Legislative Assembly of Ontario

The House resumed at 8 o’clock, p.m.

YORK COUNTY BOARD OF EDUCATION TEACHERS DISPUTE ACT, 1974 (CONCLUDED)

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for York North has the floor.

Mr. W. Hodgson (York North): Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak on second reading of this bill, on the principle of it, with maybe a better understanding of it than any member in this Legislature. I have been very close to it for the last five weeks. York North is in the centre of the region of York, better known as the York County Board of Education.

Further to that we have our grandson, who lives in our home and goes to high school in Aurora, as one of the victims of the walk-out at this present time by the teachers in the school board dispute.

Mr. E. J. Bounsall (Windsor West): He has been irrevocably damaged?

Mr. W. Hodgson: We also have a daughter who taught in the York county system for a matter of six years. She taught under the old system of district school boards, also under the York county school board. I still get confused sometimes calling it the York county school board and the region of York. I usually refer to it as the region of York.

My remarks won’t be too long tonight. I think there has been too much talk going on for the last six weeks.

Mr. D. C. MacDonald (York South): But not much action by the government.

Mr. W. Hodgson: There has been a lot of talk, talk, talk. It is as if they fiddled away while Rome burned. I felt this afternoon in this Legislature, with respect to every member who spoke and his sincerity, that they all wanted to see this come to some resolution and our students go back in the classrooms. They have spoken at some length on issues that are bygone issues as far as I am concerned. They have spoken condemning the trustees of the board of education in York; they have condemned the administrator in York and they have condemned our Minister of Education (Mr. Wells).

As far as I am concerned, every member of that school board was elected the same way as you and I were elected -- by the people. I know a lot of those members personally and they are just as sincere in what they are doing as you and I are in what we are doing in this Legislature in the Province of Ontario -- every one of them.

Mr. W. Ferrier (Cochrane South): They are misguided.

Mr. W. Hodgson: On behalf of the teachers of York county, I would say the majority of them are very sincere people. The only reason that they are in the profession is for the betterment of the younger generation of this province.

I want to say a word about our Minister of Education.

Mr. J. F. Foulds (Port Arthur): The member is in trouble now.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. W. Hodgson: I have been a member of this Legislature since 1967.

Mr. T. P. Reid (Rainy River): That was a good year.

Mr. W. Hodgson: Some of the members have been here for a lot longer and some have been here for a shorter term, but I can say about the Minister of Education that there isn’t a more sincere member or minister. I have had the opportunity of working with him over the last five weeks. He has made himself available on a 24-hour-a-day basis, seven days a week. He has been willing to meet with any delegation or anybody who has asked for an audience with our minister.

If the members want further proof of that, why, I would like to relate to a week ago last Sunday when the York county school board asked to meet with the minister. He gave up his Sunday to meet with them and it was a very important day in our minister’s life and that was his wife’s birthday. I think that he must have used a lot of persuasion to persuade his wife that he was going to meet the York county school board instead of taking his wife out to dinner. But this is the type of man he is. He put the situation in York first.

Mr. Reid: Besides that, he saved $50!

Mr. MacDonald: I did the same tonight to come to listen to the member.

Mr. W. Hodgson: Well, that’s a matter for the member. If he wants to listen to me okay, but I can only say, I will say it and I will say it right now --

An hon. member: They should both be up for desertion.

Mr. W. Hodgson: -- I have never played politics in this dispute. I am not taking the side of the school board or the side of the trustees, but there is a lot of politics being played by the opposition parties in this very dispute for political advantages.

Hon. E. A. Winkler (Chairman, Management Board of Cabinet): Forgetting about the students.

Mr. Ferrier: The member doesn’t agree with that, does he?

Mr. W. Hodgson: Yes. That is the truth. I want to say another thing, further, on behalf of the member for Wentworth (Mr. Deans). I met with him on the platform, with the hon. member for York Centre (Mr. Deacon), and I really appreciate the support the member for Wentworth gave me on the platform in front of 1,000 people that night. I just wish he could be in his seat so he could hear it tonight.

Mr. MacDonald: He will be here.

Mr. Bounsall: He thought the member did well, too.

Mr. W. Hodgson: But my concern is, after six weeks has gone past, if the school board is at fault, which the opposition has belaboured this afternoon too much, or whether it is the teachers, which they haven’t said -- I know there are more votes on the teachers’ side than there are on the school board side -- the opposition really set up for the teachers this afternoon. They are right and the school board is all wrong and the minister is wrong.

My concern is for the 14,800 students in York county and their parents, and I am going to ask every member of this Legislature, if they are concerned about the students, our citizens of tomorrow, to support this bill and give it early passage so we can get along with the legislation necessary to get the teachers and the students back in the classrooms. Thank you very much.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Huron-Bruce.

Mr. J. Riddell (Huron): Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Huron.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Huron.

Mr. Riddell: That great county.

Mr. Speaker, not being too long removed from the teaching profession, and subsequently the school board, and recalling the days when teachers and school trustees still had some freedom of decision and a great sense of responsibility which they were permitted to exercise without government interference, I personally feel committed to rise and oppose this bill. I am opposing particularly the compulsory arbitration --

Mr. A. Carruthers (Durham): He doesn’t really mean that.

Mr. Riddell: -- section of this bill, which is really an imposition on a group of professional people.

Mr. J. P. MacBeth (York West): Never mind the sections, what about the principle?

Mr. Riddell: The Minister of Education has infringed upon the local autonomy of the York County Board of Education by imposing compulsory arbitration to settle the six-week-old teachers’ strike. We believe that a voluntary settlement could have been reached by now, had the Minister of Education come to the conclusion that the pupil-teacher ratio should be negotiable much earlier in the dispute. We support the idea that teachers should have some voice in the size of the classes they teach -- in other words, in the pupil-teacher ratio -- because working conditions are an important part of a contract.

We are against the principle of compulsory arbitration and feel that the trusteeship could have been set up instead to settle the dispute. More than 7,300 residents of York county were in favour of setting up a trusteeship whereby the board’s activities would be suspended for a short period of time. The Minister of Education then would become responsible for school administration and for negotiations with teachers. As soon as the schools got back into full operation on terms the province was willing to agree to, the trusteeship could be terminated and a new board elected.

Mr. Carruthers: The member doesn’t believe that.

Mr. R. G. Eaton (Middlesex South): What about local autonomy?

Mr. Riddell: In that way, students would have been back in the classrooms immediately, and the issue of whether the trustees were deemed to be right or wrong in their position could have been decided at the ballot boxes. There has been a precedent for the setting up of a trusteeship, and provisions for it appear in the Ministry of Education Act. Furthermore, this idea had the support of the OSSTF.

The Minister of Education also infringed on local autonomy by establishing spending ceilings.

Mr. Carruthers: Who elected the board?

Mr. Riddell: How could satisfactory negotiations take place under such restrictions? Now the minister has changed his mind and has stated that ceilings will not be an issue. Had the minister been in his present frame of mind six weeks ago a lot of trouble could have been averted. His introduction of Bill 274 last December alienated all of the teachers in the province --

Mr. W. Hodgson: Did Roth write the member’s speech for him?

Mr. Riddell: His introduction of Bill 12, which includes a section stating that pupil-teacher ratio be negotiable, no doubt will alienate many of the trustees. I am certain the students in the school system are not too happy with his performance these last two months either. It would be difficult not to develop a persecution complex in this situation.

Much valuable time has been lost in this dispute, and it is the students in York county who have been the real losers. Since they have a lot of catching up to do, I suggest that classes be held next week instead of having the scheduled spring break. Furthermore, if the curriculum is not finished on time, perhaps the school year could be extended a couple of weeks in the summer in order to complete the courses.

In conclusion, I can only reiterate my objections to compulsory arbitration which prevent me from supporting this bill. I agree with the minister that this strike should be resolved, but I do not feel that this end justifies his means. The only praiseworthy aspect of Bill 12 is the negotiability of pupil-teacher ratio, which I hope will now be established as government policy for all boards across the province.

Thank you.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Port Arthur.

Mr. Foulds: Thank you, Mr. Speaker --

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Foulds: Mr. Speaker, I rise to oppose Bill 12. I hope what I say will not be provocative.

Mr. Carruthers: With a deep sense of responsibility.

Mr. Foulds: I want to say it in terms that I hope will have some impact in solving the dispute that is currently going on in York county.

Mr. R. Haggerty (Welland South): Why didn’t the member’s party oppose it on first reading?

Mr. Foulds: I want to endorse what the leader of the New Democratic Party said at the outset of our remarks on this debate. And, uncharacteristically of me, I want to say some kind words about the Minister of Education.

You know, Mr. Speaker, if I had been a Tory Minister of Education and had brought in this bill, frankly, I would have been relatively proud of myself. I think that we in the opposition and that teachers throughout the province taught the minister and his officials a lesson over Bill 274 in terms of drafting legislation. Perhaps unfortunately for us and for the teachers, the ministry learned that lesson too well.

The bill is basically a well-drafted one. There are one or two amendments that we will probably be putting during the clause-by-clause debate. But having said that, as everyone in this House fully realizes, I am not a Tory Minister of Education. I am a socialist critic of education in this province. And because I am a socialist and because I’m a democrat, I cannot accept the Tory view that force and compulsion are an acceptable way to settle this kind of dispute. Because I’m a socialist, I cannot accept it when that force and that compulsion are aimed primarily at the workers -- in this case the teachers. Although the bill, in terms of its guarantees, slaps the board firmly on the wrist, it kicks the teachers firmly in the solar plexus.

I want to say that there have been mistakes in judgement in the York county dispute; and there have been mistakes in judgement, frankly Mr. Speaker, on all sides and by all parties involved. There has been one monumental mistake on the part of the government and the minister that I want to deal with. There is no doubt in my mind that in the public perception that mistake has been retrieved in the past week by the initiative of the minister but that initiative would not have been necessary if he had not made the initial mistake.

Before I go into that, I want to re-emphasize our party’s position of principle that we believe in full and free collective bargaining rights for teachers; or for any other group of workers who have to negotiate a collective agreement with management. And in this case, even when those workers are full professionals they still -- because of the way that they have their contracts; the way that they have to negotiate with boards -- must realize that they are in a collective bargaining situation.

The mistake that the minister made that I want to talk about for a few moments -- the monumental error in judgement -- was that he allowed the board to parade a fiction before the parents and students of York county and before the public of this province. That fiction was that the schools remained open.

There was a fundamental contradiction in the government’s thinking. On the one hand the minister to some extent, and the Premier (Mr. Davis) to a larger extent, talked about the teachers’ strike. On the other hand, they agreed to the technicality that the York board foisted on the people of this province that their schools were remaining open and the minister did not withdraw, in their entirety, the grants from the board of education. And he should have done that.

He said this afternoon during question period that that amount of moneys for teachers’ salaries would be withdrawn, as it was in the Windsor dispute last year. But what has happened is that the full economic pressure that is a fundamental part of any collective bargaining process was not brought to bear on both sides -- and it was not brought to bear in this case on management in the board.

Knowing the peculiar view of education that the York county board has, and in particular the director of education of that board, the minister’s inaction in not withdrawing the full grants was a positive encouragement to the board to keep the dispute going. In fact, they made a little bit of money on the dispute. Without the full complement of students, the use of supplies, the wear and tear on the buildings, and the maintenance costs will not be as high.

This peculiar action -- this particular inaction, I suppose -- has in fact exactly reversed the normal economic pressures that should have been brought to bear.

Okay, let’s talk briefly in a historical context. What should and what could the minister have done? As I have indicated, we feel that he could and should have withdrawn all the grants for the secondary components of the school system from the York county board and not allowed them this fiction that the schools were remaining open. He should have done so until the dispute was settled.

He could have taken an initiative some weeks ago, at various points in time, perhaps after he received the report from Mr. Mancini about the fundamental importance of the pupil-teacher ratio item in the dispute. When it became apparent that it was unable to be settled or agreed to or even talked about by the board, he perhaps should have introduced a bill which would have given him the power to negotiate on behalf of the trustees with the teachers.

Mr. Haggerty: He has got that power now.

Mr. Foulds: He should then have sat down directly with the teachers and come to an agreement, especially over that contentious pupil-teacher ratio issue and, if it was necessary -- and frankly I don’t think it was necessary in this particular dispute -- but if it was necessary he should and could have then adjusted the weighting factors in the ceiling so that a just settlement could have been reached if, indeed, the ceilings are the cause of the breakdown in negotiations which, frankly, Mr. Speaker, I don’t think they are.

We in this party do not feel that he should have put the board into full trusteeship, thus depriving York county of its so-called local autonomy. After the agreement had been reached he should have turned the affairs of the board immediately back to it, and the people of York county can then deal, this coming December, as they see fit with their elected representatives.

The York county dispute, of which this bill is the culminating point, does not reveal the inadequacy of full and free collective bargaining because full and free collective bargaining has not taken place in York county. What it does display are some of the fundamental weaknesses of the educational system and of the county system of education.

I have been in York county twice personally -- I have a couple of very close personal friends who live in that area -- that is, I have been twice since the dispute started. One cannot help realizing that the growth of the county system in York has put the educational system at a distance from the people of that county. One cannot help realizing that the county system of education in York put the system into the hands of the bureaucrats in York county, and the trustees have, unfortunately, accepted the bureaucratic view of education.

That frankly is a danger not merely in York county. It is a danger throughout the province because there is no doubt that the administrative staffs of the large boards funnel the information the elected trustees get so that when they make their decisions they do not, in fact, have full access to all sides of every question.

If I can digress for a moment I know, for example, that is true with the Lakehead Board of Education over the dispute we have had going on there since November about the sale of rural school properties. The same thing applied, I am convinced, to the negotiation dispute between the teachers and the board in York county. York county has perhaps the highest ratio of administrators to teachers of any board in the province; it is certainly one of the highest. The structure that they have with the ministry’s director and area superintendents, and the hierarchy under them, down to the principals, down to the teachers, virtually makes communication impossible.

Mr. Bounsall: Nil, not at all.

Mr. Foulds: The member for Scarborough West (Mr. Lewis) referred earlier this afternoon to the series of rules that the board has. It is almost like the old-fashioned series of rules, about 47 in number, that we had when we were going to school, about not chewing gum and right down to walking on the left-hand or the right-hand side of the hallways --

Mr. F. Laughren (Nickel Belt): Up the down staircase.

Mr. Foulds: -- and you can’t go up the down staircase or down the up staircase, and so on.

Mr. G. E. Smith (Simcoe East): No feet on the desk.

Mr. Foulds: Well, the way the teachers have to communicate they can’t go directly to the superintendent, according to the board’s formula for communication. They have to go through all these eddies and channels. There is no chance. So the York county system of education distanced itself not merely from the parents and students, it distanced itself fundamentally from the people who are the people who make the system work -- the teachers.

So while the teachers were desperately fighting for a pupil-teacher ratio comparative to other pupil-teacher ratios in the province, there were more administrators per teacher in that board than in the vast majority of other boards throughout the province. In other words, York county was one of those places where real economies could have been achieved and should have been achieved in administrative salaries and costs. But, of course, the administrators couldn’t allow that to happen.

I want to make the point that my colleague from York South made earlier today and one that I am fond of making. I’ve said it to teacher groups and I’ve said it to trustee groups, that if I had a propaganda ploy to offer to my friends in the teaching profession, I would suggest to them that when they talk about working conditions in their press releases they make damn good and sure that the public understand that they are talking about learning conditions for the kids in the classroom; that a lower pupil-teacher ratio doesn’t mean an easier load to the teacher. What it means is that he could pay some individual attention to those children in the classroom who are having genuine problems in comprehension and need that extra attention.

If I may, for a few moments I want to outline a brief history of the York county negotiations, but before I do that I’d like to read the eight basic objectives that the teachers in York county have made from the beginning of their negotiations.

No. 1, they wanted a grievance procedure and a redress of grievances related to the 1971-1973 agreement. Very interesting that the second part of that is a redress of the grievances. That indicates that something is not going right in York county. They wanted the maintenance of the OSSTF certification as the basis for salary status.

Do you know, Mr. Speaker, what the administrator in York county wanted to do to teachers who have been teaching for the board for a number of years, who have the top qualifications -- category 4 it is called in the secondary school panel -- specialists with a certain number of years experience? The board administration wanted to reduce summarily the category of that teacher if he were no longer teaching 50 per cent or more of his timetable in his specialist subject, even though that reduction may have taken place not because of the teacher’s choice but because of the implications of HSI and because the board couldn’t timetable him a full timetable of his specialty subject.

The third objective that the teachers were holding out for was tenure for competent teachers. It seems reasonable to me. Stabilization of the pupil-teacher ratio at the 1972-1973 level doesn’t seem unreasonable. They don’t want a reduction, they want a stabilization at the 1972-1973 level.

They wanted the restoration and negotiability of board policies relating to teachers. In other words, they didn’t want board policy arbitrarily to say to the teachers within their employ, “Thou shalt not do this, thou shalt not do that.”

They wanted a realistic salary grant. As item 6 in their list of priorities, they wanted acceptable clauses on positions of responsibilities, a certain allowance vis-à-vis head shifts and other positions of responsibility within the school itself and improved fringe benefits.

Mr. Speaker, with those objectives in mind, which seem entirely reasonable, the first blast from the board side in the dispute was issued on May 16, 1973 -- almost a year ago; 10 months ago anyway. In the spirit of goodwill that supposedly surrounded those negotiations, according to our friend from York North, the chief negotiator for the board said as early as May 16 to the teacher negotiators, York County Board of Education “could replace every teacher at the same salary.”

Markham trustee John Honsberger told secondary school teachers this the week previously, according to the Aurora Banner. He made the comment at a salary negotiation meeting between a committee from the board and the negotiating team of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation, District 11. “While the board recognizes that there has to be a salary increase,” he said, “you OSSTFs should recognize that every position could be filled with others who would like to come to work with us.”

That’s really encouraging, isn’t it? That really means, “Yes, you teachers from York county, we like you, and we want you to be there with our kids.” You know what the OSSTF replied, from Dave Robinson who was one of the chief negotiators at that time -- one of the local negotiators, I might say, Mr. Speaker?

He said, “The trustee’s statement could be interpreted as a veiled threat.” What land of a reasonable man is this David Robinson? He says, “could be interpreted as a veiled threat.” When the management says to you, “We can take away every one of your jobs and hire somebody else to take your place,” and the negotiators simply say, “That could be interpreted as a veiled threat,” that is mildness indeed. That is reasonableness indeed.

No wonder the OSSTF in York county wanted a grievance procedure. No wonder they wanted an adjudicator appointed at that time over the grievances, and no wonder they wanted to be able to seek redress from principals for actions that they considered arbitrary and for actions from other administrative officials.

Then Mr. Honsberger at the same meeting had the nerve to say, “Before we talk about clauses in the agreement, I want to know who the contract is between.” Well, who the devil does he think it’s between? He is a trustee. Does he not read the Ministry of Education Act? And, very cleverly, because Mr. Honsberger is a lawyer, he said, “The board in the position paper states that the OSSTF is in law a stranger, because there is no contractual, no employer-employee relationship.” Well, Mr. Honsberger was right about one thing. In York county, from all the evidence that has accumulated, there is and there has been no employer-employee relationship.

In October -- the fall now -- of 1973 the OSSTF got a salary bulletin out to its membership. Unfortunately, that is not a very good title for this document, because by this time the teachers in York county were not primarily concerned about salaries. They should have been entitling it “Negotiation Procedure Bulletin.” But at that point the board had “categorically refused to negotiate such items as pupil-teacher ratio, transfer, tenure and grievances under the present agreement” -- transfer and tenure.

I want to tell you a little anecdote, Mr. Speaker. You know, at one point, I think it was about three years ago, a teacher in York county who had considerable seniority but was in her early 60s did not want to teach a full load and asked to be put on half time; she even gave up her seniority to be able to do that. But you know what happened a year or two later? Because she didn’t have that seniority, the board wanted to get rid of her -- after she had served that board for some 25 years. That’s the kind of good faith shown by the administration and the trustees in York county.

The other interesting thing that occurred on Thursday night after a meeting between the negotiating team of the OSSITF and the trustees was that the board categorically refused to consider arbitration to resolve differences. The board had categorically refused to consider arbitration to resolve differences until legislation was introduced requiring it, Mr. Speaker -- “until legislation is introduced requiring it.” In October of 1973 the board negotiators were waiting for the legislation requiring arbitration. They were waiting for this night.

Earlier, on Sept. 18, the county board of education tried another cute little ploy. They got out what they called an open letter to the secondary school teachers of York county. They tried to bypass the negotiating team of the OSSTF. It’s the oldest game in the book, Mr. Speaker -- divide and conquer. Breed distrust amongst the working people -- in this case, amongst the teachers in your negotiating team.

But in that open letter there is a very interesting phrase -- very interesting indeed. The York County Board of Education said, and I quote: “The York County Board of Education teachers, on average, surpass their neighbours in qualifications and experience.” That seems very nice, very complimentary except -- do you know what they tried to use that for, Mr. Speaker? That’s revealed on Oct. 4 in a memo from the president of District 11 to the teachers, to his colleagues. And there’s this very interesting clause -- clause 1.1, subsection 11 of the 1971-1973 agreement. That clause says: “Where a teacher requests and is granted a teaching programme which for more than 50 per cent of the teaching time is in an area of the curriculum other than in which his categorization is based, he shall be paid one category lower.” The teachers’ agreed to that in 1971-1973, but notice the key words, “Where a teacher requests and is granted ...”

In 1972-1973 there was a dispute regarding two teachers in that school year -- and in fact, pardon me, it was four teachers. In the spring of 1972, four teachers of area 1 of the county were notified there was not likely to be a timetable available which utilized their highest certification for 50 per cent of the time. It was pointed out -- not agreed to, not requested -- it was pointed out they would be paid one category lower than their category as established by the OSSTF certification board if they wished to stay and accept the available classes.

In the autumn of 1973 that category of teachers, that sizable group was given that option -- that is, “accept this lower categorization, accept this timetable which we are forcing on you of less than 50 per cent of your specialist subjects. “There was no retraining programme, no encouragement for them to stay on, no grandfather clause.

So finally, in this situation, at this sort of initial first stage of the dispute, the local negotiating team convened a mass meeting of the secondary teachers of York county on Oct. 17. There were 696 seats in the theatre; there were approximately 866 secondary school teachers in York county. The theatre was full, there was standing room. Over 95 per cent of the teachers were present at the meeting. The teachers’ local negotiating chairman, Dave Robinson, recommended to the assembled teachers that a request be made to the provincial executive of OSSTF to take over the negotiations. The motion passed by 98 per cent of the secret ballots cast, Mr. Speaker.

What that indicates, very briefly, is of course that there was no attempt by the Bay St. boys of OSSTF to come and take over. That is interesting in the chronicle of events in York county, because there was a deliberate attempt on behalf of the trustees, to paint the negotiators for the teachers as provocateurs from outside.

An executive officer of the OSSTF, a Mr. Vince Mathewson, took over as chief negotiator at the request of the local teachers. On Nov. 23 he had to report to the membership in York county there was a meeting that evening, or that day -- pardon me, the previous Wednesday -- and that the central discussion was the matter of pupil-teacher ratio. The board resolutely refused to give any assurance that a PTR commitment would be made to the teachers in the agreement or anywhere else.”

The teachers submitted specific proposals at a meeting the following Thursday and reported back to their membership. Actually, the date of this document is very interesting. It is Dec. 10. So that while negotiations are going on in York county over these things, things are happening on the provincial scene; because of course you remember, Mr. Speaker, that Dec. 10 was the day Bill 274 was introduced.

Mr. S. Lewis (Scarborough West): A black day.

Mr. Foulds: Now on that day the negotiating team got out an 11th-hour bulletin which dealt with that, but also dealt with the matter of what was happening in York county. Rumours were being perpetrated that salary was the important item of dispute. So to allay that fear they told their members:

The provincial executive negotiating team met with the board negotiators Thursday evening, Dec. 6, 1973. Some progress can be noted.

How optimistic these fellows are. How naive they are. How generous they are in viewing their opponents.

Some progress has been noted in that a number of clauses have been determined as mutually acceptable and carrying tentative agreement. There were discussions on terms and conditions of work. To allay apparent apprehensions we reiterate that terms and conditions of work are high on our list of priorities.

Then, Mr. Speaker, your friend and mine, a person who has been mentioned in this Legislature before, the person who colours all of the negotiations that go on in York county, decided to hold a press conference. He decided to say at that press conference that the provincial teachers’ federation used “clever psychological manipulations to perpetrate the mass resignations of 667 York secondary school teachers.” They had been “brain-washed,” he said at a board news conference in Richmond Hill.

Who is this Mr. Chapman? He is a very interesting man. He is not working for the York County Board of Education this year, yet he is central to the whole negotiation procedure. He is on leave of absence with OISE.

Richmond Hill’s gain or York county’s gain was OISE’s loss -- and OISE can ill afford any losses. But Mr. Chapman, while being on leave of absence, is a special consultant for the negotiators of the York county board. And he says to this news conference: “I have absolute data that says they don’t even know the items being negotiated” -- “they” being the rank and file teachers in York county.

Without applying the label specifically to the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation, Mr. Chapman said: “Provocateurs instigated the current state of unrest amongst the teachers.” The fact is, Mr. Speaker, you don’t need provocateurs to come in. You have got them right there. There are the board trustees and Mr. Chapman. He’s the outside provocateur, because he’s supposed to be on leave of absence.

There is a fellow called Bob Roth who writes an editorial page column for the Aurora Banner. He saw through this press conference. He saw through these megalomaniac charges. He said, and I am quoting from Mr. Roth:

The tactic of trying to find a scapegoat for real social, economic or political problems is not new and history has shown the effectiveness of uniting people around a threat of an “outside enemy.”

Remember, this was around Dec. 10, Dec. 18, and those fateful days. From the Ministry of Education we were hearing words about “mob rule.” I think we were even hearing it from the Minister of Education.

Mr. Laughren: We certainly were.

Mr. Foulds: And from the local board in York county they were hearing of “intimidation” and -- get this -- OSSTF’s “leapfrog tactics.” The imagination boggles.

The image that the board was trying to create was that those university-educated people teaching in our schools were actually mindless automatons, that they were puppets of the negotiating team.

Mr. J. E. Bullbrook (Sarnia): It’s easy to write, but tough to say.

Mr. Foulds: No, it is not tough to say; it is easy to say. Maybe it is hard to say for someone like the member for Sarnia, who is inarticulate -- though I take that back. I withdraw that remark about the hon. member for Sarnia.

The board was trying to convince the people in York county that somehow the teachers were subject to an intricate brainwashing process by the sinister outside force, OSSTF leaders at 1260 Bay St. Well, the fact that they are on Bay St. sometimes causes me a little unease; but they are at the right end of Bay St. They are not down there in the financial section, yet.

Then we had the appointment of Mr. Mancini as the mediator.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Foulds: Then we had the report from Mr. Mancini that the leader of the New Democratic Party spoke about earlier today. I won’t go into that in detail. The crucial point was, it was apparent at the end of January that, if the crucial pupil-teacher ratio issue could have been solved everything else basically was operational fall out. The other items would have fallen into place in a very reasonable and short time.

Nobody goes on strike lightly.

Hon. J. R. Rhodes (Minister of Transportation and Communications): The member is calling it a strike, is he?

Mr. Bounsall: Sure, it has been called that all day.

Mr. Foulds: I didn’t say that.

Mr. Bounsall: Where has the minister been? It has been called that all day.

Mr. Foulds: Just wait till I finish the speech.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Is he calling it a strike?

Mr. Foulds: Go back and build a few roads in northern Ontario.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Mr. Foulds: Go back and build a few passing lanes around Schreiber and Kenora.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Is the member calling it a strike?

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Mr. Foulds: If the minister will stop listening with his mouth, I’ll tell him.

Mr. Bullbrook: Why doesn’t the member call it a strike and make him happy?

Hon. G. A. Kerr (Solicitor General): He should get another volume of statutes there. He is leaning over.

Mr. Foulds: Well, I was told I was too short when I started.

Mr. Bounsall: If the minister had been here before, he would have heard.

Mr. Foulds: No one, Mr. Speaker, goes on strike lightly.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: I get it, it’s a strike.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. The hon. member for Port Arthur has the floor.

Mr. Bounsall: Sign some more letters.

Mr. P. G. Givens (York-Forest Hill): Let the man proceed.

Mr. Foulds: Even more so, no teacher resigns his job lightly, because under current lack of legislation, the teacher doesn’t have the absolute right back to his job. If he resigns he uses that collectively. For all intents and purposes, for my friend from Sault Ste. Marie who doesn’t seem to understand it, it is a strike. But he does not have, like the striker has, the guarantee of job security at the end of the dispute.

Mr. Bounsall: That’s the difference.

Mr. Foulds: As the pressure mounted, and as the dispute progressed, it became abundantly clear that the pressure was being mounted and applied by those who had a very narrow, mechanistic view of education, by those who believe that education can only take place inside a school building and that students need to be spoon-fed knowledge between 9 o’clock and 3:30 in the afternoon in little rhythm timetabled periods.

There were heart-rending stories of the educational deprivation being suffered by the students. One I recall, I believe it was from the Star but it could have been the Globe, detailed the plights of half a dozen York county students who were “bored,” Mr. Speaker. One of them even had to resort to practising with his kid brother’s yo-yo five or six hours a day. I think he was trying to loop the loop or do the around-the-world trick.

Hon. Mr. Kerr: Those are heroes the member is talking about.

Mr. Foulds: Anybody who feels that because the school isn’t going that’s the alternative has a very sad view of education.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Where is the member’s leader?

Hon. Mr. Kerr: That is the norm the member is talking about.

Mr. Foulds: Our education system has failed him, if, by the time he’s reached high school, that’s his attitude to it. Meanwhile, what was going on in all those so-called open schools, in those schools that the board was keeping open, and for which the minister was continuing to pay some portion of the grants? One student, a Miss Lisa Daniel, wrote the Globe and Mail and said, “Perhaps you would be interested in what is going on at school -- Mickey Mouse and other exciting films and card games.” That’s what was going on in the school building.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Read all the Globe and Mail letters. Read them all and the editorials.

Mr. Foulds: Does the minister want me to filibuster? I wouldn’t think of it.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: He has been filibustering since the day he came in here.

Mr. Foulds: Mr. Speaker, will you stop him from inciting me to unparliamentary activity?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Read them all.

Mr. Laughren: That promotion has gone to the minister’s head.

Mr. Foulds: Meanwhile, what had the teachers done? The teachers in York county had taken several steps before the walkout, before the withdrawal of services, to ensure as far as it was humanly possible that none of the students suffered.

Many of them assigned essay and reading assignments in English and history, and a series of math problems. And they made available to their students, the teachers of York county, their home phone numbers so that if they were having problems they could receive personal attention on those sections of the assignments that had been given to them that they were having difficulty with. The teachers would not go back into the schools to do that, but they would arrange to meet with the students, say at one of the student’s houses. Later on a fuller system developed.

I want to quote from a memo that one of the principals sent to the teachers. The principal of Richmond Hill High School said, in a bulletin to his staff just before the withdrawal of services, and I’m quoting directly:

In moving around the school and in talking to teachers, I have formed the firm opinion that teachers are working even harder than usual and planning ahead in preparation for a possible break in daily routine. This obviously is being done in an effort to see the students in their charge do not suffer any more than is absolutely necessary. I think this is admirable and that the teachers are to be commended.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: He is reading, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Foulds: Of course I’m reading. I’m reading. I’m trying to quote directly from this memorandum.

An hon. member: The minister is signing letters that other people have written for him.

Mr. Bounsall: Don’t be jealous of him.

Mr. Foulds: Well, it’s better than signing letters without reading them as the minister is doing.

An hon. member: Doesn’t the member wish he could do it?

Hon. A. Grossman (Provincial Secretary for

Resources Development): He just wants to prove that he’s educated, that’s all.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: I know I can, but he is trying to prove it.

Mr. Speaker: Order please.

Mr. Foulds: At the same time, as soon as the dispute, the withdrawal of services took place, a tutorial centre system was designed by the teachers and it was operating from the beginning of the strike, Mr. Speaker. Initially, it is true, assistance was provided only for the grade 13 students, but later the scheme became across the board and provided access for any student requesting help. Students were given the phone number of the OSSTF office located in the Legion Hall in Richmond Hill.

Hon. Mr. Kerr: Were they on the payroll?

Mr. Foulds: Then one of the five centres got in touch with the student to arrange for seminars and so forth. The centres were located in Markham at St. Andrew’s United Church; in Richmond Hill at Richmond Hill United Church; in Thornhill at the Holy Trinity Church; in Woodbridge at the Calvary Baptist Church; and in Stouffville at the Stouffville United Church.

Hon. Mr. Kerr: How about the pool hall? Better balance it out with a pool hall occasionally.

Mr. Foulds: That’s what the minister would do; that would be his physical education class. But let’s not impose his value judgements on the teachers of York county.

Hon. Mr. Kerr: Or a gymnasium.

Mr. Foulds: Besides, what is wrong with pool halls?

An hon. member: What has the minister got against pool halls?

Mr. Foulds: Is the minister going to close them down now that he is the Solicitor General?

Hon. Mr. Kerr: No, no.

Mr. Foulds: A fine fuss!

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: The greatest bonus education got in the province was when the member quit and came here.

Hon. Mr. Kerr: No, nothing; it is the churches I am worried about.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: It is an uneducated debate on education.

Mr. Foulds: Only from the provincial secretary’s side.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: The member has been wrong up until now.

Mr. Foulds: An article in the Toronto Star on March 4 outlined in some detail the way the tutorial centre system worked. One of the students, a Cathy Lemmon, said she was at the tutorial centre in St. Andrew’s United Church in Markham because:

“It’s where my teachers are. When they go back to school I’ll go back.” She said she had been studying at home until the teachers opened the centres a week ago but she’s been able to keep up to date on her school work and she’s not worried about failure.

Hon. Mr. Kerr: Dear Mr. Foulds.

Mr. Foulds: Go ahead; finish it, finish it!

Mr. Speaker: Order please. Allow the member to complete his remarks.

Hon. Mr. Kerr: How much longer?

Mr. Foulds: You mean continue, Mr. Speaker, not complete my remarks. Continue surely.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: He should have finished half an hour ago, so let him finish.

Interjections by hon. members.

An hon. member: Some members haven’t even started.

Mr. Foulds: About 500 students were enrolled in the centres across York county and attendance had been 80 to 85 daily. The aim of the programme, basically, it is admitted, Mr. Speaker, was to provide remedial aid and the introduction of some new material; but it points out that the teachers made every effort to make themselves available to those students who genuinely wished to pursue what one of my friends from the Liberal Party earlier called the book learning side of education. In spite of the fact that the programme was originally set up for the grade 13 students, no student at any level was turned away. If they came through the doors of the church halls they were given help.

What do we have here, Mr. Speaker? We have the dispute in which the board has bargained in bad faith from the beginning.

Mr. Carruthers: Elected by the people.

Mr. Foulds: We have teacher negotiators who have put counter proposals. I want to relate another small incident which illustrates the extent to which someone at the board level, probably at the administrative level, was provocative.

About three days after the teachers went out, one of the science teachers in one of the secondary schools had planned a trip, which he does annually with his senior science students, to go to one of the universities -- Waterloo, I believe it was. He checked with the OSSTF. They okayed the trip, so the teacher could take those senior students on the outing to the University of Waterloo. The insurance on the school bus was applicable and valid. The board refused, after some consideration, to let that group of kids go to the University of Waterloo.

That can only be seen, Mr. Speaker, as a deliberate attempt to try to alienate the parents and those students from the teachers. That teacher was willing, not to go back to the school building, but to go with his students on a field trip which had been planned for some time. There was no legal reason why it should not have taken place. There was no worry about insurance. There was no worry about costs; but the board refused to make the bus available.

We have a board that has consistently shown bad faith throughout the entire teacher negotiations. We have teachers who have made every effort, in individual and in collective ways, both through their negotiators to make counter proposals and, privately in a humane way, to make themselves available for teaching or for learning to the children.

I want to say a bit about this so-called dilemma facing the grade 13 students. A lot of public outcry has been that the grade 13s are going to fail the year and they won’t be allowed to go to university. What nonsense, Mr. Speaker. Anybody who is familiar with the secondary school system knows that the high school students from grade 13 are accepted into university on their Christmas grade 13 marks and on their grade 12 marks, not on the full year. Their applications have already gone in. The university accepts them conditionally provided that the remaining school year marks have not fluctuated dramatically from those averaged, but the basic administrative decision about admission has been made.

Hon. T. L. Wells (Minister of Education): They need an April 1 mark.

Mr. Foulds: In York county?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Of which the member knows absolutely nothing.

Mr. Bounsall: Is this minister going to take part in this debate?

Mr. Foulds: Which is more than this minister does; which is more than he knows.

Mr. Bounsall: When is he going to make his speech?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Right after the member for Windsor West.

Mr. Bounsall: I have made mine.

Mr. Foulds: One of the questions I want to raise with this Legislature is, why is the compulsion being forced on the teachers? Even at this hour, as this bill proceeds through the House, there is a possible 13th-hour solution -- not an 11th-hour one, but a 13th-hour one.

I would beg the minister to ask both parties to execute a document similar to the one that he tried valiantly over the weekend to get executed, but giving the teachers the guarantees that the bill contains. Ask both parties to go voluntarily -- maybe later tonight or tomorrow -- and to accept that document. But, Mr. Speaker, through you I say to the minister, execute the document outside of this Legislature. Don’t contaminate the whole negotiation process between teachers and boards by forcing compulsion at this time with this bill.

The leader of the New Democratic Party said earlier that three representatives of this party pleaded with three of the teacher negotiators on Monday night last to try to see if a voluntary settlement could be achieved. If the minister is willing not merely to make himself available but to take an initiative tonight or tomorrow, before the bill passes, to reach a voluntary agreement, we would offer whatever good offices we have with the teachers to reach that conclusion.

But I would very seriously beg the minister and the government not to proceed with this bill at this time --

Mr. W. Hodgson: Is the member serious?

Mr. Foulds: -- because if they proceed with this bill they colour the whole texture of future possible negotiations with boards and teachers, and they colour the general legislation that may be brought in subsequently, so that it can no longer be dealt with on its merits.

Mr. W. Hodgson: He can’t be serious.

Mr. Foulds: The government has contaminated the laboratory, so to speak.

As I said in the debate on Bill 274, even though this is one group, and it is only one group, every time we take away the basic, free collective bargaining rights of one group, no matter how small, it becomes easier and easier to do it to more and more groups. That’s why, although at the beginning of my speech I indicated to the minister that he and his ministry have learned a lot about drafting legislation, and that the bill is well drafted, we cannot accept it.

We cannot accept it because it embodies that basic compulsory principle that takes from one group of people basic civil rights. We would like to see the bill suspended. We would like to see a voluntary agreement reached. And I would be willing to bet you, Mr. Speaker, that given the guarantees that are in the bill, as clearly spelled out as they are in the bill, we would have at least a 70 per cent chance of getting that voluntary agreement. I would urge the minister to make that one last effort.

I don’t want to be too florid in conclusion but as to our attitude toward compulsory arbitration, or compulsion in any bill, I might paraphrase Macbeth: “You get so far steeped in blood that it is as easy to cross over the river to the other bank than to return.” Once we take those rights away from an additional group of people, it is easier to do it through the whole labour relations process.

We would ask the minister, very sincerely, to withdraw the bill at this time. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Prince Edward-Lennox.

Mr. J. A. Taylor (Prince Edward-Lennox): Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the bill. Firstly, may I commend you on the fine manner in which you are conducting these proceedings. You not only grace that chair but you certainly add dignity and charm to the House. Secondly, I would like to commend the Minister of Education, the Hon. Thomas Wells.

Mr. Ferrier: Is that his name?

Mr. Taylor: I think has done just a tremendous job.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. V. M. Singer (Downs view): A great man.

Mr. Taylor: Just no question about it.

Mr. J. R. Breithaupt (Kitchener): Stand up.

Mr. Foulds: This isn’t like the time in December, is it?

Mr. Taylor: The dedication and the hard work that he has put in here is just beyond belief, just beyond belief.

Mr. Singer: Oh, yes, yes.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. Order.

Mr. Taylor: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Speaking of trouble, where’s the member for Grey-Bruce (Mr. Sargent)? Tell him we --

Interjections by hon. members.

An hon. member: There won’t be any trouble --

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. The member has the floor.

Mr. Taylor: Mr. Speaker, I don’t think anyone likes compulsory arbitration. However, surely after 10 months --

Mr. Laughren: That’s nonsense. The members opposite just love it.

Mr. Carruthers: He believes in enforced socialism.

Mr. Taylor: -- of negotiation and conciliation, some finality must be brought to the bargaining process. And I think --

Mr. Foulds: Wasn’t there somebody else who thought there should be a final solution?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Quiet. Don’t interrupt.

Mr. Taylor: I gather the member doesn’t believe in final solutions to anything. It strikes me that the more dissension and discord he can inject into any matter, the more chaotic the conditions be, the more he thrives. That’s his philosophy.

Mr. Foulds: Does the member check his bed every night before he goes to sleep?

Mr. Taylor: I sure wouldn’t want to find the member for Port Arthur under it.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Foulds: He doesn’t need to worry about that.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Like Maxwell Smart, he keeps chaos alive.

Mr. Taylor: I think, Mr. Speaker, it has been mentioned earlier, that we have to consider, first of all, the students in the process, and then of course the parents, the community, the province and the very nation. It’s all very well to say that the students will not lose their year, but they are concerned; they are very concerned. They are enrolling in other classes; they are paying their own tuition fees in order to enrol. Let the opposition convince them that they are not losing something by having their schools empty of teachers. They know they are, and if they will search their conscience they will admit that they are.

Mr. Carruthers: They haven’t got any conscience.

Mr. Foulds: Would the hon. member for Durham get his feet off the desk?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: The hon. member should talk about feet on the desk!

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. MacBeth: That’s just about how hypocritical those people are.

An hon. member: That’s right.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Attaboy. Talk to them.

Mr. Ferrier: How come the member for York West didn’t make it to the front benches there, into the cabinet?

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Mr. Taylor: Mr. Speaker, if you examine the bill, you will see that the negotiations in connection with salary guarantee the teachers a minimum of the last offer made to them by the board.

Interjection by an hon. member.

Mr. Taylor: Now what union, what employee, would not like to start off the bargaining process by bringing before the arbitrator the final offer of the employer? You give me an example where that has happened before, Mr. Speaker.

Furthermore, if you examine the bill you will see that the pupil-teacher ratio is a subject matter of arbitration. Again, I think that is something which is probably incomprehensible in terms of similar types of negotiations.

Mr. Bounsall: It was there in all the others.

Mr. Taylor: The member challenges that.

Mr. Bounsall: It’s been there in all the others.

Mr. Taylor: A policeman doesn’t say how many policemen there are going to be in a city to police that city.

Mr. Bounsall: It’s there in all the other cases of teacher negotiations.

Mr. Taylor: It’s the city that determines the number of policemen.

Mr. Foulds: They certainly do negotiate that.

Mr. Taylor: Look at the fire departments and so on.

Mr. Foulds: They certainly do negotiate that.

Mr. Bounsall: The member would be surprised.

Mr. Taylor: They certainly do not.

Mr. Foulds: Quite specifically.

Mr. Taylor: Any of that type of group which goes to arbitration would be overwhelmed by a piece of legislation which guaranteed them those minimums, and to be able to bargain from the base that has been established by this legislation.

Mr. Bounsall: If the member doesn’t like it he can vote against the bill.

Mr. Taylor: What I am saying to the House is that this bill is more than fair from the teachers’ point of view.

Mr. Laughren: I hope Hansard doesn’t misquote this.

Mr. Taylor: If the opposition members were interested in really settling that dispute with the teachers they would be supporting the bill. I think it is sheer hypocrisy to oppose it.

Mr. Riddell: How would the member like his child to be in a class of 40, particularly during a chemistry lab? Does he think he would learn?

Mr. Taylor: My friend, I have got a lot of my education looking through a window.

Mr. T. P. Reid (Rainy River): What is he -- a Peeping Tom?

Mr. Singer: That was a very good remark.

Mr. Bullbrook: Did Hansard get that down?

Mr. Taylor: I went to university after the war.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Mr. Taylor: We were lucky to have the opportunity of attending school. And those classes were so filled we attended in church basements, theatres, whatever accommodation we could get and we got our education. It wasn’t just a question of the physical plant -- it was a question --

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Mr. Taylor: -- of having that opportunity there.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Let the member talk to us; we understand him.

Mr. Taylor: They don’t understand. They don’t want to understand.

An hon. member: Did Hansard get down that remark of the member for Rainy River?

Mr. Givens: Hansard will say “inaudible.”

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. Allow the member to continue.

Mr. Reid: Tell him to go ahead.

Mr. Taylor: Mr. Speaker, they are just afraid of the truth. The truth shall make one free but they are afraid of the truth.

Mr. Laughren: Does the member think that outside agitators caused the riots in Attica State Prison?

An hon. member: The conservative members are doing all the interrupting here tonight.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Reid: We’d just like to hear a little truth.

Mr. Taylor: The opposition are the people that want to perpetuate the impasse. They talk about provocateurs.

Mr. Laughren: Ask the minister if he believes that?

Mr. Taylor: They talk about provocateurs -- they are the provocateurs.

Mr. Bounsall: On his wife’s birthday.

Mr. Laughren: Does he think that outside agitators caused the riots in Attica State Prison?

Mr. Taylor: My friend seems to have a pipeline to these negotiations and we appreciate very well his principles, such as they are.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Such as they are.

Mr. Taylor: But he is not the least bit interested in solving a dispute in which so many lives are at stake, the whole educational process.

Mr. Foulds: Such as it is.

Mr. Taylor: Mr. Speaker, it is --

An hon. member: He is a real motherhood speaker.

Mr. Taylor: Mr. Speaker --

Interjection by an hon. member.

Mr. Taylor: What are they afraid of?

Mr. Foulds: Certainly not of the member’s speech.

Mr. Taylor: No, because the member is not interested in putting students back in the schools. He is interested in emptying the classes.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Taylor: He is interested in confusion and chaos, agitation. He is interested in strife.

Mr. Ferrier: The member is filibustering here, that’s what he is doing.

Mr. Taylor: He doesn’t have a conscience. He is not concerned with the students.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Bounsall: We are concerned with the credibility of his speech.

Mr. Bullbrook: I think they beat their wives, too.

Mr. Taylor: It is with those remarks, Mr. Speaker, that I rise in support of this bill.

Mr. Singer: To support the bill?

Mr. Taylor: The sooner the teachers get into the classrooms and the students get back to their classrooms, the better for all and the community.

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

Mr. Singer: Great fellow.

Mr. W. Hodgson: Hear ye.

Mr. Givens: Mr. Speaker, during the dinner break, driving home and back, I was listening to the news reports on the radio on what was happening here. The broadcasters were indicating that there had been a meeting today of the teachers’ association up in Newmarket, and reference was made to the fact that even though the legislation had been tabled, the debate was going on, would go on for hours, and would go on tonight.

I sort of mused to myself that this wasn’t really much of a debate -- an oratorial contest perhaps, but not a debate in the sense that anybody was going to make any points, that those who opposed the legislation were going to win anything by any stretch of the imagination or by any chance. The legislation had been tabled, the Juggernaut would roll on, the die was cast regardless of what we in the opposition would say, so it really wasn’t in the nature of a debate.

I can see that the minister is waiting with great patience to have the legislation passed, because after many, many weeks of activity in which he worked so very hard, he will feel relieved. The only future embarrassment that he may have is if the teachers decide to defy the legislation, and I don’t pose that mischievously. It may happen.

Mr. P. J. Yakabuski (Renfrew South): Is the member suggesting they should?

Mr. Givens: I think it is interesting that last year when compulsory legislation was tabled with respect to the elevator operators they went back to work --

Mr. W. Hodgson: So will the teachers.

Mr. Givens: -- the moment that the legislation was tabled, and here so far the teachers have not gone back to work. I have to ask myself the question as to whether, indeed, this group, who in other circumstances and many years in the past were small “c” conservative in nature, may find themselves to be so militant that they may decide to defy the legislation. I hope not. I don’t think there is anything to be gained from that.

Mr. Speaker, I still wish to say a few words, not that I am going to convince anybody, but I must say, sir, that I am alarmed at this piece of legislation. I have serious misgivings about it, and I dare say, sir, that the government may have misgivings about it. There is nothing in this legislation that they couldn’t have tabled weeks ago, and I can’t help feeling that they have some misgivings because they have trod so carefully, as if they were walking on eggs, before bringing this down in the way that they have. So they must have misgivings and I have, and there are a few things I want to say out of very deep conviction.

I am opposed to compulsory arbitration and I will tell you why, Mr. Speaker. Some of the reasons I will give you are not new, you have probably heard them before, and may I say this en passant, that people have indicated --

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Givens: Well, I thought the members were educated; we are talking about education. That means “in passing.”

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Givens: People have indicated their concern about the students in this particular area, that they weren’t being educated. This may be a good thing for the students, and again I am not being facetious. I speak out of conviction, out of concern. As the minister has indicated that the students will not suffer I don’t know what he has got figured out for them, but if he means that those of them who were concerned about losing their year won’t, those who were concerned about their scholarship status, or concerned about going on to college will not have to be concerned then that’s fine.

But I really think that the trouble with a lot of things in education is that students learn vicariously or they learn from textbooks and they do not learn from living. I think that some of the older students might very well benefit from this industrial strike that they have lived through, because they will begin to understand and to feel and to perceive what it means to live through an industrial war, to live through a trade war, to live through a union conflict which they are seeing for the first time at first hand and not vicariously.

Mr. Bounsall: Not through the window!

Mr. Givens: Not through the window, yes, and not as Peeping Toms but as people who are part of this thing; they are concerned, they are in the middle of the upper and the nether millstone in this particular case.

I am against compulsory arbitration because I believe that in the field of continuing human relations you cannot force people into a human relationship on a continuing basis by legislation or at the point of a gun. I don’t think you can do that in a marital situation between husband and wife, between a father and a son, a mother and a daughter, or a brother and a brother.

You can do it in a court of law where you have a plaintiff and a defendant who may have a conflict over a business matter and they resort to litigation, and they have a hell of a fight in court and no matter who wins they may appeal it or they may abide by the decision, and they never speak to each other again in a million years, and that’s all right; the conflict is resolved, it’s arbitrated and it’s settled. But where there is a continuing relationship, where people have to live with each other day after day, week after week, month after month, you cannot force it at the point of a gun, or at the point of a piece of legislation.

When we are dealing with business and family matters, where the law is specific or even if it’s sort of remote, we can interpret and apply the law; but with respect to continuing relationships, we cannot do that -- and certainly not here. And we cannot teach children under duress. Fancy a teacher standing in a classroom -- never mind the PTR, in any classroom -- trying to teach kids under duress because they are forced to do this by legislation.

Then there’s the matter of the arbitrators. The bill calls for the appointment of three arbitrators. Where are these Solomons going to come from? Where are these men who are so sagacious, so wise, so clever, so perceptive that out of nowhere and after many weeks of conflict, they suddenly appear on the scene? They’ll be plucked from the background somewhere, put into a situation of conflict and expected to settle it when the minister couldn’t settle it, when all his high-priced helpers couldn’t settle it, when the representatives of the union couldn’t settle it and so on.

Mr. Yakabuski: And the member for York Centre couldn’t settle it.

Mr. Givens: Where are these wise men going to come from all of a sudden? And if the minister has them and they are available, why hasn’t he found them before this, Mr. Speaker?

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Givens: Mr. Speaker, I believe, and my colleagues on this side believe, that compulsory arbitration is only applicable --

Mr. W. Hodgson: Let’s pass the legislation and get on with it!

An hon. member: Let’s have the teachers back tomorrow morning.

Mr. Givens: -- in situations where matters of public health and safety are at stake, when life and death are at stake. It is not enough to say that a certain industry or a certain calling is essential. That is not the criterion for compulsory arbitration. I think garbage collection is essential, street sweeping is essential, the running of elevators is essential, the providing of a water supply is essential, public transportation is essential. I would not consider any of these fields in which compulsory arbitration should take place in a labour dispute. Police, yes; fire, yes --

Mr. F. Drea (Scarborough Centre): The Liberals voted for it. They voted for it a year ago.

Mr. Givens: -- hospital workers, yes -- but not in a case of this kind.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Givens: Mr. Speaker, strikes are by nature costly. Strikes are by nature inconvenient. They are meant to be. They are a form of economic warfare. They are painful. But I tell you, Mr. Speaker, and I mean this very seriously and out of a sense of conviction, that this is the price we pay in a democracy for the kind of society that we want to have. Either we are prepared to pay that price or we are not prepared to pay that price. We on this side are prepared to pay that price. We think it’s essential for a free society. In the Soviet Union and in the “iron curtain” countries such a thing could not happen, but it does happen here -- and it is part of the price we pay for freedom.

Mr. W. Hodgson: I can assure the hon. member --

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. Order, please.

Mr. Givens: There is another thing that concerns me, Mr. Speaker. It should concern the minister and the government. I think it should concern all of us. I say to the minister, this group is an unusual group -- I don’t have to tell of highly intelligent, highly educated people. In the past, there has never been much trouble with the teaching group in this province. They are not militants. They are not stevedores. They are not longshoremen. They are not miners who perhaps haven’t had the opportunities of education that these people have had. There hasn’t been any evidence that they are being led by militants, by Communists, by Trotskyites or what have you. There has been no evidence of this kind at all here.

Now, if this particular group in our society is conducting itself in this manner, Mr. Speaker, I suggest to you that our society is in trouble. I say this, as a member of this government, even sitting on this side of the House: We have got much to be concerned about. If this is what we get from this particular group, this elite -- they don’t call themselves that, but I say they are by virtue of their education, their background and their upbringing -- these people who are teaching our kids, who have control of the minds and the souls of our children, this is a matter of very grave concern. Somewhere, Mr. Speaker, we have failed. The minister has failed and we have failed.

We have failed throughout the community if this is what we get from this group, considering their background, their education and their intelligence. And I don’t blame them. I don’t say they owe us a higher duty than anybody else, that they owe us a higher sense of obligation, that they should conduct themselves in a different manner or that they have fewer rights than other groups. I would expect a stronger sense of social obligation from them, but something has gone wrong somewhere. We should concern ourselves with this, because these darned things -- compulsory arbitration now, and next year it will be something else -- they don’t end it. This is just a temporary ending of the situation. It certainly doesn’t solve the situation.

There are certain things, Mr. Speaker, that puzzle me. For many weeks I was inundated with mail which said that the reason the teachers were behaving this way was because of the ceilings that the government has imposed. The minister said in this House that it was not because of the ceilings that were imposed. The minister was asked the other day, “What happens with the ceilings?” If, as the minister announced in his statement, there’s going to be a floor in this arbitration and no ceiling -- he said ceilings would not apply -- then where will the money for the settlement come from? Is this government going to mortgage the future? Are the local boards of education going to mortgage the future? Will the board of education in this particular community mortgage the future for the purpose of paying the awards which an arbitrator will decide? What is the answer? I wish the Minister of Education would answer some of these questions that I’m asking.

Another question I’d like to ask of the minister, through you, Mr. Speaker: What is he doing to forestall a similar situation from happening with the CUPE workers in the educational organization? There are the caretakers and the sweepers and the cleaners and the people who keep the boilers going. They can also shut down the educational plant. What is the minister going to do after he settles this dispute? Does this bill include them; or is this to be a precedent for what he will do if he gets into trouble with them?

Mr. Bounsall: They’ll get around to it.

Mr. Givens: We’d like to have an answer. Now, how does the minister adjust what he’s going to do here for the pupil-teacher ratio with respect to the declining registration; the declining enrolment he obviously is going to have next year? The minister has projections of these figures and he knows he’s going to have a declining enrolment. How does he take this into consideration on Bill 12?

There is another question I’d like to ask: What does the minister do if the arbitrators make a decision with respect to certain matters which are not enforceable; which cannot be effectuated from the standpoint of administration? They may make decisions which cannot be put into operation.

Indeed, if everything is to be negotiable, does that mean literally that every single thing will be negotiable? What about the length of the school year? Are the teachers going to decide to elongate the school year? Instead of making it an eight-month year, they might make it a 10-month year or an 11-month year, and sort of telescope the period of time that the students are in school. Does it really mean every single thing? Will it apply to extracurricular activities? Will it apply to matters which are clearly policy matters? I don’t think this is made clear.

The last matter of concern that bothers me, Mr. Speaker, is that since the province pays something like 60 per cent and up to 90 per cent in some cases of the cost of education, does this mean again that there’s going to be the sacrificing of local autonomy? We’re finding it in regional government, with more and more centralization, more and more decisions being made with respect to education from the Kremlin right here in Queen’s Park.

Does this mean that this is inexorable, that it is irrevocable, that we’re going to continue on this path of further and further centralization in the field of education -- as there is with respect to transportation and with respect to regional government and with respect to water resources and all the other things that we’ve been dealing with in this Legislature? I am very concerned.

The basis of our whole educational system is supposed to be local autonomy -- where regional needs and local needs have a great order of priority. This is not what we’re going to get under this system if the government persists in this kind of legislation.

Hon. Mr. Wells: Does the member for York-Forest Hill favour trusteeship taking over the board?

Mr. R. F. Nixon (Leader of the Opposition): I think it’s better than imposing compulsory arbitration.

Mr. Givens: I think it’s better than what the government is doing here. There’s nothing of a shotgun approach in the trustee system. Well, answer that and explain it to me. I would like the minister to explain it to me. He can debate it. This is supposed to be a debate, the radio broadcasters say.

Hon. Mr. Wells: Trusteeship would have to be done by an Act of this Legislature.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Mr. Givens: This legislation may rid the minister of the temporary toothache he’s got, the temporary pain that he’s got -- but the malady will linger on. The problems that I have set out in these few remarks that I’ve made here, I think are very very serious. For these reasons I cannot support this legislation; and my colleagues can’t support this legislation. I hope that the minister will see fit to answer some of the questions that I’ve posed in the course of my brief remarks.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Nickel Belt.

An hon. member: Give him a stepladder.

Mr. Taylor: Get up off the chair.

Mr. Laughren: Mr. Speaker, if these disparaging remarks about my stature persist, even though I’ve tried to convince the members of this House that from the time I realized I had stopped growing one philosophy carried me through life, and that was --

Mr. Drea: That was pretty early wasn’t it?

Mr. Laughren: Very early, yes! Particularly when I got to be a teenager and started to I go out on dates, the philosophy was that --

Mr. Reid: Maybe that was what stunted the member’s growth.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Laughren: It did, believe me; I was quite normal then.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Laughren: Well never mind. It is better to have loved a short man than not at all.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Laughren: Mr. Speaker, we in the New Democratic Party have been maintaining in the debate today that this bill need never have been introduced. We believe that for the reasons given by the members of the New Democratic Party that the whole thing could have been solved before it reached this state.

Mr. Taylor: What is the member going to do about it?

Mr. Laughren: I must say that I don’t intend to repeat the arguments put forth by other members. My main concern about this bill is that unlike the members of the Liberal Party I am opposed to compulsory arbitration for all working people.

I do not believe, as they do, Mr. Speaker, in isolating groups of workers into the haves and have nots; some who are subjected to compulsory arbitration, others who are not. The member for York-Forest Hill should go back and check the voting last year on the elevator workers’ dispute and find out how his party voted. I don’t believe, whether working people are garbage men, or whether they are civil servants or whether they are teachers, that they should be subjected to compulsory arbitration. I do not believe in segmenting the work force in that way.

The Conservative Party, of course, uses compulsory arbitration as a political weapon. I don’t think there’s any question but what they know very well what they’re doing when they impose compulsory arbitration on people. It solidifies the kind of myths that are out there already about working people; and the Conservative Party is quite happy to capitalize on those myths and even to give them an added stature that they don’t deserve.

As a matter of fact, I believe that the members of the Progressive Conservative Party in this province would be quite happy to impose compulsory arbitration on any group of workers if the delivery of goods and services was disrupted in any way at all. They have absolutely no principle involving the rights of workers to free and collective bargaining.

Mr. Drea: That is what the Waffle says about the members and his colleagues.

Mr. Laughren: They have no commitment to it. The member doesn’t know me or he wouldn’t say that.

Mr. Drea: That’s what they say.

Mr. Foulds: The member for Scarborough Centre doesn’t know them either.

Mr. Drea: Oh, I know them very well.

Mr. Foulds: Oh does he?

Mr. Drea: They are very honourable people; they’re in nobody’s pocket.

Mr. Foulds: Oh.

Mr. Laughren: Mr. Speaker, it seems to me that --

Mr. Foulds: Is he one? Is the member from Prince Edward one?

Mr. Laughren: Mr. Speaker, it seems to matter not to the government that it’s not possible to arbitrate good teaching, it’s only possible to legislate the people back into the classroom. They don’t seem to realize either that the imposition of compulsory arbitration on any group of working people is a demeaning experience in itself. I don’t know how the government expects they are contributing to the cause of education in Ontario by imposing compulsory arbitration on the teachers.

It’s not that I’m overly concerned about the teaching profession here, Mr. Speaker. It’s obvious that since in this last year the Minister of Labour (Mr. Guindon) intruded into the private sector to impose compulsory arbitration on the elevator workers, no group of working people in the Province of Ontario is going to be safe from compulsory arbitration from that day on. This is probably just the first of many such instances.

They don’t seem to realize that compulsory arbitration ruins the entire collective bargaining process, because as soon as the two groups involved in the dispute are aware there’s compulsory arbitration at the end if they cannot resolve it themselves, there is no real reason why either side should make any major concessions in the bargaining; none whatsoever, as long as there’s compulsory arbitration at the end.

Mr. Speaker, there has been a lot of talk by some members here this afternoon about hypocrisy, and about taking different stands, and I really wonder if the government doesn’t see how important this issue is, not just in terms of any single group of working people, but the whole question of people being involved and having more of a say in the environment in which they work.

They go through the motions of having public input into the decision-making process in Ontario, by Transportation and Communications having public meetings, the Ministry of the Environment having public meetings, Treasury and Economics having public meetings, supposedly to get the opinion of the public so that they can make decisions that are closer to the people out there. And at the same time they will not see that teachers are just a part of the public who want more of a say not less of a say in those things that affect their work environment.

I was reading a completely unrelated piece of literature today. I came across a quote from an economist -- this was in 1970 -- Mr. Jaroslav Vanik, and I quote:

The quest of men to participate in the determination and decision-making activities in which they are actually involved is one of the most important socio-political phenomena of our times. It is very likely to be the dominant force of social evolution in the last third of the 20th century.

Mr. Speaker, my point is that as long as boards like the York county board persist in refusing to allow teachers to negotiate on things such as pupil-teacher ratios -- which, after all, are as much a part of the learning process as they are of the teaching process -- then they are flying in the teeth of the changes that are going on in society around

Mr. Bounsall: They’re back in the first two-thirds.

Mr. Laughren: And I think that economist puts it quite well. This issue is going to surface again and again because the seeds of discontent are in all of us in terms of wanting to have more and more and ever more of a say in all the factors that affect the way we live. To take away this right is going against a major trend in this part of the 20th century. People will no longer subject themselves to arbitrary measures, and of course compulsory arbitration is just that -- arbitrary.

You might very well ask what are the alternatives. Well, I think it has been documented this afternoon and this evening that the Minister of Education did have some alternatives earlier on in the dispute, before the negotiations deteriorated to the level that he felt necessitated this bill we are debating now. I wonder how he thinks the bargaining committee for the teachers could possibly ignore that gauntlet that was thrown down to them when the board said that they would accept the resignations and hire new teachers. How could the bargaining committee ignore that kind of challenge and bargain any more with that kind of nonsense?

Mr. Speaker, we in the New Democratic Party simply cannot support a bill that imposes compulsory arbitration on any groups of working people in Ontario. This is truly an offensive bill.

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

Mr. E. W. Martel (Sudbury East): He is going to support the bill, I suspect.

Mr. MacBeth: Mr. Speaker, I welcome this opportunity of saying a few words on education in this province. This bill is not the end of good education that we have enjoyed. Sometimes I think that we get overly alarmed at the task we have before us. Education will go on in this province with or without this bill, and it will continue to be good education.

Mr. Martel: Well then, vote against the bill.

Mr. MacBeth: However, the main duty as I see it today is to a certain group of students who are not having the advantages that the rest of the students of this province enjoy. Our task, Mr. Speaker, is to be fair to those students and to get them back in the classrooms where they belong.

Mr. Speaker, there is a time --

Mr. Martel: He reminds me of Spiro Agnew.

Mr. MacBeth: -- for oppressed people to be militant. There is a time for them to stand up and say, “Our rights have been abused and we must take forceful action.”

But I look at the teaching profession across this province and I say to you, sir, that they have not been so badly abused by the citizens of this province.

They enjoy many rights and many privileges and they are highly respected and reasonably paid, and I think, sir, it is too bad that at this time --

Mr. Martel: Not compared to lawyers.

Mr. MacBeth: -- simply because they are not receiving everything they think they should receive -- and I’m not saying they are receiving everything they should receive; but I think in taking a militant position, as they are doing --

Mr. Martel: Who’s militant?

Mr. Taylor: The member’s militant.

Mr. MacBeth: -- that they are doing a disservice to those they profess to serve --

Mr. Martel: I don’t talk about lawyers like that.

Mr. MacBeth: -- namely the students of this province.

This bill, sir, I say is regrettable but it is necessary.

Mr. Martel: Where did they drag him from?

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Take his feet off his desk.

Mr. MacBeth: It is fine, Mr. Speaker, for the opposition to tell us how difficult it is and how wrong we are, but the opposition are not charged with the responsibility of the education of this province. They are doing their duty when they criticize what the government does, and I don’t say that they are wrong in criticizing this bill, but the opposition has the advantage of not having to be consistent. The government has to be consistent and the government has to bear the responsibility.

I say the bill is regrettable first of all --

Mr. Martel: So is the member’s speech.

Mr. MacBeth: -- because it interferes with local autonomy and that to me is very important. I think the good system of education that we have enjoyed across this province --

Mr. Martel: He sounds like Spiro Agnew.

An hon. member: Oh, stop his yapping.

An hon. member: Button up there, thin lips.

Mr. MacBeth: Oh, don’t mind him. I’m not paying any attention to him and I don’t think many of the rest of the members are.

Mr. Martel: It is obvious the seals are, they are all chattering. Give them another fish.

Mr. Taylor: Ah quiet, Archie Bunker.

Mr. Martel: The member is the biggest Archie Bunker around here.

Hon. S. B. Handleman (Minister of Housing): Does the member want me to tell them about Place Quebec?

Mr. MacBeth: I can wait until he subsides.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. Allow the member to continue.

Mr. MacBeth: I am content to wait, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Martel: Well, it’s a lot of nonsense.

Mr. Taylor: No, the member for Sudbury East is a lot of nonsense.

Mr. MacBeth: Mr. Speaker, I say it is regrettable because it interferes with local autonomy and it is this local autonomy, this close relationship among the people of the community, their elected trustees and the teachers in whom they have confidence, that has built the good educational system that we in this province enjoy. This bill interferes with that. I think it is too bad, because in my mind if anything is a management right it is this teacher-pupil ratio. All of the members today --

Mr. Laughren: There should be no such thing.

Mr. MacBeth: -- in this debate have been looking on school boards as management.

Mr. Martel: All right.

Mr. MacBeth: Mr. Speaker, you and I have served on school boards together and we know that school boards are not management, they are the voice of the people.

An hon. member: Right on.

Mr. Foulds: But they are mismanaging.

Mr. MacBeth: Mr. Speaker, I am quite happy --

Mr. Martel: Nobody else has rights, just management.

Mr. MacBeth: -- and quite content -- and so, I believe, are the people of this province -- to leave the matter of teacher-pupil ratio in the hands of their elected representatives. This bill interferes with that and I say it is regrettable.

Mr. Martel: He is voting against the bill.

Mr. MacBeth: Mr. Speaker, my third point for saying it is regrettable is on the matter of arbitration and salaries. I believe that can rightly be handled and best be handled by a close relationship between teachers and their school boards.

Mr. Foulds: Do you know who he is, Mr. Speaker? Pumblechook in Dickens.

Mr. MacBeth: And I have the pride of having represented the people of my ward, as it then was, on the Etobicoke school board and at a time when probably Etobicoke was doing more for teaching and teachers’ salaries in this province than any other board. It was setting a course, it was leading, and that is a pride that I personally have -- that we were leaders in education at the time I was a member of that board, and leaders in teachers’ salaries.

However, I come back to the point that the teachers -- at least, I suppose the ones who are militant -- are the product of the Spock generation, are the ones who, because they are not --

An hon. member: Like the NDP.

Mr. MacBeth: -- getting exactly what they think they should have --

Mr. Foulds: Fifteen years old -- they are like us.

Mr. MacBeth: -- they are the ones today who are being militant.

Mr. Martel: They have said no at last, for the first time in their lives.

Mr. MacBeth: They are saying, “Because we don’t get exactly what we think we should, therefore we’ll’ go on strike.”

Mr. Martel: Why don’t you stop the lawyers for a while, Mr. Speaker?

Mr. MacBeth: Mr. Speaker, this bill is regrettable, but regrettably it is necessary.

Mr. Bounsall: The member is sounding like the Liberals.

Mr. MacBeth: And let me go on a little further.

Mr. Martel: Quiet, please! Go ahead.

Mr. Bullbrook: He was a Liberal for years.

Mr. MacBeth: Touché! The ceilings are likewise regrettable, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Martel: It looks like the member shouldn’t be up there speaking about principle.

An hon. member: He’s got more principle in his little finger than the member has in his whole being.

Mr. MacBeth: But I say this, that the ceilings are a part of a much larger and more fundamental problem than perhaps any of us have discussed today.

I don’t know where the school boards are going to go with ceilings on one hand and arbitrators on the other hand. And yet this, I say, is a part of a much larger problem, that of financing across this entire country of ours.

School boards should not depend on provincial grants to the extent that they have to do. I am not criticizing school boards for that, it’s our tax structure.

Mr. Foulds: He thinks he’s Treasurer.

Mr. MacBeth: School boards have to depend, at the present time, on large handouts from the province to pay the expenses of school boards.

An hon. member: It isn’t only welfare; a lot goes to schools.

Mr. Bounsall: Get it all over with.

Mr. MacBeth: Mr. Speaker, there should be some rearrangement so that school boards have a larger basis, or some different basis, on which to raise their taxes. This is not to say that we don’t need some equalization across the province, that the richer areas should not have to subsidize those with less resource, but certainly the school boards should be responsible for raising their own taxes.

Mr. Martel: This should be resolved successfully.

Mr. MacBeth: That way the community could come back to having the voice that I think it should have and to a greater degree say what standards it requires or what standards are desired.

At the present time, with the province paying so much of this, naturally the piper has to follow the tune. That is again, as I say, one of the regrettable things. I am suggesting to this hon. House that many of the problems we are facing today, not only in the school situation but in many things, are tied up with the inadequate tax structure of this entire country. Until, sir, we get some redistribution of the taxes between the federal government and the province --

Mr. Foulds: What about between the wealthy and the poor?

An hon. member: What has the member got against wealthy people?

Mr. MacBeth: -- and from the province to the municipalities, so that the municipalities don’t have to depend on handouts from our provincial level of government, we are going to continue to be in trouble.

I am saying this in all seriousness and all honesty --

Mr. Martel: Yes; so am I.

Mr. MacBeth: -- that the taxation problem is the root of the problem that we have today. I am certainly in support of this bill, not because I like it but because it’s necessary and must be passed and should be passed tonight to get those North York county school children back to the class.

Thank you, sir.

Mr. Lewis: No, no. York county; York county.

Hon. Mr. Winkler moves that the House sit beyond the hour of 10:30.

Mr. Lewis: Why is the minister doing that?

Mr. I. Deans (Went worth): On a point of order: Why is it that at five minutes to 10 the House leader feels compelled to move that? Isn’t it possible that we would be able to wrap this up by 10:30?

Mr. Lewis: We would have been able to.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: By 10:30?

Mr. Deans: Well I don’t understand it. I don’t understand why the House leader is moving now to sit beyond 10:30.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Mr. Speaker, the motion was placed simply to facilitate the members of the House prior to second reading being moved. As a matter of fact we have been here all day and I understand the member for Wentworth wants to speak. I was merely facilitating him.

Mr. Deans: Oh, I am going to.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: If it concludes before 10:30, of course, we won’t sit.

Mr. Speaker: The motion is then withdrawn?

Hon. Mr. Winkler: No, the motion is not withdrawn Mr. Speaker.

An hon. member: But if the member speaks briefly it may be unnecessary.

Mr. Speaker: We have this motion before us. Shall the motion carry?

Some hon. members: No.

Mr. Speaker: Those in favour please say “aye.”

Mr. Lewis: Mr. Speaker, before you proceed. There is a quaint custom in this House which allows people to speak on motions; even when they are sucking on whatever it is I am sucking on.

Interjections by hon. members.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Watch it, Stephen.

Mr. Speaker: There seems to be some discussion necessary.

Mr. Lewis: Do you mean there will be no -- Could I ask for a --

Mr. Speaker: The member for Scarborough West.

Mr. Lewis: A very surreal moment!

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Lewis: Could I ask the House leader a question? Is it his intention to proceed beyond second reading this evening?

Hon. Mr. Winkler: No, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Lewis: Just finish second?

Hon. Mr. Winkler: That’s right.

Mr. Lewis: Thank you.

Hon. W. G. Davis (Premier): So be brief.

Mr. Speaker: Shall the motion carry?

Motion agreed to.

Mr. Speaker: Are there other members wishing to participate in this debate?

Hon. Mr. Davis: What is the member for Scarborough West eating?

Mr. Lewis: Peppermint.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Dried pork.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Wentworth.

Mr. Deans: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Deans: Easy what?

Mr. Lewis: If I had something more potent, the members would hear it.

Mr. Deans: I must say that I am certainly delighted to have made it back in time to add my voice to the opposition to this bill.

Hon. Mr. Davis: I tell the member it has been less than enthusiastic so far.

Mr. Lewis: Not so.

Hon. Mr. Davis: Most of it has been less than enthusiastic.

Mr. Deans: We will try to change that because what I want to ask the Premier directly is -- how long are we going to have to wait in this province until the government insists on bargaining in good faith?

Just how long are we going to have to put up with management-oriented people, anti-union people, sitting down at the bargaining table and not trying to deal fairly and equitably with the issues before them? How long is it going to be before the government is going to insist that the clause in the Labour Relations Act, which I know doesn’t necessarily apply here but which demands that the parties bargain in good faith in the Province of Ontario in an effort to reach a collective agreement, is adhered to?

Interjection by an hon. member.

Mr. Deans: That is the crux of this whole issue. That’s why we are here tonight. That’s why this dispute was never resolved.

Hon. Mr. Davis: Does the member want the Labour Relations Act to apply to the province?

Mr. Deans: I want there to be a clause dealing with bargaining in good faith.

Hon. Mr. Davis: And the Labour Relations Act doesn’t do it.

Mr. Deans: Collective bargaining is a useless tool unless the parties sitting together are prepared to try to resolve the issues.

Hon. Mr. Davis: Talk about all the aspects of it.

Mr. Deans: And when we go back to the very beginning of this dispute --

Hon. Mr. Winkler: I might well quote the member on that one.

Mr. Lewis: He would not object to that.

Mr. Deans: Feel free to quote it.

Mr. Lewis: The profession wants good faith bargaining. The board has been playing games for months.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Mr. Deans: The members are not listening.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. The member for Wentworth has the floor.

Mr. Deans: I was the only one standing -- what is the Speaker worried about?

Mr. Breithaupt: Why not? He is the member for Wentworth.

Mr. Deans: Absolutely. The Premier’s reaction to my statement is exactly what is wrong with the government. The government doesn’t hear what is being said to it. The government is completely incapable of understanding what it is that’s being said to it.

What I am saying -- and I say it again, through you, Mr. Speaker -- is this: That if collective bargaining is going to work in the teaching profession or in any other profession, it must be entered into by two parties aimed at finding a resolution to the problems before them. And when one or other of those parties fails to bargain in good faith, the government has an obligation to step in and to insist --

Interjection by an hon. member.

Mr. Deans: -- that the matters on the table be discussed.

Mr. Taylor: That is what we are doing.

Mr. Deans: If this government had followed up on its obligation last year when this board refused adamantly to sit down and discuss the matters put before it by the teachers, we wouldn’t be here today.

Mr. W. Hodgson: That’s wrong.

Mr. Deans: When we go back to last May, the chairman of the negotiating committee for the board, Mr. Honsberger, said that he questioned the legality --

Mr. W. Hodgson: That statement is wrong.

Mr. Deans: -- of the position taken by the trustees. When we go back to --

Mr. G. Nixon (Dovercourt): Wrong again.

Mr. Deans: When we go back to last May and recall Mr. Honsberger’s opening statement in which he said to the teacher negotiators that he doubted whether they had any legal right to represent the teachers and before negotiations would proceed he wanted to find out what their legal status was -- that hardly sets a backdrop against which bargaining in good faith can be begun.

Mr. Lewis: That’s the background from day one.

Mr. Deans: That was the beginning. From that day on there was little, if any, effort made by that board to find a resolution to the major points in contention. Little, if any.

Mr. W. Hodgson: The board offered on many occasions to meet; they wouldn’t meet with it.

Mr. Deans: In fact, the negotiating committee of the teachers, recognizing in the fall that there was an impasse, was prepared -- and did in fact -- change the negotiating team. The board steadfastly refused to deal with the major issues. The board refused even to discuss the major issues in the fall, and it was well into December when this government decided to enter into the fray, precipitously, without giving anyone an opportunity to understand what it was that it intended.

This government then created a situation in the Province of Ontario which made this board able to carry on with the farce it had been perpetrating on those teachers, and that’s what aggravates me so. I went up there to York and I listened to the teachers and to the negotiators for the board and all I could see happening was the deterioration of relationships between the two parties. There was no fair chance for a settlement to be reached.

It was obvious that the reason for this was because the board and not the teachers was not prepared to sit down and try to find solutions, and the board knew full well from the moment the minister brought in his compulsory arbitration bill in December that if it waited long enough, and if it refused steadfastly to move forward with negotiation, that the minister would eventually bail it out, and that’s exactly what he has done.

I regret, I sincerely regret, that this has created a lot of upset for the children in the system. I wish that there could have been a resolution to the problem, but what worries me is that I think there probably could have been a resolution to the problem.

I think that had the Minister of Education gone in there and said to that board, face to face, in December, “Look, there are a number of issues which we, as the government, believe are negotiable, which we intend to make negotiable, and one of those is pupil-teacher ratio”, and if he had said to them: “If you do not discuss it we will pass a law saying that it will be discussed,” then it would have sat down and discussed it and then the problem would have been resolved and the last two months would have been unnecessary.

Hon. Mr. Handleman: It was said in 275.

Mr. Deans: Bill 275 didn’t proceed.

Or if the Minister of Education had --

Hon. Mr. Handleman: It was said in 275 clearly.

Mr. Deans: -- taken it upon himself to draft what might well have been a model agreement and put it before the two parties for whatever further negotiation was necessary in order to resolve whatever was outstanding that would have been an initiative that would have been useful.

Or had the Minister of Education been prepared to say to the board, as they did in Windsor, “We are going to withdraw the grants,” that would have been an initiative that might have been useful.

Or had the Minister of Education been prepared to say to the board, “Since you are bargaining in bad faith, since you are not dealing with the legitimate issues before you, I, as the Minister of Education, am prepared to take over the negotiations, and I, as the Minister of Education, on behalf of all the children whom I see suffering, am prepared to find a way to resolve the dispute, and to show to you, the board from York, that it is entirely possible through the collective bargaining process to resolve this dispute,” that might have saved us the aggravation of eight additional weeks of upset.

But none of these initiatives was undertaken. Not one of these initiatives was undertaken. The minister steadfastly sat back, and though I don’t doubt for a moment he was involved in discussions, those kinds of initiatives were the kinds of initiatives required to resolve the dispute.

Now this government has to take a look at what it has done, because in fact it has acted in concert with the board to destroy the collective bargaining process in York.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: And had the NDP not stirred up militancy?

Mr. Lewis: Stirred up what? Militancy?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Oh, in Maple Leaf Gardens. The NDP stirred that pot really good.

Mr. Deans: The government has said it will support the board’s position; it will support the board’s position in this way, that that board now knows, and other boards now know, that as long as they sit back, whether they bargain in good faith or whether they don’t bargain in good faith, this government will ultimately bail them out, and that’s wrong. It destroys all of the value of bargaining. As someone noted, they can sit back and not exercise the responsibility which is rightfully theirs and someone else will come along in the ultimate and make the decision for them. The government has done that for this board.

I say this to the minister in all fairness, the content of his bill isn’t all that bad, and if it had been the wish of the parties to go to an arbitrator and seek a solution to the problems which they were unable to resolve, then that bill with minor modifications might well have served the purpose.

If it had been the wish of the two parties to go to an arbitrator and ask that that arbitrator try to find a way to bring about an end to the impasse, then as I say, we might have accepted the bill with modification. But this dispute is no longer about the content of the bill. This dispute is not about pupil-teacher ratio. This dispute is a dispute between personalities.

It has deteriorated to the point where there is absolutely no mutual respect, and we can’t arbitrate mutual respect. Regardless of the outcome of the arbitration, all of the soreness, all of the upsets, all of the discord and disharmony will remain.

Hon. Mr. Wells: Does the hon. member think they can negotiate in those circumstances?

Mr. Deans: Yes, the only way we can get mutual respect is by the parties sitting together until they finally understand, one with the other.

Mr. Lewis: That’s true. We don’t get it this way.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: We waited over 40 years.

Mr. Lewis: The minister could have won it, had he negotiated with the teachers.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: We waited over 40 years.

Mr. Deans: It is not a matter of waiting. The minister took no initiative.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. Order, please.

Mr. Deans: He took no initiatives.

Mr. Lewis: That’s right.

Mr. J. E. Stokes (Thunder Bay): Mr. Speaker, don’t look over here when you are asking for order; over there is where the interjections are coming from.

Mr. Speaker: I am trying to help the speaker.

Mr. Deans: I don’t need your help, thank you.

In talking about being reasonable, the one thing that has been left out of this entire dispute is reason. Why is it that the Minister of Highways -- of Transportation and Communications --

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Highways? That’s a dirty word. It’s Transportation.

Mr. Deans: I changed it. I don’t require the hon. minister’s prompting. When I need a prompter, I will hire him to sit under the gallery.

Mr. Stokes: Yes, go and read somewhere else.

Mr. Deans: Why is it that the Minister of Transportation and Communications now is so concerned about the dispute? Why was he not after the Minister of Education back in September, in October, in November and in December, asking him to go to that board and to tell that board that it had an obligation to those parents and those pupils to sit down and bargain?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Because he knew what he was doing, and I supported him.

Mr. Deans: Where was my friend from the Soo --

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: I was there.

Mr. Deans: -- when that board was adamantly refusing to bargain with the teachers on the points that are still in contention?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: I met the teachers and I talked to them.

Mr. Deans: Was he putting pressure on the minister to ask him to go in there and to insist --

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Was the hon. member putting pressure on the teachers?

Mr. Deans: I have been putting --

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: And so was the member’s leader.

Mr. Lewis: What’s wrong with that?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: You wear the horns because you deserve them.

Mr. Deans: I put the blame on one side? No, I would have put the blame on both sides if the teachers had gone to the bargaining table without any proposals. I would have put the blame on the teachers if they had refused to meet. I would have put the blame on the teachers if they had walked out of the meetings that were set up. I would have put the blame on the teachers if they had refused to go to meetings that had been set up. I might even have put the blame on the teachers if they had failed to recognize that there were some internal problems in their own negotiating team and hadn’t corrected them.

But I put the blame on the board, because the board refused to meet, because the board set the backdrop against which negotiation could not take place, because the board refused to sit and talk about the major issues, and because the board refused to make counter-offers to the suggestions of the teachers.

That’s why I place the board in the position of accepting the blame. When the board refused to take part in that process, the board then failed to bargain in good faith and the board should then have been dealt with. There can be no negotiation if one party refuses to take part.

An hon. member: And the government was the chairman of the board.

Mr. Deans: And the government understood that.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Surely the NDP wouldn’t interfere with local autonomy?

Mr. Lewis: Provoking -- the party of confrontation over there.

Interjections by hon. members.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: They would interfere with local autonomy?

Mr. Lewis: That’s right -- in a case like this.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. The member for Wentworth has the floor. Please allow him to continue.

Mr. Lewis: The member for Wentworth is fine. He doesn’t need your help, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Deans: And then we have got to take a look at another element in the dispute, because it’s an obvious element in the dispute; that’s the whole matter of the director of education and the fact that this has created a problem that seemingly can’t be resolved without an assurance from the minister that the director will no longer be involved in that particular board. The teachers find it impossible to deal with the director of education.

This brings out a point that I’ve felt for some time. The administrators of the boards of education in the Province of Ontario have far too much power. The administrators of the boards are running the boards. The trustees aren’t running the boards; the trustees in most jurisdictions are not taking part as trustees ought to take part. The trustees in most jurisdictions have given up their power and given it over to the appointed officials and the appointed officials are making the decisions. The appointed officials, without answering to the trustees, are making the final choices. And this is where the problem arises.

Mr. Martel: Everyone knows it. They run the whole show.

Mr. Deans: If the Minister of Education wants to avoid this kind of thing in the future, let me suggest this to him, he simply has to allow for collective bargaining on all aspects of employment. He has to permit the opportunity for discussion on all matters involving conditions of employment.

Hon. Mr. Wells: I never said it should not be that way.

Mr. Deans: No, I’m not saying the minister didn’t. I’m saying that has to be done. I made the same argument when we dealt with the Crown Employees Collective Bargaining Act. I asked at that time that the minister not be restrictive, that he not go back into history and invoke something called a management’s rights clause.

Because I say to him now, as I’ve said before, that the workers in the Province of Ontario have as much at stake in the good, orderly management of any operation as does the management itself. The teachers have as much at stake in the decisions that are made on behalf of the educational system, on behalf of the pupils, on their own behalf and on behalf of the taxpayers; because they are taxpayers. Who, surely, who could offer more by way of constructive suggestion to the educational process than the very people who are in the classroom doing the job day after day?

Mr. Martel: And have never been consulted.

Mr. Deans: If the boards in the Province of Ontario would promote the involvement of the teachers in discussions, if they would not simply give them an opportunity to sit in and listen; but rather encourage them to be a part of the discussion, sit down with them, talk to them about the problems; talk to them about the reasons why the pupil- teacher ratio can’t be lower than it is, if that’s the case; lay open the books and talk about what the problems are, about trying to bring in new systems; then we wouldn’t have the kind of confrontation we have at collective bargaining time.

Collective bargaining is a year-round process. It’s a year-round process and it should not and must not --

An hon. member: Mutual trust.

Mr. Deans: -- be confined to that period immediately prior to and after the termination date of the contract.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: These are teachers, not firemen.

Mr. Deans: The minister wouldn’t know the difference.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: I know the difference, but does he?

Mr. Martel: Has the minister been in the raspberry?

Mr. Deans: The whole collective bargaining process requires, if you’re going to have any meaningful negotiation, that the people involved are able to take part on a day-to-day basis in the decision-making on matters that affect them.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: I know these pole-sitters.

Mr. Martel: I know those radio types.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: I negotiated with them.

Mr. Foulds: Go broadcast a hockey game, will you?

Mr. Deans: If this government had taken it upon itself --

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order please; order please. The hon. member for Wentworth has the floor.

Mr. Deans: All right, I’m going to let it go, I’m going to let it go.

I’m going to tell you though, Mr. Speaker, something that I think we have to say. I happen to believe that this government, by its own actions, created the confrontation. This government, by its lack of action, allowed the situation to develop in this board prior to the government creating the confrontation. This government failed to produce anything by way of a reasonable alternative to the confrontation that it created. This government, by the imposition of its ceilings in the first place, caused a distortion in the process of collective bargaining, which in fact added a factor which neither the board nor the teachers were able to deal with.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: One board out of the whole province; out of the whole province one board.

Mr. Deans: Beyond that, this government recognized that there was bargaining in bad faith being undertaken by the board and re- fused to act. This government understood that the board was not prepared to deal with matters which the government, by its own statement, knew were proper matters to have on the collective bargaining table and refused to act. This government is responsible, totally and completely responsible, for the impasse which developed in the negotiations in York because this government refused to live up to its obligations --

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: One board.

Mr. Deans: -- and this government has to suffer the consequences.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: One board.

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

Mr. Drea: Mr. Speaker --

Mr. Bounsall: He is right so far.

Mr. Drea: I’m going to be right for about five minutes and the member is going to get it right between the eye’s and he’s going to take it.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Martel: We know why -- at the end of five minutes the United Steel Workers fired him.

Mr. Drea: Mr. Speaker, we have heard tonight that society is in trouble. Mr. Speaker, society is indeed in trouble when we have a member of this House stand up and say that we are all threatened, it is all our fault because children haven’t been in school for five or six weeks; and then he stands there and offers no alternative.

Mr. Speaker, society is indeed in trouble when a member of this House suggests that the difficulty is the children are out of school, and yet he would leave them out for the rest of the school year and on into infinity --

Mr. Martel: The unions were in trouble until they fired the member for Scarborough Centre.

Mr. Drea: -- because it is better to let the situation drift -- and somehow it will be resolved -- than to face up to the problems and to send the people back to work.

Mr. Speaker, the basis of education in this province is not happy teachers. The basis of education in the Province of Ontario is not happy trustees on school boards. The basis of education in the Province of Ontario -- and thanks to this party --

Mr. Lewis: Is unhappy teachers and unhappy trustees.

Mr. Drea: -- we have the finest system of education anywhere in the world -- the basis of that is the schools are open for the children to attend and the teachers to teach.

In December, Mr. Speaker, I stood here and I talked on Bill 274 --

Mr. MacDonald: There is a profound comment.

Mr. Drea: I regret that I didn’t hear anybody today, but I understand that the magic words were not uttered today. I’m still floored from December, because the proposition was put forward at that time that a strike is part of the learning process and it will benefit the children.

Interjection by an hon. member.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: The member for Port Arthur said it and another member. Both of them. They said it was part of the learning process.

Mr. Drea: Oh yes. All of them. Well, it’s been going on six weeks in the region of York -- or York county, whatever you want to call it -- and they won’t be back to school until the end of the month. I defy anybody to go up and talk to those children and say: “You should be happy my boy, or my girl, the strike has been part of your learning process. Try it next year in university when the grades don’t come very well.”

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: The member for Port Arthur said it. Now he’s got his feet off the desk, eh?

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Want to withdraw that one?

Mr. Martel: No wonder the United Steel Workers fired the member for Scarborough Centre. Is it any wonder that United Steel fired him?

Mr. Drea: Nobody has ever fired me.

Mr. Martel: Boy oh boy; no wonder.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order please.

Mr. Drea: Try and say that, sonny, and I’ll sue you.

Mr. Lewis: My embarrassment at this moment is not as acute as that of the member for Scarborough Centre.

Mr. Drea: Oh ho! So now we find out that the strike is not part of the learning process and perhaps is not beneficial to the teenagers and to the children in the elementary schools. That is what I suggested, Mr. Speaker, last December --

Mr. Foulds: We don’t agree with anything he says.

Mr. Drea: I said that a strike brought bitterness. It brought a lifetime of discontent, of animosity, of frustration and a great number of other things. And that the school system was not the place for a labour dispute, or a strike, or a withdrawal of services, or a mass resignation by teachers; or indeed some very recalcitrant actions by a board of trustees -- because neither of them up there in York are on the side of the angels on this one.

But that, Mr. Speaker, is not what an education system is based upon.

Mr. Lewis: Angelicism.

Mr. Drea: An education system cannot be based upon mutual hostility. The hostility comes down and torments the third party; and that is the innocent party, the student. That is why I support this bill.

If I have regrets about this bill -- we are into second reading today -- it is that I would have liked to have seen it on Feb. 2 -- and I’ll make no bones about my position. I do not believe that the school system -- and that is from grade 1 all the way up through university and into the graduate schools -- is a place for a labour dispute which stops students from going to classes.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: That member does.

Mr. MacDonald: The neanderthals all react like that.

Mr. Drea: I say that in all sincerity, Mr. Speaker.

Interjection by an hon. member.

Mr. Drea: Mr. Speaker, I do not wish to place upon the heads of the teachers -- or their union or federation or whatever they want to call it -- I do not want to put or seem to put the blame for this matter upon them entirely. Neither do I want to put it upon the board of trustees.

Mr. MacDonald: That’s a good safe position.

Mr. Drea: Although I must say in this situation that, quite frankly, I am much more sympathetic to the public position of the teachers than I am to the board.

The hon. member for Wentworth has alluded to a few things tonight that I was not aware of, but in any event I will let my sympathies rest with the public case.

Mr. Speaker, the blame rests upon both of them because here are people who are elected from the community to administer a board of education. They go to the people like everybody in this House and they say they are in a position to manage probably the most essential industry, if one wants to call it that, that we have in this province. If the education of children and teenagers and on up, institutionally and otherwise, is not the most essential aspect of our province -- we are paying an awful lot of money in taxes; parents are put- ting an awful lot of faith in institutions and people in general have a great deal of respect for them -- if this is not true I suggest to you we have all been led astray.

The very foundations of the Province of Ontario rest upon education.

If we go back 150 years when there were only crossroads towns, and see the land grants for the immigrants who came over in steerage -- and it took them a lifetime of toil to pay off that land grant -- the first thing they built and the first thing they made sure of for their children was the school.

They built a church and they built a school. They recognized it was essential, even when education was not as formal as it is today. And today education is an absolute necessity. It is necessary for employment; it is necessary, indeed, even to be able to cope with the complexities of life.

Mr. J. A. Renwick (Riverdale): That’s fairly trite.

Mr. Drea: Yet we allow something that essential to be interrupted by a labour dispute.

Mr. Speaker, when we get in o the question of bargaining in good faith, it seems rather interesting to me that on one occasion those with the arbitrary mind would have us seize the management, which in this case is the board of trustees. This was the proposal, seize the management, we don’t like their side this time.

It must be the first time in the history of the Liberal Party that it has ever even raised an eyebrow toward the position of management, let alone threatened to seize it. Somehow, I suspect in the months ahead there is going to be a great deal of explanation that the party really didn’t mean it.

Mr. Yakabuski: That’s usual.

Mr. Drea: Now the next time around, with that arbitrary kind of mind -- the 1930s were filled with the arbitrary kind of mind, not only in this House but abroad. That was the type of thing done when, if the union didn’t seem to agree with the government, it seized the union.

Mr. Breithaupt: Is he threatening us with law and order?

Mr. Drea: The next time around, if the board of trustees appeared to be on the side of the angels --

Mr. Bullbrook: I can think of a seizure I would like to undertake right now.

Mr. Drea: -- it would be: “Seize the federation; put it under trusteeship and let the Minister of Education negotiate.”

Mr. Speaker, there are only three places in the world where the minister of anything seizes one side and then very calmly says: “Now here is the model contract.” It happens in Russia, it happens in China and it happens in Cuba. Everybody signs because if they don’t sign we know where they go.

Mr. Foulds: How about Chile?

Mr. Lewis: Where’s that? Where do they go if they don’t sign?

Mr. Drea: One can go to the islands.

Mr. Lewis: The islands?

Mr. Drea: Or the archipelago, or behind the wire.

Mr. M. Gaunt (Huron-Bruce): They are mild compared to you fellows.

Mr. Drea: Yes, in South America -- I was coming to South America -- the Ministers of Labour are great in South America. They collect all the union dues and they dole them out in one day. If the union gets along with the government, great. Ask the teachers in South America when was the last time they took a hike. They don’t. They sigh, nice and cute. Surely, is that the kind of local autonomy we want in the Province of Ontario? Elect a board of trustees so that when they get into any difficulty --

Mr. Deans: In South America the teachers head the revolution.

Mr. Drea: -- or particularly with a labour dispute -- elect that board of trustees and put your confidence in them to spend your tax money to supervise the education of your children, and then when they get into difficulty put them under trusteeship so the Minister of Education can use the big club and tell them exactly how the people who work for them are going to be paid.

As a matter of fact, I find it very interesting, particularly in Scarborough; the chairman of the board of education in Scarborough must be a friend of the Liberal Party, because he wore a button for them at the convention and he campaigned at Scarborough. He’s a great fellow. Do the members know what he says? He says a teacher shouldn’t have the right to have any say in his working conditions. Because, after all, he says the teacher is a professional person --

Mr. Deans: He is wrong.

Mr. Drea: -- and professional people really don’t want the right to have any say in their working conditions.

Mr. Lewis: That’s not what he said. Don’t misrepresent him.

Mr. Drea: I have it downstairs in a clipping. That is what he says.

Mr. Lewis: That’s not what he said.

Mr. Drea: Oh no, this is --

Mr. Lewis: He said the Minister of Education was --

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Mr. Drea: Oh no, this is what he said; this is my clipping.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Drea: But you see, Mr. Speaker, in this bill, even though it is an 11th-hour bill to send people back to work --

An hon. member: It is the school board.

Mr. Drea: -- this government has ensured that the teacher has the same right as anybody else in this society who has banded together for economic or social or professional betterment, and that is the right to have a say in his working conditions.

Mr. Lewis: But this is compulsion.

Mr. Drea: Not only do we say it once in the bill, but we say it twice.

Mr. Lewis: This is compulsion. There are only three places in the world this could happen.

Mr. Drea: Oh there are more, because if one is going to have compulsion to bargain one must have compulsion to belong. Now if the NDP want to take away the compulsory arbitration why don’t they trade with the teachers for compulsory membership in the federation? That might be an interesting little trade.

Mr. Lewis: Why, why?

Mr. Deans: Why doesn’t the member go to a meeting and suggest it?

Mr. Drea: Compulsion is only used when it is used in front of arbitration. We don’t talk about compulsory membership, compulsory payment of dues. We don’t talk about a compulsory black-list.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Drea: Oh no, we never talk about those.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Mr. Drea: We don’t talk about the hiring halls either.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Mr. Drea: We don’t talk about messages around the world that anybody who goes to work in York will be blacklisted.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Mr. Drea: Any other labour organization that does this is against the law.

An hon. member: They are pink-listed.

Mr. Drea: Mr. Speaker, to come back to the particular points that I want to make --

Mr. Foulds: Why doesn’t the member voluntarily take three steps backwards?

Mr. Drea: Mr. Speaker, one, how can you have local autonomy of a school board and stand there with a straight face and say, “Oh, we believe in local autonomy. Let the minister seize them and run their affairs.” That’s magnificent local autonomy, magnificent.

Mr. Gaunt: Tell us about the bean board.

Mr. Drea: South American style. Secondly, if there is such aversion to compulsory arbitration, Mr. Speaker, what is the alternative? The alternative in this situation is to let the children in the region of York stay out of school through March, perhaps through April, perhaps through May, Mr. Speaker, I notice some people looking at me with amazement. That couldn’t happen? Well on Monday I heard it in the House from across the floor, that unless something was done, the children were suffering, the board should be seized.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Who said that?

Mr. Bullbrook: Is the member going to talk about the principle any moment? Because if he is we are in trouble.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Drea: Well the member for Sarnia is the apostle of it, I don’t know why he doesn’t want me to talk about it.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: How about the bean board? Tell us about the bean board.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order please, allow the member to continue.

Mr. Drea: Mr. Speaker, can’t you control the rowdies?

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order please, the member for Scarborough Centre has the floor.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Please give him the courtesy of allowing him to continue.

Mr. Bullbrook: But he promised only five minutes.

Mr. Drea: Every time the member interrupts me, another minute. So just keep opening your mouth. I’ve got all night.

Mr. Speaker, what concerns me most about this particular labour dispute that has the children without a school to go to, is that apparently once again we are put into the very paradox that the public school system was established to eliminate, and that is a law for the rich and for the poor. Because in the region of York, if a family has enough money it doesn’t have to worry whether the high schools reopen or not. They can send their son or their daughter to a private school. They can hire a private tutor, a one-to-one situation. They can make very sure that they will be prepared when they attend university in the fall.

Mr. Speaker, the working man cannot afford that. In my view, the children of working men and women deserve every opportunity that this province can provide through an education system. To allow the closure of schools in the region of York to continue, Mr. Speaker, would be a sin of omission that would weigh most heavily upon a government that throughout the years has been dedicated to building the kind of school system that will produce graduates who have made this province the envy of this country, and indeed, the envy of North America.

To come back to my first point, Mr. Speaker, society is indeed in trouble --

An hon. member: We are all in trouble.

Mr. Bullbrook: Why doesn’t the member let the minister wind up?

Mr. Drea: -- when it takes from 3:30 until 10:30 at night, after more than six weeks of a strike that has closed the schools in a region and, because of other conditions, will not allow them to be opened for at least a seventh week --

Mr. Lewis: Now they don’t want it to be debated. There are only three countries in the world that don’t debate it.

Mr. Drea: -- when we have to spend seven hours in here, when we have seen the students outside of this building --

Interjection by an hon. member.

Mr. Drea: -- begging on their hands and knees for the right to go back to school.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Drea: Mr. Speaker, if that is part of the learning experience, then give me the bill of the Minister of Education, because it is about time that we opened up the schools --

Mr. Lewis: They crawled into the chambers!

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Drea: -- so that the students who want to go to school can go, and the teachers who want to teach can teach. And if they don’t want to teach, then let’s get some who do.

An hon. member: Attaboy.

An hon. member: It sounded good. Good speech.

Mr. Breithaupt: It’s like “The National Dream.”

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

An hon. member: I’ll vote for the bill now.

Mr. Speaker: Does any other hon. member wish to enter this debate?

An hon. member: There aren’t any left.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. minister.

Hon. Mr. Wells: Mr. Speaker, I want to begin by reiterating what I said in the closing of my statement in introduction of this bill yesterday, that while we debate this bill here and it is proceeding through the House -- and, of course, it will go to second reading tonight and be proceeded with tomorrow -- if the parties can come to us and tell us they have reached a negotiated settlement or have agreed to go to voluntary binding arbitration, we will not proceed with this bill.

Mr. Lewis: The minister knows that is not likely.

Hon. Mr. Wells: I am always the eternal optimist.

Mr. Stokes: Hope springs eternal.

An hon. member: He was suggesting they should.

Hon. Mr. Wells: Mr. Speaker, one of the colleagues of the leader of the New Democratic Party indicated that he hoped that this still might be possible, and I, of course, would hope that it might be possible also.

An hon. member: Is he in the next room in the hotel?

Hon. Mr. Wells: That’s certainly why I issued my statement for voluntary arbitration on the weekend, and that offer is still open. I tell the House that if such an agreement is communicated to us, we will not need to proceed with this bill.

Mr. Lewis: That’s obvious.

Hon. Mr. Wells: But in all good conscience, I feel that if it is not, we must act. Governments must act at certain times, and this is the time when we must act. We cannot wait any longer.

I would like to review some of the things that have been said and some of the impressions that have been left. I think it’s regrettable in this debate that we have been talking about personalities. I might tell the members of the House, Mr. Speaker, that I do not intend to talk about any of the personalities involved in this particular dispute, save to say that it is very interesting that one of the members of the school board who has played a very prominent part in the negotiations was awarded the “lamp of learning” by the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation a few years ago. That is very interesting. So, in fact, perhaps all is not black and white in this particular situation.

Much has been mentioned about mutual respect. Certainly there has been a loss of mutual respect on both sides, one for the other. I agree with those who say we can’t arbitrate mutual respect back. I don’t think we can negotiate mutual respect back, either. We can only earn it back, and that earning of it back is going to have to begin right now, today, on both sides. It’s going to have to begin in order for the York county school system to regain some of the something that it has lost during these last 10 months or so.

I have also heard it said in this House -- I can’t remember how many times during December when we were debating Bill 274 -- that perhaps we should let the strike happen; but when the appropriate time comes this House can always be called to end it. And that, I would suggest to you, is exactly what we are doing at this particular time.

I want to just tell you, Mr. Speaker, why I feel that we are right in what we are doing at this particular time, at least from my viewpoint and from where I stood in my involvement in this dispute from last December.

I guess my involvement began in January when it became obvious that York county was going to be one of the areas where there was going to be a critical situation as to whether they would in fact reach an agreement before the Jan. 31 deadline for acceptance of resignations. At that time I recall meeting with the board and discussing Bill 275, which had been introduced into this House, and I recall, and I think I am recalling correctly, that I said, as I said in this House during that debate -- and I have the quote here -- that Bill 275 “gives teachers the right to negotiate terms and conditions of work.” And at another time I think I used the expression “terms and conditions or working conditions.”

Mr. MacDonald: Well, their subsequent attitude was bad faith toward the minister and everybody else.

Hon. Mr. Wells: Well, wait a minute, the member will hear what I have to say. I said to the board that this was my intention. They said, “It’s very clear that the government’s intention, as indicated in the draft Bill 275 that was introduced into the House, is that school boards should negotiate terms and conditions of employment -- should negotiate working conditions.”

Mr. MacDonald: And they defied the minister.

Hon. Mr. Wells: “We don’t agree with that but we accept it because you have said that.”

Now, they then came back -- I can’t remember exactly how many days later -- but they came back, not to me but to the bargaining table, and said, “We agree. We are going to negotiate terms and conditions of employment, working conditions, but we don’t think that pupil-teacher ratio is a working condition.” Now, they didn’t say that they weren’t going to negotiate working conditions, but they disputed the fact that pupil-teacher ratio was a working condition.

Mr. Lewis: Does the minister think that’s good faith? Does he? Does he think that is plausible, as Minister of Education?

Hon. Mr. Wells: Well, wait a minute. They said that it was strictly a financial condition -- a financial thing that a board used in managing its budget. Now I don’t agree with that, and I didn’t agree with it --

Mr. MacDonald: That’s worthy of a Philadelphia lawyer.

Mr. Lewis: The minister doesn’t agree with that?

Hon. Mr. Wells: -- but they said instead, “We accept that working conditions are to be negotiated” and as I recall, they brought in a 43-page document --

Mr. Lewis: That’s right.

Hon. Mr. Wells: -- detailing working conditions which they put on the bargaining table. And they said, “This is our alternative. You say you want to negotiate pupil-teacher ratio; we say we’ll negotiate working conditions. Here are the working conditions.

Now, I’m not going to go into what was in that document and all that went on, but I think that -- you know, Mr. Speaker, the members opposite say this was bad faith. I think that they felt that they were operating in good faith at that time -- that they were accepting our admonition to negotiate working conditions, but they were putting on it what they felt was their interpretation of working conditions. So they began their discussion, but there was a difference of opinion, obviously.

Mr. Lewis: With the minister as well as with the teachers.

Hon. Mr. Wells: Well, with me, but also with the teachers.

Mr. Lewis: But he is the minister -- he is the minister, Mr. Speaker.

Hon. Mr. Wells: I am the minister, but they are also a board which operates under legislation of this province. And I made my views very clearly known to them.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Deans: The minister tells them how much they can spend.

Hon. Mr. Wells: I am not a dictator. I am not a dictator.

Mr. Lewis: It is not a matter of dictatorship.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Hon. Mr. Wells: I made my views very clearly known to them. If I could force everything here it would be fine. We would have a voluntary arbitration agreement now.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: What about that story in the Globe that said the minister did not make it clear and that the trustees said that he did not?

Hon. Mr. Wells: Again, in checking with some other people who were at that meeting -- and my recollection is not completely clear -- my recollection is that I did tell them at that Sunday meeting that I felt that they should negotiate pupil-teacher ratio. I checked that with some of my staff who were at that meeting with me and they recall that I did say that to the board.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Then the story that said that the minister remained silent is in error.

An hon. member: Oh, never mind --

Hon. Mr. Wells: As far as I can recall it is. As I say, I can’t verify that absolutely, but I must say that we had a long discussion about a lot of things, and if I didn’t say it then I’ve said it of course many times; and I think that there is no question that that board is very aware of what my opinion was in regard to negotiations of pupil-teacher ratio.

Interjections by hon. members.

Hon. Mr. Wells: Now wait a minute. Let’s just --

Mr. MacDonald: And they defied it.

Mr. Lewis: He let them defy it; and 14,000 kids were out.

Hon. Mr. Wells: Oh no, no. Let’s just look at what happened.

We arrived at the night before the deadline, and when it was obvious that a negotiated settlement was not going to be arrived at, we then started our process to see if we couldn’t arrive at voluntary arbitration. We went through many different exchanges that day and that night. The board at one point accepted a document, but the teachers didn’t. And when we asked for a counter-proposal, that proposal was not acceptable to the board. So it cannot be said that one accepted and one didn’t, because actually they didn’t agree.

Mr. Lewis: What was the crux of the counter-proposal?

Hon. Mr. Wells: The crux of the counter-proposal was that the teachers specifically wanted to have the arbitrator rule on pupil-teacher ratio. But at that very time both of them argued until 4 in the morning but could not agree.

Now, I point out to the hon, member that this again was a document to go to voluntary arbitration, which needed the agreement of both sides. I think that if he had been in the room he would have known that I was very disturbed that the board would not sign or finally agree. But at 4:30 in the morning it finally became obvious that neither side would agree to anything that both could sign.

So the deadline passed, the walkout occurred, and everyone agreed that the best thing that could be done now was to negotiate a settlement. And rather than worrying about negotiating terms for voluntary arbitration, which is what had gone on for 14 or 16 hours, they started to negotiate again.

Now, during this process one of the Ministry of Labour negotiators was present. It has been’ mentioned that the Ministry of Labour negotiators are labour-oriented people and they are not effective in this particular kind of situation. I don’t accept that, Mr. Speaker. I don’t accept that, because I think that both sides recognized that the person who was involved in this particular dispute -- and the others who were involved -- did in fact serve a useful purpose and did, I think, appreciate the type of situation they were in. They did appreciate the educational connotations.

I point out to you, Mr. Speaker, that while this one dispute ended in a walkout -- and at this point in time we still do not have a settlement -- and the Ministry of Labour negotiator was involved, we also have at least four other Ministry of Labour negotiators who did yeoman service. I think they helped in a very great degree to bring about settlement in a lot of the areas that were in dispute.

Mr. Lewis: I don’t dispute their yeoman service.

Hon. Mr. Wells: And they understood what was going on, I think, and they performed well. I think that the fact that they perhaps had not been involved -- actually I don’t think it is fair to say that they hadn’t been involved because really the Ministry of Labour negotiators have, in fact, been in educational disputes for the last three or four years. They have been used in the CUPE disputes or in disputes with the teachers and school boards over the last few years.

But in any event, the negotiator who was involved in this particular dispute worked for many hours with both parties. In fact, he told me that he spent more time in this particular situation than he has done with any other Labour mediator sat with them. Sometimes and that included some of the very large negotiations with some of the steel companies, and so forth.

Mr. MacDonald: The board was even tougher.

Hon. Mr. Wells: Now, our position was -- and I think that I maintained this, and both sides maintained it -- that after the withdrawal of services had occurred they agreed that the best way out of it in order to try and save some vestige of morale for the system was to negotiate a settlement. So we agreed with that. We said, “All right, get to the bargaining table and negotiate.” And the Ministry of Labour mediator sat with them. Sometimes with great difficulty and sometimes perplexing some people we resisted efforts to interfere with that negotiating process. I have to tell members I could only justify doing that if I thought they were negotiating in good faith. I have to tell this House that I was given assurances that both parties were negotiating in good faith for the last five weeks.

Mr. Lewis: That was wrong.

Hon. Mr. Wells: Well, it may --

Mr. Lewis: The minister should have known that.

Hon. Mr. Wells: My friend says it is wrong. I can’t tell because I am not an expert labour-management person. I can’t tell. All I can say is that I asked again, and I asked again specifically tonight, so that it wouldn’t be my judgement but it would be somebody else’s. I asked Mr. Mancini, the Ministry of Labour mediator, if the parties were negotiating in good faith and he said he felt they were honestly trying. Certainly, representing both of their positions, they were honestly trying to bargain in good faith and come to a settlement.

Mr. Lewis: It may be well that Mr. Mancini has an enormous capacity for self-delusion.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Hon. Mr. Wells: I just have to tell my friend that both sides -- nothing is black and white --

Mr. Lewis: How could it be in good faith to accept the resignations of the teachers, telling them they would hire --

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Hon. Mr. Wells: I say, I don’t think we want to get into what both sides have done. Certainly that would act as provocation to the teacher negotiating team, but there were things done by the teacher negotiating team during those negotiations which bothered the board very much. Yet while those things played a role certainly and sometimes delayed negotiations, I have to tell members that I believe both side were bargaining in good faith during those five weeks.

If they hadn’t been, certainly I should have done something -- we should have done something -- but we were told they were bargaining in good faith. I believe they were bargaining in good faith and I am sure they are. I don’t want to attach any blame to either side because I suppose the blame rests on both sides in any dispute. I am sure it does in this dispute but I am not going to try to assess blame.

The responsibility of this government now is to bring this impasse to a close, to get those schools open. That’s really what we have to do now. We believed that somehow during the period of five weeks a settlement could be negotiated; but I guess last Friday, when I made my offer again for voluntary arbitration, an impasse had been reached.

It seemed that further negotiations were just going to continue on and on, so the voluntary arbitration agreement was put forward. It was not accepted, and in good conscience all this government could do was to bring in this legislation which we think is very fair legislation.

Certainly it’s compulsory arbitration legislation. It’s the same kind of legislation that the Prime Minister of Canada brought in when the rail strike reached the point when something had to be done. It’s the kind of arbitration that was finally used, not imposed by a government, but finally used to settle the-

Mr. Lewis: This is a better bill than that one was.

Hon. Mr. Wells: Well, certainly. What would the member expect?

Mr. Lewis: It took us by surprise.

Hon. Mr. Wells: It’s the same kind of arbitration, although it is being imposed by this Legislature, that was used to settle the garbage strike in Metropolitan Toronto. I listened to the member for York-Forest Hill, and I say to him arbitration has been used 305 many times, both in a voluntary sense and a compulsory sense, when all other avenues of settling a dispute have come to an end. I think in that way it represents a sane, civilized way to do it if the arbitration is carried out with skilled arbitrators, I agree with him that they have to be people who have some understanding, some compassion for the situation. These people represent, I think, a very sane way to bring to a conclusion something which, I submit, is causing a great deal of harm to a lot of families in York county.

Mr. Speaker, the government feels this cannot go on. We must accept our responsibility and act. We act through bringing forward this bill which we believe will bring to an end that dispute in York county.

Mr. Speaker: The motion is for second reading of Bill 12.

The House divided on the motion which was approved on the following vote:

Ayes

Nays

Allan Apps Auld Beckett Bennett Birch Brunelle Clement Davis Dormer Drea Eaton Ewen Gilbertson Grossman Handleman Havrot Henderson Hodgson (Victoria-Haliburton) Hodgson (York-North) Irvine Jessiman Kennedy Kerr Lane Leluk MacBeth Maeck McKeough McNeil Meen Miller Morningstar Newman (Ontario South) Nixon (Dovercourt) Nuttall Potter Reilly Rhodes Rollins Root Scrivener Smith (Simcoe East) Smith (Hamilton Mountain) Snow Stewart Taylor Timbrell Turner Villeneuve Walker Wardle Welch Wells Winkler Yakabuski Yaremko -- 57.

Braithwaite Breithaupt Bullbrook Burr Davison Deacon Deans Dukszta Edighoffer Ferrier Foulds Gaunt Germa Gisborn Givens Haggerty Laughren Lewis MacDonald Martel Newman (Windsor-Walkerville) Nixon (Brant) Paterson Reid Riddell Ruston Singer Spence Stokes -- 29.

Clerk of the House: Mr. Speaker, the “ayes” are 57, the “nays” 29.

Mr. Speaker: I declare the motion carried.

Motion agreed to; second reading of the bill.

Mr. Speaker: Shall the bill be ordered for third reading?

Mr. Lewis: What are you looking so bemused about? We’re not going to third reading.

Mr. Speaker: Mr. Minister, committee of the whole House?

An hon. member: Agreed. We’ve got amendments to make.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Before I move the adjournment of the House, Mr. Speaker, tomorrow we will proceed with the consideration of Bill 12 to be followed by item no. 5, Bill 8, and item no. 4, Bill 7; then we shall return to the first order.

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

Motion agreed to.

The House adjourned at 11:10 o’clock p.m.