Legislative Assembly of Ontario

The House met at 10 o’clock, a.m.

Prayers.

Mr. Speaker: Statements by the ministry.

Oral questions. The Leader of the Opposition.

WORKMEN’S COMPENSATION BOARD

Mr. R. F. Nixon (Leader of the Opposition): Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the Minister of Labour if he contemplates making further changes in the composition and personnel of the workmen’s Compensation Board and the high administrative echelons of the board?

Hon. F. Guindon (Minister of Labour): Yes, Mr. Speaker. There are still two vacancies on the board. Two commissioners still have to be appointed.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Thank you. Can the minister assure us that Mr. Decker will be maintained in his position as --

Mr. S. Lewis (Scarborough West): He was reappointed.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: -- vice-chairman and that the stories and the rumours that are heard among those concerned with the Workmen’s Compensation Board are in no way true, and that, in fact, he will continue in his important post?

Hon. Mr. Guindon: Mr. Speaker, Mr. Decker has been reappointed for a term of two years. I believe, as a commissioner of the body corporate and not as vice-chairman.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Not as vice-chairman?

Hon. Mr. Guindon: Right.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: A supplementary then: Are we to assume that he will be removed from that position?

Hon. Mr. Guindon: There are two vice-chairmen. With the new structure of the board, as members know, we have a vice-chairman for manager, Mr. Speaker, and a vice-chairman for the appeal structure; but Mr. Decker is still a member of the board.

Mr. I. Deans (Wentworth): He is a hearing officer.

Mr. Lewis: He is a commissioner of appeals.

Hon. Mr. Guindon: No, no. He is a member of the corporate body.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I’m sorry, Mr. Speaker, I don’t want to belabour this, but his position has been vice-chairman now for a considerable period of time and that is going to be changed. Is that correct?

Hon. Mr. Guindon: Yes, that’s right, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Decker was vice-chairman of the board. Now he is a member of the corporate body, the same as Mr. Hamilton.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Right. A supplementary: Is it the minister’s intention to deal directly with the union of injured workmen -- a group that he is familiar with, as are we, from various communications -- which seems to be becoming more and more the major organized spokesman for those people who feel they have not been dealt with equitably and with justice by the board?

Hon. Mr. Guindon: I think the board has always had a fairly good rapport with the injured workmen’s group, Mr. Speaker. However, in the new structure you will find there will be counsellors appointed as well, counsellors who will not come under the board but will be paid by the Ministry of Labour.

Mr. E. J. Bounsall (Windsor West): Supplementary, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Windsor West.

Mr. Bounsall: Thank you. Would the minister consider appointing various persons or the directors of the Injured Workmen’s Consultants as consultants to the board, as one of these bodies outside the board which the board is now able and willing to appoint?

Hon. Mr. Guindon: Right now, of course, Mr. Speaker, the board is accepting applications from anyone interested in being appointed to the board. These applicants will be screened, and of course we are looking for experienced people who we feel really will fill that job properly.

Coming back to the question of my hon. friend from Windsor West, I cannot say at this time whether we could do this or not. I would think not.

Mr. Lewis: Supplementary, Mr. Speaker: Why did the minister turn down the recent request from the union of injured workmen to meet with a large number of their membership, so that they could raise with the Minister of Labour, the enormous range of injustice they continue to feel about their relationship with the Workmen’s Compensation Board? Most of them, as the minister knows, represent immigrant communities in the west end of the city of Toronto, and he categorically refuses to meet with them. Why does he do that as minister? He refused to meet their mass meeting. He said, “Send some representatives to my office.” Why won’t he meet with the range of injured workmen themselves?

Hon. Mr. Guindon: Mr. Speaker, I have met with this group on several occasions -- at least three that I recall in my offices here at Queen’s Park. The board and the chairman of the Workmen’s Compensation Board have met with them on several occasions as well. These people naturally want to talk about benefits. I am in no position to say anything at this present time. I certainly have to consult the employers’ and employees’ organizations of this province and find out the cost factor of any benefit that perhaps could be added. So I am not in a position at this time to --

Mr. Deans: Has the minister not done that?

Hon. Mr. Guindon: I am prepared, and I said so --

Mr. Lewis: The minister is building another host of rage out there.

Hon. Mr. Guindon: I have never turned down any delegation in the last 2½ years, Mr. Speaker. I would be quite prepared to meet with them, but there is no point in attending a public assembly --

Mr. Lewis: Why not? He is a minister of the Crown. There is tremendous frustration amongst those workers. He should meet with them.

Hon. Mr. Guindon: I would be glad to meet with them, and I will -- I have offered to meet with them.

Mr. Lewis: Sure, three or four selected ones in his office.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Supplementary: Would the minister agree that the very best kind of a political realization in this is that if the responsible minister, not the appointed chairman, meet with this group, the injured workmen’s union, and on their own ground and under their own circumstances?

Mr. Lewis: Sure, sure.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Why not? Surely that is why we have a Legislature and a responsible minister.

Hon. Mr. Guindon: Mr. Speaker, I think it is known, even among the injured workmen’s association, that it is not hard to meet the Minister of Labour in this province. I think I made this very clear.

Mr. Lewis: Well, he refused.

Hon. Mr. Guindon: Moreover, when our bill, the Workmen’s Compensation Act, went to the committee stage last year, we made it a point to invite these people to attend; and in fact they did contribute something.

Mr. Lewis: The minister gave them 24 hours’ notice. He invited them on Friday for a Monday.

CAMP ASSOCIATES ADVERTISING LTD.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: What happened to the Minister of the Environment (Mr. W. Newman)? Oh, there he goes.

I would like to ask the Minister of Industry and Tourism to repeat his rather convoluted explanation as to why he, through his ministry, has made payments of $1,250,000 to Dalton Camp Associates without a contract or a written agreement. Does the minister not feel that it is his personal responsibility to see that these moneys are spent in a more orderly way, if at all? Does he not further see the sensitivity in this matter, since a number of advertising agencies seem to be getting bigger and bigger accounts with various government ministries as we get closer to the election, and the government embarks on these self-aggrandizement programmes at the public expense?

Hon. C. Bennett (Minister of Industry and Tourism): Mr. Speaker, the remark made by the Leader of the Opposition is not actually correct. First of all, the sum of $1.25 million was not paid to the Camp agency. That was our entire account for advertising in press, radio and TV for the ministry for the year that the auditor was reporting for. Camp Associates, sir, works on a commitment to the government through the Ministry of Industry and Tourism. When the auditor brought it to our attention that there should be an agreement, the ministry people set to work to draft an agreement. After many months of discussion within the ministry and with the auditor’s people they were not sure as to why exactly they were trying to propose or arrange an agreement, which is not the customary way of dealing with advertising agencies anywhere in this province.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: The customary way is to do it on a friendly and political basis.

Hon. Mr. Bennett: Well, I suppose if it is on a friendly and political basis we’d likely gain that line of knowledge from the Liberal Party in Ottawa -- and so, Mr. Speaker --

Mr. J. R. Breithaupt (Kitchener): It has worked for 30 years.

Hon. Mr. Bennett: I am reporting exactly as the situation happens to be with advertising agencies in this province --

Mr. D. C. MacDonald (York South): Both the Conservatives and Liberals do it the same way; we recognize that.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: We know who are the ripoff artists.

Hon. Mr. Bennett: -- and let me remind the NDP that it is on the same basis as the NDP is treating its advertising agency in Manitoba; the agency that looked after the party in power in Manitoba during the last provincial election in that province.

Mr. J. A. Renwick (Riverdale): We will check that one, too.

Interjections by hon. members.

Hon. W. A. Stewart (Minister of Agriculture and Food): Righteous indignation.

Mr. MacDonald: Let’s get back to Ontario now.

Mr. Speaker: Order, order.

Interjections by hon. members.

Hon. Mr. Bennett: Mr. Speaker, we have with our agents -- and I can report that for the Ministry of Industry and Tourism we have three agencies that work on our behalf -- commitments which have a 30-day cancellation clause. In the commitment it very clearly states exactly what we expect of that agent for us as the client.

Mr. Renwick: Let’s table that.

Hon. Mr. Bennett: We place the advertisement in the areas that we believe it should be placed for the greatest efficiency and promotion for the Province of Ontario. Their commissions --

Mr. R. F. Nixon: And for the Conservative Party.

Hon. Mr. Bennett: If it happens to advance the cause of the government of the Province of Ontario, all well and good. But first and foremost we are advancing the position of the Province of Ontario, which I believe includes the opposition members as well.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Does he mean the Conservative Party?

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. MacDonald: Can we share the decisions on how the minister handles that?

Hon. Mr. Bennett: We have at the moment the Camp agency, which looks after the tourism account, and in our opinion it is doing a very effective and efficient job. The travel agency for Canada, through the Liberal Party, admits that our advertising is among the best on this continent.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: An absolute disgrace.

Interjections by hon. members.

Hon. Mr. Bennett: With that, sir, it is obvious that this government has employed the best agency possible to advance the cause of tourism in this province.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Supplementary: Does the minister then reject the criticism from the Provincial Auditor? In fact, is he saying that what he is doing is better than what the Provincial Auditor is suggesting and saying specifically should be done?

Hon. E. A. Winkler (Chairman, Management Board of Cabinet): That’s right.

Hon. Mr. Bennett: Mr. Speaker, since the time that we discussed the --

Mr. R. F. Nixon: The Chairman of the Management Board says “right.”

Mr. Lewis: Get that on the record.

Hon. Mr. Bennett: Let me assure the Leader of the Opposition, since the day that --

Mr. MacDonald: Great management over there.

Hon. Mr. Bennett: Yes, we have good management and we have followed the advice of the auditor at this point in time.

Mr. Lewis: Oh come on --

Mr. R. F. Nixon: It is already too much.

Mr. Lewis: The man the minister is dealing with is also the chairman of the commission on the Legislature.

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Hon. Mr. Bennett: Mr. Speaker, it would be well if the leader of the NDP would get his facts straight for a change, for the simple reason that Mr. Camp is not associated with the firm.

Mr. V. M. Singer (Downsview): It is his brother-in-law.

Hon. Mr. Bennett: I couldn’t care less who he is. The fact is that --

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Mr. Lewis: Just tell us the minister will put it in hand.

Hon. Mr. Bennett: The statement was made that Mr. Camp was leading the agency.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: That agency has such a catchy name -- Dalton Camp Associates.

Hon. Mr. Bennett: Well, it appears that the Liberal Party was willing to accept some of his recommendations on changes in the Legislature, so I would think that his advice must be good here as well as in the advertising field.

Mr. Lewis: Sort this out then.

Interjections by hon. members.

Hon. Mr. Bennett: May I say that the leader of the Liberal Party asked if we were willing to accept the auditor’s advice. We are; we have prepared an agreement.

Mr. Singer: Oh, the minister and the Chairman of the Management Board don’t agree on that.

Hon. Mr. Bennett: May I advise the Leader of the Opposition that since that time we have had further discussions with the auditor general for the province and we are not sure that there is anything to be gained by signing an agreement. I would advise the House of this, that we have an agreement which has been signed by the Camp agency. It has not been signed by the ministry at this point because there seems to be some difference of opinion with the auditor as to why we should have the agreement when the commitment is covering the item fully and adequately at this time.

Mr. MacDonald: Because the Chairman of the Management Board was opposed to it.

Mr. Lewis: Supplementary, Mr. Speaker: No. 1, will the minister table those commitments in the House? No. 2, will he explain what he means by the customary relationship? And No. 3, can he tell us whether or not the Management Board will accept the auditor’s recommendations since the Chairman of the Management Board has already rejected them this morning in the House?

Hon. Mr. Winkler: That’s not true.

Mr. Singer: The Chairman of the Management Board had better get up and set that straight.

Hon. Mr. Bennett: Well, as far as the Management Board’s position is concerned I’ll allow the Chairman of the Management Board to report on that question for the member.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: That’s nice of the minister.

Interjections by hon. members.

Hon. Mr. Bennett: As for the commitments, sir, we are prepared to file them. They are an order from our ministry to the agency as to where we wish our advertising placed. We have no reasons not to indicate very clearly to this House and the people of Ontario where we spend the money in their interests to promote tourism.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: And the government’s own.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Downsview.

Mr. Singer: Mr. Speaker, by way of supplementary, could the minister tell us how many dollars he expects to spend with the Camp agency, without the agreement, during the months of March, April, May and June of 1974? Has he projected his thinking that far ahead or is he just writing a blank cheque? How many dollars has he allocated and what plans does he have?

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Just whatever is good for the Tory party.

Hon. Mr. Bennett: Let me say, Mr. Speaker, while the Leader of the Opposition seems to think that it is all for the advancement of the Tory party --

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Isn’t it?

Hon. Mr. Bennett: -- it has provided excellent government for this province over the last 30 years. Obviously we have placed the ads in the right spots to convince people we are doing a job on their behalf and in their interests.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: It is time for the campaign.

Mr. Lewis: It won’t save the government anyway, but that’s not the point of the question.

Hon. Mr. Bennett: As to answering the question, we do have spelled out very clearly in our commitments to the agency exactly the number of dollars that will be spent and in the places that they will be spent, whether it relates to television, radio or newspaper advertising.

Mr. Singer: How about telling the House about it?

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Did the minister say he would table it?

Hon. Mr. Bennett: If Liberal members had been listening to the leader of the NDP --

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Did the minister say he would table it?

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Hon. Mr. Bennett: I believe, Mr. Speaker, if a few of the members of the Liberal Party would sit and listen for a moment to the questions that are asked by other parties in this House, they might also be able to gain some knowledge of the answers that are given.

I indicated to the leader of the NDP that I was prepared to table in this House the commitments that we have with our agency in placing advertising on a national or international basis, and that would cover the very question that the member from the Liberal Party has asked.

Mr. Singer: When is the minister going to table it?

Mr. R. F. Nixon: When is he going to table it?

Hon. Mr. Bennett: In due course.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Lewis: Apart from self-enhancement or whatever else, I don’t think it’s comic in terms of the commission on the Legislature. Does the minister not think he owes it to Dalton Camp Associates as well as to the Legislature to table those commitments on Monday or Tuesday of next week to indicate to us when in time those commitments were undertaken and whether or not he is going to follow the specific recommendation of the auditor to have a negotiated agreement or contract?

Hon. Mr. Bennett: Mr. Speaker, I think I have already covered the position in the contract. We have an agreement already drafted and signed by the Camp agency, but because there appears to be some difference of opinion as to what the need of the agreement is at this time it has not been fully signed by the ministry.

Mr. Lewis: Let us see it.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Well, if the ministry doesn’t need it, why have it?

Mr. Singer: Mr. Speaker, by way of supplementary, if the minister doesn’t know the need, if there is confusion, how can he possibly say that he has a plan for the ongoing months?

Mr. Lewis: Well, he can say many things.

Hon. Mr. Bennett: Mr. Speaker, I am not sure that the relationship of the agreement has anything to do with the placing of advertising, to be very honest with you.

Mr. Lewis: I wouldn’t have thought so, either.

Hon. Mr. Bennett: I already indicated to this House that in the opinion of the auditors and those people within the ministry, the commitment that we have with the agency is basically the same thing, a direct commitment as to what we are going to spend in advertising and in what months and in what areas of promotion we are going to use it.

Mr. Singer: Why doesn’t the minister tell the House about it?

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Leader of the Opposition? The hon. member for Scarborough West.

Mr. Lewis: We will allow Camp Associates to tender on our contract.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Scarborough West with a question.

ENVIRONMENTAL HEARING BOARD

Mr. Lewis: I have a question, Mr. Speaker, of the Minister of the Environment because he has been so anxious to jump in these last few days. May I ask him whether he has rejected the request from Disposal Services Ltd. for what would amount to a hearing under section 35 of the Environmental Protection Act, which would allow the bylaw to be waived so that Disposal Services could continue to establish large landfill sites in Vaughan township?

Hon. W. Newman (Minister of the Environment): Mr. Speaker, there will be an Environmental Hearing Board meeting next week on these matters, on the 20-acre site and the bylaw.

Mr. Lewis: On the 20-acre site and on the big proposed site -- the 900-acre site -- as well?

Hon. W. Newman: No, just on this portion of it. We are still waiting for engineering reports on the total overall picture.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: A supplementary: I wonder if the minister could tell us the status of that other great garbage commitment that his Environmental Hearing Board has made and that is in Hope township. Is he prepared to say what the government policy is on going forward with that or cancelling it? Hopefully it will cancel it?

Hon. W. Newman: As you know, the environmental hearing board has made its report --

Mr. R. F. Nixon: They made a recommendation.

Hon. W. Newman: They made a recommendation.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: That the CPR be granted the right.

Hon. W. Newman: Right. And we are now doing the necessary testing in that area. There are still more meetings to be held with the CPR officials and the municipal officials.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: A supplementary: Has the minister visited the site?

Hon. W. Newman: No, I haven’t visited that site. I have visited many garbage sites, though, in the province.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Is he going to visit this one?

Hon. W. Newman: I will be visiting a lot of them.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: He has been to a lot of Tory rallies in the past.

Mr. Lewis: Supplementary to the minister, Mr. Speaker: Would the minister consider suspending the intended plans for the Hope township site, for the Pickering township site and for the Vaughan township site, both in the transportation of public and private garbage? And would he take a look at the possibilities of alternatives for Metropolitan Toronto, with assistance from the public treasury, in the three- or four-year interim period before major recycling and reclamation can be undertaken, to locate that garbage in an area of the province, transported by rail if necessary, which would not cause such total disruption in those surrounding communities immediately adjacent to Metro? He has that authority under the Environmental Protection Act.

Hon. W. Newman: The total matter of waste disposal, of course, I’m very much concerned about and live with daily, but I’m not prepared at this point in time to withdraw all these applications, no. But we are certainly looking.

As you know, we have the programme Watts from Waste. We are also working on the engineering for a reclamation plant. We are looking for other means. Certainly in the long-range view we want to do away with the sites, but even with all those processes there still will be some waste that will have to be dealt with in the future.

Mr. E. R. Good (Waterloo North): A supplementary.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Waterloo North.

Mr. Good: Would the minister assure the Legislature that he will give only enough permits to handle the Metropolitan landfill problem until such time as there is a speed-up in the reclamation and recycling process within Metro -- which is five years late, incidentally, Mr. Speaker -- so that there won’t be permits given, which could carry on for 20 years more, for burying our garbage in the ground, which is what they are wanting to do?

Hon. W. Newman: We are quite anxious in this ministry to get away from long-term landfill sites.

Mr. Good: When did it change its policy? Overnight? Because that was not the previous policy.

Hon. W. Newman: No, I didn’t say it was --

Mr. R. F. Nixon: New minister, new policy, that’s all.

Mr. Good: That’s great.

Hon. W. Newman: There are many sites -- and I realize what the member is trying to say, that we want to look at the other programmes we have under way to try to find other ways of dealing with this matter.

Mr. D. M. Deacon (York Centre): A supplementary.

Mr. Good: The minister didn’t answer my question.

Mr. Deacon: In view of the fact that there are at least a score of well-proven recycling installations now in operation in Europe and in North America, could the minister not select one of these at least and get several of them immediately under construction, because it takes two years at the most to get proven plans into construction and in operation if they are proven processes? Would the minister undertake to do that and keep the limit on any landfill to three years, other than the refuse left over after recycling?

Hon. W. Newman: I must be quite honest. I am not that familiar with all the European situations at this point in time. As I said, we have engineering plans under way for reclamation plants now and --

Mr. Deacon: This is terrible.

Hon. W. Newman: At this point in time I am not prepared to say that we can lock into a three-year situation until we have these plans well along.

Mr. B. Newman (Windsor-Walkerville): Why doesn’t the minister take my bill --

Mr. Renwick: Mr. Speaker, by way of a supplementary question, has the hon. Minister of Industry and Tourism reported to the hon. Minister of the Environment about the discussions which he has been having with a firm from Italy on this question of garbage disposal and the mechanical equipment which, I understand, was quite acceptable to the Ministry of Industry and Tourism?

Hon. W. Newman: As a matter of fact I have been rather busy since I started this job. I haven’t really had a chance to talk to the Ministry of Industry and Tourism, though I plan to be meeting with them -- I believe it’s on Monday of this coming week.

Mr. Lewis: The minister hasn’t talked to him yet?

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Scarborough West.

FOOD PRICES

Mr. Lewis: A question, Mr. Speaker -- I have been looking for the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations. I can’t find him, but I see a facsimile over there so perhaps I could direct the question.

Mr. Good: Frankie Laine’s over there.

Mr. Lewis: What is the minister doing about his continued appraisal of supermarkets and retailers in his effort to watch the rise of food prices? Has he referred any other discrepancies or injustices that he thinks may have occurred to the federal food prices commission, and what has happened to that legislation which was hinted at in the last session, but not noted in this Throne Speech, which might give the consumers some protection from increasing food prices other than in the area of warranties and franchises, etc.?

Hon. J. T. Clement (Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations): Mr. Speaker, firstly I would like to thank the leader of the New Democratic Party for recognizing that I was here. I have been here two or three days and I am surprised he didn’t see me.

Mr. Lewis: No, he hasn’t been here; not in his seat he hasn’t.

Hon. Mr. Clement: I also welcome the comments referring to my Christmas present and I have a new shirt on today, too. I hope the fact that it’s a little on the red side has nothing to do with my new motif.

In any event, sir, referring to the question dealing with the food prices, yes, we are continuing to monitor them. We are also drafting the Business Practices Act to which I have made reference in the past. I hope to be able to introduce that legislation in this session of the House.

I have also had discussions with my counterpart in Ottawa, the Hon. Mr. Gray, insofar as food price increases are concerned. As the hon. leader knows, it is not only restricted to this province; the problem seems to exist, in fact, across the country and I anticipate that legislation will emanate from the federal people dealing with this particular matter.

I am sure the hon. leader is aware that a substantial number of prosecutions, I am advised, have already been initiated by the federal people as a result of the Prices Review Board’s investigations into food prices, which have been carried on over the past few months. Insofar as our proposing or undertaking some form of price control is concerned, I see that just cannot be effected and I would not, accordingly, make any such undertaking to the members of this House.

Mr. Lewis: A supplementary: Can the minister make public the monitoring of food price increases that he has in his ministry to give us a sense of where precisely it is occurring and who is responsible for it? Second, has he called the major supermarket chains into his office to justify to him or explain to him how they legitimize the return on investment which they have made over the last 18 months to two years, and to take a look at their balance sheets?

Hon. Mr. Clement: Mr. Speaker, no, I have not called the presidents of the supermarkets into my office to make that inquiry. We have taken a careful look at those publicly listed companies out of a matter of curiosity on our part. It is interesting, Mr. Speaker, in connection with one major supermarket that while at first blush it did have a particularly lucrative year in 1973, it appears that a substantial portion of earnings in that particular year for that particular company emanated from the sale of capital assets by way of land, and it appears a capital gain of some substance was realized.

We have no jurisdiction to invite them in. I am sure that if we did, they would come in and discuss it.

Insofar as the food monitoring is concerned, I propose to make those figures available to the public, again in the next week or two. I should point out to the House, Mr. Speaker, and to the hon. leader of the New Democratic Party, they are not particularly persuasive one way or the other in that the prices will fluctuate ever so slightly from week to week. There are no significant trends or leadership provided by any one company in any one particular period of time and the difference in terms of dollars and cents is rather minimal.

Mr. Lewis: The minister is being manipulated and ripped off and he is enjoying it. He likes watching this system work.

Mr. MacDonald: A supplementary question, Mr. Speaker: May I ask the minister what co-ordination, if any, there is between this work in his ministry and the work within the Ministry of Agriculture and Food where it monitors a food basket? Why is it that both this ministry and the Ministry of Agriculture, in reference to the food basket monitoring, operate so secretly? Why isn’t this information out to the public so that it may be of some value?

Hon. Mr. Clement: Mr. Speaker, as I have indicated, I will make that available. There is nothing secretive about it but I don’t think the hon. member for York South will really be turned on if he notices that at supermarket X our food basket cost $19.26 and at its competitor it was $19.31 for the week. I don’t think that will do anything for him.

Mr. Lewis: Let the minister ask himself what that means.

Hon. Mr. Clement: There’s nothing secretive about it. We have worked closely with the Ministry of Agriculture, particularly the food council which also does the monitoring. We are trying to ascertain at all times, in our role, whether any legislation of this province is being breached by any of the supermarkets. The member and I can sit here and talk all day about the spiralling costs and that sort of thing, but I ask him exactly under what legislation we would move?

Interjections by hon. members.

Hon. Mr. Clement: Unless we see that existing legislation is being breached there is nothing we can do at the provincial level.

Interjections by hon. members.

Hon. Mr. Clement: We have had discussions with the Food Prices Review Board people on noticing practices that we don’t think are in the best interests of consumers; and they have shared that concern and in fact have initiated certain prosecutions under the Combines Investigation Act.

Mr. Lewis: The prices are totally provincial.

Mr. MacDonald: A supplementary, Mr. Speaker: Is the minister familiar with research paper No. 14, prepared for the farm income committee by William Janssen et al, in which he, Janssen, documents that this manipulation of prices by supermarkets is part of their regular game? It is part of the pattern of operation; and if they are fooling the minister and he can’t do anything about it, doesn’t that underline the need for legislation that will catch these procedures?

Mr. Lewis: An excess profits tax; the right to roll back prices.

Hon. Mr. Clement: I have not seen it.

Mr. Deans: I have one more supplementary.

Mr. MacDonald: The minister ought to read that report; it is a very good document.

Hon. Mr. Stewart: He will be able to implement that in Manitoba because he is now the deputy.

Mr. MacDonald: He is indeed.

Hon. Mr. Stewart: But he hasn’t done a thing about it.

Mr. MacDonald: He has, you bet he has.

Hon. Mr. Stewart: He hasn’t done a thing about it; not a thing.

Mr. MacDonald: They know about their food basket; there are weekly announcements about the discrepancies between what farmers get and consumer prices.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order, order.

Mr. Deans: Thank you. Mr. Speaker, is the minister satisfied there is in fact no collusion between the supermarkets in order to make sure that the average food basket does maintain a level which they consider to be reasonable but I consider to be exorbitant?

Mr. Lewis: Sure there is collusion; there is collusion.

Hon. Mr. Clement: I can’t speak to any such discussion as it exists, in reality or as alleged, between the supermarkets. I point out to the hon. member that under the Combines Investigation Act if that type of practice persists there might well be prosecution emanating from that level.

Mr. Lewis: Well then, the minister should examine it.

Hon. Mr. Clement: So I’m not privy to any discussions between the heads of supermarkets, no.

Mr. Deans: One final question.

Mr. Speaker: The hon member for Kitchener. There have been three supplementaries. Was it a supplementary?

Mr. Breithaupt: No, it wasn’t.

Mr. Speaker: I’m sorry. Then the hon. member for Wentworth may ask a supplementary.

Mr. Deans: One final supplementary question: Is the minister aware of the statement by certain supermarkets that they do indeed check their competitors’ prices before establishing a price on their own shelves for similar products?

Hon. Mr. Clement: Mr. Speaker, yes I’m aware of that statement having been made.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Scarborough West. Does he have a further question?

Mr. Lewis: No, I don’t think so.

Mr. Speaker: No. The hon. member for Kitchener.

PUBLIC SERVICE ACT CONFLICT

Mr. Breithaupt: I have a question, Mr. Speaker, of the Chairman of the Management Board of Cabinet. As it would appear that in 1971-1972, Dr. Douglas Wright received some $39,863 as chairman of the Committee on University Affairs, can the Chairman look into section 33 of the Public Service Act and advise us if the additional payments of $34,980 per diem for work on the Commission on Post-Secondary Education, and $23,935 in expense moneys received as well by Dr. Wright, do not perhaps come into conflict with the requirement for a public servant not to engage in any work or business undertaking other than that for which he is paid as a public servant?

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Mr. Speaker, I will certainly have a look at the question the hon. member raises. I’m satisfied at the moment that it met criteria, but I’ll have it examined and reply.

Mr. Breithaupt: Perhaps the minister on the same point could inquire as to benefits likely to have been received for consulting work done on the structural steel contract at Ontario Place.

Mr. Lewis: A supplementary, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: All right.

Mr. Lewis: Who was the commissioner who received 27 per cent of the per diems and 47 per cent of the expense allowance indicated in the auditor’s report; the commissioner on the Post-Secondary Education Commission? That was it, was it not?

Hon. Mr. Winkler: I’m not aware of the detail the hon. member is inquiring about but I shall find out and reply to him.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Sudbury.

EFFECT OF FREIGHT RATE CUT

Mr. M. C. Germa (Sudbury): Mr. Speaker, I have a question of the Minister of Transportation and Communications. As it is not apparent that any benefits have accrued to the consumer as a result of the freight rate reduction programme into northern Ontario, can the minister cite any one specific consumer item which has had a price reduction on account of the freight rate reduction programme by the Northern Transportation Commission?

Hon. J. R. Rhodes (Minister of Transportation and Communications): No, Mr. Speaker, I can’t cite any specific commodity, but I can say that there will be a new announcement very shortly. As you know, there was an experiment in this area. It did not perhaps come forward as we had hoped it would. It has been reassessed in connection with a group of citizens in the northeastern part of the province, and a new programme will be brought forth very shortly. But I can’t mention any specific commodity at this time.

Mr. Germa: Supplementary, Mr. Speaker: Could the minister also give us the details of the total revenue loss to the Ontario Northland Transportation Commission on account of the programme and tell us who is the greatest benefactor of these lost revenues?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Mr. Speaker, I will attempt to get that information for the hon. member.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Downsview is next.

COMMUNICATIONS-6 INC.

Mr. Singer: Mr. Speaker, I have a question of the Minister of Natural Resources. Could he explain to us the basis on which payments in the amount of $59,578 were made to a firm of consultants and writers on public relations to manage the information and public relations programmes for historical parks in that year? This was done without the prior approval of the deputy minister of the department; and there were apparently payments made to a firm called Communications-6 Inc. Who were they, who found them and on whose authority was this expenditure made?

Hon. L. Bernier (Minister of Natural Resources): Mr. Speaker, this information, as the member is very much aware, just came to my attention late yesterday afternoon. I have asked the deputy for a full report, and I will have that for the member just as quickly as I can. I might say that this particular contract has come to an end, and we have called tenders for a new public relations officer for the Huronia area.

Mr. Singer: By way of supplementary, could the minister shed a little light on who Communications-6 Inc. is?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: No, I can’t, Mr. Speaker, but I will get the information.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for High Park.

PREVENTIVE MEDICINE

Mr. M. Shulman (High Park): A question of the Minister of Health, Mr. Speaker: Can the minister explain why his department has lost its interest in preventive medicine? Specifically, if you will recall, some time ago the department announced with great fanfare that OHIP was going to pay for well-female examinations every six months. A big press release was issued, and yet very quietly the department has issued a notice to all physicians saying it no longer will pay for this type of preventive medicine. Are they no longer interested in the department in the prevention of cancer?

Hon. F. S. Miller (Minister of Health): Mr. Speaker, no matter what crib notes I get, each day he asks another question that is not on them.

Mr. Breithaupt: That is the plan.

Mr. Lewis: It is carefully worked out. We know the notes the minister gets; we get copies of the notes and ask other questions.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: We have a cute Minister of Health.

Hon. Mr. Miller: Cute in the literal term or just visually?

Mr. MacDonald: What is the minister’s answer to the question?

Hon. Mr. Miller: I would not say that the ministry has lost its interest in either the prevention of cancer or, of course, preventive medicine. I would think that the conference of health ministers of Canada and of the provinces of Canada, held in Ottawa last month, in fact pointed out how important this measure is and how the focus of the health care programme has been too much upon treating illnesses once they arise and not enough on the prevention.

I can only say that I am extremely keen and very much aware that in this economy we have today, where we can afford the luxuries of life that in fact create poor health, one of our real problems is getting people even to care about keeping themselves in condition and taking some of the measures that are necessary to safeguard their own health.

Mr. Deans: What about those who have the incentive?

Mr. Shulman: As a supplementary, Mr. Speaker: In view of the minister’s fine sentiments, will he resume the programme which he abandoned so recently of paying for well-female examinations every six months, which the second former Minister of Health announced with such a great advance flurry and which has been dropped?

Hon. Mr. Miller: Well, it seems to me this was a subject of a lot of controversy in the press a short while back. The controversy was a medical controversy, not a political one, and that was the question of the value of some of the tests that are involved in that particular examination --

Mr. Shulman: The Pap smears.

Hon. Mr. Miller: Yes, the Pap smear test specifically. As I recall, there was a real war between different factions of the medical profession as to whether in fact the Pap smear test --

Mr. Lewis: Oh, surely not?

Hon. Mr. Miller: I am recalling only what the medical profession said.

Mr. Lewis: No, I don’t think he is -- not the Pap test.

Mr. Shulman: A further supplementary, if I may. Is the minister suggesting that there is a difference of opinion in the medical profession as to the value of Pap smears? Is that what he believes? Is that what he really believes?

Hon. Mr. Miller: I have found many differences of opinion in the medical profession.

Mr. Shulman: The minister is in bad trouble.

An hon. member: So is the medical profession.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for York-Forest Hill is next.

INTERMEDIATE CAPACITY TRANSIT SYSTEM

Mr. P. G. Givens (York-Forest Hill): I have a question of the Minister of Transportation and Communications: In view of the statement, reported in this morning’s newspaper, of Mr. Richard Soberman, who advocates the replacement of the Scarborough Expressway by LRT instead of the Krauss-Maffei system -- because he said that this will work now, and we want something that will work now and not in the future -- would the minister reconsider the complete GO-Urban policy of the ministry with a view to accentuating the incoming of light rapid transit because it is more efficient, it is of lesser cost, it is demonstrably better and it is almost immediately available?

Mr. Deans: If he opts for something that will work now and not in the future, he is dead.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Mr. Speaker, I have not read Mr. Soberman’s total comments. I did hear some reporting on it last night. It seems to me that he didn’t compare it with the Krauss-Maffei; he simply said that it was possible to put it in in place of the expressway and he has stated that this is what he thought should be done.

As to what is the best way of handling the urban transit problem and the best type of method to be used, that is a matter of opinion. At this time I’m not about to say that we will change the whole direction because of Mr. Soberman’s statement; not at all.

Mr. Lewis: A supplementary, Mr. Speaker; Mr. Soberman’s statement in effect says that the Krauss-Maffei system, through the southeast as the government had envisaged it, should be abandoned as should the expressway and that light rail transit, available within two to three years, be implemented along a specific right of way. Gradually the Krauss-Maffei system is being dismembered point by point. The minister has only the mid-Toronto corridor left out of the original five lanes. Surely, he would use Soberman’s report as a basis to indicate to the House and the public that he will reduce the overall amount of money committed to Krauss-Maffei and perhaps consider its abandonment?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Mr. Speaker, I don’t think that the government’s policy in this matter is going to be dictated by a statement made by Mr. Soberman --

Mr. Lewis: It is not just Soberman.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: -- which in effect is a report to the Metropolitan Toronto council which hasn’t even decided what it is going to do with it. Perhaps we should wait and find out what Metro’s thinking is on it, initially, before we start making statements based on his thoughts.

Mr. Lewis: Metro clearly has purposely discarded the report.

An hon. member: Right.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Windsor West.

NEGOTIATIONS ON BEHALF OF COMMUNITY COLLEGES

Mr. Bounsall: A question of the Chairman of the Management Board of Cabinet, Mr. Speaker, with reference to the negotiations and conversations that have taken place between the government and the Civil Service Association of Ontario on behalf of the community college faculties: Who, in his opinion, would best decide which items are negotiable when the public service tribunal under Judge Little or the arbitration tribunal under Judge Anderson decide they don’t have the power to decide which items are negotiable? Should it be through the courts or by reference back to the Legislature of Ontario?

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Mr. Speaker, at the moment this board has been legally constituted; the matter at this moment in time is in the hands of Judge Anderson and I would leave it to his adjudication.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for York Centre.

Mr. Bounsall: A supplementary, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: All right, a supplementary.

Mr. Bounsall: It isn’t a question of leaving items to Judge Anderson’s decision or not. My question was, what is the minister going to do when Judge Anderson says he cannot decide which items are negotiable? Where will that decision be made in the event that that decision from Judge Anderson is forthcoming?

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Since that board has not yet met, Mr. Speaker, it is a hypothetical question which I do not wish to answer.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for York Centre.

WITHDRAWAL OF TEACHERS’ SERVICES

Mr. Deacon: A question of the Provincial Secretary for Social Development, Mr. Speaker: With the 12-to-8 decision last night of the York county board to hire new teachers, will the government intervene under the appropriate section -- it is section 12(1)(1) of the Ministry of Education Act -- if it has evidence that a substantial percentage of the registered voters of York wish it to establish a trusteeship and call for a new election of trustees?

Hon. M. Birch (Provincial Secretary for Social Development): Mr. Speaker, the only comment that I’d be prepared to make at the moment is that the Minister of Education (Mr. Wells) is currently holding conversations this morning with those people.

Mr. Deacon: A further supplementary: May I ask the provincial secretary to consider this legislation? I would also ask the provincial secretary to pass on to the minister my question whether, if the government concludes the existing legislation does not permit intervention in the form I’m suggesting, will the government introduce such legislation, because if the voters want the board’s actions to be overruled we should be sure they have that right to do so, because I fear this whole matter is going to escalate far beyond the regions of York?

Mr. Speaker: Order! Question!

Mr. Lewis: It will escalate to compulsory arbitration.

Mr. Speaker: Any further response to the question?

Hon. Mrs. Birch: Mr. Speaker, I will be very happy to pass along these comments.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for High Park is next.

ALLEGED MAFIA ACTIVITIES

Mr. Shulman: I have a question of the Attorney General, Mr. Speaker. Is the Attorney General aware that this past week in this city a certain Billy Ginsberg, a stock promoter, had his house blown up and his partner, one Bernie Frankel, was beaten with a baseball bat right in the middle of Bay St. for refusing to pay certain moneys to the Mafia?

Hon. R. Welch (Provincial Secretary for Justice and Attorney General): No, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Shulman: Mr. Speaker, if the minister is not aware, would he be willing to make inquiries and take some action, because obviously while the government has got rid of the crime in the construction industry, it still hasn’t touched the basic problem of organized crime in this city?

Hon. Mr. Welch: Mr. Speaker, I would be very happy to look into the matter referred to by the hon. member.

Mr. Lewis: Can the Attorney General imagine a beating on Bay St.?

Mr. R. F. Nixon: In the middle of Bay St.

Mr. Speaker: The oral question period has now expired.

Petitions.

Presenting reports.

Hon. Mr. Stewart presented the annual report of the Crop Insurance Commission of Ontario, 1972-1973, and the annual report of the Agricultural Research Institute of Ontario.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Mr. Speaker, I beg leave to table the annual Ontario Mineral Review for 1973. If I may, I will make a few comments on this particular report with your permission. You are aware this is a very early publication of this summary of the mining activity in the Province of Ontario. It is a long-standing tradition within the old Department of Mines and Northern Affairs and this has been carried on into the new Ministry of Natural Resources.

This particular report has gained acceptance as an authoritative reference work of value to the industry and to the government and to educational institutions, but it is always a pleasure to report on the achievements of the mining industry in this province. It is even more of a pleasure than usual to comment on the result of the past year, when production of minerals soared to an all-time record of $1.779 billion, nearly $245 million better than the total for 1972. Translated into terms of the entire provincial economy, this means that mineral production each year amounts to about 3.7 per cent of the gross provincial product.

Mr. Deans: What did we get in taxes?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: This is surely a sector of our economic life which should not go unnoticed. These and other facts -- some not generally known -- concerning this major industry are contained in this particular review. The second part of the review deals with some of the facets of the Ministry of Natural Resources’ operations in which I am sure the public will be interested.

Mr. Deans: How much more did we get in taxes?

Mr. Speaker: Motions.

Hon. Mr. Winkler moves that Mr. Rowe, the member for the electoral district of Northumberland, and Mr. Hodgson, the member for the electoral district of York North, be appointed chairman and deputy chairman respectively of the committees of the whole House for the present session.

Motion agreed to.

Mr. Speaker: Introduction of bills.

Orders of the day.

Clerk of the House: The first order, resuming the adjourned debate on the motion for an address in reply to the speech of the Honourable the Lieutenant Governor at the opening of the session.

THRONE SPEECH DEBATE

Mr. R. F. Nixon (Leader of the Opposition): Mr. Speaker, I want my first comments to be directed to you, sir, and to say how happy we all are to see you back in that chair, looking your old self and full of fire, and to assure you of our complete confidence in your ability to govern our debates with justice and fairness. We reserve the right, of course, to amend that opinion as events require. However, I recall to your mind, sir, that it wasn’t this side that challenged your ruling before Christmas.

Mr. R. F. Ruston (Essex-Kent): Where is he now?

Mr. E. R. Good (Waterloo North): Look what happened to him.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: You have had, more or less, to suffer this sort of challenge and harassment from all sides. Still, it is our opinion you do it with grace and ability and we are very glad, sir, to see you have made a full recovery and are back with us in your position of importance and authority.

I would like, sir, to state as well that all of us are sorry to see the end of the term of our present Lieutenant Governor. There will be an occasion, surely, when this can be expressed by other members as well and I am very glad to see that the Premier (Mr. Davis) has taken some initiative in this regard. It is very fitting indeed.

I feel a special responsibility in this connection since His Honour resides in my area, although not directly in my constituency, and he has been associated in his former political life at least with me and my father. Ross Macdonald was first elected to Parliament in 1935 and as you are aware has had many high posts of political responsibility with the government of Canada and in the Senate. His term as Lieutenant Governor has really shown the strength and breadth of the Governor as a man. I know of no person in that position in our history who is more loved and revered and honoured in all parts of the province and right here in this House.

I want to speak briefly about the situation that concerns us pertaining to education. The newspapers and radio reports inform us that a large group of citizens from the York area is going to come to Queen’s Park today and no doubt will be coming within the next few minutes. I feel, sir, that the seriousness of the situation cannot be overestimated. It appears that the government, particularly the Minister of Education (Mr. Wells), has run out of any viable initiative and although we are told by the provincial secretary that he is meeting with groups from that area at the present time, the fact remains that the government’s policy is seen to be chaotic. It has really led to a fiasco in which the schools in that area have been closed for five weeks in an effort to allow negotiations, hopefully conducted in good faith, to come to agreement or some acceptable fruition.

I have had an opportunity, along with the hon. member for Port Arthur (Mr. Foulds) to visit the area on the invitation of the striking teachers, to express our views to them and hear their own. I can’t help feeling that in the circumstances in York it is difficult to put all the blame for the protracted strike on one side or the other. I feel that the trustees have an incorrect understanding of their elected and elective responsibility. They somehow feel that they are saving the rest of the province from the encroachment of teacher authority. I get a feeling they have a fear that they must not give in to the demands of the teachers and, as a result of their intransigence and, in my opinion, their lack of understanding of the situation, the schools have remained closed for this very long period of time.

In talking to the teachers they have eight specific areas on which they are basing their strike; some of them are more significant than others. Very specifically, they are demanding a say in working conditions and specifically in the pupil-teacher ratio. In my opinion, this is the crux of the problem; the trustees feel that allowing the teachers to take part in that sort of negotiation would hand over what they consider to be their sole responsibility, that is the power to run the schools.

The problem that I see is that the trustees don’t realize that the community, certainly the members of this Legislature, the Minister of Education himself, have stated categorically that the teachers, through their professional organizations and individually through their negotiating teams, do have a responsibility to participate and negotiate the conditions of work. The fact that the trustees have been unwilling to accept that is perhaps more than anything else the single rock upon which the negotiations have foundered so far.

I must be frank as well and say that in our visits to the teachers in the area, and I believe we had an opportunity to speak to all 670 of them and hear questions and comments from a good many of them, we found that one thing that does not appear in the negotiations was very much in their mind. I refer, and it’s rather unfortunate I have to refer to this, to their lack of confidence in the ability of the director of education himself. Certainly it is not my place nor my desire to be critical of him but simply to report to you, sir, that he does not seem to have the confidence of the teachers; yet this is a matter which apparently has not come up for any considerable public discussion.

The trustees on the other hand have, in my view, failed to come to grips with the very real problems the teachers have indicated clearly are the negotiating points. I refer specifically, as I say, to the right the teachers feel they must have, not only in York but elsewhere in this province, to negotiate, the terms of employment of course but also the conditions of work. This seems to be the shoal beyond which we must pass if a settlement is going to be achieved.

I would call on the Minister of Education to make it clear, if in fact he has not already made it clear, that we are going to insist on that being a term to be negotiated; and that the trustees must simply accept it, because it is going to be and is already stated as the policy of not only the government of Ontario and the Ministry of Education but the Legislature.

The situation that we presently have is approaching chaos in York. The fact that the trustees are now going to attempt, based on a decision of a divided vote taken last night, to fill the vacant positions by hiring other teachers is completely irresponsible and untenable. I don’t believe there is any possibility that this can come about, since in fact the whole system has been brought to a close by the inability of the trustees and the teachers to reach a reasonable agreement.

The minister must, of course, take a personal responsibility for this since his inadequate policies in Bill 274, following forward in Bill 275, have led to this chaotic situation. The principle put forward by the government, opposed by the two opposition parties, was that in no circumstances would the schools close. Well the schools are closed, but the unfortunate aspect is that the minister has not used his authority, or at least his good offices, to require that the two sides do sit down together, not just through their negotiating legal representation, and in the presence of the minister continue to negotiate until a settlement is reached. I believe that putting this off for such a protracted period in the hands of the negotiators for the Ministry of Labour is inadequate under these circumstances; the minister has shown a substantial failure in his ability in this regard.

The government’s policy has been knocked into a cocked hat. It was unacceptable to begin with and even they have withdrawn from it. Just a week ago the Premier himself said that perhaps even the concept of compulsory arbitration is subject to review, as certainly it should be. It’s going to be nothing but a continuing difficulty for them as they attempt to impose it on a broader and broader area of the people in this province.

The teachers of the community colleges are finding it completely unacceptable and it was ridiculous in the extreme to lump the teachers in the community colleges in with the new civil service negotiating procedures statute that was passed by this House now some months ago. To require, by law, that these people must attend to their classroom duties and their right to withdraw their services be taken away is unconscionable and inadmissible and is going to be nothing but a problem for the government in the future.

I would predict from the way things are going now that there will be an illegal strike in the community colleges. Once again, while we are all prepared to say that this is unfortunate, still if those classrooms close, it will be because of, as much as anything, not the inability of the government to bargain with the teachers concerned but because of the requirement of a tribunal imposing a settlement which the teachers do not feel is in their best interests.

The same can be said for the hospital workers -- that while we, on this side, are prepared to support compulsory arbitration for an essential service like hospitals, it is meaningless, of course, and unfair in the extreme, if it is going to be imposed at the same time that spending ceilings directly associated with the salaries of the working staff involved are going to be imposed ahead of all other considerations.

It is interesting to note that two government ministries have inaugurated studies into the inequities in the hospital workers’ situation. The regrettable thing is that this simply postpones a rational and just settlement as it would pertain to the problems that the hospital workers have experienced over so many years. We have seen an illegal strike in the hospital situation a year ago last summer. There was no final conclusion there. It was simply an embarrassment for everyone concerned since we believe that the law should be respected but, in a case such as this where government regulation rather imposes itself on any concept of fairness, it is a serious matter indeed.

The Minister of Education has the responsibility in his hands completely. It has been suggested that if the school board cannot function, a petition in the local area might very well be used to ask the minister to intervene with his undoubted powers and directly. We, on this side, would hope that that is unnecessary.

There was an indication last week that the members of the board of trustees were thinking of resigning in a body. That too, surely, is a very extreme situation when the solution lies within their hands. If the minister were to indicate that his ceilings, which have been disrupting the negotiations both there and elsewhere, can be moderated to settle this strike, then surely this is what must be done.

We do not believe that the teachers, as a group, are so lacking in moderation that they are not prepared to come to some settlement somewhere between the two extreme salary demands. After all, settlement has been achieved in many other situations similar to this. But I would say that the minister owes it to the students in the area, as well as to the parents who are going to be talking to him, no doubt, outside the Legislature a bit later, to intervene personally to see that the two sides sit down in each other’s presence and to keep at it until a settlement is reached, because surely one is possible. We will not admit that a situation could develop where a settlement is not possible if the minister is persuaded that his ceilings must be at least moderated in this particular situation and that he must take a personal position in that regard.

Mr. Speaker, I wanted to say something about that at the beginning of my remarks because it is a matter of great urgency and pertains to high policy that the government has put forward over a number of years, a policy associated with the removal of the right to strike and the freedom of the individual in this regard which, I believe, they now see to be unacceptable. We have two policy ministers here this morning. It is very good of them to stay around and I would hope that they are in a position, perhaps, to indicate to their colleagues that, surely an amendment to that policy is required.

Mr. J. F. Foulds (Port Arthur): Two practising ministers.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: You know, certain things have been happening of substantial importance in this regard and it seems to me that the Premier himself -- although he is not here this morning, and I regret that and I’m sure he does too -- the Premier himself is carefully searching his alternatives to find a political stance which is more acceptable to the people of the province and perhaps more acceptable even to his supporters in this Legislature.

We have been extremely interested in reports that have indicated that the private public opinion polling and sampling organization funded by the Conservative Party has been making regular reports to the Premier and the government on these matters week by week. There was every indication that during the problems with the teachers and the school boards before Christmas that the sampling organization -- I believe it is based in Detroit -- had indicated to the Premier that he and the Minister of Education had the high ground and that the people said, “Sure, put it to the teachers. They get too much money, they don’t work hard enough, and they are getting too big for their boots.” Somehow or other they took that kind of advice much too seriously and there has been a backlash across this community which indicates that the people are substantially and seriously displeased with the inadequacies in government policy in that connection.

It is interesting when you hear the Premier waffle on his positions. You can almost think that the day before somebody would phone him up -- and we wouldn’t suggest that it was Dalton Camp Associates, or anybody like that -- and say, “Gosh, this week things don’t look quite as good. Bill. Maybe you had better moderate that a little bit.” It seems to me that policy is largely being made by the responses from the public opinion polling organizations that privately report, but another indication is that the Premier has found himself personally in receipt of probably the poorest support across the province that he has ever experienced.

It was interesting, I think, last fall to read in the Toronto Star -- it wasn’t a private poll and it wasn’t a poll that actually inspired me in all of its particulars but there was a poll published then that indicated that only 28 per cent of the people of the province were satisfied with the leadership and administrative abilities of the Premier, and I suppose it was a response to what they thought of the Premier as an individual. We have heard, and it has been reliably reported, on the CBC no less, that a private poll is now available to the Conservatives indicating almost the identical levels of support, or lack of it in this case, for the Premier and his leadership in the province and in the party. This has surely galvanized him into the kind of action which we have seen in the last few weeks.

Mr. Foulds: That is not galvanized action.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I tell you when the Premier and his policy ministers, who have always got time to travel around the --

Mr. J. R. Breithaupt (Kitchener): New awareness!

Mr. R. F. Nixon: -- province with him although they may not have time to come into the Legislature and listen to the debate, the Premier goes out weekend after weekend, they hire a hall or get one donated, since they usually indicate that they want to do it as economically as possible, and there he is every Saturday morning talking to the citizens and listening to them. And believe me I will be the last --

Mr. J. A. Renwick (Riverdale): That includes asking him questions.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I would be the last to criticize him for doing that. I just wish his responsibility carried over into the feeling that he should attend the Legislature for these debates, which he obviously considers to be rather routine and non-productive.

Mr. Foulds: The only thing that is galvanized is the garbage cans.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I tell you that this is a response and he is sitting down with his coterie of political advisers and they are saying, “Okay, we are going to have to go to Barrie this Saturday. We’ve got to get to Kingston the next Saturday, London the next, and we are going to go up into the north,” and so on. Good politics; you would almost think that an election campaign was on, because I notice that the leader of the NDP is pretty active around the province as well and, by God, so is the leader of the Liberal Party.

Mr. J. P. MacBeth (York West): About time, since those guys got the new cars.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: And I would say to you, Mr. Speaker, in your other capacity, that your own activities have been noted in bringing to the attention of the citizens and the taxpayers of this province the substantial inequities in the policies of the present government, and that you, sir, yourself have done this in your political capacity in a most admirable and effective way.

Mr. Renwick: He is the Speaker, nonpartisan.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Oh yes, well I was talking about his other capacity, of course.

Mr. Breithaupt: His other hat.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: That’s right. So the one response to the information that has come to the Premier that he is failing in maintaining this kind of support is to bring him into the House. I tell you that that is much appreciated since this debate, in my view and in his I know, is one of substantial importance, where in my view policies of the government can be influenced, affected and changed, and where he owes a duty to his high office to attend. He is now surrounded by five cabinet ministers, so this is becoming a great occasion indeed; and I hope that I will live up to those expectations.

His second response was to realize that the perception of his cabinet and himself across the province was that somehow or other the control that the people had come to expect from his predecessors had been lost; the control of the leader over the party, the control of the Premier over the government.

Hon. W. G. Davis (Premier): How about the Leader of the Opposition’s control over his party?

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Well, Mr. Speaker, I don’t seem to be bothered with problems of controlling the party. We work together for the good of us all; and it seems to me to be working very effectively indeed.

Hon. Mr. Davis: The majority of his party voted against him.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: So the Premier says: “Phase two is to shake up -- “

Mr. S. Lewis (Scarborough West): If he wants to talk about problems of control, he can talk to me.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: “ -- this gang of scalawags and to dismiss from the cabinet those who are seen to be ineffectual and put in their place those who perhaps can try again.”

Mr. M. Gaunt (Huron-Bruce): And somebody disagreed and somebody didn’t.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: That’s it. Well, I don’t want to spend a lot of time talking about the cabinet changes, other than to probably express a personal view about one or two of them.

I was very sorry indeed to see the former Minister of Transportation and Communications (Mr. Carton) let’s say dismissed. He is sitting now up in the back row there, happier than he has been for a long time. And to tell you the truth, Mr. Speaker, I look forward to hearing him take part in the debate later this session, because as a private member his contributions to the general debates were probably among the best that came from any side.

Mr. Lewis: Agreed, with one exception.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I can remember on one occasion he used his very persuasive style to persuade the former Premier to make adequate compensation and adequate financing to the residents who had lost their rights and their privacy along the expanded 401.

He somehow lost his fire when he came down to the front desk and appeared once again to be subject to the dictation of his boss. Now that he is back in the back row, I think that we may be treated once again to perhaps some more independent expressions of his opinions.

I thought perhaps one of the most fatuous editorial comments that was made about the cabinet changes was in reference to the Minister of Transportation and Communications. It said he was fired because he had approved too many expressways; that the Premier dismissed him to show once and for all and for everyone to see that there were going to be no more expressways, and that it was the Premier’s wish.

Hon. Mr. Davis: Is the Leader of the Opposition still in favour of Spadina?

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I should not perhaps paraphrase the Globe and Mail editorial quite so freely, but that was the concept. I have a feeling that the decision to go ahead with Highway 402 was not dictated by anybody, except maybe the Minister of Agriculture and Food (Mr. Stewart), assisted by his now parliamentary secretary and certain others -- that the decision to go ahead with -- what is it? -- 406 down in the St. Catharines area, was not a decision made autocratically by the Minister of Transportation and Communications, but simply a political decision made on ballots by the Tories in the area.

It may well be that the former Minister of Transportation and Communications was not prepared to accept the new political reality and that the time has come to start spending some money in the north. I agree wholeheartedly that the time to spend money in the north is now and, as a matter of fact, politically the government is doing the right thing. The people in the north have suffered for a long period of time from an inadequate share of the transportation budget, and surely, the changes in that regard are going to be of great importance.

The second former cabinet minister I want to deal with just briefly is the former Attorney General (Mr. Bales), who was subject to a great deal of criticism in the House for his land holdings in the Pickering area. Certainly we criticized him for saying that if there were profits there he would give them to charity, but I recall to you, sir, that the former Attorney General himself stated publicly that he was prepared to resign if his boss felt that there was a conflict of interest of any substance or concern there. He was supported at the time by the Premier. I felt that under those circumstances that the former Attorney General should have resigned, just as the present Minister of Energy (Mr. McKeough) resigned under similar circumstances.

It has been a tradition in our democratic process that those resignations are usually followed sometimes by a by-election or a general election in which the people assess the charges themselves and in the best of all courts, the democratic court, the people give a judgement. In the case of the Minister of Energy, he has made his way back without such a judgement, but probably the member for York Mills should have resigned under those circumstances, rather than wait and be cut off in the ignominious way in which he was retired from the cabinet just a few days ago.

I know that the Premier expressed publicly the problem that he faced under those circumstances. I’m sure he was remembering the fact that the former Attorney General is a man of integrity and a fine man.

Mr. L. M. Reilly (Eglinton): A fine man.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I’m sure he even remembered that in his political capacity the former Attorney General was chairman of the “Bill Davis for Leader” campaign in Toronto and York. Now we find the former Attorney General up in the back row contemplating his future, probably in private practice.

It’s too bad, but I suppose the Premier felt, if his support was down to 28 per cent and the experts were telling him that his cabinet was seen as a collection of people who were prepared to live with conflict of interest, who were prepared to defend contracts going to companies who had given substantial political donations; and that the cabinet was prepared to allow large contracts to be awarded without any reasonable tendering procedures at all, that somehow or other it had to be changed and turned around.

I’m not so sure that he has done this. He fired five. Let’s say five are no longer in the cabinet. The former Minister of Correctional Services (Mr. Apps), the Lady Byng award winner, had indicated quite clearly that he was not prepared to run again, but the Premier jumped at the chance to get him out of there. You remember Syl always thought he was going to be minister of youth. It was too bad in many respects that he never had a chance to show what he could do in preparing programmes and having them accepted by the young people in the province.

He was brought into the cabinet in the Correctional Services ministry, which is kind of a passing-out ministry. The present minister, the former Minister of Health (Mr. Potter), says that he is going into that ministry for a rest. Surely that’s a strange way to approach this high responsibility, but I noticed as I glanced over to the former Minister of Health during question period that he was relaxing and enjoying it, as his colleagues were attempting to explain why large advertising budgets are still being paid out without any contract and so on.

Hon. Mr. Davis: Just like in Ottawa.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: The Premier says just like in Ottawa. If he thinks he is somehow destroying the argument by saying that, then he is pretty naive, because if they are doing the same thing in Ottawa, then they are serious rip-off artists just like this government.

Mr. Ruston: That is right.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I’ll tell you this, Mr. Speaker, when we open the newspapers and see these tremendous ads about a fair share for the taxpayers of Ontario, we realize that the spending machine is starting a role begun by Bob Macaulay who is retained at -- what? $70 an hour -- by the government to advise on energy policy. It is really the same old advice that he gave back in 1962 when he said, “Let’s get into the advertising business.” What did they call it? You know, the hippopotamus.

Mr. V. M. Singer (Downsview): Oh, yes.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: He said, “Let’s have a big advertising programme. Let’s rent all the billboards. Let’s take the full page ads. Let’s have four colours on the television. Who is to stop us?”

Wasn’t Bob Macaulay the one who said that? And now we see the advertising by Ontario. That was it. Now it’s a fair share Ontario. It’s almost like the new deal but fair share goes pretty well.

Mr. Breithaupt: More like the old deal.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: The thing is, Mr. Speaker, that we have seen this ever since Macaulay thought about it for the election of 1963 -- it happened in 1967 and 1971, and now we are building up to the 1975 -- where, in the guise of informing the citizens and taxpayers about government policy, they simply spend the citizens’ money in self-aggrandizement and political propaganda. That’s exactly what is happening, and the fact that Dalton Camp Associates gets $1,250,000 without a contract or any agreement --

Hon. Mr. Davis: They don’t get it. They don’t get it.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: -- simply confirms to me, sir, as I am sure it does to you, that this government in its policy is directed by the public opinion polls that are fed to the Premier week by week. We can see the backing and filling that comes as he receives them. He is concerned that his personal support in the province, we are told, is down to 28 per cent -- I wish I could report something as dramatic on the other side -- so he shakes up the cabinet, dismisses his old friends, brings in a bunch of new people who are untried and who are going to be failures in turn.

Hon. Mr. Davis: No. Great ministers.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Then we turn to the Speech from the Throne, which is a third sort of level of defence: “What can I do to restore the confidence and the good feeling in ‘good old Bill’ from Brampton?” I believe that even on this level there is another serious failure. I listened with care to the reading of the speech, I have since examined it very carefully, and I have found that it is substantially insignificant.

Let me be fair. I think the idea of a prescription drug plan for pensioners is great. I think it is a programme that is going to be supported on all sides. The concept of an environmental hearing board is one that is important and we will give it the support it deserves if in fact there is an objective hearing on the large programmes that the government brings forward which are interfering with the environment so seriously. But in general it does not come to grips with the problems of inflation and the cost of living, it does not come to grips with the problems of provision of housing and land-use planning; it is in this latter area that I want to speak more directly for a few moments.

The Ontario Task Force on Housing reported several months ago that there is a near-crisis in housing in this province but, as the Speech from the Throne has revealed, the provincial government still has no policy to control spiralling land and housing costs. The average resale price of homes in Hamilton, for example, was 21 per cent higher in the last half of 1973 than a year earlier. House lot prices in Ottawa jumped up 150 per cent from 1965 to 1972. The average price of all houses sold in Ontario rose by 26 per cent between 1970 and 1973, with much more spectacular increases in specific communities, such as Metropolitan Toronto.

The real problem, the most serious problem is here in the Metro area, where the cost of shelter rose by 36 per cent last year alone. Thirty-six per cent in one year, an increase of $1,000 per month on the average house. The housing cost increase was about four times as much as the rise in the cost of living and almost twice as much as food price increases in 1973.

Everywhere in Ontario housing prices are out of control and the ripples, almost tidal waves, from the Toronto housing situation are spreading throughout southern Ontario as prospective home buyers and land speculators search farther and farther afield.

In St. Catharines, for example, land prices started to rise about 18 months ago because of pressures in the Toronto real estate market. In Barrie, another good example, almost all housing purchases can be directly attributed to the lack of housing and the high prices in this very community.

The Ontario Economic Council reported last year, “The primary cause is the scarcity of developed land,” something that the new Minister of Housing (Mr. Handleman) has indicated that he is prepared to accept and act on if possible. The demand for land far exceeds the supply, and the shortage has been heightened by competition for available sites between foreign and domestic capital. The result is artificially high land costs which are eventually passed on to home buyers.

German, Swiss, American, Japanese and British investors have all been attracted to Ontario’s buoyant property market, but their demand for real estate has resulted in inflated housing prices for Canadians. Last year the Urban Development Institute revealed that 13 foreign-controlled companies owned half of the land available for housing between Oshawa and Burlington. Let me repeat that: Between Oshawa and Burlington, half the land available for development -- that is, half of the land that has been assembled -- is owned by 13 foreign-controlled companies.

Foreign firms have also made substantial purchases in other parts of the province. Now, in this House there are members from every area of Ontario and, Mr. Speaker, as an individual member you are aware of the intrusions of buyers from outside the community and from outside Canada who are prepared to buy anything in the way of real estate or property at any price.

In my own community, you go into the small towns and you find that the old hotel, maybe or maybe not licensed premises, often in a state of disrepair, economically unviable under present circumstances, has recently been bought by someone representing interests from outside of Canada.

Farm tracts are being bought up in large amounts. Foreign firms have also made substantial purchases in the urban centres. The Swiss-owned firm of Fidinam (Ontario) Ltd., for instance, controls a large tract of land in Norfolk county near the Nanticoke generating project. It was bought some years ago with the expectation that the Nanticoke generating complex would increase the value of that land. The Treasurer (Mr. White) has frozen its utilization but eventually planning decisions will have to be made which will either set it aside for all time, which is very unlikely, or open it up for development.

But these companies have not confined their acquisitions to raw land. The select committee on economic and cultural affairs reported five months ago: “There is concern about substantial foreign investment in urban commercial developments, both new and existing. It is claimed that through market linkages, undue upward pressure on residential real hyper-investment of this sort is putting estate prices and shelter costs.” The amount of foreign-owned land in central Ontario is staggering. The downtown Toronto block bounded by Elm, St. Patrick, Simcoe and Dundas streets is owned by a corporation known as DWS Toronto Holdings Ltd., which is controlled by the Dreyfus group of New York.

A German company, Lehndorff Management Ltd., owns property at 360 Bay St. German interests also recently bought property on Don Mills Rd. and Gateway Blvd. in East York.

EILPRO Holdings Ltd., a Swiss company, has substantial holdings in central Toronto, including the block bounded by Yonge, Wellington, Scott and Front streets; property fronting on Chestnut, Armoury and Centre streets; property on the southwest corner of Bloor and Jarvis streets; property on the south side of Walton St., between Bay and Yonge streets. EILPRO bought land fronting on Bay, Gerrard and Walton streets from Japanese interests about two years ago.

Besides its substantial acreage in Norfolk county, Fidinam (Ontario) Ltd., a Swiss firm, owns or controls property at the northeast corner of Bloor and Yonge streets -- that’s the Workmen’s Compensation Board head office -- at the northeast comer of University Ave. and Wellington St., and on the west side of Yonge St. north of Davenport Rd. Fidinam also controls the Park Plaza Hotel at the northwest comer of Bloor St. and Avenue Rd.; land assemblies in the vicinity of the northeast corner of Bloor St. and Avenue Rd.; and most of the block bounded by Queen, Victoria, Richmond and Yonge streets.

Trizec Corp., controlled by Star (Great Britain) Holdings Ltd., owns the Hyatt House Hotel and the Yorkdale Shopping Centre.

MEPC Canadian Properties Ltd., another British company, owns the northeast comer of Marlborough and Yonge streets. Hammerson Properties of England owns the southwest comer of University Ave. and Wellington St.

Capital and Counties Real Estate of England acquired property on Dundas St. east of University Ave. when it gained control of Great Northern Capital Corp.

Such extensive foreign participation in the Ontario land market not only infringes on our natural heritage, but also contributes to higher shelter costs for the residents of this province. This type of foreign investment does not create jobs, or advance technology. It benefits only the investors. The provincial government must act promptly to restrict future land purchases to residents of Canada and Canadian-owned corporations or Canadian-controlled corporations, or an even greater influx of foreign money will further inflate Ontario’s land prices.

Mr. Speaker, I put this to the Premier and the administration most seriously, that there has always been the feeling here that we have a wide-open economy. I can remember the Premier saying, “Surely if we have the right to buy properties such as condominiums in Florida, why should we restrict the purchase of properties here in Canada to foreign investors?” I would simply say to you, sir, that with our population and our economic viability, that if we leave all of our properties open to the investment of foreign capital, then we are going to find that this property is going to be almost entirely foreign-owned and controlled and that the pressures brought by investments of this type are unnaturally inflating and dislocating the prices that we ourselves must pay for our own housing and commercial investments. This is true not only in the urban centres, but it is equally true in our recreational centres. The time has surely come for us to say to people who are not Canadian, “You are welcome here on a lease basis only.”

I think, on the other hand, as far as our own residents are concerned, that they should have the right to buy recreation properties in the north where in fact they are compatible with the ecological and environmental plan and programme for the areas to be developed.

We are concerned with the encroachment in our agricultural areas. I have become quite sensitive, particularly to the class 1 and 2 agricultural land arguments, and I am sure that there is not a government minister who doesn’t think about this now whenever a programme is going to encroach on further property in the Province of Ontario. Unfortunately, we cannot freeze expansion, although some municipalities have attempted to do so under the direction of the planners at the provincial level.

I know of municipalities in my own constituency that are proud of the fact that no serviced lots have been opened up in two years and no severances granted in the same period of time. Perhaps this would be something to be proud of if in fact we had achieved zero population growth. But far from that fact, our population continues to grow, although at a lower rate, and immigration has been reduced, but we still find in many communities where government policy or lack of policy has frozen development that young people embarking on the responsibilities of married and family life, have one alternative only, and that is to crowd further into facilities that are already available or to move out of the community into the urban centres and bring additional pressures of expansion there.

We must realize that development cannot be frozen, even though individuals and politicians may from time to time call for that as an alternative. We cannot put all of the growth and development on the Canadian Shield, that area where people seem to think that houses are going to be set up on the rock so that the farmers can continue to grow food on the good land. I would hope that the government would return to the concepts of the Toronto-centred region and see that the Canadian Shield is going to have a good many incentives for further development. But we must not for a moment think that the communities already established in this province can be frozen at a no-growth status. We do have young people who want to live in their own community. They want to have a chance to work there.

I will have something more to say about the intrusions of government programmes on class one and two land in a few moments, but I for one do not believe development can be stopped altogether, and anyone who preaches that is surely being unjust and unfair and unreasonable.

I should say that when we talk about the pressures of foreign capital increasing the prices of our own land and housing stock, we must be aware that newly enriched Middle Eastern countries are already rumoured to be buying land in Ontario. When the “Sheikhs of Araby” see that the billions of dollars channelling into their treasuries can only buy so many solid gold Cadillacs, they are going to be looking for the kind of investments which in the long run will be much more valuable than the bullion that they are now demanding in payment for their precious oil, and some of the most valuable assets are, of course, the real estate right here in Ontario and other parts of Canada.

We can see, Mr. Speaker, more and more, that buyers with foreign capital from Italy, Switzerland, Germany, the Netherlands, Great Britain and the oil-producing nations, are coming here with absolutely no restraints on the prices to be paid. If anything is for sale at any price it will be bought, its title transferred, and it will then become a real asset as far as the speculators, and particularly the investment council of these capital-intensive countries, are concerned.

Relaxed Japanese regulations for investors in foreign land have been in effect for only a few years. As you are aware, Mr. Speaker, the outflow of Japanese capital was carefully controlled for many years at the time when the industry and the development of the industrial plant in Japan had to be financed with their own resources. But now this money is rolling out of Japan and it is coming into the investment in real estate in our own communities. The recent devaluation of the Canadian dollar in relation to European and Japanese currencies is also attracting foreign investment to Ontario’s real estate market which, because its value is rising so fast, is a better investment even than gold.

Restrictions on foreign land ownership will ease the upward pressure on land prices somewhat, but tough measures are also required to stop land speculation by Canadians. Just yesterday the newly-elected president of the Ontario Real Estate Association estimated that 30 per cent of all land transactions in Ontario involved speculators. Land speculation in the Toronto area has recently been accelerating at an alarming rate. A representative of the Urban Development Institute estimated this week that the total acreage of assembled land around Metropolitan Toronto has increased by 50 per cent since last August as a result of feverish speculative activity.

I am sure the Premier and his advisers are concerned about this. If you come from a rural area you are aware that once the farm holding of a traditional farm family has been broken, in other words the farm is sold, you can almost guarantee that it will be sold three more times in the next two years, each at a substantially inflated price.

The real estate agents, of course, are very anxious to do this. Why should they not be? They collect their commission on the whole thing right from the word go, and this in addition adds upward pressure to the cost of the property.

The attitude of those people who either have money to invest or can collect, scrape together, a down payment is that in land speculation they can’t lose, there will always be somebody along within a month of the purchase offering them more than they paid.

We are told by builders, those developing new communities in urban areas particularly, that individuals, if they possibly can, no longer buy a house for themselves and their family, but they will try to buy five or six homes in a community such as that. They will make a down payment, then perhaps try to postpone the closing, and the builder will find that the houses have been resold at a substantial profit within four to five months.

These are the things that must concern us all and surely must concern the government policy makers. The activity surely is not confined to Toronto. The provincial government has failed to develop a rational plan for the development and servicing of raw land. Rumours and uncertainty are fueling speculation throughout Ontario. The UDI representative stated that: “There isn’t a community in southern Ontario that doesn’t have land speculation going on around it. Until the province makes an announcement about where the next developments will go the speculation will continue. In the past few weeks it has gotten worse. There has never been as much speculative money around as there is now, and never as much uninformed speculation. Every little town is being bought up.” It is true. In the village of St. George, where housing of very, very moderate circumstances indeed was being traded between $10,000 and $15,000 no more than 18 months ago, it has now sky-rocketed to the point where one of these very moderate homes, indeed if it comes on the market and they do so only rarely, goes for $30,000 to $35,000.

We are not talking about price controls; we are talking about the availability of serviced land and a programme to build housing so that people in urban, and also in rural communities, can have an opportunity for housing that is rationally associated with the amount of money available from their own employment. The government must act immediately to bring this intolerable situation under control. The unbridled greed of land speculators is pushing shelter costs out of reach for all but the wealthiest of our citizens. I don’t think we can expect people trading in land to say, “Oh, my, that price is too high. I will not take it.” That would be an unnatural expectation in the extreme.

The people trade in land to make a profit, and they are making tremendous profits right now. As I drive into Toronto from my home from the west, I come along much the same route followed by the Premier, at least in the last few miles. He must be as aware as I am that the farmlands for 40 miles around this city are largely abandoned. The barns are falling down, the fences are in disrepair and the fields are growing nothing but golden-rod.

This is because of the uncontrolled aspects of land speculation and not because of the farmers themselves who received a good price, took the money in most cases and either retired if they were elderly or took the money and bought viable farmland elsewhere. They were able to build new buildings, transfer their stock and continue as active dairy, beef and cash crop farmers elsewhere in the province. Some of this best land lies there growing weeds.

It must bring tears to the eyes of the Minister of Agriculture and Food, because he doesn’t like to see it go out of production. As a farmer, I think he would like to get in there with a big plough and turn it back into production and make some money on it. I can’t understand why these lands cannot somehow be brought back into viable farming operations. Believe me when the Minister of Agriculture and Food says that he’s concerned about and is prepared to bring forward programmes requiring that, he will get support from this side, because we don’t like the looks of it. We believe it is wasteful and we do not believe that the speculators should simply sit back on their hunkers waiting until the price is right.

This is a matter that concerns all of us. I hope that we are going to have something more than policy pronouncements but real action in that regard. The incentive to speculate in land must be removed by applying a steep rate of tax to these windfall gains. This tax should apply to profits from most sales of raw land and houses which are not occupied by the owner, but should not apply to profits from the sale of a principal residence or to profits from the sale of an owner-occupied family farm.

It is not enough to say that the tax base we presently have will accommodate it. I believe it can be used to require that land be kept in production, and also at least to control in the public interest to some extent the unbridled situation that we are all so much aware of. In other words, the tax should be structured in such a way as to apply to speculators only without penalizing other landowners. A tax on speculative land profits can slow the price rise, but in order to reduce and stabilize housing costs in Ontario the provincial government must ensure that there is always an oversupply of serviced land available for residential development.

The Ontario Economic Council remarked a year ago that by concentrating its efforts on house building programmes instead of land servicing the province was “treating the symptoms and not the disease.” The Ontario Economic Council also noted that Ontario lacks “a planned programme of ensuring an adequate supply of serviced land in the correct places.”

As an immediate step, the provincial government should develop its own land holdings where they fit in with the municipal official plan. This would include, in the case of Ontario Housing holdings, the 3,000 acres assembled in Waterloo county where it fits in with the official plans of Kitchener-Waterloo and the new community known as Cambridge, and also the 1,700 acres at Malvern, where development is beginning. It has now progressed, I believe, to stage 3, but servicing should go forward on a priority basis to make these lands further available.

The activities of the Ontario Housing Corp. should be expanded to encompass a land servicing programme with the objective of restoring balance to our supply-short land market. After the provincial government has consulted with municipalities in order to establish areas where residential development is desirable and acceptable, Ontario Housing should build the necessary trunk services for water and sewage as a public utility. These services should be sold to municipalities in much the same way as Hydro sells electricity. The province should guarantee loans for capital expenditures as it does with Hydro, and Ontario Housing Corp. should be required to repay its debts from the revenues accrued.

The cost to Ontario taxpayers of such a land servicing programme would therefore be minimal, but housing prices would be substantially reduced. A government-run land servicing programme would also permit more orderly growth throughout the province. Specifically it would allow the provincial government to decentralize the growth pressures which are contributing to urban sprawl in southern Ontario by providing inexpensive land in eastern and northern Ontario.

Of course, a co-ordinated programme to decentralize growth must also include appropriate stimulation for industrial development and employment opportunities in the north and the east. It goes without saying and it has been said by government representatives on many occasions. But we have got to the point, surely, where government policy must be something more than simply the expression of pious hopes. There are these lands held in public ownership in various parts of the province, such as Brantford, Waterloo, certainly here in Malvern, and with projects beginning elsewhere. It is surely time for the government to decide on the development of services for those areas and to proceed with making the serviced lots available. If in the Ontario housing programme it is deemed necessary that the so-called Home Ownership Made Easy programme would apply, the government could in fact not only service the land but build the houses. In most cases the serviced lots should be made available to private enterprise and individuals who want to buy the serviced lot and build their own homes.

Inexpensive housing forms including mobile and factory-produced homes must be encouraged. In five years of experimentation with system building of houses in the United States costs have been reduced by 36 per cent despite rising labour and building material prices. When I refer to building material prices we in this House should move to reduce the sales taxation on building materials and, of course, the taxes levied at the federal level as well; seven per cent here, 12 per cent in Ottawa. It would give a substantial stimulus to the building programme and, I would trust, it would indicate a reduction in the costs of housing if these taxes were moderated or removed or if, in fact, an equivalent grant were made to the builders or purchasers of new homes.

The main source of the saving is in reduced assembly time with regard to some of the new forms of building, such as the system building that have been used in various areas of the United States. The standard production methods and close supervision of mass production enable system builders to provide high quality housing at low cost.

One of the most impressive system building programmes is in Akron, Ohio, where $17,000 two-storey townhouses were renting a few months ago for from $47 monthly for a two-bedroom unit to $54 monthly for four bedrooms. That is not a subsidized housing programme. The unions associated with the building programme have endorsed the programme because parts are produced in union plants and on-site assembly is done by union workers.

In some areas where the programme has been attempted those people who must do the work have objected because they have felt that it cut into their own livelihood, but such is not the case under these circumstances.

The building codes of most Ontario cities bar such housing not because of structural specifications but because of house and lot size restrictions. Municipalities demand oversized lots, wide streets and highest quality services because of their heavy reliance on property taxes as a source of revenue.

Low-cost housing on small lots means lower property tax returns. Kitchener has recently relaxed its high standards on some lots and other municipalities should be encouraged to do likewise.

In our party we recognize the high accommodation costs as a serious problem and unlike the Conservative government we have a policy to solve that problem. The government’s refusal to act in the past has precipitated a crisis housing situation in this province. Strong action, including restrictions on foreign investment in land, steep taxes on speculative land profits, a government-run land servicing programme and steps to reduce residential construction costs are urgently required in order to avoid further housing price increases.

I would say to you, Mr. Speaker, that housing price increases cannot be avoided, if the plan put forward in the Speech from the Throne is the only basis for government action. The increase in the amount of money that is available to service land is not sufficient to make an impact in the communities of this province and is substantially inadequate, in fact, to be even anything more than more of the same. I would say to you, Mr. Speaker, that the matter is a principal and priority concern to all of us in this House during this session.

I wanted to congratulate the new Minister of Housing on his appointment. I had felt frankly that, being a trade economist and a tax expert, his usefulness, if he were to be brought into the cabinet, might perhaps be in the revenue area rather than as Minister of Housing. He said himself that he can’t drive a nail straight, but I don’t suppose that is going to detract from his applying in the best possible way the moneys made available by the Treasury and, more particularly, from applying the policies that are agreed upon by this government. But the best minister cannot do anything if, in fact, the money is not available nor if the principles behind the policy are not adequate to meet the needs.

As a matter of fact, we are concerned about the cabinet changes that the Premier announced just a few days ago. We wish the best for the new ministers. We want to question them as closely and as strictly as we can as their policies are enunciated. But we look at the new Minister of the Environment (Mr. W. Newman). A man in his position is going to have considerable problem in his own constituency. The land of Cedarwood is being assembled and many of the citizens in that area feel that they have been dealt with unfairly by the government in that hearings on expropriations have been cancelled by order in council or not permitted under the provisions of the statute.

Pickering airport is being built there. The new Minister of the Environment is in a good position surely, if he has the courage of the convictions he has stated so ably in the past that we don’t need an airport in that location, to say to his colleagues in the cabinet that a statement of policy from the government should go forward to the government of Canada saying, “We do not want the airport there. It is the view of this province that those plans should be cancelled. If we, in fact, are going to be meeting the long-range requirements of the community of Ontario, then the airport should be moved elsewhere.”

You say where? I would say on to the Canadian Shield. It does not have to go in any location where it is going to be that close to this particular centre, because I don’t believe we are going to need its facilities until 1985 or maybe 1990. I believe that the airport should be cancelled and so does the Minister of the Environment. Why does not the government, following the statements made by its own minister in his former private member’s capacity, simply tell the government of Canada that it does not meet the needs of this province and see that it is adjusted accordingly?

While there has been some land assembly go forward, there appears to have been something less than a total commitment to the Pickering site. The complaints about it are valid and come from many sources. It is true -- and the Prime Minister said it in Toronto just a few days ago -- that if one cancels Pickering it is going to put additional pressures on Malton. That is one of the things that must be taken realistically into consideration. By so saying, I mean to meet the needs of the air transportation requirements, but also politically, because the people living around Malton get awfully sick of hearing those planes and some of the low-flying ones may even fly up as far as Brampton.

Hon. Mr. Davis: Ask the member for Etobicoke (Mr. Braithwaite) what he thinks about an expansion there.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: We are not talking about an expansion there. We are saying that that can serve the needs of the community until 1980 to 1985, perhaps to 1990.

Hon. Mr. Davis: Without an expansion?

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Now is the time to cancel the new Pickering airport and see that it is located further from Toronto, without using class 1 and 2 land.

Hon. Mr. Davis: The member’s colleague is laughing.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: There is no possible way that the Premier can have it both ways. I am simply pointing out to you, Mr. Speaker, the problem that his own new Minister of the Environment is going to have in meeting the problems that he finds in his own constituency. He has got Cedarwood, the Pickering airport, enormous new garbage dumps, the proposal for Highway 407, the new sewers and service road that are going to come up and angle in to service the north part of the Metro area -- all right in the home farming fields of the Minister of the Environment.

He has problems, there is no doubt about it. He is an honourable man and a man with ability, but the Premier has given him an assignment which is going to crack him up. He will not be able to continue to represent his own people while imposing the environmental threats in his own community under those circumstances. There is going to have to be a change in policy and I would suggest to you Mr. Speaker, that the Premier should announce a change in policy in connection with the airport.

Now, the Premier is prepared to make policy changes. He has made that clear. As a matter or fact, I am wondering what he is going to do with the situations that come in upon him on the development of new communities in the Province of Ontario.

I have talked about this already for a moment, but I would like to say this that in Norfolk county where we have imposed a new regional government, the decision has been made by the experts advising the Treasurer that a large new community with a population of 250,000 is going to be required in what is now called the city of Nanticoke; and yet the Treasurer has said that he is going to demand the right to make the decision on its location, but he hasn’t made the decision on its location.

Now, I just ask you to consider, Mr. Speaker, the dislocation that brings to the land market of the Norfolk and Haldimand area, that the land is being optioned at ever increasing and spiralling rates, the Treasurer has frozen all the land, so that it is very difficult, if not impossible, to get a severance and a building permit. The most minor building permit must be approved from the Treasurer’s office. That’s the situation we are in.

It has been that way now for well over a year and the time surely has come when we have had a sufficient, it’s not a cooling off period because things have heated up, but a sufficient period of time for the Treasurer and his planners, and he designates himself as the chief planner for the province, to make a decision on those areas; and there have been resolutions from the local councils calling for the decision to be made.

If the Treasurer decided in his wisdom that it would be better that the decision be made by the local people, then let him so announce and indicate to the local authorities that their decision, after sufficient consultation with the experts available to them, must be made within a certain period of time. But we cannot continue to delay, we cannot continue to hold large parcels of land in the name of Ontario Housing, without development, in communities where serviced land is in short supply. It is obvious that the government policy in this regard is completely inadequate.

Now, another new cabinet minister is the former parliamentary assistant to the Treasurer, who is now the Minister of Revenue (Mr. Meen). Probably this minister is more of an authority on the intricacies of regional government than any one now in the Legislature. It seems to me that to direct his abilities into the Ministry of Revenue is a strange decision indeed; it seems surely that with regional governments just now coming into operation in various parts of the province, it would have been a much more effective decision indeed if this member, if he was going to be taken into the cabinet at all, would have had some general supervisory responsibility pertaining to these regions.

This is a matter that is difficult to explain. He becomes Minister of Revenue, unless perhaps that is a training ground for the Treasurership of the province, which we are told is going to be vacated by the present Treasurer some time in the not too distant future. The situation under those circumstances might be different except for this, that during the last two years, since the report of the Committee on Government Productivity was accepted, the Treasurer has been also the minister of municipal affairs, but in the recent changes the member for --

Hon. F. Guindon (Minister of Labour): Grenville-Dundas .

Mr. R. F. Nixon: For Grenville-Dundas (Mr. Irvine), was designated Minister without Portfolio with special responsibilities for municipal affairs. In other words, we are moving once again towards a ministry of municipal affairs and a very proper move that is, without the Premier making the decision that in fact the recommendations of the Committee on Government Productivity were wrong. They have been inappropriate in our experience of two years’ association with policy ministers and the work they are supposed to do. The policy minister experiment has been a failure and this is apparent in decisions made by the Premier pertaining to the changes that have come about.

So it seems, Mr. Speaker, that the cabinet changes were made only for political purposes, to remove from the Premier pressure applied by the cabinet itself, through the conflicts of interest, and the awarding of contracts without tender -- the scandals associated with the decisions made by cabinet ministers. It seems that somehow or other the Premier would try to show that he had a new group of people who didn’t do things like that.

Unfortunately, it appears that he is sticking with the concepts that have made it difficult if not impossible for the cabinet to make the kinds of decisions that are necessary. So he simply goes on with the political exigencies that we were treated to in the Speech from the Throne. For example, his sudden interest in northern affairs.

Along with his report from his polling experts that he was down to 28 per cent in the support of the people of Ontario, they must have told him that he was dead in the north and that while he has been steadily losing support for many years there, it looks now as if the support is down to rock bottom. So you can’t blame him for making an effort to attract once again interest of the taxpayers, the thinking citizens of the north.

You know, when you travel up in the north, the first question you are asked is, “What do you think about a separate province up here?” I think the idea is a bad one, but it indicates clearly the alienation of the people living in that part of the province who think they have been forgotten by big government at Queen’s Park, that their decisions are dictated from the offices and the bureaucracy down here.

So what did he do? The Speech from the Throne calls for a feasibility and engineering study for a road link to James Bay through Moosonee. The Brunelle highway.

An hon. member: To Moonbeam?

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Since the minister is applauding so strenuously, I have a feeling that it really doesn’t matter what the feasibility study says. If the member for Cochrane North (Mr. Brunelle) stays in the cabinet, they are going to get the road.

Hon. R. Brunelle (Minister of Community and Social Services): That’s right. The study is not necessary because we know right now it is justified.

Mr. G. Dixon (Dovercourt): Tell them, Rene.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I am sure the Premier consulted with the Minister of Community and Social Services and the Premier, in his good judgement, thought at least they should look into the feasibility of it.

Mr. Good: Just for the publicity aspects.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: The nice thing about it is that there are so few residents in Moosonee that the politics of it don’t necessarily intrude. The people up there undoubtedly want a road and they want to be able to get out in some way other than on the Polar Bear Express, which is usually crowded with politicians going up there to see what they are doing in Moosonee this week.

Mr. B. Newman (Windsor-Walkerville): With their free passes.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: With their free passes, right. And the only alternative is to phone up the member for Cochrane North and see if they can get on the government plane or to borrow somebody’s snowshoes.

The road link in my view is a reasonable sort of thing and I regret very much the fact that in the future it means that probably we won’t have to depend on the Polar Bear Express as much as we have, because some of my more enlightening experiences in politics have been associated with travel on that train as we went through northeastern Ontario to talk with municipal officials and other experts as to what the future might hold for that great part of Ontario.

The second point is the decision has been made to investigate the rebuilding and the widening of Highway 17 between Sault Ste. Marie and Sudbury. When the announcement of the new minister of highways was made, I felt that the government had said among themselves, “Well, nobody down here wants roads, so we might as well spend the money in the north.” I think that is a great idea. The idea of improving road transportation in northern Ontario is obviously not going to solve all the northerners’ problems, but I would suggest to you very specifically, Mr. Speaker, that it is going to take more than the widening of Highway 17 and ensconcing the minister of highways in Sault Ste. Marie to convince the northerners of the good faith of this government. After all the promises made at the time of elections and the breaking of the promises at the time of the distribution of the highways budget, they are going to have to see the concrete, not just the surveyors. They are going to have to see the concrete before it can be believed.

I would say to the government quite specifically that it might as well make the commitment now, as I really think is necessary, to make Highway 11 four lanes wide all the way to North Bay; to make Highway 69 four lanes wide to Sudbury and then on to the Soo. Anything less than that is not going to meet the needs of that expanding part of the north. I am not quite prepared to say that the ministry is going to have to make it four lanes around the top of Lake Superior, although I suppose some day, that may come. I hope it does not; I think it would be substantially regrettable. I spent some years living in Sault Ste. Marie and I could never understand why, when one went over to Michigan, there were good road travel links to the southern part of that state but if one decided to travel in Canada one would have to get in line behind the trailers and the trucks along Highway 17 and make one’s way in very dangerous driving situations down into the southern and eastern part of the province.

The northerners, of course, while they want good road links to the southern and eastern part of the province are just as concerned with good road and transportation links between northern centres. That is surely where the initiative of the new Minister of Transportation and Communications (Mr. Rhodes) must be brought to bear as well.

So we go on with the promises for the north. Four more communities in northwestern Ontario will receive air services. Good. I think norOntair has been a good experiment. I haven’t had the opportunity to fly the line of the purple goose -- is that it? I think that is it -- but it seems to me that the Twin Otters are excellent planes and that the future of quick communications between the northern towns is going to rest on their utilization.

On improvement of certain existing airports I hope the minister is going to do something with the one in Geraldton. I don’t know whether or not the minister’s plane gets down there regularly but obviously that is one of the communities which should be treated to expanded facilities. I think it would have been better if the communities which were going to be served under this programme had been specifically named in the Speech from the Throne.

Studies regarding the establishment of a port facility in the James Bay area; that is interesting. In the long run the building of the ONR or, as it was then called, the Timiskaming and Northern Ontario Railroad -- is that the correct name? -- was to give us a salt water or a sea water outlet or seaport for this province. Actually it was extremely disappointing right from the start. The minister is aware of the shallowness of James Bay and the area of Hudson Bay most readily accessible so I don’t know whether this feasibility study means building a wharf six miles long or doing dredging to bring the ocean boats right up into Moosonee or what it is. The feasibility study has been done before, admittedly when technology was not quite so far advanced.

Hon. Mr. Brunelle: That was for Moosonee itself. The intention is to go further north into deeper water.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: The idea of having a seaport here is an interesting one and one that we will follow with a great deal of interest.

The other major statement was a power line to Moosonee. Electricity comes within 200 miles of it now, I believe, the last time we were up there. Is that not correct?

Hon. Mr. Brunelle: About 150 miles, along the rapids.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: That should not be a serious problem, indeed, in the community which we hope is going to grow and expand as it serves a larger and larger area and will have the benefits of a good power source.

On local autonomy, northern communities will have the opportunity to establish local community councils. In other words, some of the friends of the government, who have been chairmen of the improvement districts without benefit of election through all these years, may find themselves subject more directly to the wishes of the people in the communities they have been serving in their own inimitable styles over these many years.

Mr. Good: Does that include Moosonee?

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I don’t know whether it includes Moosonee; I presume that it would. It will include White River and many other communities which we have talked about from time to time.

The government has said “Yes, that’s what we are going to do for the north. We are going to build some roads. We are going to study the feasibility of certain other programmes. We are going to improve a couple of airports. We are going to expand some money to see that the airplanes will get into four more towns.”

I don’t think that will be sufficient. Appointing a minister of highways from the north might, in fact, improve the situation quite a bit because I have a feeling we are going to see the earthmovers on Highway 17. I’m not so sure that is going to convince the people in the north that they can look once again with some confidence to the Conservatives because I believe the Conservative Party has lost any right to the confidence of the northerners after all these years.

After all, they have not taken the steps, other than by way of changing the name, to indicate that the Northern Ontario Development Corp. is going to have an independent stance. We, as Liberals, believe that on the board of the NODC should be all of the elected members from the north. The former Premier used to criticize me and say, “You are setting up a northern parliament. You are a separatist.” Of course, I reject that. I simply say that in the north, probably more than in any other place, there is the feeling that when a member is elected he has something more to do than simply serve time and apologize, in the case of the Conservatives, for the government’s inactivity.

I would like to see the board of NODC composed basically of the elected members without regard to their political party. If the government wanted, through its undoubted rights by the Lieutenant Governor’s order in council appointment, to add to it certain representatives of the community otherwise I would have no objection. Only if it does that can NODC be seen to have a stance and status independent of the experts who are usually seconded from Bay St. when they are looking for a job and pressure comes on them, perhaps unduly, in the ordinary course of their careers.

I think, further, that the government should make the definite commitment to move the head office establishment of at least the Ministry of Natural Resources out of Toronto and up to the north. This, more than any thing else, would be an indication of good faith -- that the ministry which deals almost more than any other -- I would say more than any other -- with northern affairs is going to have its head office there. After all, I understand the minister has at his disposal 48 planes, probably more than that now; all the planes, in fact, which are not in use by other people who have access to them. It would enable the minister to come down for whatever is necessary, to attend cabinet meetings or whathaveyou here.

The establishment of the ministry must be in the north. I think there should be something more than an ad hoc paving programme indicating what the basis of the government’s policy is in communication. There should be a reference to Highway 11 to North Bay, and 69 to Sudbury, just as there was to Highway 17 from Sudbury to Sault Ste. Marie. The government could put a reasonable timetable on it and say there is going to be a commitment of a certain percentage of the highway’s budget so that the people in the north know it means business.

Surely it is not going to be the same as it has been in eastern Ontario where one gets the commitments and the promises, election after election, about road building. At one stage the Conservatives even appointed George Gomme, an easterner, as minister of highways and the people in the east thought, “Now we will get our roads.” But no, the roads were not built. The surveyors went out one more time; the flags were put up; the people found, as they were driving in the summer, that they had to be careful because there were so many surveyors around there that the usefulness of the highways was substantially reduced.

Now we find that the alternative of 17 down there is not going on that alignment at all; it is going on a completely new alignment and very properly so. The government is going to build a little bit more of it and I have a feeling that when we get to election year it could be that the Minister of Labour and maybe the Minister of Housing and the Premier himself will go down and cut a ribbon opening yet a few more miles. One might even be able to drive from Ottawa right through to the Quebec border, but that remains to be seen.

I just say, to my regret, that sort thing seems to have worked in eastern Ontario until now but it is not going to work again. The government is going to get the surprise of its life when it actually opens the road and finds that the people in eastern Ontario are voting, for the first time in a lone time, against the Tories and for the Liberal alternative.

The same is true in the north.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: And the same is true in the north. It will not be enough even for the new Minister of Transportation and Communications to go up there and put the flags in the ground and hire the surveyors to go up and down Highway 17.

Mr. J. H. Jessiman (Fort William): Don’t hold your breath.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I notice that the member for Fort William is joining in the debate. There have been no specific promises about new roads up there but, of course, most of the people in his area I guess are content that their member has been made chairman of the Ontario Northland Railway. Maybe they feel that that is sufficient recognition. But I’ll tell him this, that being chairman of the Ontario Northland Railway is not going to save the political bacon of either the chairman or the Conservative Party in northwestern Ontario.

A very case in point came forward yesterday. Sure we are delighted that a new mill is going to be located, not in the hon. member’s riding, of course, which is largely an urban riding, but up there in Kenora where the Minister of Natural Resources (Mr. Bernier) is more and more considering it to be his private fiefdom. We can’t help but remember that the same company that is expanding to the tune of what? -- $250 million -- is the one which under government supervision was permitted to pollute the whole Wabigoon river system and the English river system in such a way that it will never be cleaned up. There will never be the opportunity for sport fishing there and to eat the fish. The Indians living in the area have had either to be moved off or be given permanent food payments so that they would not eat the fish. Almost every tourist outfitter in the Wabigoon and English river system has either moved out or gone broke because sport fishing is no longer permitted. Now that’s the government record in northwestern Ontario! This is the situation.

The chairman of the ONR was in the news just a few weeks ago. He had sold a parcel of land to Ontario Housing and made a large profit on the transference of that property. I know the property well. I know that the chairman of the ONR did business there. As a matter of fact, I have rented a car on one occasion from his very business premises. But for the local --

Mr. Jessiman: On a point of privilege, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Let the member wait until I have finished before he gets riled.

Mr. Lewis: I was going to say he didn’t want to sell it to the OHC.

Mr. Jessiman: I would just like to correct the Leader of the Opposition in the statement that he just made that I had sold the property to the Ontario Housing, which is a complete and utter lie, and he knows it to be so. I sold the property to an individual in the north riding.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. I think a better choice of words could have been used.

Mr. Jessiman: And I’d like him to retract that statement right now.

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Mr. Lewis: It was just an error.

Mr. Speaker: Order please. I think the hon. member should change that one word in his protest.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Good: He is talking to the member for Fort William. He used an intermediary between him and the OHC.

Mr. Speaker: I’m talking to the member for Fort William. I think a better choice of words could have been used. Would you do so, please?

Mr. Jessiman: May I say it is an untruth then, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Well, let’s look at the situation. The land that the hon. member who is objecting so strenuously owned is now in the hands of Ontario Housing Corp. Is that correct?

Mr. Lewis: No, it is not. They backed out on him.

Mr. Jessiman: On a point of privilege, Mr. Speaker, possibly the Leader of the Opposition should get his facts straight, which he seldom does.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: All right. Surely, Mr. Speaker, the point is this: that the member for Port Arthur -- I mean Fort William, the member for Port Arthur is another person --

Mr. Lewis: He is not a land speculator.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: -- and I was talking about him earlier -- the member, as chairman of the Ontario Northland Railway, has a responsibility surely to concern himself with the development of northwestern Ontario. He’s got to concern himself even further with the pollution record of the government that he is supporting. Surely as a member as well he’s got to concern himself with unconscionable land profits that he himself in the land business in the area apparently has been making. How can he continue to expect to command the support of the taxpayers and the thinking citizens in his own area?

I’m simply saying to you, Mr. Speaker, that in northwestern Ontario, as in northeastern Ontario and the eastern part of the province, no amount of government promises of the type that have been put to use in this speech is going to save the political bacon of the Conservative Party.

The people have lost confidence in the party and in their representatives in those areas. A few more miles of road might have done it back in 1963, 1959 or in 1955; but it won’t do it any more. I am putting to the government a specific alternative that it is up to them to make a clear commitment as to what they are going to do for transportation, road transportation and otherwise.

Let’s have a commitment on Highway 69, Highway 11 and Highway 17; let’s have a commitment as to which communities are going to be served by the expanding services of norOntair. Why, surely, are we not using the facilities that are presently government-owned to equalize the cost of living in the north?

Before the last election they equalized the cost of beer. The time surely has come when, as a matter of policy, the government says that it is going to provide the same cost of living for the necessities as are experienced in other parts of the province, and that as a matter of policy we must surely remove that invisible wall that separates the northern part of the province from the rest of Ontario; that they must not feel alienated and that government policy has been substantially inadequate in this regard, as it has been in others.

Well -- it is 20 after 12 -- Mr. Speaker, I want to deal quite specifically with the matter of regional government as we are experiencing it following the passage of certain statutes a year ago and three years ago. The concern with the cost of living is directly related to the cost of government programmes, and you are aware, Mr. Speaker, living near the location of a newly created regional government programme, that it doesn’t take long for the spending machines to go into operation.

I would just like to speak briefly about what our experience in regional government costs has been. In Ottawa-Carleton the cost of running the cities, villages and townships in 1968, the year before regional government was imposed, was $59.5 million. In 1969, with regional government just having been started, costs increased by 36 per cent in one year to $81.3 million.

When regional government was introduced to Niagara in 1970, the increase in municipal government spending was even steeper. The expenditures grew by 45 per cent, from $39 million to $56 million in the very first year. Increases in the cost of the regional portion of municipal government in Niagara have continued since 1970. In the four years of regional government in Niagara the annual cost of operating the regional municipality, exclusive of the local governments, has jumped 85.3 per cent, from $22 million to $41 million. In Ottawa-Carleton, the regional municipality spending has risen 88 per cent in five years.

I thought it was important that I put those figures before you, sir, because we find in the case of Haldimand-Norfolk, where regional government was imposed by Act of this Legislature just a few months ago and where the regional government will take its first authority within a few weeks, that already there have been expensive decisions made.

For example, the regional council has not been able to decide on a site for the seat of government. Half of the government will be located in Cayuga, formerly in Haldimand county, and the other half in Simcoe, that is the former county seat of the county of Norfolk. It seems to me this is typical of the problems of the imposition of the new type of government. Certainly the government has given the decision to the locally elected regional council as to where the capital will be, and they have made a decision that I suppose was forced upon them by the views of the two separate communities, and that is to have two capitals.

Now the only people who are going to benefit from this will be the people who are collecting the bills for Bell Canada. It is typical of what has happened in other regional government programmes. The costs escalate rapidly and out of all control.

The figures that I have put before members, resulting from an inquiry into these costs in the Ottawa area, and also in the area of Niagara are just an indication of what we can expect in the other regional government situations. There is the high cost and, even worse than that, the chairman is imposed from Queen’s Park and the government at the local level is insulated from the needs of the public community by the large bureaucracy that is established under these circumstances.

It seems strange indeed that the government has not been able to take advantage of the experience -- and it has been a bad experience -- in the two regional governments now established for a number of years, to ensure that if we are going to have an increase in the number of regional governments that it is not going to result in the tremendous increase in local costs that has been a part of this particular experience.

Now, this has been characteristic of what the government has done during the last four years. Since John Robarts gave up the Premiership and we had a surplus of $150 million, our deficits year by year have been -- well, this year it is substantially over $400 million; last year $36 million. The first year that the member for Peel North was the Premier it was $624 million, and actually the year in which he came into office, it was a $136 million deficit. In other words, since he took over the control of our government, our deficit has increased by $1.6 billion, compared with the last Robarts’ year when the surplus was $150 million. I think that this is an indication which has been established in many respects by policies in regional government and in other areas of new government initiatives, that it seems to have been absolutely careless of the cost.

Now, we feel also that the policies associated with regional government have been unnecessarily centralizing and you need only read the reports that were put out by the Ontario Economic Council two weeks ago to see that that’s borne out by some independent opinions. I want to quote very briefly from report No. 5 by Lionel D. Feldman, from page 41, where he says: “Few meaningful functions are being left to the local governments to perform unilaterally and therefore less remains in substantive terms to be decided by local councils. If this prognosis is valid, then the future is dim for effective local government as fewer and fewer people will be willing to stand for election to perform non-important tasks. If the transfer of functions persists unabated, if decentralization is taken to mean not a devolution of responsibility but the placement of offices of the province outside Toronto with consultative powers only -- or as one wag has recently said: ‘Regional offices in Ontario today are given only the power to say no’ -- then the future of the reorganized municipalities is bleak.”

I notice that the Treasurer took exception to the statement. He said that the statement; from the Ontario Economic Council was; untrue, and yet this is the way it is seen by the people living in the communities. I want to quote from the report once more: “What this study demonstrates is that since the beginning of the 1960s, there has been a consistent approach to the way in which provincial authorities have viewed local government. There appears to be a considerable degree of scepticism on the part of senior government people as to the inherent capacity of the municipalities to achieve goals and objectives.”

Now, what he is saying there in his best language is that the ministers’ and the senior government officials believe the people at the municipal level are incompetent to establish goals and then work toward achieving them. This is a feeling that we have been aware of for many years, somehow or other, through the various ministers of municipal affairs and lately the Treasurer -- the idea that all of the knowledge and the ability lies here at Queen’s Park; that the municipalities exist only as somehow a window-dressing operation for the expenditure of some public, funds.

There is a basic difference in philosophy that I want to put forward and I suppose, it is essentially that the elected people in municipal councils and in school boards and in hospital boards and otherwise have the right to make mistakes. I suppose you can say that the York board has made a mistake in recent months and it is all right here to criticize boards if they so do, but surely we must realize that if local government is going to have any significance in the future, we must abandon the process where the government has to appoint, from the centre, the chief of these local governments; that we must see that the conditions are removed from the grant programme instead of putting on more and more of these conditions; that we must see that the people, in planning responsibilities, can establish their own goals and essentially have the powers to fulfil them; that the time has come, surely, when the Minister of Education will not have day-to-day budgetary controls over every school board in the province; that the Minister of Health (Mr. Miller) does not have day-to-day budgetary control over every hospital board; that the minister who designates himself as the chief planner does not have the power to veto or, in most cases, simply approve or delay every planning decision in the province.

This is an indication that has come strongly from the report by Mr. Feldman. He ends up with just a very short quote indeed. It comes from the last sentence in his report on page 44 and I quote: “The future of effective local government in Ontario rests on shaky foundations.” I think that he is right, I believe that the people are concerned more and more with their local rights in the provision of government services. I am not prepared to say that the Treasurer, or the Minister of Health, or the Minister of Education has all the knowledge and I’m not prepared either to say that local officials can’t make mistakes. I’m simply here to say that they have the right to make those mistakes in the structure of a reformed government that, in fact, would be a partnership between the municipalities in the province rather than the sham which we have been treated to in recent years.

I want to just end this section of my remarks, Mr. Speaker, by quoting from a letter signed by Mr. Jack Nolan of 1096-10th St. E., Owen Sound. I quote from his letter:

“Dear Mr. Nixon:

“I am writing to you on behalf of the Boxter Ward Ratepayers Association, Georgian Bay township.

“We have just received our new assessment notice under the regional municipality of Muskoka. We are shocked beyond words. It would appear that assessments are up to fantastic figures and the taxes on these new rates will be up, for some, 500 per cent. I, for example, was assessed at $1,360. Now the assessment is $49,600.”

I interrupt here to say that, of course, the assessment per se does not set the tax rate, but he goes on to say:

“At 10 mills tax rate, which the officials propose, my taxes go from $106 last year to about $496 this year. For this we receive nothing that we did not have before, which was nothing. The exception is that last year two garbage buckets were put at the end of our road for garbage to be placed in.”

That is the end of the quote from the letter from Mr. Nolan.

I think, better than anything else, it indicates what happens under regional government. We can collect the statistics which show that the percentages go up by fantastic rates year by year, but when the taxpayers themselves convey this sort of information, and you place yourselves in their situation where they are faced with a 500 per cent increase, not associated in any way with improved services, you realize that the regional government experiment has been a failure and that the costs associated with it are completely unconscionable and that the access to democratic process has been, if not removed, insulated to the extent that the people concerned feel themselves inadequately served.

So I would say, Mr. Speaker, that the government’s fiscal policies and taxation policies have been as instrumental perhaps as much as anything else in increasing the cost of living in this province and adding pressure to the inflationary spiral. I remember the debate on the increase in the sales tax that took place in the House last spring, when it was brought to your attention, sir, and the attention of the Treasurer, that an increase in the sales tax from five to seven per cent, an increase of 40 per cent, would exert inflationary pressures and I submit to you, sir, that it has.

But this is not the only matter that must concern us.

I think we must accept, as members of this House, a great deal more responsibility for establishing an apparatus which will review and thereby control, at least in part, changes in prices in this province.

Speaking in the budget debate when I first became the leader of the Liberal Party -- I think 1967 was the date of the speech -- I called for the establishment of a committee of the Legislature which would have the function of reviewing price increases in that sector of the economy which had the apparent powers, as a monopoly would have, to impose prices to which there is no alternative.

At the time, my comments were sparked by changes in automobile insurance costs and it was indicated simply in the newspapers that the automobile insurance prices would go up by, I think that year, from seven per cent to 15 per cent. I felt, as did many others, that the increase was not warranted but there was no machinery established at the provincial level even to see if there was a justification.

At the time, it was brought to public attention that the laws of Ontario give the government the right to roll back insurance costs if it sees fit. There are sections to the Insurance Act not proclaimed, having been on the statute books for many years, which would permit the government to do that if it saw fit. In reiterating the proposal for a committee of the Legislature which, in fact, would act as a price review committee, I am motivated in precisely the same way. I believe such a committee should deal with those aspects of the economy and the cost of living in this province over which the people have no control at all nor any alternative.

For example, a week ago the Premier announced that he was approving an increase in the payments to the medical practitioners in Ontario under the OMA fee schedule of about seven per cent -- I believe it was 7.2 per cent -- with a further increase next year of something approximating four per cent. I felt at the time that we as members of the Legislature had been slighted; that we had not an opportunity to look at the justification and that the time had surely come when the province, through its Legislature, must establish a mechanism whereby something more than the Premier’s say-so or the say-so of a government minister is necessary for the prices to change. In the case of so many services and products, the government has no influence or chooses to exert no influence whatsoever.

It is in this connection that I recommend to you, Mr. Speaker, the establishment of a prices review committee. In connection with the doctors’ situation we should require that the joint committee of doctors and government people come before the committee to give the justification which apparently was sufficient to convince the Premier.

It is true the doctors have not had an increase in their payments since May 1, 1971. They have, I suppose, shown an admirable restraint in at least not requesting such increases but I think it is an indication of how seriously out of line those payments were three years ago. At least the doctors took this sort of a fee schedule holiday during that period of time when it is apparent their incomes went up substantially because of the greater utilization of their services by the people in the province.

I would say that the establishment of such a prices review committee would deal not only with this sort of matter, and the insurance requirements for automobiles that we have already talked about, but other matters with specific provincial responsibility.

The last thing I would like to do is to equate it in any way with the food price committee in Ottawa. I feel that committee has made some serious errors in conjunction with its attempts either to control these prices or to bring public pressure to bear on those increases.

I think, for example, specifically of decisions taken by the Ontario Milk Marketing Board. I believe it would be in the public interest of the farmers and the people who are going to be consuming the products controlled by the Ontario Milk Marketing Board if in the future, when it makes the decision that prices will change -- and I expect it will decree a $10-a-cwt price for milk within the next short while -- that that board come before such a price review committee and give the justification.

I’m always glad to hear the comments made by the Minister of Agriculture and Food in Ontario and his colleague in Ottawa, Mr. Whelan, when they indicate the tremendous increases in costs that farmers have to pay. How much better it would be, however, if the statistics associated with that were put before an appropriate committee in such a way that the justification, if it is there -- and in this case it is there -- would be known or knowable to all.

Obviously it is not sufficient to deal with it as we have been dealing with it in the past simply by saying, as the Speech from the Throne says, that this is a federal responsibility and we will do everything we can to help.

Number one, our rate of expenditures has got to be brought under control. Number two, we can have a prices review committee here which can substantially have an impact on the community and which is going to have a control function in the long run.

The last point I want to refer to, Mr. Speaker, and I hope that I can complete this before the adjournment at 1 o’clock, has to do with the energy situation in this province. I was interested indeed to attend the energy conference held in Ottawa convened by the government of Canada and attended by all the premiers from across Canada. We were in a special position there because it is not often at a federal-provincial conference that the Premier of Ontario has to take the position of being a have-not province. But that was very much the case in Ottawa. Our Premier contributed little to the discussion other than to speak across the table to the Premier of Alberta, indicating we would be very interested in the future in buying their coal. This is quite an interesting matter indeed. I would suspect that in the next few years Alberta coal will be brought down here by rail transportation and Great Lakes transportation and have an important place indeed in our energy complex.

I was quite interested in attending the conference to find that the comments associated with the financial distribution of the revenues of the special taxes associated with the export of oil did not come up for further discussion and review. As you are aware, Mr. Speaker, under the provisions of the federal initiative the Province of Alberta this year is going to receive almost half its provincial budget from the oil revenue tax sources. This means really that a special kind of a taxation Valhalla has been established by virtue of the fact that the provinces’ ownership of the natural resource was in no way questioned by any of the provinces or by the government of Canada.

I was among those who really expected the government of Canada to say, under these particular circumstances, oil was a strategic resource and one which they were going to undertake the management of to the exclusion, or at least the partial exclusion, of the provincial governments. Such was not the case, and the revenues from the special oil export tax are now flowing to Alberta and will account for about half that province’s budget this year. During the next following years they will assume perhaps an even larger basis as long as the resource holds out.

I was interested also to read reports of Mr. Lougheed’s budget statement made in the Legislature there, yesterday I believe, which indicates that those special revenues are going to be used, of course, for the development of the province, but also to make it even more of a tax haven than it has been -- no sales tax, no death duties and the revenues being paid from a resource that many people think of as a national resource.

But if we are going to say that, we must then look at the resource in out own province, and that is specifically the uranium resource. Very brief reference was made to that in the Speech from the Throne.

An indication was made briefly there that a review of the policy in that regard is going to be undertaken. We were concerned some months ago to hear that the ownership of the main uranium resource in this province had undertaken a sale amounting to $800 million of uranium and uranium oxide to Japan. Evidently this sale has not gone through, it is subject to federal review.

But we in our own position are in a situation where the uranium resource may in the long run far exceed the value of the oil resources of Alberta. We have discussed previously the excellent record, although it is a short record, of the nuclear power installation at Pickering, which is the largest and safest nuclear electric plant in the world, according to the information provided to us.

I was interested to receive a publication in the mail a few days ago which indicated something even more interesting. I wasn’t able to fathom it entirely, but it was actually a comparison of the costs of the production of electricity at Nanticoke, which is a coal-fired installation and a brand-new one -- therefore the most efficient one we have, I presume -- and the nuclear installation at Pickering.

Comparing the cost of production on the basis of thousands of dollars per kilowatt hour, the figure is 6.21 for the production of nuclear energy at Pickering. This compares with a much larger figure at Nanticoke, amounting to 7.55 -- thousands of dollars per kilowatt-hour -- if the Nanticoke facility is to burn coal of a low sulphur content.

In fact, we are looking at a nuclear facility that is in operation. It is not a pilot plant. It is a full-scale facility that produces power at the rate of 6.21 thousands of dollars per kilowatt-hour -- that is the way the comparison of the prices takes place -- compared with 7.55. Now, since those figures were arrived at, the costs of the energy sources, other than uranium -- that is, oil and coal -- must have escalated tremendously.

The thing I found of greatest impact in the figures is that even at 1970 prices the cost of the production of electricity from nuclear sources was far more economical than the cost of production from coal and oil sources. Unfortunately we have made a substantial commitment to further coal utilization. Nanticoke is costing us $755 million to build. Lennox, which is supposed to burn only oil, is going to cost $373 million to build -- and is largely established now, although I don’t believe it’s been fired up.

I’m quite interested in the decisions of Ontario Hydro in making such extensive and further commitments to fossil-fuel-fired energy sources when the statistics indicate that the nuclear source is not only competitive but substantially cheaper if the figures that I received are valid.

The point really is that while we are concerned with the cost of oil and coal, the establishment and utilization of our nuclear resources must concern us very deeply indeed and in fact must be a matter of growing importance to us all. I would like sometime to hear from the minister responsible just what government policy is going to be in that regard.

Well, Mr. Speaker, I have covered a number of points that it might well be possible to continue on another day but I have found that you, sir, are usually very reasonable indeed when we on the opposition benches want to put forward our views and our alternatives to government policy.

I and my colleagues have perused the Speech from the Throne and we have found that it was a substantial disappointment. I have indicated clearly two areas where I think that the new policy enunciations are adequate, although we will examine the legislation associated with them carefully. I refer specifically to a prescription drug programme for pensioners and to the establishment of an environmental hearing board.

There is a good deal more that should be said about that, of course, but on the examination of the speech we feel that it has been inadequate in a number of significant areas.

Mr. Nixon moves, seconded by Mr. Breithaupt, that the following words be added to the motion:

“This House condemns the government:

“1. For its chaotic education policy which has led to the inability of teachers and school boards to reach a reasonable agreement and resulted in the dislocation of our education system;

“2. For its failure to establish a prices review committee of the Legislature which, together with a reduction in provincial deficit spending, would exert control on inflation;

“3. For its inadequate land-use policy which continues to permit the unreasonable loss of farm land to government and private development and the unnatural inflationary pressures of foreign land purchases without safeguarding Canadian ownership and interest;

“4. For its failure to establish planning and land servicing programmes without which serviced-lot costs have escalated housing out of the financial reach of our residents.”

Mr. Lewis: Mr. Speaker, I would normally adjourn the debate and I am, obviously, going to adjourn the debate until Monday.

Just before I do, since there are perhaps five minutes left and it isn’t inappropriate, I would just like to say a brief word about the demonstration that gathered in front of the Legislature today and about the York county dispute.

That dispute is getting very, very much out of hand and that dispute is beginning to show a real negligence on the part of government to do something about it. I was one of those people who admired the intervention of the Minister of Education in the latter few days of January of this year as he made a herculean effort in some cases to resolve many of the outstanding disputes, and did so artfully and well on occasion, and I don’t begrudge commending him in a number of specific instances.

I do not commend the conduct of the Minister of Education and the Premier in the York county dispute. The York county dispute has been allowed to continue, unjustifiably and illegitimately in our view, for several weeks without the Minister of Education saying three things publicly that had to be said:

1. That the dispute is as much between the teachers and the administrator of the board as it is between the teachers and the trustees;

2. That the trustees should be required to negotiate teacher-pupil ratios, and that that should be understood as a legitimate item for collective bargaining just as it is understood in Bill 275;

3. That the intractable position of the board, the master-servant relationship which it vests in itself, is intolerable to the Minister of Education and to the Premier, and will not be allowed to continue, and therefore the Minister of Education in having laid it out publicly -- because there comes a point where the kids have been out too long and where clearly the situation has to be settled -- that he wants to settle it without compulsory arbitration, and I very, very much hope that will be possible, then what the Minister of Education now does, surely, is one of two things:

Either he submits -- and my colleague from Wentworth (Mr. Deans) was discussing this with me earlier and he has some considerable expertise in the world of labour relations -- to both parties a government proposal, and I have no doubt in my mind that in considerable measure it would be acceptable to the teachers. If it were then rejected by the board, everybody in the world would see the board for what it is. Or alternatively, that the Ministry of Education settles with the teachers, itself using the withdrawal of the grants that it would normally give to the board, and then reinstate the trustees’ position for the rest of their term to be dealt with by the electors of York county as they see fit.

But the time for the endless negotiations using Mr. Mancini of the Ministry of Labour has perhaps reached the point where the Minister of Education and the Premier himself intervene, make a recommendation -- or indeed, suspend the board in order to negotiate directly with the teachers. Anything to avoid compulsory arbitration.

It serves some political purposes to have the strike prolonged so that we are faced with an extremity next week or the week after. I understand that. It serves no educational purpose, because the response around the Province of Ontario from the teachers would not be one anyone wishes to contemplate. I don’t think the cabinet wishes to contemplate it.

But to have the public gradually turning on their teachers, to have the dispute move to a point of hostility and antagonism; that the board in a gesture of outright blackmail said -- “We will hire teachers afresh on March 15” -- to allow that to happen, to allow a board to behave in that way is beyond the pale, is insufferable. And you don’t have an education system in a county in such difficulty when everyone who has any eyes to see witnesses the behaviour of this board. Therefore, Mr. Speaker, there is absolutely -- as my colleague from Wentworth says quietly -- absolutely no mutual respect; and obviously that’s exactly what happens.

Some of these boards, Mr. Speaker, behave in ways which are unimaginable. The Windsor separate school board searches for a route to the courts when they have signed a document accepting as binding voluntary arbitration. I mean that kind or behaviour on the part of a board is absolutely unbelievable. Somewhere the Minister of Education has to say to the public: “Certain things are acceptable, certain things are not -- and I am not going to play the pussyfooting game forever as Minister of Education in saying that they negotiate when I know one party is negotiating in bad faith from day one.”

What we need is to have an offer made in good faith from the ministry, or the ministry deals with the teachers in good faith who are clearly willing to do so. Or, indeed, that the ministry point out to the public where it has gone wrong; but let it not disintegrate.

I plead with minister not to let it disintegrate or, indeed, let us not have the kind of confrontation again that we had back in December. The collective bargaining process can work. There is no doubt in my mind it can work, if there is support for it. And that’s what is now lacking on the part of government. They are going through the motions without the kind of support that would resolve it.

I move the adjournment of the debate and we will save the more pertinent remarks for Monday.

Mr. Lewis, moves the adjournment of the debate.

Motion agreed to.

Hon. E. A. Winkler (Chairman, Management Board of Cabinet): Mr. Speaker, on Monday we will continue with the debate and I think that I, without divulging any confidences, that I can tell the member who has taken his seat the minister and the Premier are both involved in that particular question at this particular time in seeking a solution.

Hon. Mr. Winkler moves the adjournment of the House.

Motion agreed to.

The House adjourned at 1 o’clock, p.m.