their program, they would be looking at $30,000 or more to be paid back in an employment market where it takes two to three to four to five years for a person with a good education in this province to establish themselves in a proper, permanent job.
I would just close by saying that rather than vilifying and perhaps even criminalizing those who have less advantage than others, and placing restrictions and inhibitions upon them, it would be more appropriate to look at ways in which we could create jobs and make it easier for people to acquire the education and training they need to fill those jobs. I'll just give you two suggestions.
Here in Cornwall we have the St Lawrence River Institute of Environmental Sciences. This institution has the potential of becoming the Massachusetts Institute of Technology equivalent for Cornwall. It could create tremendous spinoffs in knowledge-based industry. But this organization limps along, doing very good work but not receiving the support it should be receiving from either level of government. In addition, we have a unique opportunity here to create certain other environmentally based industries that would be spun off or arise as a result of the work done by the St Lawrence River Institute of Environmental Sciences. Quite frankly, this is an area where this government could show leadership and has to date failed to do that.
I would also point out that in the downloading of infrastructure, roads, to the municipalities in this region, this government has probably made it more difficult for job development to occur in this area. I've just come back from New Brunswick, and I was astounded at the quality of the infrastructure in communities the size of Cornwall in New Brunswick. The government down there has made an investment in hard and soft goods. I have great quarrels with the government in New Brunswick in other areas, but they have made it possible for economic development to occur in a community equivalent to Cornwall, whereas this government has placed impediments to economic development while at the same time introducing a bill that would tell the people who are having trouble getting real jobs: "There is something wrong with you because you haven't got a real job, and we're going to punish you. We're going to make you follow certain rules. We're going to expose you to some very real risks to life and limb, to harassment, to degradation. We're going to expose you to those risks and we're going to prevent you from doing anything about it."
I said I was closing about three times now. There is a young man who is on my mind. This young man is an injured worker. He has a family. That young man today has to decide between continued personal injury and destitution for his family. That's the choice that the aggregate policies of this government have left him with. It seems to me that instead of vilifying and harassing and exposing that young man to danger, a better role for this government and this committee would be to ensure that this young man had the opportunity to improve himself, to acquire some economic skills that he could use, and not place him in the position of having to choose between further injury and poverty for his family.
The Chair: Thank you very much. That allows just a little over two minutes per caucus, and we begin with the government members this time.
Mr Dave Boushy (Sarnia): I have just a brief question to ask. Could you tell me how much union dues are? If a welfare recipient has to join, how much would he pay in union dues? That's a serious question. And what would he get in return for his union dues, since he doesn't have really a real job?
Mr McEwen: Whenever people come together to act jointly, they make those kinds of decisions. It would seem to me that if I was an organizer of the conscripted workers, there would be no fee for assisting them. I am sure we could find money somewhere else.
I will draw as a parallel the injured workers' centre here in Cornwall, for which I gather the funding from the government has been largely withdrawn. I don't believe they charge their clients fees, but rather they get the money from fundraising and from contributions from local unions. I imagine something very similar to that would occur because we have a very similar situation.
Mr Boushy: You are a member of a union, sir?
Mr McEwen: I am a member of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation, sir.
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Mr Boushy: Could you tell me how much you pay for union dues per month?
Mr McEwen: I believe I am paying approximately 1% of my salary. Frankly, I think it's the best money I am spending.
Mr Rollins: Do I have time for a quick one?
The Chair: Actually, no. The two minutes are up. We move to the official opposition.
Mr Cleary: I would like to thank you, Natalie and John, for your presentation. I'll speak to John's comments especially because he's from a community I'm involved in. He had talked about the downloading quite a bit. He had talked about an opportunity with a new environmental science project which he's been involved in and I've been involved in for many years. They're trying to get money from both levels of government because they see an opportunity to do a lot, especially on the St Lawrence River and other environmental issues.
He had mentioned also about the downloading and the stress municipalities are under with their roads.
Also something new brought on by this government is the policing in this area, which we're going to be getting a hefty tax bill from, one that will take a lot more than a 30% cut in the provincial income tax.
He also mentioned our college system, which we were very proud of, being connected with Brockville and Kingston. They're under a lot of stress, so much so that the hall they have in our community, they're trying to get donations to run it privately. I know the students in our community are very upset about what's happening at the college and it's a real mess.
I also mention the health care system. We have residents here who can't get appointments here in Ontario because they're booked. People book and they're on waiting lists. One lady who was supposed to have an operation tomorrow couldn't get the operation in Cornwall. She's going to have to go to Quebec. She has it slated for tomorrow, and OHIP are not saying whether they're going to pay it or not.
There are real issues out there that we should be talking about to get the government to listen.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr Cleary. We move to the third party.
Mr Kormos: I thank you, as I do all participants. You know there are people who are strong supporters of Bill 22. There are people who firmly believe that certain classes of people shouldn't be able to belong to a union or an association, and we've heard from them as well.
I want to tell you people something. You made reference to the 21.6% cut in assistance levels. I recall that. It was one of the first things the government did. You know what they followed that very quickly with? A salary increase for MPPs. Let me tell you what happened.
The base salary was $42,000 a year -- calculate this -- plus $14,000 tax-free, right? Let's gross the $14,000 up by 100% to turn it into $28,000. Add $28,000 to $42,000. That comes to $70,000. So with a very generous interpretation, our salary was the equivalent of a $70,000 salary, $42,000 plus $14,000 tax-free, right?
The new salary is $78,000 a year. That's around a 10% increase in MPPs' salaries. They say, oh, but they eliminated the per diems. But the per diem was around $80 a day. At $8,000, you'd have to do 100 days of per diem committee work. Nobody ever came close to doing 100 days of per diem committee work because they only did that during the legislative breaks. They raised MPPs' salaries -- the arrogance -- immediately on the heels of slashing social assistance budgets by 21.6%.
They tried to pretend, they've been trying to tell people, that they lowered MPPs' incomes by making them taxable, but they grossed up the tax-free portion by over 100%. Interesting data.
The Chair: Thank you very much for coming to present today. We very much appreciate you coming forward.
CLAUDE LAPERRIÈRE
The Chair: We would call on our next presenter, Claude Laperrière. If you could come forward and correctly identify yourself, in case I made any errors, for Hansard, we would appreciate it. In the event you were not here earlier, just so you know, there's a total time allocation of 30 minutes. Any time remaining during your presentation is divided equally between the three caucuses.
Ms Claude Laperrière: My name is Claude Laperrière and I'm here representing myself. I'll give you a background on what I do. I'm a community worker with a community health centre that services the francophone community of SD&G. I'm also the animator of a community garden. I'm a director of the Kiwanis Club. I work on the board of directors of a women's shelter servicing francophone women in Alexandria and I work actively on three different environmental committees.
When I was called to come -- actually the call was that I would come and answer some questions that people had on the placements that we have made with workfare -- I was very happy to be able to assist. But then I received a phone call and I was told that this was about Bill 22. I hate to say this but I'm very busy and I hadn't had a chance to be up on Bill 22, with the knowledge of it, so I asked to have a copy of it. When I received it, I read it and I kept looking for the other pages because I thought this was really a non-issue.
Where I'm concerned, I received placements in community participation. I'm under the impression that these people who are coming are not paid by the agencies that receive them. They're not salaried employees. To me, joining a trade union -- I may not be very knowledgeable on this -- would require that there be a salary paid and an employer. This seemed to me an error that was being corrected.
Where I was very sad is the fact that the biggest challenge we have when we're doing community work is to find funding and to find participation from people. What saddened me was the fact that I started to do a mental calculation of what this exercise is costing. Believe me, if I only had 20% of what this has cost the taxpayers to use in programs such as the community gardens, youth centres, volunteer drivers -- because the job I have at the centre is as manager of volunteer resources. If I could have just had that, I could really go far this year.
In regard to the placements I've had, I hope that you will have a chance at lunchtime to question the people who are responsible for enacting the program here in Cornwall because it has been a success story as far as I'm concerned. In the placements that I've dealt with and the different areas where these placements have been made, there have been no concerns of safety. I think it has to do with the people who are running the program, who are running it properly. It has been a win-win situation in our case and I'm proud of it.
That is all I have to say. I just wish, as I say, that you hadn't come down just for this. Please correct whichever error was done before, because it's unfortunate to see all the time devoted to something like Bill 22.
The Chair: Thank you very much. That leaves us just under seven minutes per caucus. We begin with the official opposition.
Mrs Pupatello: Thank you for coming today. I can't tell you how much I agree with what you've said today. What was most interesting to me about your comments is that you were called to come to speak today about workfare. In fact, this is about Bill 22. I don't know if you were here earlier on when I made a motion, and it was defeated by the government members, to cancel all future hearings on this bill because it is a complete waste of taxpayer dollars.
What this bill is, because it's only one page long, it replaces a paragraph that was in the original Ontario Works bill, Bill 142. When we were passing clause-by-clause of that bill at committee last fall -- the government members of course have a majority on the committee so you assume that every clause is going to pass because government members vote in favour. The opposition is opposed to the project overall; we vote against. When it got to section 73, one government member was asleep, another was doing correspondence, another was reading the newspaper, a fourth was out of the room. In the end they missed passing that one clause, section 73.
You'll note -- I think you have the bill there -- the bill is actually ordered numerically correctly, 73. It's the same section that they slept through last fall, which is what led to this bill being dubbed the "Sleeping Beauty" bill. Had they not slept through committee the last time, we wouldn't have to go through this entire charade.
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There's no question that we're opposed to the way they've gone at this program, because we'd like to see something that isn't political propaganda, frankly, when you're dealing with individuals who need help to get back into the workforce. The point is that they have now taken government money, sent 19 people yesterday to Sudbury by plane, flew us back to Toronto to fly us to Ottawa to spend the night in a hotel, to get on a bus to come to Cornwall for part of the day so that we can talk about a one-page bill which was simply the replacement clause, which since last fall they have now politicized, retitled "An Act to Prevent Unionization" etc, and have taken on the road with the minister making public comments about how she will not allow labour groups to not allow workfare to go forward.
What you've correctly identified as some of the issues to workfare not working is the difficulty of many agencies to participate in programs where some additional administration costs are not being met: real training opportunities, the staffing in place in agencies to do this training for these individuals etc. There are many, many agencies out there that could do it if they had the funding available to do real training.
The difficulty I have is that in the end it doesn't matter what party you belong to, I think that ultimately if you're going to just do something because it's political propaganda it should be paid for by a political party and not government funding. But so far our costs total over $700,000 just on Bill 22.
I appreciate your coming. I think, the kind of work you're doing, your time may have been better spent in the agency work that you're engaged in.
The Chair: We have the two other caucuses.
Mr Kormos: You're in a hurry to get back to doing what you're doing and I understand that. I appreciate your comments, your candour. You've got to understand, neither of the opposition parties demanded public hearings on this. This Bill 22, this one-page bill, is getting more public hearings than did the original workfare legislation. We did two days of public hearings in Toronto, we're doing four days of travel, and it's really pretty wacko. As Ms Pupatello says, we went to Sudbury yesterday -- please correct me, Chair, if I'm wrong -- and there was a total of five submissions made, one of them the current candidate in the by-election. We spent a total of around two and a half hours maximum in Sudbury, flying up there --
Interjection.
Mr Kormos: Six? I'm sorry. OK, six. One was a no-show, so five. It's wacko. These hearings came about as the result of a closure motion which required that this bill go to committee for six days of public hearings. The closure motion I think actually indicated four days outside of Toronto, plus two in Toronto. We didn't advocate for four days or any days outside of Toronto.
This is the justice committee to boot. This wasn't the same committee that considered workfare. It's the justice committee, because we had brought, again, this application to have an inquiry into the Dudley George affair and the only way the government could knock that as-of-right inquiry out was by bringing this.
God bless, we have folks like you who do the same and similar things down in Niagara. You know some of them, I'm sure, and have dealt with them. I appreciate your coming here and I appreciate your candour.
Mr Klees: Thank you very much for taking the time to be here with us. I just want to thank you for, first of all, your expression about the fact that you feel the money that's being spent or the time and effort that's being spent on these hearings could be spent better elsewhere. I don't disagree with you on that. Quite frankly, I would prefer that the resources of this time that we have here could go to the front lines.
Mrs Pupatello: You should have passed my motion this morning.
The Chair: Order, please.
Mr Klees: The fact of the matter is that we do have to carry on the business of government as required legislatively to get this done. What really does necessitate us being here and addressing the issue, regardless of how it's come before us, is because of the fact that people like yourself have experience on a positive side with the Ontario Works program. You see first hand that people are benefiting from the Ontario Works program.
There are many people across the province who are finding jobs. This is not just about putting people into a training program. There is an objective to the Ontario Works program. We're hearing many positive results.
It is a program in growth, it's a program in transition and it's not perfect. We have never said that it is. We need to hear from people like yourself. We need to hear from people across the province how we can improve it. What is it that can be perhaps refined in the program to make it better and to work better for the people it's intended to serve?
Yet there are those in our community -- the previous presenter indicated that in Kingston, for example, as of June, there were no community placements. Let me tell you why. The fact of the matter is that there are political action groups across the province, and you may have heard of them, that are going to agencies which would want to be hosts to community placements and are threatening them, threatening to withdraw funding, threatening to create political action and demonstrations if they participate in the program.
The union movement has threatened to unionize community participants if we proceed with the program. As you rightfully said, there's no basis on which to create a union, because these people are doing volunteer work. They're doing it under the auspices of an Ontario Works program and they're benefiting from it. But for reasons beyond our comprehension, these organizations are threatening this unionization strategy, again, with a view simply to put the barriers up.
The previous presenters used the terms "coercive" and "punitive," and they were applying those terms to the Ontario Works program. You know the program. There is nothing coercive or punitive about it. Where those terms do apply are to those political action groups and to those union groups that are using coercive and punitive measures to threaten agencies not to participate in the program. That's what this bill is about. It's about removing those barriers and ensuring that the program can be implemented to the benefit of the people in this province.
It's for that reason, as well, that I've invited members of this committee to join with us at lunch in the Red Room to meet with people who are participants with the committee here. It's called the Community Placement Selection Committee, comprising people who represent the private sector, who represent agencies, who represent union positions, who are also involved in ensuring that none of the negative aspects that the program is being accused of take place, that the program is implemented in the way and the manner that it's intended to be.
So I do trust and I hope that Mr Kormos and Mrs Pupatello join us at that meeting at lunch today and have an opportunity to hear first hand the positive elements of this program. I trust my colleagues will join us as well. That was the reason for my motion this morning, to ensure that as we travel the province, because we have to consider the bill --
Mrs Pupatello: You don't have to travel the province with this.
Mr Klees: -- that at least we can then see first hand in these various communities the good work that is being carried out through the Ontario Works program.
Once again, I want to thank you. You're obviously doing tremendous work within your community. It was difficult for you to find the time to be here today. Thank you for taking the time.
Ms Laperrière: Can I respond?
The Chair: Yes.
Ms Laperrière: In response to what was said to me, I just stayed within the realm of Bill 22 in my presentation. What I find would be the solution, obviously, is if we had enough jobs for people to have decent livelihoods.
When I say it's a win-win situation in the program, I'm saying there is a positive outcome. It is not necessarily leading to a job, because there aren't necessarily the jobs out there. But it does have a positive outcome. In other words, the people are getting something to build themselves up, their self-esteem, participation in the community. But the fact of the matter is, we need jobs.
I could go on. If it hadn't been just Bill 22, I could have made a presentation to talk about the specifics of our area, but I'm sure that at lunch time -- please, I invite you to go in and question these people and to find out how they're doing it. Having been a spectator to what I'm hearing, I feel as if I belong to another world. I honestly feel very fortunate.
The Chair: Thank you for coming forward today. We very much appreciate your taking the time to come before us.
At that, this committee sits recessed until 1330 of the clock today.
Mr Klees: Mr Chairman, might I just reaffirm the invitation to members of the committee to join us in the Red Room.
The committee recessed from 1151 to 1334.
ANTI-POVERTY PROJECT
The Chair: I would call the first presenter forward for this afternoon. If we could have the representative or representatives from the Anti-Poverty Project come forward, and if you could identify yourself for Hansard, we would appreciate it. Thank you very much for attending, and as well for waiting until this afternoon to present.
Ms Linda Lalonde: I knew Frank had a pressing luncheon engagement and I wanted him to be here to hear this.
My name is Linda Lalonde. I work with the Anti-Poverty Project in Ottawa-Carleton. I'm going to do a bit of historical, how-I-got-to-be-here stuff, because I think it's important that you understand where my knowledge of employment in relation to social assistance recipients comes from.
I was involved for five years with the Opportunity Planning Project, which was a five-year pilot project in Ottawa-Carleton. It was a voluntary program -- people chose to be involved in it -- which provided access to training, employment supports, counselling and child care. It was a highly successful program, and saved money and reduced significantly the recidivist rate of those people who were involved. I know Frank has the final report, because we sent it to him, if you want to look at how wonderful it was.
Secondly, I was involved with the organizing of the job link centres, now employment resource centres, in Ottawa-Carleton, which included quite an intensive community consultation, and later sat on the planning and review committee that oversaw the operation of the centres. This was a very successful project and, again, was voluntary.
I worked for four years as an advocate for social assistance recipients with the Social Assistance Recipients' Council in Ottawa-Carleton, which was an organization established and run by people who were on social assistance.
For two years now I have been the community organizer for the Anti-Poverty Project, and I will emphasize that it's community organizer and not labour organizer; it's that kind of organizing. I do public education and advocacy there. For example, I've been doing information sessions about Ontario Works for the past several months and will be continuing that probably for the rest of the program.
I'm also involved in the Ontario Works monitoring project in Ottawa-Carleton, which is a project that's funded by the region and by the two universities in Ottawa. The monitoring committee involves representatives of business, labour, community agencies and recipients themselves. We've been running focus groups and one-on-one interviews with people who are in various streams of Ontario Works. There is an interim report which will be coming out in September. I've seen the draft -- I'm not going to tell you what it says -- and the final report will be coming out sometime in the early part of the new year.
I'm also a board member on the National Anti-Poverty Organization, and you'll understand why that's relevant in a minute.
I've had a lot of involvement with employment programs of various types.
The other thing I do want to tell you is that Ottawa-Carleton is a rather unique community in Ontario, where the social services department has worked historically very closely with both community agencies and people who are actually on social assistance. So the programs that are developed in Ottawa-Carleton are usually very responsive to need, they're very responsive to the kind of community we live in and they've also been very successful.
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We have never had a program for people on social assistance that has not been oversubscribed. We've often had six-month waiting lists for employment programs. On one occasion we had a program for single mothers which had a two-year waiting list, and they finally closed the waiting list. It was a little silly to say to someone: "Sure, we've got a program for you. Call us in two years."
Our history as a community is to be very involved with providing ways for people to get employed.
I'd like to address first of all -- and I'm sure you've had this mentioned to you a couple of times already -- the obligations that the government of Ontario has to its citizens, some of which are found in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. I'd just like to read you a few.
"The states parties to the present covenant recognize the right of everyone to the enjoyment of just and favourable conditions of work, which ensure, in particular:
"(a) remuneration which provides all workers, at a minimum, with:
"(i) fair wages...;
"(b) safe and healthy working conditions....
"The states parties...undertake to ensure:
"(a) the right of everyone to form trade unions and join the trade union of his choice" -- I assume that means "his or her" -- "subject only to the rules of the organization concerned, for the promotion and protection of his economic and social interests....
"(c) the right of trade unions to function freely subject to no limitations other than those prescribed by law and which are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security or public order or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others."
That's an obligation that the government of Ontario, in the old days of Bill Davis, who I understand was a Progressive Conservative, agreed to.
The reason I mentioned that I'm a board member of NAPO is that the National Anti-Poverty Organization is going to Geneva this fall as part of the review, which is I believe on a five- or 10-year cycle, of Canada and the various provinces' adherence to that particular international covenant. We'll be presenting, among other things, the behaviour of the Ontario government. Certainly the fact that you're going to bar people from participating in unions, which you have specifically agreed not to do, will be one of the things that will be brought up.
It was interesting to us, of course, to see the Ontario submission, which includes only the time period up to 1995, which some of you may realize is a rather significant date in the life of Ontario.
I'm not going to talk about the ILO obligations because I'm sure you've heard lots of that from labour people and I'm not a labour representative here.
There are also Canadian obligations that people have the benefit of under the Charter of Rights: freedom of association etc.
I want to reflect on the minister's statement to the House where she said: "Ontario Works is aimed at creating critical links between welfare recipients and employment." Then in the next bullet she says: "Community placements provide welfare recipients with the opportunity to," blah, blah, blah, "and to make contacts for future employment."
I'd like to talk to you about some of the benefits of union membership, as we see it. First of all, there are a number of unions where employment in that field is based on your seniority in the union. If you were taking a six-month placement in that particular field -- and these are usually in the building trades and so on -- and you could join the union the minute you walk in the door to start that placement, you would in fact move yourselves six months up in the seniority list, which would mean that you would find employment on a permanent basis six months earlier than had you waited until the end of that time.
There are many unions that provide training to their workers, to people who are members of that union. I find it rather baffling that the government would rather pay for the training themselves than allow a union to pay for training. I know that some government members object to the way unions spend their money, but I would have thought that would have been a positive and approvable spending of their money.
The third thing: From my experience with the Opportunity Planning Project, one of the beneficial things that we were able to do was to get people hooked up with someone else who was in that field and who could take them through the various intricacies of a specific occupation.
I can see a lot of instances where there would be possibilities for mentoring that could be established through a union connection. Again, I'm thinking more specifically of things like building trades, where you really need to know how to move through the hoops. Obviously there are other areas where union connections would help you.
I believe there could be some kind of associate membership in a union established -- and I think this will address your comment this morning about how much does it costs to belong to a union -- that would encompass people who are on community placements, which could also be extended to, for example, people who are doing co-op placements, people who are doing other non-paid types of on-the-job training placements. I think it would be a way of the union bringing those people in and having some kind of obligation to them before they actually were getting money from them and certainly would be, in my view, a way of working with the unions and having them provide some support to people who are in the situation that welfare recipients are.
The other concern we have is that this may be the thin edge of the wedge. What's next? Will other groups be shut out of union membership because they are a category of persons? Will other -- and this is more important to me -- freedoms be taken away from people who are on social assistance? Will, for example, a person who is a Muslim woman no longer be able to say to her welfare worker, "I can't be alone in a room with a man who's not my husband or my brother or a member of my family," and therefore be put in a work placement where that kind of situation would arise? Would a Seventh Day Adventist be able to say, "I can't do a placement that requires me to be there on Saturday"? There are a whole lot of other possibilities. Taking away one freedom makes us quite concerned about where you're going to be looking next and what kind of other infringements there will be on people simply and solely because they happen to be unfortunate enough to be in receipt of a welfare cheque.
I didn't mention that I had the benefit of spending a number of years at Carleton University studying law. I'm now doing a graduate program there in law, in negotiation and conflict resolution, which perhaps would have been useful to you this morning. One of the very first things that I learned there was that laws are created to right a wrong, and I have not been able to determine yet what the wrong is that this legislation is attempting to right. What is the point of this legislation? I'd love to have someone answer that for me. Or is this just another attack on folks on welfare with the added bonus of being able to nail the unions at the same time? Because certainly that is the perception that is out in the community, that this is just another way of nailing people who for whatever reason, usually out of their control, are in receipt of social assistance.
The Chair: Thank you very much for your presentation. That affords us over five minutes per caucus. We begin with the third party.
Mr Kormos: Thank you kindly. I understand you accommodated us by being here at 1:30.
You focused on the right of association, freedom of association, international charters, international conventions, obviously the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
You made reference to Mr Boushy's inquiry about the cost of belonging to a trade union. Do you believe that this bill in any way implies that people would be compelled, if it were not for this bill, to belong to a trade union?
Ms Lalonde: There's certainly the implication that the only way we can stop forced labour union membership is to pass this bill.
Mr Kormos: Do you have any direct involvement or experience with the trade union movement? This is an open question. I really don't know.
Ms Lalonde: From 1973 to 1977 I was a member of the Public Service Alliance of Canada and last year, because I did one of those 8:10 in the Morning on CBO things, they took union dues off my paycheque that I got. I think it was $3.45. That's the most recent experience that I've been involved with a union.
Mr Kormos: We also heard from an interesting submitter today, Ms Laperrière, who's a volunteer coordinator here in Cornwall and who has so-called workfare placements, not under her direct supervision but she's coordinating, that she is placing in volunteer positions. You've done a lot of work with low-income people, poor people. My impression is that volunteerism and participation in community activities has been as much a part of low-income and poor people's lives as it has of anybody else's, notwithstanding Bill 142, and now Bill 22. What's your impression in that regard?
Ms Lalonde: Certainly in Ottawa-Carleton there are a lot of organizations that wouldn't exist if it were not for the voluntary labour of people who are on social assistance. I'm thinking particularly of food banks and other very localized programs -- community gardens, those kind of things, programs that, for example, offer child care while a parent is at an appointment. Those programs are often dependent on having volunteer social assistance recipients.
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Mr Kormos: You made reference to Ms Ecker's comments about the end result being a job, that that's what her mandatory workfare was all about. What's your sense of the type of job availability out there in your community, regardless of whether you've got mandatory workfare or not?
Ms Lalonde: In Ottawa-Carleton, unless you have high-tech training, you're probably only looking at a quarter of the jobs that are available. The biggest problem we have is not that we don't have jobs available but that the match between the people who are unemployed and the jobs that are available is not there. For example, we have a lot of people who came out of the federal government who have specific administrative -- they've been trained to do this little job here, but they can't translate that experience into a real world job and are not being hired by the private sector because their training is so narrow, and they don't have a way under this program of getting the training that would make them able to do the high-tech jobs that are available.
Mr Kormos: Down in the Niagara region where I'm from, adult ed has really suffered, even this process of getting your high school diploma as an adult, because of the cuts. What's the situation like in your area?
Ms Lalonde: We still have a couple of adult education schools. We did when I left Ottawa this morning, anyway.
I want to mention, by the way: If you lads and Sandra were in Ottawa this morning, you could have just met with me there before you left, and then you could have come down here. I just wanted to make that point. Thank you for putting that in my mind.
Mrs Pupatello: I would have loved to.
Mr Rollins: But you weren't up early enough, Sandra.
Ms Lalonde: You would just have to leave there half an hour later, you see.
The Chair: Order, please.
Ms Lalonde: You would have been so happy after you left there talking to me that you wouldn't have had that argument this morning, so you wouldn't have been behind time. Now your question was?
Mr Kormos: Adult ed.
Ms Lalonde: We still have some adult ed programs. They have been cut back. There are fewer people able to get into them and eligible to take them.
Mr Kormos: Now that you mention having to come down here from Ottawa, I'm not sure -- Chair, you can help -- but Ms Laperrière is from Cornwall, the Kingston and District Labour Council that made a presentation this morning is from Kingston, you're from Ottawa, the Barrie Action Committee for Women which is going to be speaking next is from Barrie, the Heart and Stroke Foundation -- are they going to be here this afternoon, sir?
The Chair: They're here.
Mr Kormos: Are they from Cornwall?
Interruption.
Mr Kormos: The Cornwall area, OK. So we've got two Cornwall participants and then Kingston, Ottawa, what have you. We were in Sudbury. We went all the way to Sudbury yesterday and back, and then from Toronto to Ottawa for, what, a total of five submissions? Whacko. Ms Pupatello is going to talk about that.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr Kormos. Now we move to the government members.
Mr Klees: Ms Lalonde, thank you for your presentation. I would like to respond to the specific question you asked; that is, what is the wrong this legislation is righting? The wrong, frankly, is the threats, both direct and indirect, obvious and unfortunately sometimes not so obvious but realized by many organizations across the province, that unions have made that if the organization were to agree to accept a community placement, they would unionize the workfare participants. Quite frankly, this government does not agree that this would be appropriate. This bill does not in any way preclude anyone from joining a union. The legislation is very clear that it is with respect only to community placement participants.
I'm thankful to Mr Kormos for pointing out that for years in fact it's the spirit of Ontarians to volunteer. You confirmed that in Ottawa-Carleton many agencies couldn't exist without the volunteer efforts of people in their organizations. It's my experience, and I'm sure yours as well, that many of those volunteers are welfare recipients, or have been. I find it interesting that for all of these years welfare recipients have been volunteering in agencies across this province, the unions have never come forward threatening to unionize them. I wonder what's at the heart of that intense opposition or that need to feel that they have to now, under the Ontario Works program, come forward with that threat to unionize.
I just wanted to respond to your question. I want to move on to another question because you raised --
Mr Kormos: On a point of order, Chair: Ms Pupatello is choking. I don't know if she's choking on his words or --
The Chair: Order, please.
Mr Klees: If you could take her choking off her time, I'd appreciate that.
You raised a very interesting point with regard to unionized workplaces that may well want to support a community participation opportunity, and that the union would in that case pay for the training. We would not stand in the way of that. I think that is the kind of partnership we invite. We have said many times, "We want to work together with the unions in this province with this program." because if anyone should be concerned about helping people transition back into the workplace, we would think it would be the labour movement and unions in this province.
I'm open to discussing some way in which we could accommodate that kind of positive suggestion by unions to ensure that we don't preclude a union partnership in helping people who are on welfare get training. If you have any suggestions in terms of, perhaps, an amendment, and Mr Kormos may want to move an amendment that would recognize that opportunity for welfare recipients so that we don't preclude something like that, I look forward to your suggestion or even by Mr Kormos.
Ms Lalonde: I think you missed part of what I was saying. Union training is offered to their union members. I would be very surprised -- I don't have any connection with a union or any of their training programs -- to find out that they would give a spot in their training sessions to someone who is not a member of the union, paid for by union dues, and pass over somebody who was a member of the union. The term "revolution" is familiar to you and I suggest that there would be a revolution within the union if that was done.
What I was suggesting was that if a person was a member of the union, they would have the right to have that training.
Mr Klees: I'm suggesting to you that --
The Chair: Thank you, Mr Klees.
Mr Klees: -- we're open to discussing that.
The Chair: I'm sorry, you did receive your extra four seconds. We move to the official opposition, Ms Pupatello.
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Mrs Pupatello: Thanks so much for coming from Ottawa. We didn't have a lot of choice about these hearings. Frankly we felt that the whole thing's been a charade. The tally so far in taxpayer dollars is in excess of $700,000. This particular bill, this one-pager, is the section 73, and in this bill is so numbered, 73, that the majority Conservative members committee failed to pass last fall, because one member was sleeping, another was reading the newspaper, another was doing correspondence and another was out of the room.
Rather than just introduce it either by regulation or bill, which would have been quickly passed because obviously they have a majority government, they chose instead, on the taxpayers' bill, to take this out on the road in terms of propaganda once again for workfare. What it is in fact is just trying to paper over the errors they made themselves when the bill was first going through its processes last fall, and at taxpayers' expense.
That's the most offensive part for me, because it is propaganda. They're going forward to talk about, to extol the virtue of, workfare, and in fact 97% of welfare recipients are in no way, shape or form connected to any form of workfare and some of those people are doing well and getting off the system. The statistics paint a very opposite picture from what this government purposely paints for the public.
You said thin edge of the wedge. I was interested in that comment. Where are they going next? I come from Windsor; that's my riding. John Engler is the governorof Michigan, and when we saw what they were doing to welfare recipients in Michigan, we were quite worried. This was before the Tories were even elected. They tend to be a few years or an election or so ahead of what eventually will come into the right wing of Canada. What we saw when we saw Bill 142 was several phrases throughout the bill that talked about classes of people, and we questioned at that time if one of those classes would be single people, would be people of a certain marital status, race, whatever, because that's exactly the point we were making then: "What other group or class of people will you exempt from what?"
The latest commercial that John Engler -- interestingly enough the Republican purse is paying for this advertising, unlike in Ontario where Ontario taxpayers are paying for this charade. In Michigan, the Republicans are paying for ads with Governor Engler walking down the street with his family talking about drug testing for welfare recipients. I'm expecting, whether it's the next election platform or whatever -- I'm kind of loath to discuss it in case it hadn't occurred to them; I don't want to give them any ideas, but that's the kind of thing I see, that they just take it to the next step and continue to play on this division in our society instead of doing the opposite and really trying to integrate us and make us all responsible for everybody in our society, which I think is what Dalton McGuinty's position is and has been. You may know more of him, coming from Ottawa too.
That's my fear. What are we doing here? Why are we here? What is this bill really about? We have yet to see that it's anything more than an administrative error on their part at enormous expense to the public purse. The irony that the Conservatives would be so blatantly wasteful of taxpayers' money for sheer propaganda just astounds me. To that end I called for a motion to put an end to this charade, and unfortunately they have chosen not to do that and they'll continue to waste taxpayers' money to exploit, in my view, people who need the help.
I don't want to give any more examples of the American experience, but that thin edge of the wedge is there, surely just for politics, and then once you get past the election their words, policy on the back of a napkin, end up being public policy that simply doesn't work out there in the real world.
Ms Lalonde: I might just recall that when I appeared in the Bill 26 hearings one of the questions that was asked of me was how would I stop Ontario from spending $1 million a day more than they took in, or words to that effect, and $700,000 is a good part of a million. Anyway, on the thin edge of the wedge concern, we have seen a number of instances where what appears to be a fairly unharmful piece of legislation, when it's actually put into practice, is not equally applied to people.
As a matter of fact, the day before yesterday I was in a low-income housing project and had a story related to me where a Somali woman, who is Muslim and lives alone with her five children, had a male ERO arrive at her door -- that's an eligibility review officer. She refused to let him in. He left. He came back a few minutes later and her daughter refused to let him in. He left and he came back a bit later with two policemen. It wasn't until the intervention of an elder from the community who was able to explain to them that she could not allow a male to come into her house -- they were going to haul her off to jail. They were going to put the handcuffs on her in front of her children.
We get very concerned when we see something that is an infringement of rights that already exist. If you won't stop at this level, where will you stop? Where is the pendulum going to end up?
The Chair: Thank you. We very much appreciate you coming forward and spending the time with us today.
Prior to our next presenter coming forward, are there representatives who have shown up and are waiting from the Low Income Needs Coalition? No? Okay.
BARRIE ACTION COMMITTEE FOR WOMEN
The Chair: Then we would have the representative from the Barrie Action Committee For Women. If you could come forward and identify yourself for Hansard, we would greatly appreciate it, and you may begin.
Ms Sherrie Tingley: Sherrie Tingley from the Barrie Action Committee For Women. I'm here today as a volunteer. Our group is a volunteer group.
Thank you for this opportunity to come here today and talk to you about Bill 22. I'm very lucky I was able to make it here today. When I was writing this on the weekend there still was no commitment to support people's expenses to present to this committee. As you go across the province and wonder at the lack of participation of welfare recipients, you might want to consider that this presents a barrier to democracy, to have to risk your child's food and shelter to participate in this process. I am a single mother, so I had to give up work today as well.
The Barrie Action Committee For Women was founded in approximately 1989 and is dedicated to the social, political and economic equality of women. Over half of our members are women living in poverty, so often we are looking through the lens of poverty at issues.
Over the years in our community of Barrie we have worked to ensure that those most affected by issues and decisions being made have meaningful input into those decisions.
I'm just wondering how many members of the committee are lawyers. Could you put your hand up if you're a lawyer?
Mr Kormos: Do we have to?
Ms Tingley: Yes. I just wanted to know. Two lawyers. Mr Parker.
Mr Kormos: I apologize in advance.
Ms Tingley: I'm also wondering how many members of this committee are aware that 1998 is the human rights year and we're celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Do people realize this? I guess nobody on this committee realized this was the 50th anniversary of the universal declaration. Does anyone know what the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is? There's no show of hands, so nobody knows what the universal declaration is.
It's quite small. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was passed December 10, 1948. The preamble states:
"Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,
"Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people...."
I think you people may realize why it was important to pass the universal declaration after what had happened in Germany.
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I assumed, because this is the standing committee on justice that's considering this bill, which deals with a pretty basic human right, that it was important to talk to you about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the obligation of all governments in Canada to uphold all human rights for all. That's the theme this year of the celebration: All human rights for all.
International human rights law has been designed to protect the full range of human rights required for people to have a full, free, safe and secure and healthy life. The right to live a dignified life can never be obtained unless basic necessities of life -- work, food, housing, health care, education and culture -- are adequately and equitably available to everyone. Based squarely on this fundamental principle of the global human rights system, international human rights law has established individual and group rights relating to the civil, cultural, economic, political and social spheres. Civil and political are things like free elections, so if you're wondering what human rights are, that's part of it.
There are two instruments that fall out of the universal declaration. When the universal declaration was passed, they decided to define the rights within the universal declaration with two covenants: the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which Linda talked about, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
Is anyone familiar with the international covenants? OK, no one. The two covenants are legal instruments. This is from the UN fact sheet 16:
"Thus, when member and non-member states of the United Nations ratify a covenant and become a state party to it," which Canada is, "they are wilfully accepting a series of legal obligations to uphold the rights and provisions established under the text in question." When a state ratifies one of the covenants, it accepts the solemn responsibility to apply each of the obligations therein and to ensure the compatibility of their national laws with their international duties in a spirit of good faith.
Through the ratification of human rights treaties, therefore, states become accountable to the international community, to other states which have ratified the same text and to their citizens and others resident in the territory.
Are you aware of the indivisibility and interdependence of all human rights? That's really what the theme of the international year is about.
Really, civil and political rights have received more attention -- free elections and whatnot -- and have been instilled in public conscience to a far greater degree than economic, social and cultural rights. It is therefore sometimes wrongly presumed that only civil and political rights -- rights to a fair trial, rights to equity of treatment, right to life, right to vote, right to be free from discrimination -- can be subject to violation and international legal scrutiny. Economic, social and cultural rights are often viewed as effectively second-class rights, unenforceable, non-justifiable, only to be fulfilled progressively someday. Such perspectives, however, overlook a fundamental part of the global human rights system from 1948 with the universal declaration; namely, that human rights are indivisible and interdependent of civil and political rights, and they're fundamental tenets of international human rights law.
Recently, Canada reaffirmed its commitment to the indivisibility of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights by supporting a 1997 resolution of the United Nations General Assembly which states, "All human rights and fundamental freedoms are indivisible and interdependent." The resolution also recognizes that the full realization of civil and political rights without -- and this is the interdependency -- the enjoyment of economic, social and cultural rights is impossible. So Canada supported that.
Again, Canada will be reviewed this year. They'll be reviewed at the United Nations committee on economic, social and cultural rights, which is responsible for monitoring states' compliance. State parties have to submit a report, and again Linda mentioned that, every five years. As part of the current review, the Canadian government sent off a core document explaining how human rights worked in Canada. That's document 91, and this explains: Some human rights fall under federal jurisdiction, others under provincial and territorial. Therefore, human rights treaties are implemented by legislative and administrative measures adopted by all jurisdictions in Canada. It is not the practice of any jurisdiction in Canada for one single piece of legislation to incorporate all the human rights. Rather, many laws and policies adopted by federal, provincial and territorial governments assist in the implementation of Canada's international human rights obligations.
This was submitted January 1 of this year to the UN to form the core of its report.
All jurisdictions review their legislation for consistency with the human rights conventions in question before the ratification. To ensure compliance, existing legislation may be amended or new laws enacted after ratification. Canada's international human rights obligations are taken into account in drafting new legislation.
So I'm surprised that this committee could not raise their hands about your international obligations, because I would have assumed that this committee was taking into account Canada's obligations.
Has an international human rights expert been consulted with this bill? This must be a reoccurring theme. Is there a show of hands? I don't quite know.
In May, the Geneva committee drafted very specific questions and sent them to the governments of Canada, Ontario and whatnot for the issues that will be taken up in November.
One of the questions is, "What is the position of the federal government and each provincial government with respect to whether workfare programs discriminate against welfare recipients and are contrary to article 2 of the covenant?"
Article 2 says that Ontario has an obligation to undertake to take steps individually through international assistance and cooperation to the maximum of its available resources with a view to achieving progressively the full realization of the rights recognized in the present covenant; also, that the rights in the covenant will be exercised without discrimination of any kind: race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.
The right to work: The committee in May -- the issues were released June 10, and they're asking Canada and the province this question:
"Please provide information on any provinces which require participation in workfare or similar programs and describe the appeal procedure with respect to any disentitlement from basic necessities.
"Are these programs applied to single parents and, if so, what exceptions apply?
"Is the committee correct to assume that these programs would have been illegal under CAP?"
They're asking, for provinces applying a work-for-welfare scheme, such as Ontario and Quebec: "Please provide information concerning the application of labour standards, including minimum wage and any discriminatory criteria that are applied."
In the covenant, it says that you recognize the right to work, which includes the right of everyone to the opportunity to gain his living by work which he freely chooses or accepts.
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One of the questions they're asking too is, "Please provide information regarding the rights of farm workers and domestic workers to organize and bargain collectively and identify any change in provincial labour legislation which has affected these rights." Is there any justification for denying these workers collective bargaining rights according to other workers?
One of the things you've agreed to is that everyone has the right to the enjoyment of just and favourable conditions of work which ensure remuneration which provides, as a minimum, all workers with fair wages and equal remuneration for work of equal value without distinction of any kind; in particular, women being guaranteed conditions of work not inferior to those enjoyed by men, with equal pay for equal work; a decent living for themselves and their families; safe and healthy working conditions; equal opportunity for everyone to be promoted in his employment to an appropriate higher level, subject to no consideration other than those of seniority and competence -- Linda spoke very well about having two classes of people; also rest, leisure, reasonable limitations of working hours and periodic holidays with pay, as well as remuneration for public holidays.
It really shocked me when I read the opening of this committee and the minister said, "In the name of compassion and a misplaced concern for rights, all it really offered was neglect.
I was really concerned when the Lieutenant Governor, representing I guess the crown -- I'm not quite sure who she represents besides herself -- said: "Your government will move to the next phase of its plan to convert welfare into work. It will expand mandatory work-for-welfare. The ultimate goal is to ensure that every welfare recipient does something of value in exchange for his or her benefits." Sounds like a job.
She also goes on to say, "Last month, leaders of another union announced plans to try to unionize workfare participants -- giving rise to the prospect of participants collecting vacation pay" -- oh my God, can you imagine? -- "or even going on strike for higher welfare benefits. These are real challenges that this government must and will overcome."
Now, I looked at Bill 22. I'm not quite sure what it's about. It sort of reminds me of the Ten Commandments. I'm not quite sure where she got them, Mount Cyanide or something. "Thou shall not" -- or what? When I talked to welfare recipients in my community they said, "Or what?" "If we join a union, what? We'll be put to death? We'll lose our benefits?" You don't say. How can we even be discussing a bill where you don't say "or what"? It's just, "Thou shall not." I guess the intent is to scare recipients.
We're a women's group and we're going to be involved in setting the terms and conditions that people participate under in their placements. There is no way that a participant is going to be in a workfare placement and we're not going to be concerned about their conditions of work. Does that mean that a recipient who belongs to our group is already in trouble? Again, what kind of trouble? What are your sanctions?
To me, it's clear that this government is just interested in building hatred for one group of people, as evidenced by the statements of Hilary Weston. History has shown us another government that worked in this way.
Also, when I was doing the research for this, the United Nations Web site has some really great documents. There is a communication of January 25, 1996, from the Economic and Social Council to Canada. This is the person concerned with human rights violations. They go to the horrible places in the world. They send concerns. They sent this to Canada:
"During 1995, the Special Rapporteur transmitted the case of Nicholas Cotrell, a 15-year-old, and George Dudley, reportedly killed by the Ontario Provincial Police on 6 September 1995. It was alleged that the OPP opened fire on a group of unarmed...men, women and children who were defending a sacred burial ground located in Ipperwash Provincial Park, Ontario.
"The permanent mission of Canada to the United Nations informed the Special Rapporteur that Canadian federal authorities have sought information from the competent authorities of the province of Ontario which will be provided shortly to the Special Rapporteur.... Furthermore, the government informed the Special Rapporteur that on 6 September 1995, a confrontation between the occupiers of Ipperwash Provincial Park took place. According to the government, police officers who were responding to the confrontation were fired upon and they returned fire. As a result of the incident, George Dudley died and Nicholas Cotrell was injured and subsequently taken to the hospital, from where he was released shortly afterwards. In addition, the government stated that the incident is currently being investigated by the special investigations unit.
"Observations: The Special Rapporteur urges the government to investigate such disturbing allegations, identify and bring the perpetrators to justice and compensate the families of the victims."
I couldn't find any response or follow-up to that, so I don't know if it's still hanging or whatnot, but it was kind of interesting to find that in the international Web page.
I also just wanted to remind you of some of the articles in the universal declaration, specifically around work, assembly, collectively bargained. Where is it? I should have marked it. It is in the universal declaration. In fact, it doesn't necessarily talk about labour unions, but it talks about the freedom to associate, and that is really what I was getting to, that it's not clear what this bill is about. What is a union? I think it's going to go further and deprive people of the right to associate and to get together for their interests, because you haven't said anything.
Anyway, thank you.
The Chair: Thank you very much for your time. That allows us just under three minutes per caucus, and we begin with the government members.
Mr Klees: Thank you for your presentation. I just wanted to confirm for you. You asked a question as to whether this legislation had been reviewed by those with legal expertise as to whether or not it is in line with human rights legislation and so on. I can confirm for you that it has been, and we are advised, have legal opinion, that it does in fact comply. I might just add that any piece of legislation that is drafted by government goes through a process where it's reviewed by legal staff and would not be brought forward unless we had the appropriate advice, so just for your information.
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With regard to your other question in terms of just what this is about, I want to again affirm for you that this legislation in no way precludes an individual from joining a labour union. The legislation reads quite specifically, and that is that "no person shall do any of the following" -- here are the very key words that people seem to either intentionally leave out when they debate this issue or have failed to place in the appropriate context. The words go on to say "with respect to his or her participation in a community participation activity." So it's very narrow in that it refers to an individual who is a welfare recipient and is involved in a community participation activity in that context.
That individual, it says, shall not join a trade union, shall not have "the terms and conditions under which he or she participates determined through collective bargaining" -- because the welfare rates are set by the government, it's a social service -- and shall not strike.
It's the opinion of this government -- and you disagree, and you have the right to, and this public forum gives you the opportunity to express your views. Certainly our government does not believe that individuals who find themselves relying on welfare should in fact have the right to strike. There is an appropriate process through which government, society, sets the welfare rates. We're simply saying that this program, the Ontario Works program, the community participation program, is affording individuals an opportunity to gain experience in the community, to develop some job skills, to help them become employment-ready.
Ms Tingley: I guess essentially you're saying work will make you free.
The Chair: It's now the official opposition, Mrs Pupatello.
Mrs Pupatello: Thank you for coming up from Barrie to be with us today. I wanted to mention, in response to the parliamentary assistant, in that all legislation goes through legal counsel, I might remind him that Bill 26 was passed by the House and stripped several sections out of different acts, one of which was taken to the courts, specifically the pay equity clause. The courts upheld that it was illegal. That was two years ago, and while they were to pay, the government still has not paid.
Even though you seem to always have an answer for everything, the truth is you just never tell the whole truth. The point is that your supposed legal counsel has been wrong before. Your government is getting to have quite a record of being wrong. I would suggest that typically you likely get your counsel in a very slanted version and then you don't like people telling you you're wrong. Sometimes you just have to be the big boy and accept that, and I'd like to suggest this is one of those times.
In any event, we've been fairly frustrated with this whole process. We did bring forward a motion to cancel these hearings because it's an enormous waste of taxpayers' money for a battle which we acknowledged we lost in the workfare debate. They have a majority government. They passed it. They passed it in a very bungling manner, by missing a clause that they slept through, which is the only reason this bill is now travelling the province. We dubbed it the Sleeping Beauty bill because one of their members in fact caused that clause to fail, and that is the only reason that we're out here. The most unfortunate political side of this is that they're wasting taxpayers' money to go on a propaganda spree, a campaign spree about workfare, as opposed to just doing their job. In this case it's just a blatant waste of taxpayers' money. It's very frustrating to watch that.
We heard from some very honest people who came to us and talked about real training programs that actually do help people. Peter Kormos and I had a very interesting lunch and full discussion regarding the programs in this area that are working and why they are. Despite the best effort of government to send them under, good programs will still find a way to survive. Frankly, that's what we discovered over the lunch hour and we were pleased to do that.
Thank you very much for coming to see us.
Ms Tingley: I would be interested, from Mr Klees talking about having retained an international human rights expert to review this bill and I guess workfare itself -- I would assume something so important, so fundamental as human rights, that that advice would be available to the public.
Mr Klees: First, I did not say that we had retained --
Ms Tingley: I was just commenting actually. You don't have to reply or respond.
Mr Klees: I'm happy to clarify the record for you, if you like.
The Chair: Thank you. This is Mr Kormos's time.
Mrs Pupatello: On a point of order, Mr Chairman: I'd like to hear the parliamentary assistant's response.
The Chair: That is not a point of order. Mr Kormos, this is your time.
Mr Kormos: It could be Mr Harnick -- but, then again, he's so busy getting the family support plan up and running that he'd have very little time to review legislation like this. He's been very occupied bungling.
Ms Tingley: He's been on a sabbatical. I don't quite understand why recipients are accused of fraud in this province, accused constantly. Squeegee kids, we've got to pass a law against them.
Mr Kormos: Do you know why? Because it's hot politics.
Ms Tingley: Yet the highest official can break the law and be reinstated, so there are two forms of justice. Of course, there is different justice for different people, especially Dudley George.
Mr Kormos: I want to emphasize two points you made. Ms Pupatello talks about the opposition not calling for the public hearings on Bill 22, least of all travelling. We're here (1) because the Tories screwed up big-time and they didn't have section 73 passed in clause-by-clause; and (2) because we brought an application to do an investigation by this, the justice committee, into the assassination, slaughter, murder of Dudley George at Ipperwash park and the involvement of the Premier, the Premier's office and others around him. The only way they could circumvent that or avoid it was by using closure to have literally more days of public hearings on Bill 22 than they had on Bill 142 in the first instance.
The other point you make is, no penalty now. I suppose, and I don't want to give --
Ms Tingley: I don't think there was an answer.
Mr Kormos: Yes. I don't want to give free legal advice, but I suppose there's a general penalty section in the Provincial Offences Act. But you're right, because you know what? I've talked to workfare, mandatory workfare -- and this is the critical word here: "mandatory." We've also talked to voluntary people working in volunteer work. The critical distinction is the fact that this is mandatory.
You know what, Mr Klees? They're still going to join unions. Not all of them, because you don't get organized. Unions don't go out there and force themselves upon workers, like Bill Clinton on Monica Lewinsky.
Mrs Pupatello: That is alleged at this point.
Mr Kormos: Ha ha, yeah.
People join together and either decide to sign union cards or not. Unions don't force themselves on working people or on workfare participants, and they're still going to do it. Go ahead.
Ms Tingley: I just wanted to add I've been a long-time community volunteer. I've sat on hospital committees. I've volunteered in pediatrics. I've volunteered with the school board. I was quite proud to belong to the hospital auxiliary of my hospital, which is, I guess, an association of volunteers that in fact has a seat on hospital boards often and is a historic association. I'm not quite sure, actually, if there is a participant in a hospital whether they'll actually -- you cannot volunteer in a hospital without belonging to the hospital auxiliary, so I don't quite know --
Mr Kormos: People can organize themselves clandestinely. If that's what this government wants, it will create an opposition that's even more formidable. Perhaps all the better.
The Chair: Thank you very much for your presentation. We very much appreciate you coming forward today.
Mrs Pupatello: On a point of order, Mr Chairman: I just wanted, for the record, for perhaps the Chair to clarify actually that all of the comments and statements that are made by the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario are actually scripts that are handed to her and not the opinion or the text of the Lieutenant Governor herself.
The Chair: We can find out that information for you, yes.
Mrs Pupatello: That is the case. I just wanted to clarify that for the participant.
The Chair: You were clarifying it, or you were asking me to clarify it?
Mrs Pupatello: I just wanted to clarify that, actually. That isn't her text. The Lieutenant Governor wouldn't write that kind of script that she reads.
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HEART AND STROKE FOUNDATION OF ONTARIO, CORNWALL AREA OFFICE
The Chair: We would call our next presenter forward, a representative of the Heart and Stroke Foundation. If you could identify yourself for Hansard, we would greatly appreciate it. Thank you for coming.
Ms Susan Adams: Thank you for the opportunity to be here. My name is Susan Adams and I am the office manager of the local Heart and Stroke Foundation of Ontario area office. I think I should preface everything I have to say by pointing out that the opinions I'm expressing are my own opinions and based on my experience with workfare placements. They are not necessarily the opinions of the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Ontario or of the Heart and Stroke Foundation at all as a whole. So I am perhaps expressing my narrow view from my experience in my office.
Also, before I begin, I do want to point out that I've experienced some confusion and perhaps frustration in the setting up of this meeting. The first information I had was in the nature of an invitation to come and speak to the minister and representatives from the ministry, to tell them my experience and how workfare was going from the point of view of a placement site and even possibly a visit to the placement site.
Only within the last few days -- and I realize that summer vacations have interfered here a little bit -- did I learn that in fact this was a hearing on Bill 22. I asked for information on Bill 22 and was promptly provided with the information that was provided to the local placement office. It wasn't the bill; it was in fact basically a perspective of what the bill was supposed to be and do. In other words, it was all the nice stuff that was supposed to be fixed by this. I had to request again to actually have a copy of not only the bill faxed to me this morning but the bill that it was set out to replace. So you'll understand that I'm experiencing some frustration and working from an agenda that has changed rapidly in the last few hours even.
Thank you to the people who did try to help me understand. My local community placement office was very helpful. They were working with the information they had. I was given to understand that this is not a usual procedure for this committee or hearing situation, that my experience was unusual.
Mrs Pupatello: Can you elaborate or explain?
Ms Adams: I was told, I think by Mr Arnott's office, that there usually isn't this kind of confusion surrounding things. I'm getting the impression that it's a bit unusual to have this confusion happening, but it was confusing for me.
Mrs Pupatello: This bill is unusual.
Ms Adams: I'll speak to that later.
To continue, just to give you a bit of an oversight, the Heart and Stroke Foundation has area offices all over the province. Our office serves Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry. We have three chapters and we serve them out of a very small office. We have a staff that ranges from two to about two and a third full-time placements, and some of that is contract that isn't even full-year contract.
We depend very heavily on volunteer assistance to accomplish the many, many things that need to be done at the administration level in that office. We provide administration assistance to our volunteer committees and we also make significant use in our situation of co-op placements from colleges, alternative schools and high schools. So we are able to offer, I feel, a very good placement for Ontario Works participants because we have experience in training people at times who have very little skill levels. You must understand that volunteers come to us looking for skills. We have experience with people who are unemployed and looking to set themselves up to be more employable. We have a small, intimate office setting that allows for one-on-one contact.
My experience of this program, as a not-for-profit placement, has been, on the whole, positive. However, it's quite true that not-for-profit cannot provide the spectrum of workplace experience that is required by those people who are on welfare and need to get their skill sets put together for the workplace. What we often find is that these people, at least at this point, especially given that the workplace environment has changed -- we have a fragile but growing work atmosphere that's more positive for employment. What we have on welfare and what we experience is people whose lives are just not going well. They have significant barriers that prevent them from being able to acquire and hold a job. They have things going on in their lives or things going on with their health or things going on with their families that are providing them with significant barriers. They haven't got training, and of course the access to adult education has been significantly affected lately negatively in that these people don't have as much access to adult education as they once did. It's not as available, it's not as easy for them to access.
As I said, our experience is largely positive, we find these people have a lot to contribute, but we deal with problems here. We deal with people who have transportation problems. We deal with people who have daycare problems. We deal with people who have significant mental health barriers to their doing a 9-to-5, day-after-day job. We have, in my view, anger management problems, we have manic-depressive and chronic depression problems with these people. We have even diagnosed schizophrenia with paranoid and excessive-compulsive behaviours. The most pervasive problem is paralyzing low self-esteem. So when they come into my office they're a mess. They may have taken computer courses or even worked in an office setting, but they're a mess. They often just haven't got what it takes to handle even a part-time job. They may be on the road to getting there, and we feel we help a lot of them get towards that goal, but these people would have found a job if they had had the package they needed to acquire it and keep it.
What I believe we need is not just a workfare program but an integrated approach in the community, an integrated approach involving health care. They need easy and consistent access to mental health counselling, not just, "If you're suicidal we can probably get you in next week." We need a health care approach here. They need counselling. We need a daycare approach that's consistent, available and quality. We need public transportation. It's well and good in the city centres to say, "OK, you have to work," but I come from a rural area. Believe me, it's a better place to live, at least in my opinion, but there is no public transportation. If they don't have a car they might as well be on an arctic ice floe.
We also need a workers' compensation approach that is integrated and that recognizes that some of these people need something more than welfare to bridge the gap and to offer them a space to get the counselling and so on, health care that they need, before they are pushed back into the workforce.
As for Bill 22 specifically, the only reason I can see that any union would even worry about these people is sabre-rattling. So in that sense I support the bill. OK, we don't want them unionized, but it mystifies me why in any other sense unions would even want to be involved with these people. They present a multitude of philosophical and practical problems for unions. First of all, the whole tenet of unions has been no short-term or part-time work. This flies in the face of their whole rationale for years and years. They want full-time permanent work for their members and they don't want anybody getting in the road of that. The inability alone of these people to make union dues payments on a level with the other members -- it doesn't even make sense. The significant cost of grievances that these people will cause their union if they're treated as full union members -- listen, if you want the unions to go down, put them in there; they're going to go down.
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Having said all that, very small business is the logical home of these work placements, and not just for union reasons. Unions are generally not present in very small businesses. I'm talking businesses of 20 workers and less, very small business. They are the only placements that I can see that can offer these people the kind of understanding they need, because they are going to have to understand so much about what these people are bringing in baggage to their work placement.
That brings me to a third point, and that is the extension of welfare to the private sector. I have significant reservations about this initiative, both as a not-for-profit placement and as a former small business owner.
First of all, move forward with caution. That's my overall cautionary note. The tentative and fragile gains that we have made in battling unemployment this far mean that Ontario Works candidates who are there, the pool that is there at this point, who haven't found jobs yet, really need significant amounts of training, emotional support and patience, not only in terms of what they have to say about themselves and the time they take in the workplace just dealing with life but also patience in terms of their productivity and just general life skills. Whether they can even get there on time can be an issue. I'm not sure that private employers, generally speaking, have the resources to absorb that at this time.
I also would mention that it seems to me that seasonal jobs must receive very special consideration. If a workfare placement in private sector is linked to employment after the workfare placement is over, seasonal employment can cause some really significant problems. It's often where a lot of these jobs may be available, but it cannot necessarily meet the same requirements for true employment after the placement that other regular job opportunities can.
The extension to the private workplace will absolutely necessitate the bolstering of the support provided by our community placement agencies. Local municipal taxpayers cannot afford to beef up those agencies at the local taxpayer cost. We depend on these people and they're doing a good job with the resources they have at hand now for the not-for-profit placements, but private business will probably demand more. They aren't as experienced dealing with underskilled people as we are with our volunteers and our co-ops and so on.
My concern is that we will be putting a heavy demand on our local community placement agencies without giving them the resources they need to actually meet that demand and meet the expectations of the program. Without that significant support -- and it shouldn't be placed on the local taxpayer, especially with the burden of amalgamations hitting them at the same time -- I really feel this should be moved far more slowly. But then this government's heard that story before. Move slowly and make sure that the support is there.
Again, to reiterate, also in the other surrounding and integrated aspects -- the health care, the day care, the public transportation and the understanding in terms of rural people to support their transportation needs.
Finally, as a not-for-profit agency we have significant concerns regarding extension to the private sector in that we wonder whether qualified candidates will have any interest in a not-for-profit placement if the possibility of employment is that much higher in private sector placements.
While we understand and support the intent of the program -- in other words, getting these people back to work -- we cannot help but predict that this will significantly reduce the number of workers in the pool that we have access to, as well as the quality of their skills and ability to actually benefit from a placement.
I thank you for the opportunity to speak to you this afternoon and I welcome any comments that you might have.
The Vice-Chair (Mr E.J. Douglas Rollins): Thanks for your presentation. We have approximately five minutes per caucus and we'll start with the official opposition.
Mrs Pupatello: Thank you so much. I can't tell you how pleased I was to hear your comments, every part of your presentation today. I just want to tell the government, you should listen to this woman, along with the balance of many others we have heard from in our travels, as expensive as they have been. What you would do, I would think, with the over $700,000 it has cost us just for this one bill -- what you and the other agencies we've heard from would do with that kind of money to really move people into communities, into real jobs. It's astonishing to think we've squandered away that kind of money in this charade.
I was really fascinated by your comments about how you came to be here. I see the kind of interference by the minister's office to somehow make this thing look as though, "We're calling you to come and talk to us about what a wonderful workplace you have for workfare," when the purpose of this bill and the hearings of this bill through the justice committee, organized through the clerk's office, which is supposed to be totally separate and apart from the propaganda machine in the minister's office. The people who have come today should have known and been told very clearly, "This is Bill 22 public hearings. This is the bill. This is its intent," instead of getting fooled by the minister's office and the political staffers to go into communities that you're spending an awful lot of money to send us to, to go searching and digging around for the 3% of all the welfare recipients in Ontario who are even touching a workfare program, because 97% are not. So you've got to go digging around to find them to begin with and then you fool them by calling them and telling them to come here and talk to us about what a wonderful place you've got.
And the purpose of these hearings is to talk about Bill 22? It's galling for me to watch this happening. This is not the first presenter who's come here completely misguided, with a completely different set of instructions from the phone calls, who landed here. The woman who was here earlier this morning said: "I've never seen this bill. This is just one page. What did you ask me to come here about this bill for?" She actually said that this morning because she was told that she was coming here to talk about the joys of her site and her workplace for workfare. That's the kind of propaganda machine we've got operating at Queen's Park.
It wouldn't be so bad if the PC Party were paying the bill. I mean, they're the government, making all the money with their political fundraisers and all. No, this is the Ontario taxpayer. So you and I, all the New Democrats, all the Liberals, all the non-political people who pay taxes are paying for this propaganda machine -- over $700,000.
In fact, just the House debate on Bill 22 so far, at the government's estimate of $100,000 per hour to operate the House, seven hours of debate, that's how we get to the $700,000, which is a given because it's the government's estimate of the cost. Not to mention that my ticket alone just for this little excursion to Cornwall, just for the plane ticket from Queen's Park to Sudbury, a brief stop in Ottawa, and here -- $842. But it's not just me. Nineteen people were in Sudbury yesterday; a smaller group today. That is the kind of money that they are squandering away instead of looking at real issues.
I have to tell you I was most impressed by what you itemized as the real needs of people who have to get into the workforce. It was so familiar to me what you were telling me. It was so familiar.
Do you know who said they were taking care of those issues? This man right here, who is the parliamentary assistant who was seated at the table at the hearings, said, "That's exactly what we're doing." He said, "We're taking care of day care, transportation, all those things you talked about." This man right here said they were doing that. And here you are, in the real world in this Cornwall area, discovering that those things in fact are not happening.
But your ministry political staffers had to go scrounging around digging to find the only 3% of all of the welfare recipients who are anywhere near a placement. And yet we come and find one, and you're still not meeting the things that you said you were doing.
I want to tell you, as I just wrap up my five minutes here, that Christine Whitman is the governor of New Jersey. A few years ago their political right-wing Republicans starting doing her scripts for her, and do you know what she started saying? "Promises made, promises kept." So you fast-forward to the last budget of Ernie Eves right here in good old Ontario and read what was written for him by the political staffers here: "Promises made, promises kept."
There we were in Sudbury yesterday, spending an inordinate amount of money to go there to hear the PC candidate launch in all his diatribe -- because they actually got the candidate to say, "a place to live and work and raise a family."
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The Vice-Chair: Sandra, you've exhausted your time.
Mrs Pupatello: That's what I got out of next year's Whitman catalogue in the Republican state of New Jersey.
Ms Adams: May I make a clarification?
The Vice-Chair: I'm sorry, that's the way the time goes.
Mr Kormos: Go ahead.
The Vice-Chair: If she wants to take it off your time, that's OK.
Ms Adams: A brief clarification point: I was never under the impression this was a bring-and-brag. I was under the original impression that I was asked to come here to make the minister and delegates aware of the true situation from the perspective of a workplace. And yet I stand behind everything else I have said.
Mr Kormos: At the end of the day, I think you've made a very valuable contribution to the process. But when were you first contacted about the committee?
Ms Adams: I've been on holidays two of the last three weeks. I have no clue. I cannot tell you off the top of my head. I would defer to Carmen Cousineau, our local placement agency director, but I think it was about three weeks ago.
Mr Kormos: You say you would defer to Carmen Cousineau. I don't understand the connection.
Ms Adams: She's the original connection. She was the original person who contacted me and asked me if I would be interested in meeting with representatives --
Mr Kormos: There's no problem with that. Her representation to you was that this was to be a meeting with the minister?
Ms Adams: Yes. I've since confirmed with her that she was working from the understanding she had at the time. That was the understanding she had been given. She was asked for names of agencies and she knew I was comfortable with public speaking and so on and would be comfortable. We've had some very successful work placements and have worked with the program very well and were one of the first placements in this community.
Mr Kormos: You say it was only today that you found out about Bill 22 as the subject matter.
Ms Adams: No. I was on holidays last week, so when I came back from holidays on Monday -- although I did give Carmen my home phone number and say, "If anything changes you can call me at home" -- that's when I heard it was about Bill 22.
Mr Kormos: How did you discover that?
Ms Adams: Who told me? I can't remember whether it was Carmen or Paul Berry from the clerk's office.
Mr Kormos: Did you know what Bill 22 was?
Ms Adams: Hadn't a clue.
Mr Kormos: Did you indicate that to anybody, that you didn't --
Ms Adams: Yes. "OK, tell me what it is, folks. Give me some literature." Carmen delivered immediately. She got the information, she delivered it to me. I think we were both under the impression it would include a copy of the act. It didn't. When I took it home to read it Monday night -- I did not have time at work -- I found it wasn't the act. Or was it last night? Anyway, I went on the Net to try to get some information from that. I'm not a really comfortable Net user and could not pull up Bill 22 or the Ontario Works Act, which I also wanted to see. I never did actually receive the Ontario Works Act.
Mr Kormos: Bill 142.
Ms Adams: And Marsha someone, I think it was Marsha, called this morning to confirm my time -- which was changed a couple of times even since getting here -- and said, "OK, are you ready to go?" I said, "Yes, but I'd really like to see Bill 22." She faxed that to me at least.
Mr Kormos: Ms Pupatello already referred to a participant this morning who narrated a similar fact situation to yours. Yesterday up in Sudbury, fair enough, we had the Tory candidate in the by-election up there, but then we had two small business people, both of them very competent and entitled to views which very much conflicted with mine, or mine with theirs. But one of them, Mr Kennedy, talked about how he was supposed to have received some information, a package of materials, but it never got to him.
He was a little, dare I characterize it as "miffed" about it. He didn't want to say who. I thought maybe it was the Liberal member up there, Mr Rick Bartolucci. I thought maybe his office had been asked for it. Maybe it was Shelley Martel's office that had been asked to forward it. I thought: "Uh-oh, where angels fear to tread. Don't ask because he's going to say, 'I called Rick Bartolucci's office,' or, 'I called Shelley Martel's office.'" But it was neither of those offices that were requested of it.
Ms Adams: I was told I would receive information and contact from Noble Villeneuve's office. To the best of my knowledge -- and again, the interference of holidays is always there -- I did not receive anything from Noble Villeneuve's office.
Mrs Pupatello: Can I ask where you live?
Ms Adams: Where I live or where I work?
Mrs Pupatello: Where do you live?
Ms Adams: I live near Chesterville. I live right out in God's country.
Mrs Pupatello: Whose riding would that be?
Ms Adams: Noble Villeneuve.
Mr Kormos: Noble's riding.
The Chair: Thank you very much. We now move to the government members.
Mr Klees: First of all, let me apologize to you for any confusion that there may have been around your invitation to be here. I can assure you that our interest is simply hearing from people who have first-hand experience with Ontario Works.
This bill, while focused on one particular aspect of Ontario Works, elicits a great deal of discussion about the Ontario Works program generally. If you have been following or care to look at Hansard on the discussion relating to this bill, you will see that neither Ms Pupatello nor Mr Kormos keep themselves to the discussion of the narrow piece of legislation that's before us; rather, 99.9% of their discussion relates to other matters and to a large degree it's an attempt to annihilate the good intent of the Ontario Works program.
Mrs Pupatello: Don't impute motive on my part. That's inappropriate.
Mr Klees: So for you to be here and share with us your first-hand experience --
Mrs Pupatello: Chair, I would ask you to rule on that. That is inappropriate language. There's not one thing that either Mr Kormos or myself have said that would impute motive on the part of any individual and I don't think that I would be subjected to the same from the parliamentary assistant who is acting on behalf of the minister today.
Mr Klees: In the interests of time, Chair, I'll withdraw that.
Mr Kormos: Chair, if I may, I've never imputed motive at all. I've stated it outright.
The Chair: Thank you. The member has withdrawn.
Mr Klees: I'm happy to withdraw in the interests of getting on. I think that what is important is that you've come. You've shared your experience and that is welcome.
Mrs Pupatello went into somewhat of a rage, as you observed, and leveraged from your comments about the reference to things like transportation and day care. I'm happy to hear from you on that. We have members of staff here observing these proceedings. An integral part of the Ontario Works program is to provide transportation, so if someone has a community participation opportunity, there is funding within the program and the policy design of the program is to provide transportation. It is also to provide day care. No one would be asked to participate in a community participation opportunity without also providing the appropriate day care support.
If you're finding there is a shortcoming there, I would be pleased to hear from you and I'm sure that even following this meeting, if you would care to, I will introduce you to staff and we should talk about that. That also is an opportunity and one of the purposes, quite frankly, of having public hearings, because we can get that kind of very practical input from people who are experiencing the difficulties. We'll deal with that because we want to underscore, not only for you but for other people in this province, that this program is intended to address those barriers that people are experiencing in their lives to keep them from moving on to getting a job.
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You rightfully talk about transportation, day care, training, skills training and so on. That is all very much part of the Ontario Works program. You make reference to the fact that many of the people you meet who are referred to you have difficulties in their lives and couldn't maintain a 9-to-5 job because there are difficulties. That again is what this program is all about. It's recognizing that everyone is at a different stage in their life. Some people just have to be given an opportunity to gain some self-confidence and, as you say, to learn to show up. Some people, because of circumstances in their lives, have lost that.
For an organization to come forward and offer to take a community placement for two hours, three hours, five hours a day, maximum 70 hours a month, that is the partnership, if you will, that makes Ontario Works what it is. It's a matter of ensuring that people have an opportunity to move back into that kind of face-to-face contact with people in their community, because many people have lost the self-esteem, the self-confidence to which you refer.
Ms Adams: Mr Chair, on a point of clarification, if I may: My concerns regarding day care and transportation are not so much directed to the time of placement, the duration of placement under Ontario Works. I haven't experienced great difficulties in that regard. Mind you, I only get people who have access to public transportation. Nobody's coming in from the counties to work with me. My expression of concern there is directed to making that next progressive step to employment and what happens with the day care and transportation needs as they roll off the end of the Ontario Works placement and roll into part-time or full-time employment. I think that's where I'm asking that.
In order to make Ontario Works do the job it needs to do, there has to be an extension of attention to day care and transportation, but more importantly than that, if you want to pick one of the three, pick health care. I have had to have the "seek help" conversation with some of my placements. They need counselling, significant and extensive and well-trained counselling that I cannot do for them.
I am constantly in a situation of asking myself, because I'm being paid to do the job I'm doing and to see that the work gets done: "Can I afford to keep this person? Can the Heart and Stroke Foundation afford to pay me to keep this person working here or have they come to the point where they're not producing enough work to justify the time I'm spending keeping them working at it?" That's callous and you often find yourself asking if you need to dismiss someone to whom that would be a devastating blow and who really isn't doing anything wrong except trying to cope with a very shattered life.
Mr Klees: Thank you very much for that clarification.
Ms Adams: Thank you again for the opportunity to speak with you. I appreciate the opportunity, as confusing as it has been. I hope that all the best comes out of the work of this committee.
Mr Kormos: On a point of order, Chair.
The Chair: Just prior to your point of order, Mr Kormos, I'd like to let the members know that in regard to the amendments for the August 19 sitting, which takes place at 1 o'clock, if we could have any amendments submitted to the clerk by 10 am of that day, that would give him enough time for distribution of the information.
Your point of order, Mr Kormos.
Mr Kormos: We heard today from Ms Adams, who just left -- didn't leave the committee room but left her seat here -- and Ms Laperrière this morning. Both of them, I say, were incredibly candid, straight as an arrow, thoroughly unimpeachable, thoroughly honest and with no ulterior motive or secondary motive in appearing here and in what they said, and I respect their views. However, I tell you, Chair, I find what they had to say about the manner in which they got here somewhat troubling. Ms Laperrière wasn't questioned, quite frankly, to the same extent that Ms Adams was about the manner in which she got here.
The Chair: Your point of order is?
Mr Kormos: Yes, sir, please. I'm going to be as brief as I can, but I'm deadly serious, because I'm extremely concerned about what may have happened here. I want to be very careful in saying "may have happened." I say to you it's tantamount to -- it's not the same as but tantamount to -- a British Columbia politician who wrote letters to the editor under a nom de plume, and the interference with process that that was obviously demonstrative of.
I link this with the suggestion yesterday -- and again, we didn't have as much information yesterday in Sudbury as we have here today. Mr Kennedy, however, gave the clear impression -- he was the second business person, remember, the carpenter, who gave evidence, if you will -- not evidence, but he spoke to the committee. He spoke about not having received a package. I made reference to that in my comments regarding Ms Adams.
I can't say this about Sudbury, because we didn't ask the right questions of either Mr Kennedy or Mr Niro, the other small businessman, the tavern owner. But after today it appears that certainly in the case of Cornwall -- and again, I don't dispute the right of Ms Adams or Ms Laperrière to appear here. I don't agree with everything they had to say, but they said it with great candour and I don't dispute their right to be here. What I find of concern, and this is perhaps the crux of it, is that Ms Adams indicated that she was contacted by one Carmen Cousineau, whom she identified, if I recorded it correctly, as the head of the community placement service. Therefore, Ms Cousineau is part of the delivery process. I don't know who she is; I don't know who she works for. At some point, one way or another, she's being employed by the government, either on contract or through a local MCCS office, but as a delivery agent. It appears to me that somebody somewhere has been utilizing the civil service for very partisan purposes.
I ask you to reflect on some of the rulings that the Speaker in the House has had to make with respect to very similar and parallel situations. It appears that Ms Cousineau has done nothing wrong. I want to make that quite clear. I don't want to in any way indict her or suggest that she has done anything improper. But it appears that political people have prevailed in this instance upon Ms Cousineau to produce people who could speak about their workfare experience when this isn't even a workfare bill. It's Bill 22; it's the anti-unionization bill.
This is consistent with Mr Carroll's motion yesterday, which he withdrew, that we visit workfare sites, with Mr Klees's motion today, with Mr Klees's lunchtime meeting with local providers of the service. Again, I don't dispute Mr Klees's right to do that, but I do tell you this: Mr Cleary was at that lunch, he tells me, as he appropriately was. He's the local member; he has been active and involved in supervising it. It appears that Cornwall has a distinctively different experience with workfare than most places in Ontario. Among other things, there's a higher degree of volunteerism. I just want to mention that. I also found it interesting that Mr Klees wanted to do his photo op, and Mr Cleary, the local member, who's accountable to and responsible for his community, was left sitting aside.
What I'm speaking of is political interference with the civil service here. I think a very serious problem has arisen about the use in this case of Ms Cousineau by somebody somewhere to put a political spin and in fact obfuscation of the real issue, which is Bill 22. For them to be told this is about workfare and they'd be meeting with the minister and just some sort of committee was a less than candid, less than forthright representation. I don't think it came from the clerk's office. The clerk's office doesn't do that. It's not their function, it's not their job, and I don't believe they did it. I believe it came from somewhere else.
I believe, Chair, that this warrants an investigation by you as the Chair into what has happened here. My fear is that there has been an abuse by the government of its power, implicitly and explicitly, over in this case Ms Cousineau, and that they are abusing the process within this committee.
Mr Klees: I'll speak to this very briefly, Chair, and I'll leave it to you. Let me say, first of all, that Mr Kormos is drawing some conclusions that are not necessarily anywhere near the mark.
With regard to invitations that may or may not have been extended by anyone employed by the government either directly or indirectly, quite frankly, we did have a meeting at noon today, to which I invited Mr Kormos and Ms Pupatello, who both refused to come, to meet with a local committee of individuals who were involved in the Ontario Works program. I extended that invitation to Mr Cleary, who was kind enough to attend.
Yes, we had asked staff, as I do as a parliamentary assistant with responsibility for Ontario Works, to gather together today a number of people who could provide us with insight into the Ontario Works program. The fact that we have a committee hearing here to which an individual -- the witness indicated herself that she wasn't sure of the circumstances or the timing because she had been on holiday. The fact that the detailed package relating to the meeting that was taking place may not have been as succinct as it could have been or did or did not include a copy of the act -- and I don't know, Chair. I don't believe that any witness to this committee ever has received a copy of the act from the clerk or someone who has been invited. I don't know that that has ever been procedure. Maybe it should be but it certainly hasn't been, and it in no way affects whether the appropriate process has been taken here.
Whether Mr Kormos believes that Bill 22 has anything to do with workfare or not is quite irrelevant and it's probably most indicative of how he views the world. For him to come here and say that Bill 22 has nothing to do with workfare shows that he too is in some other world and some other universe; in fact it's at the heart of it. Surely it's most appropriate --
Mr Kormos: What did you sell before you got elected, Frank?
Mr Klees: I let you finish.
The Chair: Order.
Mr Klees: It's most appropriate --
Mr Kormos: Was it the Home Shopping Channel?
The Chair: Order.
Mr Klees: It's most appropriate for witnesses to be asked to come forward to speak to the issues of Ontario Works because they directly affect Bill 22.
I leave it with you, Chair. I think Mr Kormos is on the wrong stuff here and is fishing and he's going to catch himself if he's not careful.
The Chair: I will report back at the beginning of next week's hearings. That recesses today's hearings until Monday of next week.
The committee adjourned at 1522.