Legislative Assembly of Ontario

The House met at 2 o’clock p.m.

Prayers.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Etobicoke.

Mr. L. A. Braithwaite (Etobicoke): Mr. Speaker, may I present to the House 100 young people from Smithfield Middle Public School in Rexdale. They are here today with their teachers, Ms. Gooding, Mrs. Wardley and Mr. Paton. I would ask the members of the House to join with me in welcoming these young people.

Mr. Speaker: Statements by the ministry.

The hon. Premier.

PREMIERS’ MEETING WITH PRIME MINISTER

Hon. W. G. Davis (Premier): Mr. Speaker, I thought I might just very briefly report to the House on the discussions that took place yesterday at 24 Sussex Ave. or St. --

Mr. E. W. Martel (Sudbury East): The Premier got there, did he?

Hon. Mr. Davis: Oh, yes, I got there.

Mr. Martel: For higher aspirations, perhaps permanency?

Mr. J. F. Foulds (Port Arthur): Casing the joint for the future?

Hon. Mr. Davis: It was my third visit, as a matter of fact, Mr. Speaker. It is a very delightful spot.

Mr. R. F. Nixon (Leader of the Opposition): Almost as delightful as Carleton East where we’re going to be.

Hon. Mr. Davis: I understand the Leader of the Opposition was there during the day --

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I couldn’t find a Tory anywhere.

Hon. Mr. Davis: -- but not at Sussex Dr.

Mr. S. Lewis (Scarborough West): That’s right. I looked for Tories everywhere last night.

Hon Mr. Davis: I heard the member was there.

Mr. Lewis: I sought them but there were none around.

Hon. E. A. Winkler (Chairman, Management Board of Cabinet): They were at home, satisfied at what the result would be.

Mr. Lewis: Don’t be too sure, my friend.

Hon. Mr. Davis: I would like to report just fairly briefly. There was, I think, a very constructive discussion with the Prime Minister and with the Minister of Finance. The Minister of Finance gave us a brief resumé from his standpoint of the international economic situation, which is, I think, important to Canada, and then some rundown of the state of the national economy. We explored a number of subjects.

I noticed some of the press reports which indicated that the premiers supported the anti-inflationary policy of the federal government. Mr. Speaker, I don’t want in any way to debate how press reports are put together. What I said -- and I can’t speak for the other Premiers -- was that we recognize today, in particular, the very delicate balance that exists between taking steps to curb inflation, and the impact that those steps might have in bringing about a rise in unemployment and, as a result of that, a lack of confidence and the possibility of a recession.

I think that it is fair to state that the premiers, and I am one of them, look with confidence as far as the future of the economy of our own province and that of the country generally is concerned, and that I was not suggesting steps -- nor would I here in this House -- that would have the effect in trying to combat inflation of reducing the economic activity of this province, because I think we are in a very delicate period.

I personally said in this House three years ago that I don’t believe that we had to do things that were part of federal policy, quite frankly. I guess in 1969 and 1970, when we were going through something of an inflationary period, it introduced measures that then did create higher degrees of unemployment and a degree of economic lack of activity.

I think it is fair to state, Mr. Speaker, that the federal government is concerned about inflation. What, in terms of specifics, might be contained in the budget or matters of government policy, I cannot tell the House because I don’t know. There were a number of suggestions from other premiers; I suggested from Ontario’s standpoint that in the area of public expenditure capital programmes that were not essential should not be undertaken, and this is a policy, Mr. Speaker, that we have adopted here.

We suggested discussions related to the co-ordination -- or, if not co-ordination, some degree of communication -- as to the level of public borrowings by the various provincial jurisdictions along with the federal government, and some recognition that this can have an impact on the capital markets and perhaps coincidentally some impact on inflation.

I made, I hope, a very strong suggestion to both the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance that while some aspects in terms of capital construction as it relates to government institutional building properly should be curtailed, on the other side of it, as far as construction is concerned, there should be additional emphasis with respect to funding for housing. But while some might argue, and I’m not one of them, that there is a fair amount of heat in the construction industry generally, I don’t think that is a major problem for us, certainly in the house construction field. Certainly one way to help solve the problem of cost in housing is to increase the supply.

Mr. M. Shulman (High Park): Did the Premier suggest credit controls?

Hon. Mr. Davis: I’ll get to that, Mr. Speaker. I am trying to set it out as objectively as I can, because I think it is a very important issue. I sort of look back to our discussions of Monday last and I can’t rewrite the rules of the House, but it’s really not the vehicle, I think, with 10 minutes or 20 minutes, to get into perhaps more objective assessment of some of these important issues.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: The Premier didn’t attempt any kind of an objective assessment on Monday. He had 20 minutes and he used five of them.

Hon. Mr. Davis: I would only say to the Leader of the Opposition that I know he was very disappointed in the lack of response he got to the five suggestions that he made, but I was really looking for something more than that.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I was certainly disappointed in the Premier’s lack of response, because he didn’t respond. He can’t come in here and say that only he has a serious --

Hon. Mr. Davis: So, Mr. Speaker, I would suggest --

Mr. Lewis: I just flew back with Allan Blakeney, so I am checking your interpretations very carefully. He gave me chapter and verse and I am listening very carefully.

Hon. Mr. Davis: I think we are on all fours so far.

Mr. A. J. Roy (Ottawa East): Did the Premier mention wage and price controls out there?

Hon. Mr. Davis: Well, Mr. Speaker, I did say to the Prime Minister of Canada any national steps he would take, as far as meeting the present economic problems, that would require the co-operation of this jurisdiction, he would get it. Yes, I did say this.

Mr. D. C. MacDonald (York South): If somebody is willing to lead, the Premier will follow.

Hon. Mr. Davis: But I pointed out, Mr. Speaker, that both in terms of the availability of mortgage supply and also in interest rates, if we can increase the supply and do something about interest rates in the field of housing I thought this would have some impact on the cost factor at the moment. I even suggested, as it relates to land, Mr. Speaker, that if the federal government wished to move into a national programme of tax on land speculation that we would opt out of the field if they moved in. We would be quite prepared to do that.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: This government would be very glad to get rid of that.

Mr. Lewis: Yes, I should think so.

Hon. Mr. Davis: Who knows? They may do it; I don’t know.

Mr. Lewis: The Premier could offer them his latest redraft.

Mr. Roy: The Treasurer (Mr. White) should be here.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Hon. Mr. Davis: Mr. Speaker, let’s be very frank about it. There was some discussion as it relates to consumer credit. The concern I think a number felt -- and I shouldn’t speak for others, but I feel, as it relates to consumer credit -- is that this is an area once again where you get into this very delicate balance of trying to find ways to limit inflation, while at the same time you don’t perhaps provoke a psychological situation or a situation where control of consumer spending, as it relates to the need to continue to produce in the marketplace, destroys confidence in the basic economy of this jurisdiction. I can’t speak for the federal government, but I don’t think that I am prepared to recommend, Mr. Speaker, as far as Ontario is concerned, a major programme that would limit consumer spending.

Mr. Shulman: Then the government can’t stop inflation.

Hon. Mr. Davis: I think, Mr. Speaker, the possibility of some programme, which would have to be national, of more savings at this precise moment might be somewhat helpful. But the very delicate area of consumer control on expenditure --

Mr. Shulman: That is copping out.

Hon. Mr. Davis: -- or credit, is something that I am sure they are exploring, and once again it will have to be national.

Mr. Lewis: The Premier could be more nebulous. I am not sure how, but he could be more nebulous.

Hon. Mr. Davis: I am trying to be as helpful as I can. I will not quote the Prime Minister or the Minister of Finance. They were not confidential discussions in that sense of the word, but I think it would be improper to say that the concept of control on consumer credit was not explored.

Mr. Shulman: It means 20 per cent inflation next year then.

Hon. Mr. Davis: With respect, Mr. Speaker, I know the member for High Park is a very qualified economist, but I am not prepared to agree to his figure of 20 per cent inflation for 1975.

Mr. Shulman: I will remind him.

Hon. Mr. Davis: Well, we’ll see.

Mrs. M. Campbell (St. George): We have more than that in rents now.

Hon. Mr. Davis: Mr. Speaker, I would only say to the member for St. George, if she wants to say we have more than that now, there has been no one in this House, there hasn’t been a government in Canada, that has expressed greater concern and has tried to do more about inflation than this government right here. That is true.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: She said in rents.

Mr. Lewis: And done less.

Hon. Mr. Davis: Ask Allan Blakeney.

Mr. Roy: Has the Premier got that in writing?

Mr. Martel: They have done nothing.

Mr. Lewis: I did, and I will tell the Premier what he said. He said no government has done less than this government and talked more about it. He told me that just an hour ago.

Mr. Shulman: The Premier just expresses concern but does nothing.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Mr. Lewis: Expressions of concern don’t put bread on the table.

An hon. member: Blakeney has done less.

Hon. Mr. Davis: That’s right; he has done less. The member is quite right. They don’t have quite the same problem.

An hon. member: They haven’t got Morty running the commodity market That’s what’s the matter out there.

Hon. Mr. Davis: Mr. Speaker, as it related to some measures in the federal budget --

Mr. Martel: The Premier is speechifying himself to death, but he has done nothing.

Hon. Mr. Davis: -- I made one or two observations, once again in the hopes that they would be constructive suggestions for the Minister of Finance. They were not directly related to inflation, but related to some aspects of the Ontario economy. They were related to the resources tax, particularly as it relates to the mining industry so that there will be a degree of stability and, quite frankly, suggested that there be consideration given toward some credit for further exploration and development of the mining industry.

Quite obviously, one or two provinces reported the oil industry as being their prime concern, and properly so. I put the emphasis from our standpoint in the field of mining. I also pointed out to the Minister of Finance, and once again I don’t suppose to be an expert in this area, that in the last federal budget there were certain tax incentives, shall we say, given for mortgage or debt investment.

I suggested, Mr. Speaker -- and it was only a suggestion -- that with the state of the equity market at the moment, the federal government might give consideration to some form of incentive for investment in the equity market, which I think needs some stimulation at the moment.

There were two or three other areas that were mentioned by way of general discussion. I urged the Prime Minister of the country to reconsider the elimination of the milk subsidy. I didn’t receive, nor did any of us, any specific reactions or commitments, and I don’t think any premier expected that any commitments would be given.

There was also discussion of the timing of, shall we say, the more formal federal-provincial conference, which was mentioned in the Throne Speech, and some items for the agenda were discussed.

That, Mr. Speaker, in as objective and non-provocative way as I can, covers the general area of discussion.

Mr. Lewis: Non-provocative?

Hon. Mr. Davis: I said to the Prime Minister then, and I say it here in the House, that I was encouraged by the fact that he called this meeting -- and it was a meeting, not a conference. I found it personally helpful, and it is the kind of thing that I would like to see happen on a more regular basis. It’s the kind of thing that I think is helpful to all the provincial premiers and, I hope, to the Prime Minister and to the Minister of Finance on this occasion, because it does give us the opportunity in a somewhat informal, unstructured way to discuss some of the complex issues.

I said to the Prime Minister there, and I have no reservation in saying it here, that I was very pleased he had convened this meeting and that perhaps more discussions of this kind should take place in the future.

Mr. Shulman: Why?

Mr. Lewis: That is called generality run amuck.

Mr. Shulman: The Premier would do better spending his time here rather than wasting it in Ottawa.

ENROLMENTS IN UNIVERSITIES AND COLLEGES

Hon. J. A. C. Auld (Minister of Colleges and Universities): Mr. Speaker, I would like to. give the House today the preliminary enrolment figures for the 1974-1975 academic year in Ontario universities and colleges of applied arts and technology.

The universities predict enrolment of 146,062 full-time students, an increase of 4.9 per cent of 1973-1974. The anticipated enrolment includes 14,137 full-time graduate students, whose numbers have also increased by 4.9 per cent. Enrolment of part-time students is expected to increase by 4.6 per cent to the equivalent of 19,440 full-time students.

Those figures include enrolment at the 15 provincially assisted universities, Ryerson Polytechnical Institute and the Ontario College of Art.

In the province’s 22 colleges of applied arts and technology, a total of 55,038 full-time students have enrolled in technology, business, applied arts and health programmes. This figure reflects a 6.3 per cent increase over full-time enrolment last year. The figures for part-time enrolment in the colleges are not yet available.

I should point out to the hon. members, Mr. Speaker, that the college and university figures are calculated by different methods, and that the preliminary estimates I have referred to are likely to differ slightly from final enrolment figures. However, I believe the estimates indicate a satisfactory and consistent rate of growth throughout the post-secondary system.

HOUSING PROGRAMMES

Hon. D. R. Irvine (Minister of Housing): I would like to announce to the House today the signing of agreements between seven developers and my ministry under the Ontario Housing Action Programme.

Mr. Roy: Let’s hear it.

Hon. Mr. Irvine: These agreements cover 3,033 housing units either under construction or to start by December of this year. We anticipate another 6,933 units will be started in 1975, provided certain scheduling agreements are finalized with these developers. The agreements contain commitments for at least an additional 1,792 housing starts by 1976 on lands owned by the developers. One agreement also includes 2,150 acres of housing land for development starting in 1976.

We have concentrated our endeavours in urban centres where cost and supply pressures are greatest. The seven signed agreements are for housing developments in Oshawa, Brampton, Markham, North York, Scarborough, Ottawa, Gloucester township and March township.

The guidelines established for OHAP negotiations with developers suggest a 10 per cent allocation for the HOME programme and 30 per cent for the income range between $14,500 and $20,000, with the remaining 60 per cent having stabilized land prices. In the first seven agreements we have far exceeded those guidelines. Of the 3,033 units to be started by the end of this year, 1,167, or approximately 38 per cent of the total units, will be priced for the HOME programme income range, which starts at $8,000 and goes up to $14,500. The remaining 1,856 units will meet household incomes in the $14,500 to $20,000 income range.

These figures are based on a 30 per cent gross household income expenditure for interest, principal and municipal taxes. We are particularly encouraged by this income mix, which goes much beyond our original objective.

Our goal in these agreements is, first of all, to reduce the price, and secondly, to accelerate completion of these units, in keeping with the original policy established for the programme. In these first agreements the price objective has been paramount. The full range of mortgage, grant and loan incentives for developers and municipalities has contributed substantially; to both the final price and the timing of construction.

Through the recently established Ontario Mortgage Corp., OHAP provides 95 per cent first mortgages at 10% per cent over a 35-year term. Mortgage money at 9% per cent is also available for accommodation marketed under the HOME programme. The impact of the mortgage money is two-fold. First, it helps accelerate the construction and marketing of housing units. Secondly, it also reduces carrying charges, which makes housing affordable to a greater number of people, many of whom are presently in rental or shared accommodation.

The OHAP mortgage arrangements have acted as an incentive to the developers. The construction of housing for moderate income households has been made economically possible, thereby providing developers with a larger market and a greater demand for the finished product. Access to this expanded market encourages accelerated construction at a time when we have, all over, new house sales generally slow. In addition, the financing makes available to smaller developers much needed funds at low interest rates, enabling them to proceed with construction.

The high-ratio first mortgage and the lower mortgage rate are also key components in reducing the overall cost to the purchaser. The five per cent down payment and reduced carrying charges provide the opportunity for housing to a much larger number of our citizens than would otherwise be the case.

Unconditional grants will be made to area municipalities to ensure that local taxes will not be raised to service these new developments. Several loans to regional municipalities are also being negotiated at this time. We feel, Mr. Speaker, that these incentives are being invaluable in achieving an early start for developing new acreage and ensuring that projects can be ready for construction without delay.

The signed agreements provide evidence of our emphasis on family accommodation. For example, Mr. Speaker, the Bramalea Consolidated Developments Ltd. project in Brampton consists of 421 condominium units, of which 386 are two- and three-bedroom. A three-bedroom unit sells for $38,000. With down payments of less than $2,000 and monthly carrying charges of $340, this makes these units a very sound alternative to rental accommodation for most moderate-income families.

Mr. Speaker, I would like this time to discuss the signed agreements between my ministry and the developers. To date, the largest and most comprehensive agreement has been signed with W. B. Sullivan Construction Ltd. and Deltan Realty Ltd., and 1,780 housing units are either under construction or are to be started by this December.

Under the terms of the agreement, 10 per cent of the units will be available for households with incomes of $8,000 to $14,500; 30 per cent of the units for the $14,500 to $16,000 range; 30 per cent for the $16,000 to $18,000 range, and 30 per cent for the $18,000 to $20,000 range. The housing types vary from townhouses and highrise condominiums to single family dwellings, with developments in North York, Scarborough, Markham and Brampton.

Sullivan Construction has undertaken to provide 5,000 additional housing units, in the same income-range ratios that I have just outlined, on lands which the developer owns. It is our expectation to sign further agreements with this developer.

The agreement with Bramalea which I mentioned earlier provides 421 condominium units in Brampton for OHAP. Negotiations on some of the details have been proceeding for the past several months, but construction has not been delayed and completions are expected for next summer. The units will be priced for the $12,200 to $14,000 income range.

We are looking forward to several more projects with the Bramalea group. In the signed agreement, Bramalea has committed development on other lands under OHAP which should amount to at least 1,900 additional housing units.

Mr. Speaker, we also have an agreement with Minto Construction Ltd. Minto brings 206 condominium units in the city of Ottawa under the OHAP. Construction is now under way. One half of the units are priced for the $14,500 to $18,000 household income group and one half for the $18,000 to $20,000 group. Minto has also committed to the programme -- and I think this is most important -- an additional unit comprising 2,200 in the Ottawa-Carleton area to be constructed as soon as there is the necessary servicing.

As announced in June, my ministry signed its first agreement with the Campeau Corp. Immediate projects include 135 townhouse units under construction in Gloucester township and 178 condominium units started in March township. These units are priced for the $11,100 to $14,000 income range. The Campeau Corp. has also committed an additional 887 units by 1976 and 2,150 acres for further development under OHAP.

Three agreements have been signed affecting developments in Oshawa. One OHAP agreement is with Tilio Construction Ltd. and Gata Construction Ltd. Two of the projects consist of 92 garden apartments and 58 stacked townhouses. The garden apartments will take care of incomes of $14,500 and less, while the townhouses will be priced for the $14,500 to $20,000 range. We have a commitment to develop 292 units with Tilio Construction Ltd., and we also expect to sign further agreements with this developer.

Mr. Speaker, I want to say to members of the House that not all of our agreements are with the large developers. The agreements we have with Robert Mason Construction Co. Ltd. brings 119 condominium townhouses in Oshawa into this programme, with units priced for the $13,500 to $14,500 income range.

We have an agreement with MT & D development Corp., covering 44 townhouse condominiums in Oshawa. This has been signed. The development is now ready to begin construction. The units will be made available to families with annual incomes from $12,700 to $16,600.

So, Mr. Speaker, up to date, these are the agreements that have been signed. Many of the projects involved have already received municipal planning approval, and I therefore expect full co-operation from the local municipal councils and the people in general. In this connection, I have myself personally discussed the agreements with all the eight mayors involved. I have also committed the ministry to consult with any municipality in the future before further agreements are finalized.

I would like to inform the House, Mr. Speaker, that we are presently negotiating 35 additional developer agreements. Some of these include infill sites in and around Metro Toronto. In this regard I want to say to everyone that we have received a great deal of encouragement for this type of development from both Metro and the boroughs. In the next few weeks, I look forward to announcing to the House further signed agreements.

In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, I want again to say that my ministry is most concerned with providing adequate housing at affordable prices for all of our citizens of Ontario. I believe that OHAP production targets for 12,000 units this fiscal year, and a target of an additional 28,000 units in 1975 can be achieved. I look forward to broad community acceptance of this new housing production programme and to the recognition from existing neighbourhoods of the shared responsibility that we all have for accepting moderately priced family accommodation in much greater numbers than we have in the past.

Thank you.

Mr. Lewis: We’ll wait and see.

Mr. Speaker: Oral questions.

The hon. Leader of the Opposition.

HOUSING PROGRAMMES

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I would like to ask the Minister of Housing, further to his statement, how many of the 37 municipalities originally coming under the structure of the housing action programme are now participating through the agreements announced today?

Hon. Mr. Irvine: How many of the 37 municipalities?

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Yes. Are there now programmes in all of them? Or is the minister still having a problem getting acceptance at the municipal level, although he is now announcing agreements with the developers?

Hon. Mr. Irvine: Well, I have announced that there are eight municipalities involved in these agreements. We are negotiating with the other municipalities and we will have further announcements, though I expect there will be more than 37 involved in the future.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: A supplementary: But didn’t the minister say on Oct. 18 that he already had 17 municipalities who had agreed in principle to participate? What happened to them in this announcement? Was it the developers who would not take part?

Hon. Mr. Irvine: Mr. Speaker, I think the hon. Leader of the Opposition should understand that I said I am still negotiating with developers and other municipalities, and the numbers are getting larger every day. The acceptance of the programme is most encouraging to us.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: A further supplementary: Regarding the projection by the minister that there will be 90,000 starts this year, was that projection made with the expectation of the success, such as it is, that he announced today and of other successes that we may hear from him in the next few weeks, which in fact will add 1,600 new housing developments in some area and 2,700 in others? Are those in the 90,000 figure, or is the minister now moving toward closing the gap between the 110,000 needed and the 90,000 that he predicted will take place?

Hon. Mr. Irvine: Well, Mr. Speaker, my estimate of 90,000 units for this fiscal year has to be an estimate only. It is determined to a great degree, I think, by the action that is taken by the federal government. I have been encouraged by the recent statement by the hon. Barney Danson that he will be announcing shortly further incentives to produce housing throughout all of Canada. Hopefully, Ontario will share in those announcements with the funding that I have requested.

With the programmes we have announced, and with the full co-operation of the federal government, the municipalities and the development industry, I would expect we will have 90,000 units.

Mr. Lewis: And that includes the OHAP statement today?

Hon. Mr. Irvine: It includes the OHAP statement.

Mr. Speaker: Any further questions?

Mr. Lewis: May I ask a supplementary? How is it that it is not possible to negotiate with these developers and the municipalities for socially assisted housing as part of that mix? What happens to the great majority of income earners under $8,000 a year, indeed, under $14,500, but specifically under $8,000? Why is it not possible for the minister to negotiate with them for socially-assisted housing at that level?

Hon. Mr. Irvine: Mr. Speaker, under the new initiatives I announced a few days ago, we are actually negotiating with regard to leased land condominiums and leased land rental accommodations, so that under the Ontario Housing Corp. and OHAP we will be negotiating directly with the municipalities, the developers and the people in general.

Mr. Lewis: By way of one last supplementary, as I heard the minister’s statement today, in not one of the agreements he outlined nor in any of those that were projected did the minister give any relief for socially-assisted housing to those who earn $8,000 a year or less, or even those earning a little more than that. Surely that’s a terrible Achilles’ heel in the programme.

Mr. Speaker: Is there a question?

Mr. Lewis: The “surely” was the question.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Leader of the Opposition.

PREMIERS’ MEETING WITH PRIME MINISTER

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I would like to address a question to the Premier. Further to his statement, can he tell us if he is prepared to announce the curtailment of any or his so-called capital construction programmes which he feels -- and the government of Canada apparently agrees -- are contributing to some extent to the inflationary pressures?

For example, would the $30 million presently being spent at the Exhibition not be considered a capital expenditure that might at least be postponed?

Hon. Mr. Davis: Mr. Speaker, we’re prepared to consider any constructive suggestion of any kind. I think the general feeling at the meeting, and the approach that most provinces will take, relates to capital investment that is related, say, to office accommodation or something of that kind. If it means capital investment that might, in turn, result in greater economic activity or employment, I don’t think that’s the kind of capital investment that the federal people are thinking of, nor is it the kind that we’re thinking of. We’re thinking here of institutional-type facilities where you don’t look for and anticipate some economic activity being generated from it. I think that’s generally the area of capital construction.

I think the Minister of Education (Mr. Wells) and the Minister of Health (Mr. Miller), for instance, taking two fields where the government does have some involvement, would say that we have been, for a period of time now, reducing capital construction, or at least it’s somewhat more difficult to obtain capital financing. I think this is true at the post-secondary level. Although I didn’t have an opportunity yesterday to congratulate the new member for Stormont (Mr. Samis) personally, I wanted to assure him that, while we’re very concerned about capital construction, I informed his leader that the commitment was given to St. Lawrence College that when the conditions are met it will be fulfilled.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Supplementary: Since the Premier has indicated that not only was it his contention at the conference to cut out capital construction, except that which was made as a political commitment, he would also ask the government of Canada to, let’s say, sweeten the housing payment programme. Is it not true that, for example, in all of the programmes that have been mentioned, including all of the public housing that we do, there is a huge federal tax involvement? Even the big pipeline that was announced a few days ago contains a federal component. Surely there must be a recognition, as perhaps there wasn’t in the statement by the Minister of Housing, that there already is a basic agreement that comes into play automatically when the initiative for housing is taken provincially?

Hon. Mr. Davis: Mr. Speaker, if the Leader of the Opposition wants me to join him in giving major credits to his federal colleagues in Ottawa for whatever they are doing --

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Not major credits. It is a programme that is well known.

Hon. Mr. Davis: -- I’ve never been reluctant to give credit where credit is due. I really don’t understand the purpose of the question.

Mr. Roy: There is no evidence of that.

Hon. Mr. Davis: If the Leader of the Opposition is saying that Central Mortgage and Housing Corp. has an involvement in our housing programmes, Mr. Speaker, the answer to that, very simply, is yes.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: They have paid more than half of the province’s sewer plan.

Hon. Mr. Davis: I would remind the Leader of the Opposition too that about 40 per cent plus of federal revenues are generated from the economic activity of this province --

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Don’t you believe Canadians living in Ontario should pay federal tax?

Hon. Mr. Davis: -- and the taxpayers. And if one wants to get into how that’s distributed at this precise moment --

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Doesn’t the Premier consider himself a citizen of Canada?

Hon. Mr. Davis: -- there will be some suggestions flowing from the Treasurer of this province to the finance ministers’ meeting on the question of redistribution of taxation. It’s been a policy of ours for some years and, hopefully, some day somebody will have the sense and the logic to recognize that the provinces have, I think, a very reasonable request when it comes to distribution. But, Mr. Speaker, I --

Mr. R. F. Nixon: We are assisted 90 per cent for land assembly by federal money.

Hon. Mr. Davis: Yes. Central Mortgage and Housing assists with the housing industry. It assists with our housing programme.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: It assists 90 per cent.

Hon. Mr. Davis: I would only say that I think they have a responsibility to assist in a more significant way, including the reduction of interest rates.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Supplementary: Is there any indication that we’re going to have a provincial programme of significance that is going to reduce interest rates, other than the two small programmes that were announced in the Speech from the Throne, now many months ago? Did the Premier get the impression, in talking with the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance, that they are prepared to allocate even more dollars for housing for this province under those circumstances?

I can’t help but ask, why is the Premier so critical about the programmes here, but when he goes up to Ottawa and sits down around the big table, the only comment that I got out of the press was that his views are very close to those of the government of Canada? I can’t see that. Why doesn’t the Premier fight where it counts, rather than just where there’s politics?

Hon. Mr. Davis: If the Leader of the Opposition feels that it was the kind of meeting yesterday where the provincial premiers would confront the Prime Minister of Canada on this very basic issue, then all I can say is that’s not the way, thank heaven, the other premiers approached this meeting.

Mr. T. P. Reid (Rainy River): It’s a long way to go for lunch.

Mr. Roy: Wait until 1976.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Hon. Mr. Davis: Mr. Speaker, if the hon. member for Rainy River doesn’t think that these kinds of meetings are constructive and helpful, then perhaps he should communicate those views to the Prime Minister of Canada. I rather think the Prime Minister of Canada found yesterday’s discussions at least somewhat helpful in his responsibilities. I would only say to the Leader of the Opposition that I am quite prepared to give credit; I am also quite prepared to state, as I have in this House and elsewhere, that I think the federal government in terms of housing must make more funding available and at reduced interest rates so we can combat the escalation in costs in the housing industry.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: So must we make more funding?

Hon. Mr. Davis: We have.

Mr. Speaker: Supplementary? The member for High Park first.

Mr. Shulman: I wonder if the Premier could enlighten me as to what the effect on inflation would be as a result of reducing interest rates.

Hon. Mr. Davis: I am not sure, Mr. Speaker, in economic terms what the reduction in interest rates does, but one thing it would do in terms of our social needs here -- and we are also interested in that -- would be to make it more possible for young people, older people or middle-aged people to acquire housing where they don’t have this 10 or 12 per cent figure to look forward to over. a 30-year period. While he may not agree with this in terms of inflation, I don’t think you will see his leader going into any riding in the Province of Ontario and supporting, for housing purposes at least, the present rate of interest that is being charged.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Ottawa East on a final supplementary.

Mr. Roy: Mr. Speaker, my supplementary relates to the debate on inflation in Ottawa yesterday the Premier’s statement here today. Part of the federal budget to curtail inflation had been the removal of the federal sales tax on shoes and clothing material. Is there any suggestion on the Premier’s part that he might remove the seven per cent Ontario provincial sales tax on clothing and shoes -- as Nova Scotia did, I think?

Hon. Mr. Davis: Mr. Speaker, of course we have a somewhat different system as it relates to tax credits here that is not really being developed in other jurisdictions. I think as far as the impact on the average consumer is concerned, the level of taxation here in this province does not appear to exceed that of other provincial jurisdictions.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Leader of the Opposition.

PROVISION OF DRUGS TO JAIL INMATES

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the Minister of Correctional Services if he has investigated the allegations made by a judge who preferred to remain nameless --

Mr. J. M. Turner (Peterborough): Naturally.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: -- on the provision of drugs for the inmates of our jails. Has the minister commented on that before?

Hon. R. T. Potter (Minister of Correctional Services): No, Mr. Speaker. First of all, I find it hard to believe that we have a judge who, if this was brought to his attention, wouldn’t bring it to our attention. Secondly, I know it was put in the newspaper but I just can’t believe that a judge is so irresponsible that if he felt this was the fact he wouldn’t have brought it to our attention. ‘

Hon. G. A. Kerr (Solicitor General): Is it an unnamed jail?

Mr. Roy: Is it a provincial judge?

Hon. Mr. Potter: And then they say the judge refuses to be named and they don’t name the jail. I would like to have some information on it, really.

Hon. A. Grossman (Provincial Secretary for Resources Development): It is not even worth commenting on.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: A supplementary. Since the report was in a named and reputable newspaper in this city, and the reference is specifically to jails which come under the direct supervision of the minister, is the minister going to simply make light of it or will he investigate it?

Mr. Roy: Will the minister investigate it?

Hon. Mr. Potter: Mr. Speaker, I am sure the hon. Leader of the Opposition is joking when he suggests that I can investigate something when there is no way of me finding out anything about it because a so-called reputable newspaper made a statement saying that an unnamed judge made charges about an unnamed institution somewhere in the province.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Oh, yes there is. A supplementary: I think it may be that the minister will give further concern to this when he is provided with the facts available from his own staff. Can the minister assure the House, then, that drugs other than those for medicinal purposes are not being used in the jails over which he has supervision and for which he is responsible to the taxpayers and this House?

Hon. Mr. Potter: Mr. Speaker, I can assure the House that there are no drugs dispensed in any of our institutions by any of our staff --

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Not dispensed -- used.

Hon. Mr. Potter: -- other than by one of the medical staff.

Mr. Reid: That doesn’t answer the question.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: The member knows the answer to the question.

Hon. Mr. Potter: Certainly the suggestion that correctional officers hand out drugs in this province is entirely untrue.

Mr. Roy: That has happened before.

Mr. Speaker: Any further questions?

Mr. R. F. Nixon: The minister’s answer is that he will not pursue it in any way.

Hon. Mr. Potter: My answer, Mr. Speaker, is that it is the most stupid question that I have heard asked in this House.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: It is a stupid answer for a minister who expects to get paid, who probably got paid today. By the way, this is payday; that is why they are all here, for heaven’s sake.

Mr. Speaker: Any further questions?

Hon. Mr. Winkler: That is why I am here every day.

Hon. Mr. Davis: There were a lot more of us here on Monday on the non-confidence motion that the opposition --

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Did the member see the vote on Monday night?

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Hon. Mr. Potter: Mr. Speaker, I would assume that the judges appointed to the county courts in this province would be appointed on the recommendations of probably the Leader of the Opposition, and I am sure that in making these appointments consideration would be given to their qualifications.

Mr. Roy: The minister appointed some Tories.

Hon. Mr. Potter: I am concerned that a county court judge in this province would make such a statement.

Mr. Lewis: By way of a supplementary --

Mr. Speaker: This is the last supplementary.

Mr. Lewis: -- if the minister is concerned and if it reflects badly on his ministry, has he thought about having a little chat with some of the people at the paper to find out whether there are any sources available? Presumably not. The minister might as well ask them.

Mr. Speaker: Has the hon. Leader of the Opposition any further questions?

MACKENZIE VALLEY PIPELINE

Mr. R. F. Nixon: In the absence of the Minister of Energy (Mr. McKeough), I would like to ask the Minister of the Environment what backing he has for a statement he made himself in his report from Queen’s Park, which states: “Our new Ontario Energy Corp. is going to participate in the construction of a Mackenzie Valley pipeline to bring down gas from the northern slopes of Alaska and Canada’s western Arctic”? Surely the minister should concern himself with a number of aspects of the utilization of that pipeline, particularly in the sharing of the gas with American resources companies and so forth.

Mr. Speaker: Is there a question?

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Is he prepared to state, as a matter of policy, that that pipeline meets with the standards of his environmental ministry, and that’s why we’re supporting it?

Hon. J. R. Rhodes (Minister of Transportation and Communications): In the Mackenzie Valley?

Mr. Roy: It was referred to directly under the byline of William Newman.

Hon. W. Newman (Minister of the Environment): Which paper was that in? I didn’t see it.

Mr. Roy: The minister just signed it. His signature was on it.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: In the Pickering’s Bay News.

Interjections by hon. members.

Hon. W. Newman: I would be glad to draw this to the attention of the Minister of Energy and talk to him on it.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: The minister should draw it to the attention of his writer as well to find out just how factual that statement was.

Mr. Speaker: Are there any further questions? The member for Scarborough West.

Mr. Lewis: I just want to ask the minister as a folllowup, doesn’t he think it’s a little irresponsible, in terms of the Mackenzie Valley pipeline and all that it implies for Canada and for environmental matters, for him to give that kind of support to a statement made by the Minister of Energy, which is still largely hypothetical and uncertain? Shouldn’t he be rather more cautious, as an environmental minister, in what he commits us to?

Hon. W. Newman: Mr. Speaker, I’m very concerned about any pipelines or anything that goes on in the Province of Ontario from an environmental point of view. Don’t let the member forget that too. I’m very much concerned.

Mr. Lewis: Without any thought, mindlessly, as long as it is built by the Americans through Canada, the minister will approve it.

Interjections by hon. members.

Hon. W. Newman: Oh, come on now!

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Why does the member for Scarborough West hate Americans so much? Is his mother-in-law an American or something?

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

BEEF PRICES

Mr. Lewis: I have a question of the Premier, if I may. I was tramping around Osgoode township last night speaking to farmers on the question of inflation. I’d like the Premier to perhaps explain this:

What does a farmer do in an area like Carleton East who sells calves at market -- I have the bill of sale in front of me -- for what amounts to 11 cents a pound, who has cows waiting to go to market for which he can receive on the livestock exchange 13 cents or maybe 14 cents a pound, who sees then in the supermarket advertisements of the same day the meat selling at $1.68 to $2 a pound and doesn’t understand the disparity for a moment because he was getting three times that last year? Can the Premier agree to an investigation, on behalf of the farmers and the consumers of Ontario, as this documentation proceeds, into the step-by-step price increases between what is paid at the farm gate and what is charged at the cash register, so that the farmers in Ontario are not driven to the point of distraction by the policies of his government?

Hon. Mr. Grossman: The member for High Park asked that question.

Hon. Mr. Davis: Mr. Speaker, I think the Minister of Agriculture and Food (Mr. Stewart) answered this rather completely as it related to the particular beef problem the other day. I would suggest that --

Mr. Lewis: No, he didn’t. He only answered about feeder calves.

Hon. Mr. Davis: -- the hon. leader of the New Democratic Party direct this question to the Minister of Agriculture and Food when he is here tomorrow.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: A supplementary --

Mr. Lewis: I have a supplementary, if I may. In order to maintain agriculture at full production in this province in every area, does the Premier not think it makes sense for Ontario to support a call for a Dominion-provincial food bank for this province and this country, which maintains surpluses by paying a reasonable price to the farmers and cans them over time if necessary for both the underdeveloped world and here, but manages to maintain production in the process so agricultural land doesn’t disappear and the farmers don’t collapse in their own production?

Hon. Mr. Grossman: The member for High Park will answer that for the member.

Hon. Mr. Davis: Mr. Speaker, the leader of the New Democratic Party now has proved to me rather conclusively that he was talking to the Premier of the Province of Saskatchewan, who really presented something of this idea in the discussions yesterday, the question of surpluses or non-surpluses and the question of a food problem in other parts of the world.

Mr. MacDonald: Liberals and Tories have been talking about that since the end of the

An hon. member: How about food banks?

Hon. Mr. Davis: Well, food banks or whatever term you may wish to use. But I would think, Mr. Speaker, that probably there will be some suggestions coming from the federal government as it relates to this concept. I can only say from my limited knowledge of the subject -- while there may be merit in it -- it is not going to solve the problem of agriculture in this province, or in this country.

Mr. Lewis: If we pay stable prices it will.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Supplementary, Mr. Speaker: Since the Premier indicated that it was in answer to his colleague, the Minister of Agriculture, that the information would be found -- does he recall that the Minister of Agriculture said that farmers should be culling their cattle, so at least they would not be carrying over the winter those that would be non-productive? And is he further aware that the price of those culled cattle does not even cover the cost of transportation and insurance in some areas of eastern Ontario?

Mr. Speaker: The Leader of the Opposition is far from the original question.

Mr. R. Haggerty (Welland South): It is right on.

Hon. Mr. Davis: Mr. Speaker, I can only say that I read, and I listen to, and I endeavour to understand what the Minister of Agriculture of this province says on this issue and many others. I have great respect for his point of view; and if that is the point of view that he expressed, then, Mr. Speaker, of course, I would concur with it.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Whether the Premier understands it or not.

Mr. Lewis: I have a supplementary, but related question. I’ll put it as a new question. Surely it is not up to the Minister of Agriculture to investigate the disparity between the farm price and the consumer price. Surely it’s up to the Premier to accept such an investigation, and when the --

Mr. Speaker: Is there a question?

Mr. Lewis: -- gap grows and farmers reduce production, will he not do that?

Mr. Turner: The member is telling; he is not asking.

Hon. Mr. Davis: Mr. Speaker, I understood the supplementary question being asked was regarding the question of the establishment of a world food bank or a food bank --

Mr. Lewis: No, I said I was asking a separate question about --

Hon. Mr. Davis: -- that would relate to the total world food situation, and that this would stabilize the costs here. While I’m not necessarily opposed to that concept, all I’m saying is I don’t think that in itself it is a solution to the problem.

Mr. J. A. Renwick (Riverdale): No, that is not it. Don’t kid around. The Premier understood what he said and he didn’t say that.

Mr. Speaker: Any further questions?

STUDY OF VINYL CHLORIDE

Mr. Lewis: Mr. Speaker, I have a question of the Minister of Labour. To what extent has his ministry researched or asked for information on the vinyl chloride hazards in Ontario, up to this point?

Hon. J. P. MacBeth (Minister of Labour): Mr. Speaker, I’m not certain that my ministry has made any inquiries in regard to it. We have an industrial safety director who carries on a great deal of work on his own without telling me everything he has asked for. I am not aware whether he has made any requests of the Minister of Health for this information. But much of this information, the member knows, is prepared for us from the medical staff of the Ministry of Health. Now, I’ll make some inquiries, but if the member is asking me specifically what information my ministry has asked for in this regard, I can’t tell the member. But it may be that our industrial safety director has information on it.

Mr. Lewis: May I ask the Minister of Health what is being done in the vinyl chloride area?

Hon. F. S. Miller (Minister of Health): Mr. Speaker, we are studying the vinyl chloride monomer and the vinyl chloride polymer problems, and I think it’s the monomer that’s the dangerous one at this point. I had a report on it a week or two ago discussing the Canadian problem versus the world problem. I believe there are different problems depending upon the chemical form that the vinyl chloride is in. Apart from that, I can’t give you details except to say I know we are studying it and I’ll be glad to get more details.

Mr. Speaker: Supplementary.

Mr. E. R. Good (Waterloo North): Supplementary to the Minister of Health: Has he made representation to the Minister of the Environment to lower the allowable limits, as they did in the United States’ jurisdictions last spring on an emergency basis. In Ontario, the allowable limits were 200 parts per million. It was reduced suddenly to 50 parts per million because of death caused by cancer of the liver in places where people are working with vinyl chloride. Since this minister is responsible for in-plant problems and the Minister of the Environment is responsible for outside the plant, and it’s he who set the limits, will this minister not consult with the Minister of the Environment as to whether or not this reduction should not be done? It has been over six months.

Hon. Mr. Miller: Mr. Speaker, I’m not responsible for in-plant or out-plant controls. My job is to advise either minister as to the hazards that exist. I can only tell the minister that we have a set of standards that takes an eight-hour average exposure; and we also have standards for maximum exposure at any one point in time. I believe the member is correct in saying we have recently made these standards more stringent. But again, I’ll get the exact data.

Mr. Lewis: I have a question of the Minister of the Environment, if I may; which I’m sure will lead to a supplementary. How is it that Ontario continues to abide at Dow Chemical and B.F. Goodrich, parts-per-million levels of vinyl chloride of a kind which have now been documented internationally as causing irreversible liver cancer, and how is it that we are not moving in this area of occupational health rather more vigorously than hitherto?

Hon. W. Newman: Mr. Speaker, I just came out of my estimates. We have done a complete and comprehensive report of all the plants in the Province of Ontario that handle polyvinyl chlorides.

Mr. Lewis: The ministry hasn’t reduced the levels.

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Hon. W. Newman: I will just finish. We have a very comprehensive report which our staff worked on all summer and before that, and we are also having preliminary discussions with the Ministry of Health staff as to levels at this point in time.

ONTARIO’S TRIPLE-A FINANCIAL RATING

Mr. Lewis: One last question of the provincial Treasurer: Why didn’t he tell us that there are 19 states of the union which have triple-A ratings in Moody’s? Why didn’t he tell us that Australia has a triple-A rating? Why didn’t he tell us that there are 30 cities, towns and counties rated triple-A; that there are 62 corporations rated triple-A; that, by and large, it’s not so tough to get a triple-A rating; and that those countries that don’t have triple-A ratings aren’t even listed with Moody’s as a rated country because they don’t deal in the bond market?

Mr. J. R. Breithaupt (Kitchener): It is hardly a place to stand, is it?

Mr. R. F. Ruston (Essex--Kent): The member for High Park has got a triple-A rating.

Mr. Breithaupt: I’ll bet that the member for High Park has got a triple-A rating.

Mr. Speaker: Order please.

Mr. Lewis: Yes, and the member for High Park has a quadruple-A rating on the market.

Hon. J. White (Treasurer and Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs): Because my information, in writing from my officials, is that there are two states and two states only, namely California and Illinois, with triple-A rating --

Mr. Shulman: That is not so.

Mr. Lewis: The officials should look at Moody’s for October, 1974. I was intrigued.

Hon. Mr. White: -- and that Australia has a single-A rating. I will look into the matter and make a further report.

Mr. J. E. Stokes (Thunder Bay): Back to the drawing board.

Hon. Mr. White: The members saying so doesn’t make it right.

Mr. Lewis: I realize that, but it was the Treasurer’s reference to “the world” that bothered me.

Mr. Speaker: I believe that while the hon. minister is on his feet he has the answer to another question.

Hon. Mr. White: I have rather a lengthy reply to a question full of inaccuracies.

Mr. Martel: Really? Well, do it in the proper place if it is a statement.

Mr. Speaker: We’ll monitor it, I assure you.

Mr. Stokes: Good for you, Mr. Speaker.

TEACHERS’ SUPERANNUATION FUND

Hon. Mr. White: Mr. Speaker, on Oct. 28 the Leader of the Opposition asked a question concerning the payment of funds to the consolidated revenue fund by the teachers’ superannuation fund. I should like to take a little extra time answering this question, because there seems to be a misunderstanding about the role of the government in the funding of the teachers’ superannuation fund and confusion between their investment policy and the benefits that accrue through their plan.

Basically, the teachers’ superannuation commission determines the amount of funds considered surplus to their requirements and these are transferred regularly to the consolidated fund.

Mr. Martel: By the six members appointed by government.

Hon. Mr. White: The relevant Act requires the Treasurer of Ontario thereupon to issue an Ontario debenture for the amount accumulated from time to time. The term of these debentures is for not more than 25 years and not less than 20 years. The rate is set at not less than the weighted average yield to maturity of long-term securities issued or guaranteed by the province and sold on the Canadian public market during the fiscal year preceding the date of the debenture.

For example, the rate on a debenture issued in fiscal 1973-1974 would be the provincial borrowing rate for fiscal 1972-1973 and so on.

In his question, the hon. member referred to a rate of interest of 8.06 per cent, which was the rate paid to the teachers’ superannuation fund for $195 million in debentures created during the period April 1, 1973, to March 31, 1974.

I don’t think it is particularly productive to compare rates received for funds during 1973 with interest rates that exist today. Obviously in periods of rising interest rates, any interest rate based on the next preceding fiscal year will appear to lag current rates in the market. This, however, is not an important factor if the methods used to determine rates of interest are applied consistently over a long term, because of course the reverse becomes true in a declining interest-rate cycle. The teachers’ superannuation fund would then receive a higher rate than those existing under then current market conditions.

Mr. Martel: What millennium will that happen?

Hon. Mr. White: Well, the rates are coming down now, so let’s not get too smart.

Mr. Shulman: Who is he kidding?

Mr. Martel: Tell us about the rest of it.

Mr. Shulman: Long-term rates are still going up.

Mr. Lewis: That is just a fantasy.

Mr. Martel: Been adjusting the find for every year. It has been an expense.

Hon. Mr. While: Yes, the rates are coming down, about a quarter --

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Hon. Mr. White: The teachers’ superannuation fund will be in existence for some considerable years, hopefully to infinity, and over the long term the effect of interest-rate fluctuations from year to year will not have a great impact on the fund if the concept referred to above is applied consistently.

A more important part of the hon. member’s question requested me to inquire into the circumstances whereby I was alleged to have transferred money to the consolidated revenue fund before the commissioners had given their approval. In actual practice, the funds considered surplus and transferred to the consolidated fund are declared so by the teachers’ superannuation commission staff and transferred by them, based on their own cash-flow planning. Interest is paid on these amounts from the day they are received. My understanding is that the commissioners approve an overall cash-flow plan for the year which is then carried out by the staff of the commission.

It should be pointed out that the government has a responsibility to fund any benefits granted under the Teachers’ Superannuation Act. The government pays employer contributions, interest on funds deposited or on debentures issued, interest on the initial unfunded liabilities, plus all experience deficiency payments. In other words, the plan is guaranteed by the Province of Ontario. In essence, the rate of interest paid to the teachers’ superannuation fund in any one year, for reasons mentioned above, will not materially affect the success of the fund or its prime objective, namely the provision of adequate pension benefits for the province’s teachers.

Therefore I cannot agree with the Leader of the Opposition that the teachers are in a position of subsidizing the rest of the taxpayers of the province.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I would like to ask a supplementary question, Mr. Speaker, with your permission. Is the minister aware that because of the transference of these funds to the consolidated revenue fund -- and he has said earlier in this session that he considers them general revenue -- the average rate payable on the many millions of dollars that are presently used by the province are even, because of this averaging effect, far lower that the 8.06? It is estimated that the average is even lower than six per cent and it is very difficult for the teachers to consider, having made these payments over the years of their own service which have been utilized as general revenues by the province, and to compare the revenue to their pension plan with that which would be available, let us say, from a private investment.

Hon. Mr. White: Well sir, the performance of the fund has been very good. Actually, this is incidental because the benefits paid under contract by the employer to the employee are not dependent upon --

Mr. R. F. Nixon: But those benefits could be improved.

Hon. Mr. White: -- the rate of interest applying.

Mr. Martel: The fund has never been sound.

Hon. Mr. White: However, I would like to point out that we are paying 8.06 for present receipts. The experience of common stock equity funds in this country has a return of minus eight per cent, whereas in the USA those same funds show an experience this year of minus 20 per cent.

Mr. Shulman: How much is the government paying now?

Hon. Mr. White: Now, if the teachers wanted to go on the same system as OMERS, which is fully funded and where there is no subsidy from the Ontario taxpayers, they should declare themselves to have that preference and thereby permit the government to explore that possibility.

Mr. Foulds: Supplementary, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Port Arthur.

Mr. Foulds: How does the Treasurer justify the term “subsidy” by the provincial government when the provincial government does not contribute to the fund at the same time that the employees do? Can he not see that if it did, the low pensions being paid to those who did their service in the thirties and the forties could in fact come out of the pension fund, as the teachers themselves are willing to do with what he calls a so-called subsidy by the provincial government?

Hon. Mr. White: Because, sir, we put in tens of millions of dollars from the Ontario consolidated revenue fund in addition to the employer’s contribution. My hon. friend says that they want to go on the same basis as OMERS --

Mr. Lewis: That means nothing.

Hon. Mr. White: -- or detach themselves from these provincial subsidies.

Mr. Lewis: The minister shifts from one to another. The government still owes them money.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Hon. Mr. White: This is not my understanding on their position.

Mr. Shulman: Supplementary.

Mr. Speaker: Well, all right. This will be the final supplementary, but for the information of the members I have added two minutes on to the question period.

Mr. Shulman: Do I understand that the government is currently paying eight-odd per cent on funds received? How can the minister possibly justify that when short-term funds are 10.5 per cent and long-term funds are 11.5 per cent?

Hon. Mr. White: We are paying the amount of interest today that we in fact paid to borrow last year. If interest rates are going up, of course the amount paid is less than the current rates of interest. And when interest rates are going down, the amount paid will be more than the current rates of interest.

Mr. Shulman: But they are not.

Mr. Lewis: They’re not going down!

Hon. Mr. White: They are going down right now.

Mr. Martel: Yes, to 11 per cent.

Mr. Lewis: To 8.06 per cent.

Mr. Speaker: Any further questions? The hon. member for Kent.

ACCIDENT ON HIGHWAY 40

Mr. J. P. Spence (Kent): Mr. Speaker, I have a question of the Minister of Transportation and Communications.

Is the minister aware of the concern of citizens in the vicinity of No. 11 interchange, Highways 401 and 40, where there have been a number of accidents this year? The latest one occurred this morning; two school children were killed and another school child was seriously injured, as well as a pet, while they were boarding a school bus.

Mr. Speaker, there have been complaints before about this interchange on Highway 401. Would the minister look into this matter and see that the concerns of those people are immediately alleviated?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Mr. Speaker, I was not aware of any series of complaints about the particular area that the hon. member referred to.

I was informed this morning of the very tragic accident he has mentioned. Perhaps, for the information of the House, I might relate that at 8:08 a.m. this morning the Ontario Provincial Police detachment at Chatham was called to investigate an accident where a school bus, owned by the Neward Bus Lines of Chatham, was travelling on Highway 40 and stopped to pick up three children on the side of the road. The alternating flashing lights were working on the bus.

A car coming behind the bus slowed down. However, another car approaching in the same direction at a high rate of speed could not slow down, went to the right side of the bus and on to the shoulder, travelled 352 ft down the shoulder and struck the three children. Two of them were killed instantly. I regret to tell the hon. member, because I know it’s in his riding, but I was informed a few moments ago that the third child died in hospital as well. The parents were witnesses to this tragic accident, which occurred immediately in front of their house.

Mr. Speaker, I can assure the hon. member and all hon. members of this House that if there’s anything I can do that will avoid that sort of tragic accident from occurring, I will certainly do everything in my power.

It is my information, and I did check on it, that there was nothing structurally wrong on the highway; it’s a two-lane highway in that area and it was rebuilt in 1972. I did inquire about the various interchanges, and information I have just received indicates that the particular interchanges in no way were involved in the cause of this very tragic accident. But, again, I assure the hon. member I will look into these concerns.

Mr. Speaker: A question from the New Democratic Party? The hon. member for Sandwich--Riverside.

FEDERAL GRANTS FOR GRADE 13 STUDENTS

Mr. F. A. Burr (Sandwich--Riverside): Mr. Speaker, a question of the Premier. Is it true that, some five or six years ago, the federal government made available to the provinces special grants to secondary schools for those pupils who are enrolled as post-secondary students? And is it true that Ontario has taken advantage of these grants for the grade 13 pupils in the public schools, but has not applied for them on behalf of the approximately 5,000 grade 13 students in the various private schools throughout this province?

Hon. Mr. Davis: Mr. Speaker, I’m having to tax my memory a little bit, but I think the agreement probably is still in effect. It provides that Ontario’s transfer from the federal government will include grants for 50 per cent of the cost of post-secondary education related to the number of grade 13 students in the public school system of this province. These funds flow directly to the province. They are paid out both in terms of the BIUs of universities and to the community colleges and, of course, the secondary school grants are part of the grant scheme of the Ministry of Education. As I recall it, Mr. Speaker, we have never claimed for students in private institutions.

Mr. Burr: A supplementary, Mr. Speaker: Inasmuch as these grants average about $1,000 per student, and this would mean about $5 million to the families of these students, would the Premier consider applying for these grants?

Hon. Mr. Davis: Well, Mr. Speaker, this issue has been discussed in this House on other occasions, and it really brings into focus the question of tax support -- and that’s really what it is -- for private schools. Perhaps the hon. member doesn’t realize this has to be considered as well, but it is part of the issue. It does relate to the general policy of this government, which is still the policy, and that is that for secondary education public support goes to the public school system.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Elgin.

MERCURY LEVELS IN LAKE ST. CLAIR

Mr. R. K. McNeil (Elgin): I have a question of the Minister of the Environment. Could the minister advise the House if there has been any improvement in the level of mercury contamination of fish in the Lake St. Clair system?

Hon. W. Newman: Mr. Speaker, there has been some. I am not exactly sure how much, but I can get the details and report back. I will be glad to take that question as notice.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Ottawa East.

OHC BRIBE CHARGES

Mr. Roy: Could I direct a question, Mr. Speaker, to the Attorney General pertaining to his statement yesterday about the charges against certain OHC employees? In view of the fact that the investigation of this situation has been going on at least six months, why have charges not been laid against the donors -- the companies who gave the gifts to the employees -- under section 110? I appreciate the fact there is a special onus in that section, but has the Attorney General not sufficient evidence at this date to charge some companies as well?

Hon. R. Welch (Provincial Secretary for Justice and Attorney General): Mr. Speaker, I don’t feel I can add anything further to the statement that I made yesterday; in fact I think it would be prejudicial to the investigations which are still under way to add anything further to the statement of yesterday.

Mr. Roy: Well, Mr. Speaker, may I ask a supplementary?

Mr. Speaker: This is the last supplementary.

Mr. Roy: It pertains to the same section 110 and the statement the Attorney General made some time in May about a company called Diblee in Ottawa. Why has that donor of the gifts to two employees of the Ministry of Transportation and Communications who were convicted not been charged?

Hon. Mr. Welch: Mr. Speaker, that is not technically a supplementary question to the main question. However, I think the hon. member is entitled to an answer.

The hon. member, as a former assistant Crown attorney, would know something of the reputation of the Crown attorney in the regional municipality of Ottawa-Carleton. Mr. Cassels has completed a very thorough investigation and is satisfied on the basis of his investigation that there is insufficient evidence to justify a charge against either the company or officers of the company.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Port Arthur.

SALARIES FOR SPECIAL EDUCATION TEACHERS

Mr. Foulds: A question of the Minister of Education. Welcome back!

How does the minister justify the rather arbitrary practice, as reported in the Globe and Mail on Sept. 19, which has carried on the last two years by the school management committee headed by his assistant deputy minister, Frank Kinlin, of imposing a salary schedule on special education teachers in the Ontario government provincial schools after a rather ritual form of consultation with their negotiators? Is the minister going to do the same thing this year?

Hon. T. L. Wells (Minister of Education): Mr. Speaker, I don’t really feel I need to justify it. It is something that has gone on; it was going on when I became minister of this department. I might tell the member that I wrote a letter, which I signed yesterday, to some of the representatives of these teachers which indicated to them that we were prepared to negotiate the contract with them next year in a full and open way, with some procedure to finalize those negotiations if they couldn’t be reached amicably. I’ve told our people on the school management committee to work out the procedures for doing it. In other words, next year we will negotiate the contract with those teachers.

Mr. Speaker: The Minister of Housing has an answer to a question in the few moments that are left.

Mr. Foulds: Supplementary to this, if I may.

Mr. Speaker: One last supplementary.

Mr. Foulds: Could the minister, in going through those procedures, plan to give those teachers a form of recognized bargaining, either a unit associated directly with one of the established teachers’ federations or a bargaining unit within the CASO, and does he not think -- I hope in his instructions to his management committee -- it would be well to tell them that the teachers in the special schools for the deaf, emotionally disturbed kids, and so on, should have at least equal working conditions and wages with teachers of comparable boards in southern Ontario?

Hon. Mr. Wells: Of course, one of the problems that has to be worked out is what is the negotiating unit, because at the present time it is a very nebulous thing. There is a certain committee, which doesn’t necessarily represent all the teachers, that has been meeting with the school management committee.

Mr. Foulds: That is because the minister hasn’t allowed them to sign up.

Hon. Mr. Wells: So that will be part of the details that will have to be worked out so negotiations can be carried on. I really don’t think, however, that these people have in any measurable way suffered through the present arrangement. I think they are entitled to negotiate, but I think that the salary schedules are probably better than those for teachers in the same areas where they are teaching. They are probably as good anyway.

Mr. Speaker: The Minister of Housing.

LOTTERY FOR HAMILTON HOME LOTS

Hon. Mr. Irvine: Mr. Speaker, I have an answer for the member for Wentworth (Mr. Deans). His question:

Will the Minister of Housing investigate three areas of the lottery currently being conducted in the city of Hamilton under the HOME programme?

No. 1. That there has been misinformation given out by one, Mr. Taylor, on behalf of the HOME programme to those who are inquiring about the programme. That Settlement Corp. has withdrawn from the development. Settlement denies this. That Shelley Construction has withdrawn from the development. Shelley denies this. And thereby depriving a number of those people from the opportunity of choosing either of those two builders as a result of having to submit their request in the last two or three days.

No. 2. Whether or not the present method of the lottery which limits those individuals making application to a particular builder, thereby limits the opportunity for them to receive adequate, full-range particulars of the 750 HOME lots available.

And No. 3. Will he draw all the names of all the people who have submitted applications and given them an opportunity on the basis of priority number to take part in future developments under the HOME programme in the area.

Mr. Speaker, I would like first of all to thank the hon. member for Wentworth for drawing his concerns to my attention about the HOME lottery. He is quite correct that the one employee misinterpreted some comments and passed on the information that at least one builder might be withdrawing from the programme.

This is incorrect, as no builders are pulling out. As best as we can determine, several dozen people received this faulty information, which I am very sorry for. Both Shelley Construction and Settlement Corp. are still in the programme. The original advertisement listed all the builders; and again this coming Saturday we will be advertising a list of all firms -- including the two mentioned. As the lottery deadline is not until Nov. 12, I think this will provide ample time for all people to understand what the lottery is about and to clear up any past misunderstanding.

In reply to his second question, the member is not correct in stating the present lottery method limits individuals and does not provide them with a full range of particulars on all houses being offered. Interested individuals have an opportunity to review all designs and house types for the number of lots at the information centre. We have staff on hand to answer questions and provide copies of designs. After the people have looked at all the offerings, they select the builder they prefer, and they submit their application to the trust company. The trust company will conduct the selection of the buyer.

The member also asked if all the people who submit applications would be drawn and given priority numbers, which could be applied to the future home offering. We have considered this, but we feel it is not as fair as the system we have at the present time. We feel the method we have at the present time -- having regard to our very mobile society our changing incomes and our changing economic situation -- gives everyone an equal opportunity every time there is an offering. Therefore we are going to leave it as it is.

Mr. Breithaupt: In view of that statement by the minister could I ask a brief question of the Minister of Revenue, Mr. Speaker?

Mr. Speaker: Okay. We will allow one.

No, I think not. I thought it was a supplementary

Mr. Lewis: He should ask one.

Mr. Speaker: The question period has been extended beyond the extended time now. The oral question period has expired.

Petitions.

Presenting reports.

Hon. Mr. Auld presented the annual reports of the following: the Ontario Arts Council for the year 1972-1973; the Ontario Educational Communications Authority for the year 1972-1973; the financial report of the University of Waterloo for the year ended April 30, 1974; the financial report of the University of Toronto for the year ended April 30, 1974; and the financial report of Ryerson Polytechnical Institute for the year ended March 31, 1974.

Mr. Speaker: Motions.

Introduction of bills.

Orders of the day.

Clerk of the House: The 19th order, House in committee of supply.

ESTIMATES, MINISTRY OF HEALTH (CONTINUED)

On vote 2801:

Mr. Chairman: Last night when we finished, the member for St. George (Mrs. Campbell) had the floor.

Just before we start, I might say that I have had a request from members that when we pass this vote and start on the next vote we deal with it item by item, because they are very distinct and there are some members who want to speak on one item and they don’t care to speak on the whole vote.

Mr. J. R. Breithaupt (Kitchener): Mr. Chairman, that was the point I was particularly going to make. It would appear that the initial comments had been made by the critics and those interested in speaking in a general area, so that if we now agree to follow through on the votes I think we have a more orderly approach in the development of the estimates today and the next day they are heard.

Mr. Chairman: We will have to finish vote 2801 as we started out. I think nearly everyone has had their say on it now and we have rambled all over it.

Mr. E. R. Good (Waterloo North): Vote 2801?

Mr. Chairman: Yes, we are still on vote 2801. The member for St. George.

Mrs. M. Campbell (St. George): Mr. Chairman, in view of that fact and in view of the fact that I had already commenced to make my observations and remarks on later votes, I am prepared to yield.

The only thing I would like to have clarified is at what point in time the minister will be replying to those questions which have gone before? Having embarked upon some of these discussions that take place later, will we have assurance -- and if we have assurance, in the light of what has gone on in this House I wonder if we could get a performance bond from this government to indicate that we could rely on their assurances -- that we would at some point get the answers to these questions?

Could I have clarification as to the minister’s position? Is he going to answer now or is he going to answer those items which occur later as they may come up in sequence?

Hon. F. S. Miller (Minister of Health): Mr. Chairman, I am absolutely shocked by the comments of the member for St. George to bring into this amicable discussion an overtone of political bias.

Mrs. Campbell: A political bias is right.

Hon. Mr. Miller: A performance bond!

Mr. S. Lewis (Scarborough West): It was an outright accusation.

Hon. Mr. Miller: I almost rose on a point of personal privilege.

Mrs. Campbell: Mr. Chairman, if he had read Hansard, he would know the things to which I make reference.

Hon. Mr. Miller: Mr. Chairman, I think that I have been answering almost all of the speakers, except the critics of the two parties who spoke at the time of the initial discussion. At that point I thought we were going to proceed in a relatively orderly fashion through the votes. We apparently are going to do that. If you recall, my reasons for not answering them was simply that I thought some of their points would arise during the point-by-point discussion and therefore not need reamplification.

I did make some notes last night, as you were speaking, on the problems that you were talking about. It seemed to me you were talking about compound drugs. You were talking about drugs for migraine headaches specifically. I have here somewhere some specific information on the drugs you were talking about.

First, I am assured there are drugs in the formulary for migraine and I was shown the specific drug in the formulary last night. I can get for you the name of it shortly if you want it -- it’s Gynergen, or something like that. If Dr. Dyer is nearby he could perhaps sit down in front of me.

The second thing that you had written us about was phenylbutazone and you were alluding to the fact that we would not allow phenylbutazone to be sold with another compound, another drug, which as I recall you said last night acted in combination with phenylbutazone. Again, I am going by memory, but the other compound in that material was a buffering agent.

Now I don’t know how good your chemistry is, but a buffering agent is a compound added to maintain the pH at a constant level as the quantity of the ions of the acidic or basic type change in the drugs that had been administered.

Interjection by an hon. member.

Hon. Mr. Miller: Well that’s what it used to be. When I taught chemistry, that’s what they were for.

Mr. Chairman: Maybe we could leave all discussion about drugs until we get to vote 2803. We have drug abuse services under item 5 and we will deal with drugs all you like then.

Mr. J. Dukszta (Parkdale): Item 1.

Mr. Chairman: Item 1 in vote 2802?

Mr. Dukszta: Vote 2801.

Mr. Chairman: Okay; the hon. member for Parkdale.

Mr. Dukszta: Right, thank you. I would just like to make a couple of remarks and put a question to the minister on the physician-patient ratio. We went over it in some detail yesterday but there are a couple of points that need to be made.

I think when you quote a physician-patient ratio for the whole of Ontario, it misses a number of important points. They need to be brought out since you tend to use this particular ratio as an explanation and a rationale for a series of actions which I suspect you propose to take. I think we should look at the physician-patient ratio in the city of Toronto; and I would ask you very specifically on this whether you have done it this way.

The overall ratio is I think one physician to -- what? -- 600 patients, if I am correct. Could you tell me if your ministry has specific ratios for the city of Toronto, the inner city of Toronto and also whether there’s a ratio which you can provide me for the north, for the country and so on? Have you done it in as much detail as that?

Hon. Mr. Miller: The ratio I gave of one physician to, I think 545 to 550 of population -- this is varying all the time, of course -- was for the entire Province of Ontario and took all of the registered physicians in the Province of Ontario into account. It was not done on a geographic basis. I have seen studies done on geographic bases and I believe we could give you the data you are talking about.

Mr. Dukszta: I think there is a difference between a big city like Toronto and, obviously, the north. It is meaningless for us to talk in terms of this ratio as if it applies equally to everyone, because it’s obvious in the more expensive suburbs of Toronto the ratio is going to be much lower. The functional ratio, may be, let’s say, one physician to 400 patients, while I predict that the ratio in some rural parts of Ontario, including the north, may go as much as one physician for 2,000 of population. It becomes perfectly meaningless to talk this way and yet on this very ratio you are basing a statement that we need fewer physicians.

I would like to pick you up on that most of all because you are assuming that we will have enough without allowing for the fact that there is not an egalitarian spread of the availability of health services all over the province. I’ll give you again an example, and repeat what the member for Thunder Bay said, that in spite of all the efforts the government has made to send the occasional physician up north, the overall ratio is just simply not good enough. The availability is not good enough and the access is not good enough, which means that some people never get the value for the dollar they pay in their OHIP premiums. The people who live in Toronto get a better value for their OHIP dollar by living here than to those who live up north.

Surely it is your responsibility, before you cut down on physicians -- whether they are ones we produce or the ones we import -- that you should take into account that the health-care service now available is not equal. It is extremely inferior in parts of the inner city. It is inferior up north and in parts of rural Ontario, while it may be of almost extremely superior quality for some people in the suburbs, middle-class individuals, professionals and so on.

Until you take this into account, you cannot really go ahead and say we have enough physicians. Instead of being concerned with this you should surely be concerned with providing extra services for the north.

You did not really answer yesterday, Mr. Minister, what you propose to do to generally improve this availability instead of merely playing with it. As you say, you have assurance from the College of Family Physicians that 49, I think you said, will go up north. That’s piddling around there. Could you try to answer?

Hon. Mr. Miller: Mr. Chairman, we talked about this at great length, as you know, yesterday. I at no time implied that I liked the distribution, but I think you shouldn’t fall into the trap, nor should I, of assuming that some of the myths or common statements made about the supply and availability of physician care in this province are, in fact, accurate. I think you are in a very dangerous position when you say there isn’t service in this area or there isn’t service in that area, or there is too much service here.

In our study of the responses to the Mustard report, one of the first things we asked a team of people to do was to start to corroborate or determine whether some of the assumptions made were accurate. We are finding many of them aren’t accurate. We have had some studies done on the usage of hospitals by people in the north and we have discovered, believe it or not, that there is more access to hospital care in many of the more remote areas of the province -- I don’t mean the far north necessarily, because you can always find exceptions, but I mean in those smaller communities -- than we have in the large cities.

I suggest to you that some of the worst areas of service are in the cities. Contrary to the assumption that we have overserviced we have the ghettos of the cities that desperately need better care, and I am sure you know that. I am sure the member for St. George knows that in her riding some interesting experiments are going on; and also in other parts of the city those experiments are going on.

We are determined to keep on with those experiments until we have found patterns that work, and until we get the availability for the people who have otherwise been left unserviced, even though it was at no cost to them that service would be given.

Mr. Dukszta: Mr. Minister, you are making a good point. One of the things which probably happens up north is that if you have any type of a medical problem, whether it is a problem which could be dealt with on an ambulatory basis or otherwise, you probably tend to get into hospital, because that is the only thing which tends to be available. Actually you are supporting my point that the basic ambulatory type of health care is not really available.

The second point you made is actually supporting much more what I have said, that the inner city of a large metropolitan centre like ours probably is not well provided with total health care. The people who are living in the city tend to use emergency rooms and the outpatient departments of general hospitals. The people who live in Etobicoke and other suburban areas usually do have a family doctor; but the great percentage of people who live in the city don’t have a family doctor, which means they use emergency service.

Emergency service is fine as it works, but it cannot really substitute for and is also much more expensive than direct, available, local, community-oriented health care.

You know how many people have family doctors and how many don’t. All the responses you have had through the Mustard report cannot compensate for the basic fact that at least 40 per cent of the people of Ontario don’t really have any one physician who they say is their family doctor. Maybe it is 40 per cent or maybe a little less. I know from my own experience.

Just let me give you a biased sample of population -- not biased from my point of view, but a biased sample in terms of a choice of population -- from my experience when I worked in the Queen St. mental health centre. We conducted a survey of the people who were admitted over a period of two years, from 1968 to 1970 to find out how many of them had a family doctor. We discovered that probably less than six per cent had.

This is a biased sample in that they all largely are poor. But you can extrapolate this and say how many people really have a family doctor, or whether they generally apply to the emergency room or to outpatients for very ordinary health care. This hasn’t changed is what you are saying.

Let me follow up this argument. If we apply the same standards, which most of the middle-class people are used to, and to which you are used in terms of health care to everyone in the Province of Ontario, our costs would not be $2.2 billion, if we ever had enough physicians, but would be much more. The only way you solve this financial problem as a government in keeping the costs down to $2.2 billion is by providing inferior health care to easily a third of the population, if not more.

It is the same as when the OHIP was introduced, and they had to pay the 10 per cent that they don’t pay now, it acted as a deterrent fee. Many people were not prepared to pay extra dollars to go and I see a physician. This way the system was not overloaded.

By keeping the access and availability distorted, as it is now, you are putting a natural valve on the system. Some people will simply not have as good care. This way we don’t have to provide it, we don’t have to pay for it; and you are keeping the budget at a lower level.

I think you should know that at least a third of Ontario -- and maybe I am being very conservative on that point -- does not get good health care. It is not as good as we could provide; not as good as you and I can get it because we are from the professional sector of the city of Toronto.

This is where your responsibility should lie -- to change the balance between the people who can plug themselves into the system without any problem; who have used the system. They get better value -- because it is available to them.

But there are people who cannot plug themselves into the system. This is in the north and in rural Ontario -- and in the inner city. It’s an inescapable fact that our system does not provide good health care for certain groups; and I don’t see you making a major effort in redistributing the availability equally to all citizens and residents of Ontario.

You are still supporting the system which basically rewards people who are able to plug themselves in -- whether they are a professional, whether they are highly urbanized individuals, or whether they know people; and that’s quite a difference.

Would you try to comment on that?

Hon. Mr. Miller: I really feel that I would be going over the comments I made yesterday. You and I don’t agree, of course, on some of the things you’ve said. We have done more than anyone else in Canada -- in fact I would hazard a guess in North America -- to alleviate the inequities that are inherent in a rural-urban situation. We have designated the areas that were under-serviced. We have put in alternate payment incentives for physicians going to those areas to give them help. We have arranged to get doctors into most of those areas. We haven’t got them into all of them; but of the 40 to 50 that still remain unserviced, I can safely say that we have three times as many physicians under contract in medical schools at this point in time who have indicated by written contract they are willing to serve in those areas.

I feel we have taken a good many steps along the way. Further, we are experimenting with the community health clinic concept throughout the province on a volunteer basis -- a non-solicited basis. We have some 40 groups of physicians who have indicated interest. We have some 23 existing experimental groups working. I think these are real steps.

You do not change a system at once. You have many of your own profession unalterably opposed to any change that smacks of what they call socialized medicine -- in other words non-fee for service medicine. And yet we have enough people willing to experiment with us, so that we hope to carry out that experiment.

Mr. Dukszta: I respect your point of view. Obviously we disagree on an ideological and a technographical approach to the health care system. But let me just leave you with three remarks. You are making an effort which I think is basically minimal. You are if you are going to limit the supply of physicians -- either the ones from Canada or from outside -- or limit in any way their development, or even limit yourself in not building a new school. There is really no basic reason why we should not have a medical school in Thunder Bay, or other places.

I don’t buy the professional reasons that state you cannot train a physician up there. They can be trained in a different fashion, which can be made acceptable; but the important thing is they can be trained. There is enough clinical material there to do so. But if you close off those avenues -- and I think what I’m saying does not need an answer -- then you will have more of a manpower problem to try to solve, even in your own pilot fashion way, than you have at the moment.

Mr. Chairman: The hon. member for Kent.

Mr. J. P. Spence (Kent): Mr. Chairman, I wonder if I’m on the right vote, with regard to the dispensing of drugs by doctors in the Province of Ontario and the programme, as I understand it, that is being carried out. Is this the right vote?

Hon. Mr. Miller: I would think the dispensing of drugs by physicians comes under the drug benefit plan to some degree, and somebody says it is in vote 2803.

Mr. Spence: Thank you.

Mr. Chairman: Item 5, the member for St. George.

Mrs. Campbell: Mr. Chairman, I was waiting with bated breath for the minister to reply to one part of my submission to him yesterday, when I mentioned that he was going around this province indicating -- and I think it is a responsible position to take -- the effect of the mounting costs of the health programme. I referred to the Kaiser Foundation programme and the Washington programme with a view to inviting him to tell me, if he would, whether there is anything in these programmes which would be of use to him and to us, particularly in the fact that they state there is a built-in incentive for efficiency because the providers of medical care share the financial risks of illness with the patient. I’m sorry that on that particular statement I did not have the reference for that quote.

Perhaps if we’re going to talk to people about the cost he might at least invite them to consider some of the alternatives. I wonder if the minister has a comment?

Hon. Mr. Miller: As far as the model of the Kaiser Permanente group does, I understand it’s basically a form of capitation payment rather than a fee-for-service payment. We have at least two places -- I would say three that I can think of, and my staff will probably remind me of more -- that have a form of capitation payment involved. The St. Mary’s clinic is in a town where there was a competing fee-for-service basis. There was a certain degree of disagreement between the two groups; ideologically I would think. It’s very difficult to say if the capitation basis group is working more efficiently on a dollar basis, but they are getting less per patient per month than the average billing in the province.

On the other hand, I can go to Sault Ste. Marie where we have a clinic that is some 12 years old, and therefore historically gives us a good picture, that has some 43,000 patients attached to it -- so statistically it is also a good base -- some 30,000 of whom are on capitation and some 13,000 are on fee-for- service basis.

This one has a higher than average capitation cost basis, some 10 per cent to 12 per cent above the provincial average. Now, where do we get into trouble? We literally have a $100,000 bet going with the Sault Ste. Marie clinic. It’s built into our contract. That bet is that they will utilize hospitals less than the comparable groups in the community, because to say that they spend so many dollars per patient in doctors’ fees per month is meaningless until we relate it to the more costly form of care in the hospital. It looks like they might win the bet; and if they win the bet more power to them, because after all that’s what the experiments are about.

Mr. Chairman: Does vote 2801 carry?

Vote 2801 agreed to.

On vote 2802:

Mr. Chairman: Vote 2802, item 1, health protection and disease prevention services. The member for Windsor--Walkerville.

Mr. B. Newman (Windsor--Walkerville): Mr. Chairman, I wanted to ask the minister if he was aware of the Nader group study concerning health hazards in the automotive industry. If this is under the ministry’s responsibility, I will continue. If it isn’t, Mr. Chairman, I will cease my remarks.

Hon. Mr. Miller: Mr. Chairman, I honestly can’t speak with any particular knowledge except to know that that gentleman -- it is Ralph Nader you are referring to, is it not? -- has shifted his emphasis from the way cars go to the way they are built, I would suspect. But I have seen some very brief references to it, and I am sure the staff will be more familiar with it. Certainly I would think it is properly within our sphere of interest.

Mr. B. Newman: Then may I ask the minister if his officials are looking into some of the claims as to adverse health problems as a result of the auto manufacturing that the Nader group makes? This was a two-year study of the State of Michigan autoworkers, and the group was a health research group. I would assume that what they found as a result of their studies in the US would be applicable to the auto industry in Canada.

They make mention that workers exposed to dirt, dust and smoke have about a 50 per cent greater chance of having bronchitis and heart disease than workers not exposed to these elements. The reason I bring this up is that if the ministry could correct some of the problems in plants then our health bill might be substantially reduced.

A second point they make is that workers exposed to fumes from substances such as molten metal and hydraulic fluids face about a 40 per cent greater likelihood if getting bronchitis and heart disease than those not exposed.

The third point is that foundry workers have a 14 per cent greater chance of having bronchitis than non-foundry workers.

A fourth is that machinists have a 30 per cent greater chance of having heart disease than non-machinists.

A fifth is that coarse-metal finishers have a 70 per cent greater chance of getting heart problems.

In addition to this, the report shows that persons exposed to exhaust fumes from forklift trucks in plants have a 15 per cent greater chance of getting heart disease.

I would assume that if they have that greater chance, in a lot of instances they would actually come down with some of the ailments mentioned.

Does the ministry have any input in the trade or in the factory in an attempt to overcome some of these hazards so that the worker would not be confronted with these perilous in-plant problems?

Hon. Mr. Miller: I can’t comment on any of these points taken specifically. I am sure our staff will be interested in the reports. Our role, as you know, is as consultants to labour on any occupational health hazard, and I can’t speak to any specific work we have done in the automobile industry any more than any other.

I believe Nader also touched on some of the psychological problems of that industry, if I recall some of the things I read about that report, in that he thought some of the incidence was related to the boring nature of the job as much as anything else.

Also I think if you do some double checking on almost all of our occupational health hazards that are related to lung problems, they are almost always incidents that are related to smoking as well. If one starts looking into the occupational health hazard which is aggravated on the job, it is aggravated in those people who are smokers. I am looking around to see if I am correct; I am being told I am correct.

I have to say that this gentleman has done a great deal in his own way to tackle many institutions in the United States and he has a great credibility with the public. At the same time, I have to suggest that in his very first book, “Unsafe at Any Speed,” he was totally wrong on a whole bunch of the comments he made, but they were accepted by a population as correct. I think I would like to be very careful about accepting out of hand his analyses here without having some other people’s comments upon them.

Mr. B. Newman: Just to bring this to the minister’s attention a little further, Mr. Chairman. I would point out that this isn’t a report that Nader himself conducted, but it was conducted by a Dr. Janet Sherman, an internist. So there was a medical person looking into the problem, and all of the information comes from her 43-page report. I would think there would be quite a bit of truth in the comments. There’s no mention whatsoever of the effects of cigarette smoking in any of these comments.

Hon. Mr. Miller: Mr. Chairman, I am not going to imply that it is not correct. I simply say that I would like to weigh it because the presence of a medical person as the investigator doesn’t necessarily improve my willingness to accept the credibility of the report. I have reports from lots of people who are medical people, offering totally opposite advice on issues before me. I think all of us are subject to certain biases sometimes before we start our studies.

Mr. B. Newman: Well would the minister look into this specific report and have his officials study it? And if it is of no concern at all, that’s quite all right.

Mr. Chairman: The hon. member for Yorkview.

Mr. F. Young (Yorkview): Mr. Chairman, I’m not going to start an argument with the minister about Ralph Nader and “Unsafe at Any Speed.” The minister didn’t specify where the inaccuracies came. One thing we do know is that the Corvair finally had to give up the ghost.

Hon. Mr. Miller: It wasn’t safe.

Mr. R. F. Ruston (Essex--Kent): That wasn’t the whole reason.

Mr. Young: But that wasn’t the whole reason, and it did prove to be an unsafe car.

Mr. Ruston: The Edsel was one that had to go too.

Mr. Young: The minister mentioned a while ago the bet, so-called, that is on between his department and the clinic in Sault Ste. Marie. Since that clinic has been in operation for 12 years, I wonder if the minister can give us any specific figures showing how far this whole field of prevention has been served by a clinic of that kind?

In other words, have we figures for utilization of hospitals per 100,000 people in Sault Ste. Marie, as against other cities of a similar size and nature not served by a clinic of this kind? The clinic at St. Catharines would also serve in some regard along this line, but not as effectively as the Sault Ste. Marie one.

I wonder whether the minister has figures that could demonstrate to us whether this type of organization is acting as a preventive measure as far as health care is concerned?

Hon. Mr. Miller: One of the most difficult tasks we’ve been faced with has been to get reliable statistics. As I recall, at the present time we have a kind of double-blind study, or whatever you want to call it, going on that uses that clinic versus a clinic practising in Oshawa as a comparative basis. On this basis we’re trying to get the very thing you’re mentioning; that is, apart from how much we’ve given to physicians per patient per month, what was the total cost of the health care given to those people in the community?

That’s really the essence of the bet. Are they saving money in the more expensive care facilities?

They have had some disappointments. When I visited them, and I have visited that clinic twice, they had just finished a survey of a goodly number of their clients. This clinic does not operate around the clock by any means, but it’s open a good many hours per day, and I believe it has service available seven days a week. It has virtually got operating room facilities for many minor things, and certainly for most of the kinds of things that emergency wards see.

Yet when they asked the patients of 12 years’ experience where they would go in an emergency, in about nine out of 10 cases it wasn’t to them, it was to hospital. That rather shattered them, because the clinic was created at the request of the consumers, through the union, and supposedly with the greatest degree of knowledge about what it had to offer and with long enough time to have accustomed the people to the services available. Yet when the chips were down, the people would not have stopped there with a minor emergency; they indicated they would go right to a hospital. That bothered them, and it bothers me too.

Mr. Young: I presume it would. I suppose it illustrates again the difficulty of changing people’s attitudes, particularly where you have a profession which is strongly divided as to its methods of payment. The fee-for-service men think: “We don’t want this threat over here.” These people say they have a brand new way of doing things. Yet they haven’t the full facilities the way the hospitals are supposed to have.

I suppose that kind of brainwashing on both sides takes place all the time. When there’s something really serious people still think in terms of going to a hospital where you have a full range of facilities rather than to the clinic.

But if an organization of this kind in fact does cut down on the need for hospital service, then we have some answers. If, also, it can really zero in on the whole field of prevention and do an effective job on the prevention of disease, we have some other answers which we sorely need in this whole problem of escalating health care.

I would hope we have some answers in this field before too long. I would think that in this length of time there should be some knowledge as to whether or not the service in the hospitals is demanded as much as it was before the clinic or as it now is in other areas of similar size.

I suppose statistics are always hard to get on things like this. It takes a lot of time, but it seems to me this is an emphasis we ought to be making. The whole field of prevention is extremely important.

I’ll have more to say about some other things a little later on in one of the other votes, but there are habits and attitudes in our society which, I think, are wrong and must be changed before we can possibly get the kind of prevention we need.

Mr. Chairman: The member for St. George.

Mrs. Campbell: I have really three or four quick points. One, I cannot locate my figures for last year on the expenditure for control of venereal disease; could the minister advise how this figure now relates to that provided for this year.

Secondly, I would like to know whether we have any experience of inquiries in the incidence of tropical disease in this province; and if we have, what we are doing in that area? My information is that this is on the increase in certain areas.

Thirdly, I would like to know whether this minister doesn’t feel he should now be looking at the problems which result from the increasing incidence of glue sniffing among our young people. Would he be prepared to discuss this matter with his colleague, the Attorney General (Mr. Welch). As he probably knows, there has been an effort made in the past to deal with this problem through legal channels. Those have failed; but it seems to me, from meetings I’ve had with police and others recently, that once again our young people are being subjected to this. I would like to know whether we’re going to show any concern about it from a health point of view.

Finally, has the minister resolved the problems with the city of Toronto as to the funding for their health programme? Are there ongoing discussions and what precise funding is available at this point? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Hon. Mr. Miller: I’m confused on the member’s first question. She asked for a comparison of costs of the VD programme in 1973-1974 and 1974-1975?

Mrs. Campbell: Yes.

Hon. Mr. Miller: Don’t they show one under S-57, $144,000 this year; $134,000 last year?

Mrs. Campbell: I’m sorry, I don’t see that here at all. I have five totals --

Hon. Mr. Miller: Sorry, okay. Those are my figures. Those are the figures. It is $144,000 this year and $134,000 last year.

Mrs. Campbell: For last year?

Hon. Mr. Miller: Second, on the tropical diseases I can’t give the member an answer because at present, they are what we call a non-reportable disease. So I don’t have any statistics immediately available. If I do get some while we’re talking, or have someone give me more information, I’ll pass it along.

The question of the mechanism for payments to health units to the city of Toronto and the boroughs has been actively discussed in the last few months. We have had, I believe, a change of postures over a period of seven or eight years, or whatever number of years the discussions have gone on. To begin with, I believe it was the city that was demanding some kind of unified health --

Mrs. Campbell: Requesting.

Hon. Mr. Miller: Requesting.

Mrs. Campbell: We weren’t asking for unified health; we were asking that we be considered --

Hon. Mr. Miller: Yes, there was a time, I think, when there were enlightened mayors of the city of Toronto such as the gentleman sitting in the second row over here.

Mrs. Campbell: There were enlightened controllers, too.

Hon. Mr. Miller: Were there enlightened controllers, too? I knew there was a reason for it.

Mr. Chairman: And aldermen.

Hon. Mr. Miller: And aldermen. I really can insult almost everybody at one stroke here, by the looks of things.

In any case, yes, we have had difficulties. To begin with we wanted them to form regional health units for unified programmes across the Metro area. There has always been one faction unwilling to join the group.

Mrs. Campbell: The boroughs, in that case.

Hon. Mr. Miller: Well, at the current time the boroughs are very anxious for this to occur and the city is not anxious for it to occur. We have said that it is one or none.

We talked to them about a two-tier system; for a while it looked as though there would be some progress made in that. That frankly hasn’t fitted in with our philosophy, so we are paying 25 per cent of the health care costs of those units in the city of Toronto right now, vs. 75 per cent where they are in fact on a regional basis.

We have recently asked the previous Premier of the province to look at the whole issue of Toronto Metro government. This is properly within the scope of that study and I think we are best to leave any finalization of our part of it to his study.

Mrs. Campbell: Could I have an answer to the question on glue sniffing? I think perhaps the minister missed that.

Hon. Mr. Miller: I did miss it -- I thought we were still on venereal disease. I am sorry, I was giving an answer to your other VD question. The number is 965-3333. I keep giving that VD number.

Mrs. Campbell: Well, I am talking about glue sniffing now. Do I use the same number?

Hon. Mr. Miller: It depends on where you are sniffing it. I am sorry, I can’t give you an answer on that. I will try and get some information on it very shortly.

Mrs. Campbell: Well, could I repeat it in part? First of all, would the minister consult with his colleague, the Attorney General, to see whether or not it is possible to come to some sort of resolution which could then go to the federal government in this matter?

We have tried to do this via the legal route only. It has not been successful, but the information I have today from the police, from the youth bureau, is that this is again on a very significant increase; it did fade out for a while. Surely anyone involved in health ought to have some miniscule concern for the health of children involved in this particular habit.

Hon. Mr. Miller: I believe that the Addiction Research Foundation has been involved in this particular area and as I say, I will be glad to get some more specific answers to you.

On the tropical health issue I have a little more information. The Toronto General Hospital clinic for this specific purpose has had an increase in attendance, so obviously there has been either an increase in the problem or more people are aware of the problem. We are talking to the federal government about some increased funding to assist the programme to be expanded.

Mr. Chairman: The member for Parkdale.

Mr. Dukszta: Mr. Minister, you stated in your opening remarks that the way the money is organized now is different from what it was before, so I find it somewhat difficult to compare the figures. But let me quote you some figures and then maybe comment on it.

For this section, promotion and protection programme, in 1971-1972 the budget was $72 million. In 1972-1973 it was $77 million-$77.5 million almost -- of which the actual amount spent according to the public accounts was $71 million. In 1973-1974 it was $68.3 million. In 1974-1975 it was almost $77 million.

Is there anywhere else in your budget, a section dealing with this vote which could possibly amplify this figure -- augment or increase it?

Hon. Mr. Miller: I can’t give you a great deal more information on this at the present time. Again, I’ll try to find out if there were some transfers or changes in the basis for comparison over the last three years. OHIP payments related to this programme, of course, are buried in the OHIP budget. In other words, we just haven’t any way of separating prevention and promotion charges that are made by doctors on a fee-for-service basis, apart from the funds we have specified here.

Mr. Dukszta: Let me just help you with this. The last item under development of health resources -- health resources development plan -- is that the one you use for various innovative community oriented projects?

Hon. Mr. Miller: I can give you the breakdown of that last part -- it’s the $47 million you are talking about, isn’t it? The health resources development plan is about $41 million of that. Clinical, applied, operational, and other health research --

Mr. Dukszta: I’m sorry, I missed that.

Hon. Mr. Miller: Clinical, applied, operational, and other health research is about $6 million of it. There is the Banting and Best research fund of $30,000; special training of health personnel, there is a small grant of $7,000; and federal health grants operating fund, which is I think is a place where we put cash -- it’s like a bank account through which we process federal funds to assist research in Ontario.

I can give you details on any of those parts if you wish them.

Mr. Dukszta: I am going to ask you quite specific questions though.

Hon. Mr. Miller: Okay.

Mr. Dukszta: I understand a couple of days ago you funded the Bay Centre for birth control. Where would the money come from for a project like that?

Hon. Mr. Miller: Yes, the funds for that came through the Women’s College Hospital operating budget.

Mr. Dukszta: I see. Now I think you have a department in OHIP which also funds some of the developmental projects in community health. Would you include this under this section?

Hon. Mr. Miller: Let me see now -- the moneys were in vote 2801, which has already passed, and the payments to the clinics, etc., would go through OHIP. I am just looking for my detailed section.

Mr. Dukszta: The point I am making, I suppose, is that I don’t see much difference between the budget in 1971, 1972, 1973 and 1974.

Now you have said -- let me just catch you on it -- that your thrust is toward prevention. I would like to know, and I’m giving you an opportunity to boast as much as you want to, exactly how much money you are spending in addition to what you have here on this new thrust. Then I’ll ask you very specific questions on a number of projects.

Hon. Mr. Miller: I think we have other places where this kind of money comes up too.

Mr. Dukszta: Could you tell me?

Hon. Mr. Miller: I’m looking at the various detailed figures I have on these pages. For example, of the $6 million, that we transfer in effect to other research facilities, we transfer about $1.4 million to ARF for research. That’s apart from a lot of other money we give ARF for other purposes. We transfer $1.8 million to the Ontario Cancer Treatment and Research Foundation, $1 million roughly to the Ontario Mental Health Foundation, $150,000 to the Ontario Heart Foundation and $1.2 million for our own provincial programme of clinical applied and operational research.

At this point, if you have any other questions on that I’ll be glad to listen to them.

Mr. Dukszta: You have amplified your answer, but it hasn’t changed the amount of money spent per each fiscal year. It is still basically the same for the last four budgets, isn’t it?

Hon. Mr. Miller: There is another almost $27 million in transfer payments to health units, which were one of our primary promotional and prevention areas I would think you’d agree.

Mr. Dukszta: I think you said there were 29 new community-oriented projects, if I’m correct, which are pilot, innovative type of projects.

Hon. Mr. Miller: I think it was 23.

Mr. Dukszta: Could you tell me how much money you are spending on those 23 projects, as the first question? Second, maybe you could just list some of them, if not all, to me right now? Another question is what kind of projects are they? Maybe you can describe them.

Hon. Mr. Miller: The figures I’m given here, are one year behind at this point in time. I don’t have 1974-1975 figures, according to what I’m looking at here. It was $7 million in 1973-1974 to these 23 groups or their predecessors, $4.4 million the previous year and $2.8 million the previous year to that. It has gone from $2.8 million to $7 million in a two-year time span. The 1974-1975 figure is $10 million approximately.

Mr. Dukszta: About $10 million.

Hon. Mr. Miller: Yes.

Mr. Dukszta: Could you give me then some breakdown on the type of project you are funding? I’m giving you full opportunity to shine.

Hon. Mr. Miller: How many pages would you like me to read?

Mr. W. Ferrier (Cochrane South): Are you going to shine with a pure, clear light?

Hon. Mr. Miller: I will sing it with you; will you lead?

Mr. Chairman, I can go through this stuff, but I just question whether I’m going to make any of us sound any the wiser at the end of it. I would be glad to share it with the member -- it is voluminous -- on a point-by-point basis, naming the type of payment mechanism, the method of reports, the number of doctors involved, the location and when the contracts expire.

Mr. Dukszta: Well, maybe describe the nature of them. Are they all sort of community health centres?

Hon. Mr. Miller: Not all.

Mr. Dukszta: Do they all have a physician or physicians in charge or involved in it? Or are there any which have no physicians in them?

Hon. Mr. Miller: I would have to look at the list to see. I have the number of physicians shown in each area. I have the VD clinics in quite a few municipalities -- and I think they all have physicians. Let’s see; yes. Again, I could show you the number of physicians in each one, if you wanted to see them.

Mr. Dukszta: No, it’s not really what I want. Has each of them got a physician -- that’s what I’m asking?

Hon. Mr. Miller: Let me see if I can find any without one. The Springhurst community health centre is in your riding, isn’t it?

Mr. Dukszta: Yes; and it has physicians in it.

Hon. Mr. Miller: It has two of them. One of them I taught, by the way.

Mr. Dukszta: That is indeed to your credit; but I’m not sure it’s fully relevant.

Hon. Mr. Miller: I notice, by the way, for your interest, a number with nurse practitioners in them, as well as physicians -- in case that should interest you.

Mr. Dukszta: Yes, it does interest me.

Hon. Mr. Miller: But to this point, I haven’t seen any without a physician. I can’t find one at this point; but I will be glad to keep thumbing through the list. All right, here’s one that’s supposedly physician-supported without a physician in the clinic -- the Beardmore community health centre.

Mr. Dukszta: Could you give us some information about that particular one?

Hon. Mr. Miller: I can read you a page of information, if you’d like me to.

Mr. Dukszta: Yes, please.

Hon. Mr. Miller: “The community of Beardmore is a forest industry-supported town that has been on a decline over the last 20 years” -- and so on. I think we’ll go down to the point where we’re in medical care. Here it is:

There is one full-time physician in Beardmore. He is 65 years of age and is pledged to remain in the community until 1975. A new ambulance has been based in the community for the past year. The driver and attendants are local volunteers. Periodic visits are made by a public health nurse from Geraldton. The frequency varies and activities are limited almost entirely to schools.

The hospital is a two-storey building one-half mile outside of the town. It was previously operated by the Red Cross. It has been judged unsafe by the fire marshal.

In April of this year the Red Cross stopped operating the hospital and they have continued operating it as an emergency out patient service only, with two RNs and one RNA in the existing facility. It is proposed to maintain these services as is for at least 12 months.

There is a local nurse who, after taking the nurse practitioner programme at McMaster, is willing to work in Beardmore; but it will be some short time before she’s finished her course.

There’s a lot of other minor detail; but that’s really what it says.

Mr. Dukszta: That sounds like an excellent project. I will come to the point -- and maybe this was all preparation. A couple of months ago I got involved with the coalition of health-related services. I think Miss Caroline Egan has been involved in this. They met with one of your deputies, Mr. Buckley -- and I understand they are going to meet some time next week with Dr. Aldis.

Now, as I say, it’s a coalition of various community-based services which are related to health care. Some of them have a physician involved with them who is in charge. Some of them have a rotating or a visiting physician, and some are associates with a physician, and some have no physician at all.

Let me take just a few minutes to tell you of the list. There are groups called: Adjustment into Society; North York Birth Control and VD Information Centre; Hassle Free Clinic; Smokers Anonymous -- though I think that one is no longer with them -- Tribal Women’s and Children’s Health Centre; Scarborough Community Health Clinic; and a support group in the coalition I mentioned, Smokers Anonymous; and Toronto General Hospital Health Support Workers, which is part of the Department of Psychiatry paid for by the Toronto General Hospital.

Of this group, only one, I think has a physician in it. That’s the women’s health centre. Hassle Free Clinics they have a doctor available. The first three -- Adjustment into Society, North York Birth Control and the VD Information Centre have no doctor.

The other ones which I think I should mention are Harbinger, at York University, which is a health centre providing drug counselling, birth control, VD and abortion referral; Bay Centre for Birth Control, which is already funded; and Youth Clinical Services at 800 Oakdale Rd., this one has two doctors and is already funded so that really doesn’t come into it.

I only met with them once and I went over with them what kind of groups they are. Maybe I can tell in a sentence what kind of stuff they do. I think we should not be upset by the names they give each other, because it’s not relevant to the good work they do; nor is what they call themselves. Hassle Free Clinic is a reasonable name for what they try to do.

Spontaneous Art Project is a group which provides art for groups of patients from the Queen St. mental health centre. They started, like many of them, originally through federal grants. There is a physician involved in it, the psychiatrist. Dr. Fischer.

The birth control and venereal disease information centre was originally established through a federal Local Initiative Programme grant in January, 1972. Since then it has received interim funding from the United Community Fund. It is composed of a working staff of five, including Italian-speaking persons. They have been trying to provide both birth control and venereal disease information at the street level. Their programme is directed to specific target areas: Young people, working class women, women in the home, and the various ethnic communities.

You have made quite an effort to provide information and facilities to deal with venereal diseases. But one problem we run into regarding why people do not turn to those places is that often they do not know where they are, in spite of the promotional literature and leaflets you put out, because of various cultural and linguistic difficulties. This type of project, like the birth control and venereal disease information centre, attempts to deal with it on the lines of the Addiction and Research Foundation’s street workers, on a street level.

The other one is Tribal. Tribal is a group of people who are trying to provide housing and class counselling away from the hospital for ex-mental patients. There is a good rationale for doing it in that many of the boarding homes, extended care homes or any homes relating to a large psychiatric hospital tend to lose a percentage of their clients through the fact that they are related to or involved with a large psychiatric hospital. This one attempts to do it from a point of view of a community without the astigmatization which occurs quite often if you are in a boarding home associated with a place like the Queen St. mental health centre.

The Hassle Free Clinic began as a branch of Rochdale in order to make the clinic more immediate and accessible to the community. This was necessary because of the closing of the Toronto free youth clinic. It began in 1973 and operated originally under the Local Initiative Programme. There was a three-month gap in funding between October 1973 and January, 1974. The LIP funding was discontinued as of July 5.

The clinic has cut or will be cutting staff. This clinic has attempted to provide an efficient approach to health care. Their programmes deal largely with social problems, with some free medical assistance for general medical problems. They have had complete co-operation with and from the public health department of the city of Toronto but they do not have physicians.

Another one I mention to you is the Scarborough Community Health Clinic which is on the following lines.

We could either go over each in detail or you can start telling me why the department has not helped them in any way. What are the reasons you have not helped them and why will you not continue in the future?

Hon. Mr. Miller: Mr. Chairman, it is very hard to say that I won’t help them in the future. The Bay St. birth control clinic is a good example of one which receives help. A lot of things are started under LIP and people assume they will be carried on by another level of government automatically. They get upset when the provincial government doesn’t step in and automatically fund things that were created under the LIP programme. The LIP project has proven to be very useful in some areas, but at times pretty risky, because it has funded a number of things that weren’t always successful.

Some of the places you are talking about are information centres as much as anything. I think you would agree my ministry has to be involved only in the funding of those that offer some form of treatment. If they are not, if they are counselling, in the social nature, COMSOC is the ministry that does the funding. There is not always a clear line between the two.

I have an equally long list of places that we are funding for certain services in communities. I could read them back to you. Some of them have names very much like the ones you have. Certainly I find nothing offensive in the names because I realize they are trying to relate to the people whom they are serving. I can show the Community Torchlight and Information Centre; the Friendship Welcome Centre; the Maison de Ratour; and the Mary Copy Home -- things like this where we are actively involved. Turning Point Incorporated; Friendship House, Halfway House; Mission of St. Judge; Spirit of Niagara -- are also places we are funding one way or another in an effort to help people suffering from some kind of problem.

Mr. A. J. Roy (Ottawa East): Your party is even funding an outfit called the Body House.

Hon. Mr. Miller: That is just on Yonge St. north of Wellesley and they hand out papers in front of it.

Mr. B. Newman: How do you know about that?

Mr. Ferrier: Body House?

Hon. Mr. Miller: I met you there.

Mr. Roy: You are going to change the name of that, Frank?

Mr. B. Newman: Were you on the next table?

Hon. Mr. Miller: It is always embarrassing.

Mr. Roy: I understand that your picture is in one of the pamphlets.

Hon. Mr. Miller: Well I am modest.

What I am trying to point out is that where projects have proven, as the Bay St. one did, to have a useful function related to our ministry goals we will do our darndest to find some way, even on short notice, to assist them. In this case, we had to do it not by direct ministry funding but by indirect ministry funding through one of the hospitals we happened to be able to help. I can only say in regard to those that haven’t received this assistance, if they haven’t already been screened by our ministry certainly they are welcome to make the requests for funds that most places do. They should let us examine their programmes and let us examine their budgets to determine what can be done to help them.

Mr. Dukszta: You have actually met with Mr. Buckley already, if I am correct, and they are meeting next week with Dr. Aldis. I am still not clear by what criteria some of them are funded and not others.

Hon. Mr. Miller: There is one point I mentioned a moment ago. It has to be providing treatment before it gets funded. That is one of the criteria.

Mr. Dukszta: What do you define as treatment? I told you there was a drug counselling service given by one. Also, the North York birth control and VD information centre gives drug counselling. Another which gives counselling is Harbinger of the York University health centre, which gives counselling in terms of drugs, birth control and VD.

Hon. Mr. Miller: Those getting counselling on drugs come under another vote, incidentally, which I think is item 3 of vote 2803.

Mr. Dukszta: That is one of their functions. We can’t simply shift them to Addiction Research Foundation money afterwards. This is, in fact, one of the innovative community-orientated projects. I am not going to have it shifted down there. Wouldn’t you describe this as treatment of sorts, in a very broad sense?

Hon. Mr. Miller: Sir, you are the psychiatrist.

Mr. Roy: Is he?

Mr. Dukszta: Is this supposed to disarm me or accuse me?

Hon. Mr. Miller: I suppose if you have a guilt complex, we should perhaps refer you to someone else and see.

Mr. Dukszta: I will see an engineer because I am community-oriented; but please answer.

Hon. Mr. Miller: Well I am not personally qualified to make that judgement. I would have to have staff make the judgement based on an appraisal of a given programme and the relationship to the funds we have available to give it.

That’s really all I can say. I can’t sit down and set criteria that are hard and fast, because I am sure you know when we get into these areas we are starting to become subjective in some areas, particularly as they relate to emotional and drug problems.

Mr. Dukszta: Well okay. What you are saying is that you don’t really know what criteria have been used by your department to decide which project gets it and which project is nix. I think you should still try to answer and find out. I think everyone is here who have made all the decisions and produced a criterion for decision making.

I still am not clear. I have a feeling that if there is a physician involved, then it’s more likely that the project gets funded; but I do not accept -- and I thought neither did you -- that the medical health problem necessarily always needs a physician for articulation. You have everyone here. Could you try to get them to tell you? I notice that Dr. Buckley has disappeared, but you could try.

Hon. Mr. Miller: Certainly the presence of a physician is one of the facilitating devices for funding, because a good deal of our funding is done through OHIP, through transfer payments from OHIP or direct billing to OHIP in a given setting; and that isn’t budgeted in anywhere near the same way as direct grants to operate a given institute. So certainly the presence of a doctor has a great bearing on the degree of success in getting money from us.

Mr. Dukszta: Mr. Minister, have you said to me the transfer payments from the federal government were linked to the physician or not? I am referring to this clause just to clarify a bit of information you gave me yesterday. Are the transfers from the federal government linked to the physician service or not?

Hon. Mr. Miller: I am not sure which transfer payments you mean.

Mr. Dukszta: Well, the federal government gives you some money. I am sorry -- maybe I am on the wrong track here. Why have you such strict rules and regulations about transfer of money from OHIP to health-related services which are not directly under the programme?

Hon. Mr. Miller: That is very definitely related to the Hospital Insurance and Diagnostic Services Act, if I am not wrong here. We are paid from the federal government on the basis of an audit of the payments we make on the assumption that we make them within the confines of that Act. At this point in time, they have required payment to recognized practitioners, of whom the physician is the primary one.

Mr. Dukszta: But don’t they recognize other practitioners? I thought they recognized other practitioners, too.

Hon. Mr. Miller: It is limited to physicians’ services on funds from the federal government. Apparently our largess at the provincial level extends to several other groups that they don’t recognize.

Mr. Dukszta: Well, your largess extends, so that’s good. That sounds like a promise. Does this mean that you will move and can provide some money to those groups, which you have not done so far?

Once you specify to me, or discover for your own satisfaction what the criteria are on which you make a decision between one group and another it would seem they are very comparable in function or effect or composition of staffs.

Hon. Mr. Miller: Yes, I think there is some possibility. I just keep returning to the point that we have been limiting our grants to those that offer treatment. As you’ve pointed out quite accurately, treatment is a difficult word to define.

But primarily, within health care we have been trying to fund only those organizations which treat somebody; and treatment has often meant the presence of a physician of some type.

Mr. Dukszta: Are you limiting yourself to that? I am going to return to this point again. Are you saying that this is the basic criteria or have you got other criteria to define treatment beside a physician’s articulation of it? Are you prepared to acknowledge that there are others, or admit, accept or innovate a different way of articulating what the treatment is besides one given by the physician?

Hon. Mr. Miller: I was looking over a list of the 23 clinics we were talking about earlier. I find 10 of them didn’t have physicians, but are supervised by physicians. So that really doesn’t answer the question you have been asking.

To date, our criteria basically required a physician to be present. Under the next vote the grants and aid programme to which I was referring, I was reading from the grants and aids though ARF and those facilities --

Mr. Dukszta: Where do you.

Hon. Mr. Miller: Vote 2803, item 3, I think, is what this comes under.

Mr. Dukszta: Do I have to bring all this up again?

Hon. Mr. Miller: You are tempting me to say: “What else is new?”

Mr. Dukszta: You mean, we cannot discuss this now, and you are prepared to give an answer when we come to the next vote?

Hon. Mr. Miller: If we are going on a vote by vote basis, I think we should discuss those related to drug problems and so on, under the vote 2803.

Mr. Dukszta: Yes, but not all those I read to you are actually related to drug counselling. Adjustment into Society relates to psychiatry; Smokers Anonymous relates to health protection and disease prevention; Spontaneous Art indirectly relates to psychiatry; Women’s Health Centre -- I would say because of the birth control, VD and abortion referral is related largely to health promotion.

I have combined a number of the projects into one because I think it would be easier for us to discuss it. But the majority of them fit into promotion and protection programmes, and also fit into your approach of trying new pilot projects, new innovative projects in the mode and the spirit of the community health approach.

Hon. Mr. Miller: I will go back to the statement that those that have been giving a treatment generally related to a physician have been the ones we have been prone to finance and not the others, up to this point.

We do recognize the merits of some of them and I am going to have to deal with my staff and see if we can’t find ways of funding them that wall meet our present requirements for cost-sharing or other criteria.

Mr. Dukszta: It sounds to me like a promise. Does this mean we can apply to you afterwards so that you can look into it?

Hon. Mr. Miller: Will you have a conflict of interest in that?

Mr. Dukszta: Never; this is straight from the heart.

Mr. Chairman: The member for Windsor--Walkerville.

Mr. B. Newman: Mr. Chairman, I want to ask the minister what his ministry’s responsibility was in the recent hamburger episodes that were brought to the attention of the public, municipally, provincially and nationwide?

Hon. Mr. Miller: I am waiting for Dr. Martin to get near me. But I know we have been testing for five years through our programme the bacteria content in processed meats. I believe our findings and those of the federal government bore some similarity. There were few pathogenic bacteria found. While there are bacteria present, our findings were that they were generally safe. Is that correct?

Mr. B. Newman: We assume from your comments, Mr. Minister, that the great commotion over the hamburger episode was not a health hazard at all according to the findings of your officials.

Hon. Mr. Miller: First of all, the responsibility is federal.

Mr. B. Newman: It is not federal on the processed aspect. It may be federal in the slaughterhouse end, but in the processing of meat I think it is not federal.

Hon. Mr. Miller: I am listening because I cannot make that decision.

Mr. B. Newman: Food processing?

Hon. Mr. Miller: Is federal.

Mr. B. Newman: I can recall in my day never seeing a federal inspector in a meat processing plant, but always seeing municipal inspectors. That goes back a few years so that things may have changed since then. But on the slaughter level, there would be a federal inspector all the time.

Hon. Mr. Miller: You are talking about slaughtering too?

Mr. B. Newman: No, I am talking about processing.

Hon. Mr. Miller: I am told that processing is federal.

Mr. B. Newman: I will accept that if your officials say that. That is quite all right. Have you set up a bacteria count standard beyond which meats should not be permitted to be sold?

Hon. Mr. Miller: That is a federal responsibility and I am sure they must have standards. Were you aware of some? We’re not aware of the standard levels the federal government may have set.

Mr. B. Newman: Mr. Minister, in your previous comments to me you made mention that you did test for bacteria count, so if your officials have done the testing, then you must have some standards by which you you could say that certain hamburger is not edible or is a danger to health.

Hon. Mr. Miller: I am told that we have been doing this as a monitoring operation for our own interest without the jurisdictional authority to take action, but that the tests we have had were, in the opinion of our staff, satisfactory. There is no cause for alarm.

Mr. B. Newman: How recently were those tests conducted?

Hon. Mr. Miller: Continually for the last five years.

Mr. B. Newman: And they were conducted during the time there was a great commotion in Ottawa over the hamburger meat?

Hon. Mr. Miller: Yes; I am told yes.

Mr. B. Newman: May I ask of the minister if he is aware or if his officials have found any link between the use of arsenic and cancer? Apparently studies at the Dow Chemical Plant in Midland, Mich., indicated a very high incidence of cancer among employees who worked in the inorganic arsenic area.

That was a study conducted by the Occupational Safety Health Administration in the US, and was reported on by the Dow people themselves. The Dow study showed that 32.9 per cent of 178 workers who were exposed to arsenic during the plant’s 32 year record of handling the chemical died of cancer.

Hon. Mr. Miller: I have Dr. Tidey in front of me now and I have no information at this point on arsenic and its relationship with cancer. No, we do not have any information on this matter.

Mr. B. Newman: May I ask of the minister if he is concerned with fluoridation and intends to make fluoridation compulsory throughout the province?

Hon. Mr. Miller: You ask nice questions, don’t you?

Mr. J. E. Stokes (Thunder Bay): Ask Gordon Sinclair.

Hon. Mr. Miller: I can ask members of your own party. I have received very thoughtful communications from at least one member of the NDP who used to be an advocate of fluoridation and has now become an opponent of it.

Mr. Stokes: Who is that?

Hon. Mr. Miller: Just a second, my mind has gone blank on me all of a sudden. Second row, just beside Mr. Young.

Mr. Roy: That happens quite frequently by the way.

Mr. Stokes: Mr. Ferrier?

Hon. Mr. Miller: No.

Mr. Stokes: Mr. Shulman?

Hon. Mr. Miller: I am in the wrong direction, it must be on your side.

Mr. Young: Mr. Burr?

Hon. Mr. Miller: Yes, that is right, Mr. Fred Burr.

Mr. Stokes: Fred Burr? Is he for or against?

Hon. Mr. Miller: Yes, the hon. member for Sandwich--Riverside (Mr. Burr).

I am offering my personal feelings, and I believe they’re the feelings of my ministry. I believe in fluoridation of water supplies as a necessary step in the prevention of tooth decay, particularly for younger people. It is a very contentious issue, one which the province has felt should best be decided at the local level. That is still the policy of government. Yet a very high percentage of the water supplies of the Province of Ontario are now fluoridated.

I figure it’s always dangerous to quote without some reference, but something like 75 per cent or more of the people on municipal water supplies are getting fluoridated water now.

I was in two towns recently, one with and one without fluoridation. Sault Ste. Marie without, Sudbury with. The dentists in Sault Ste. Marie said to me; “I can tell any time a boy or girl comes here from the Sudbury area because they have good teeth.” As simply as that.

Mr. Roy: I wouldn’t say that about Elie Martel.

Hon. Mr. Miller: He probably lost his.

Mr. Chairman: Order please.

Hon. Mr. Miller: Comments have been made in our ministry, and I’ve even made them in speeches, as a rhetorical question to a degree, but probably expressing our opinion: What good is a children’s dental health programme without fluoridated water?

Mr. Ferrier: Do they have fluoridated water in Bracebridge?

Hon. Mr. Miller: No.

Mr. B. Newman: Then the decision to fluoridate water is a political one, not a health one?

Hon. Mr. Miller: Yes.

Mr. Roy: Well, isn’t the dental association pressuring you to fluoridate water?

Hon. Mr. Miller: The dental association, as far as I know, is unanimously in support of that point of view. There’ve been fluoride applications and so on. In the town of Bracebridge the schools have programmes where they will put the topical applications of fluoride on the teeth of the students because we don’t have it in our water supply. The size of a community shouldn’t be a deterrent. I notice the town of Parry Sound has fluoridated water, and it’s not much bigger than the town of Bracebridge. I would encourage communities to look at this issue and try and get the emotionalism out of it.

Mr. B. Newman: During question period at one time, I asked the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations (Mr. Clement) if he intended to pass regulations concerning microwave ovens, seeing they are getting to be extremely popular. In his reply he mentioned that your ministry is looking into regulations concerning the ovens. Have you looked into it, and do you intend to introduce legislation?

Hon. Mr. Miller: We have been looking into it. I think we are very far advanced in the studies of the necessary controls for microwave ovens.

Mr. B. Newman: Can we expect the result in legislation?

Hon. Mr. Miller: We would hope to have it in legislative form during the next year. We almost had it in legislative form for this session.

Mr. B. Newman: What held it up?

Hon. Mr. Miller: Simply detail. We had some unresolved points that required clarification before the legislation could be finally drafted.

Mr. B. Newman: It has been brought to my attention that certain medical devices are not regulated. Maybe this is a federal responsibility, and not provincial, but if the federal government does not regulate them, wouldn’t it be a good idea for you to urge them to implement regulations or introduce your own regulations? I’m referring to heart pacemakers. I’ve noted in reading American newspapers there have been problems with the batteries in pacemakers and that if there were regulations the problem could be resolved.

Hon. Mr. Miller: I saw a set of criteria recently for atomic pacemakers. Are these the ones you’re worried about, or the battery-powered ones?

Mr. B. Newman: The power supply was the problem.

Hon. Mr. Miller: This is why they were cooing to the atomic type, as I understand it. The atomic type had a much longer power supply and didn’t require an operation to replace the thing from time to time. I recall recently there were a series that were defective, if you recall.

They were the battery type where they had removed them, I believe, and replaced them. They had a bunch of defective batteries. I don’t know the regulations on it, I quite honestly don’t.

Mr. B. Newman: Are they or are they not the minister’s responsibility?

Hon. Mr. Miller: My staff says no.

Mr. B. Newman: I have also heard that the electronics in an aircraft can have an effect on the pacemaker. If the federal government doesn’t have regulations on them, I think we should encourage them.

Mrs. Campbell: The minister was all set to answer the member.

Mr. B. Newman: Was the minister all set to answer?

Hon. Mr. Miller: It is perfectly all right, I’ll answer it with the next question.

Mrs. Campbell: We wouldn’t want to hurt the minister’s feelings.

Mr. B. Newman: I shouldn’t drop my head.

Hon. Mr. Miller: Never drop your head when you are with me.

Mr. B. Newman: I thought I would blind you by dropping my head.

Another item that has been brought to my attention is baby incubators equipped at times with poor thermostats. Has that been a problem in Ontario at all? This apparently is an American problem.

Hon. Mr. Miller: It has, never come to the attention of my staff who are present. They’re all nodding their heads.

Mr. B. Newman: Maybe they’re not in that age bracket.

Hon. Mr. Miller: They’re all past that stage.

Mrs. Campbell: What about the minister’s professionalists?

Mr. B. Newman: The last one, Mr. Minister, is concerning emergency oxygen units that don’t work because of defective valves. Do you or any of your officials know anything on that?

Hon. Mr. Miller: We’re going to have to get your research worker working for me. No, in fact, we do not know anything of that.

Mr. B. Newman: Would you mind, Mr. Minister, having someone in your ministry look after these matters that have been brought to your attention?

Hon. Mr. Miller: I’d be glad to look at each of those items in case there is, in fact, a risk factor. We’ll see what we can do about them.

Mr. B. Newman: Thank you.

Mr. Chairman: The member for Yorkview.

Mr. Young: Mr. Chairman, in connection with the health protection and disease prevention services, I want to ask the minister what is happening in one particular phase of this prevention work.

Recently we had a conference in Ontario in connection with alcoholism, drugs and traffic safety, but it dealt with the whole field of alcoholism. I know that in the next vote, we’ll be discussing this when it comes to the Addition Research Foundation and perhaps some other phases, but I want to ask the minister about the impact this particular habit of ours has upon his ministry and what is being done in the field of prevention?

In David Archibald’s recent pamphlet “Changing Drinking Patterns in Ontario” there are some implications --

Mr. R. G. Hodgson (Victoria--Haliburton): Why don’t you carry this vote before you go on to the next one?

Mr. Young: He says this: “In Ontario in 1969, 22,600 persons between the ages of 20 and 70 died. These deaths not only were 38 per cent stricken with cirrhosis of the liver due to alcohol --

Mr. Chairman: Order please.

Hon. Mr. Miller: On a point of order. I believe this is under vote 2803, item 5, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Young: All right. I don’t mind.

Mr. Chairman: Shall section 1 carry then?

Mr. Young: No. I can keep it until later if you wish.

Mr. Chairman: Shall section 1 carry?

Mr. B. Newman: I have a question on section 1.

Mr. Chairman: All right. We’ll take the member for Windsor--Walkerville.

Mr. B. Newman: The question deals with lead poisoning. Does the ministry not have some type of device that could check on the effects of lead and lead poisoning, to see if the blood levels of the individual exposed are at a certain level or not?

Hon. Mr. Miller: Yes, the ability to make the measurement exists. And that of course hasn’t been the issue as I saw it throughout the lead debates. It’s an issue that’s bothered me, perhaps, more than any of the other occupational health issues in one sense.

I have been concerned about the very real mental anguish that has been placed particularly upon the parents of children who live in areas where there is a potential lead poisoning hazard. Quite properly -- if I were them I would do the same thing -- they have listened to those people who have said a problem exists in terms of health, simply because a fact exists in terms of an elevated lead level in the blood.

The issue of what level constitutes a health hazard to me still remains the paramount issue. I have heard from a number of physicians, and the interesting thing is no one yet has documented -- I think I am safe to say this -- an illness related to these lead levels. We can document, through the many studies that have been carried on this year, the fact that a goodly number of people, particularly children, have lead levels. Yet we can show the variations in those levels are not always related to the proximity to a smelter or even within a family. So there are many variables affecting the ingestion, if that is the word, of lead.

I am most concerned though.

First, one can categorically say it is not good to allow lead into the atmosphere. That is a safe statement. But lead is entering our atmosphere from many points every day; therefore we should take all reasonable steps to prevent further emissions of lead where we can.

My job though, as Minister of Health, is primarily concerned with when is it a health hazard, when does one exist. I hate to think of parents who suddenly worry about the child who says I have got a sick tummy in the morning. That is a pretty normal thing for a kid to say on a Monday morning; but the parents suddenly start worrying about the fact that it may be related to lead poisoning.

I am not being dramatic, this is happening. I know it is happening; I have a very close contact, in that my driver lives within a block and a half of the Canada Metal plant, and I know the anguish he and his wife go through with their four children, it brings it very close.

You know, you can talk about things very impersonally until you see how someone feels about the issue. I am sure I couldn’t convince that lady that I was right if I said to her she should not worry. But I want to be able to say to her you should worry or you should not worry, based on some evidence that is meaningful. That is the issue to me that I have to see resolved.

I am sorry that in the absence of that kind of definitive data we have really caused sheer panic amongst a lot of people in the interim. Because we don’t have any evidence of illness, even in these higher lead concentration areas. We simply remove people, particularly those in the work force, when they get to 80 micrograms of lead per 100 millilitres of blood, if I recall the figure. That is the level at which an adult is removed. I think we almost halve that for a child don’t we -- 40 micrograms per 100 millilitres we consider a cause for concern in a child.

Those are good standards to start worrying about, but they haven’t truly been related to illness; they are simply levels past which we say one should not go at this point in time.

Mr. B. Newman: May I suggest to the minister now that he is attempting to develop that computer-assisted school health programme, that he do take lead level samples of the youth in the area and in other areas. Then he could have some type of data by which to come along eventually and say there is a definite health hazard as a result of the exposure to lead or not.

I have noticed that the schools in Detroit -- and I hate using Detroit as an example, because in some respects it is not the nicest city in the United States to be talking about -- but they do have portable lead samplers and they go into the area and sample the blood of all of the youngsters. They are attempting to develop a study and I would think that it might be a good thing on the part of your ministry with your new CASH programme.

Mr. Chairman: Actually, that is on the next vote.

Mr. B. Newman: No, that is right in this vote.

Mr. Chairman: It would come under clinical, applied, operational and other health research. I believe it is out of order.

Hon. Mr. Miller: In any case, I am very aware of the problem.

Mr. Chairman: The member for Parkdale.

Mr. Dukszta: To return to the question of what you said about lead poisoning, I think if you wait for what you call a definitive version, we are really taking a major risk right now. I think there is enough evidence at the moment. I think your figures in terms of micrograms are too high and most authorities now are concerned about a much lower level. If you wait for a definitive version, it may never come.

I’ll give you an example. I think people for a long time suspected that the workers exposed to asbestos not only developed an obvious asbestosis which might be a fibrous reaction but that there was a suspected danger of mesthelioma, which only recently people have been able to show. They have been able to show it because they waited long enough. You get exposed and 20 years later you develop a cancer of the lung. The cancer does not develop immediately. It has been shown repeatedly that the population which has been exposed to asbestos in Paterson developed three times as much cancer as the population which was not exposed to it. I think you should take this into account when you look at the lead poisoning question.

You react very emotionally to the anguish that the parents feel about children. I think the anguish less important. I think what is important is to do something about it. We should accept that there is a danger even if it is not proven in that extreme scientific fashion which you demand. We have had this discussion before. It’s not enough. I think it comes under this ministry. You can surely start some of the programmes; first you could be testing generally and even going as far as providing treatment facilities; or paying for removal of the top soil which is one of the things people think should be done so that the soil which the children play on does not in fact produce constantly new problems for the children even if the factory was closed.

Hon. Mr. Miller: To imply that we are not doing some of those things, I think, is wrong.

First, Environment has been much tougher in terms of emission control standards to try to prevent an aggravation of the current problem in terms of lead in that area.

Second, you know we asked Dr. Rocke Robertson to look into the effect of health and lead -- the inter-relationship. I should have that report in two or three days; it’s that close, I believe it is past the final draft. It’s simply at this point in time waiting the approval of the individual members of the committee. I have every intention of making that report public as quickly as I can.

As for the testing programmes, I don’t know how many people we tested, but it is over 6,000. We did a sample of people not in the area considered to be a high risk area as well to give us some kind of an average population base to work on.

Furthermore, let’s look at the other occupational health hazards. Many of them have been entered into without a forewarning that there was a potential danger. I think you would agree with that.

When the men went into the uranium mines, when the men went into gold mining in the past, when the men worked with vinyl chloride monomer, one didn’t know in advance, that we had a problem. How do we find out? Obviously by relating the incidence of disease to the population averages in those groups. I think you would agree that was the method by which we determined the problem, isn’t it? We then started looking for the cause of that problem, and in cases like asbestosis it got right to mesothelioma, a type of cancer of the lung?

Mr. Chairman: I don’t think the member and the minister are talking --

Hon. Mr. Miller: I will be quite glad to stop at that.

Mr. Dukszta: This is not a philosophy. I must raise a specific question of what I consider the function of the ministry in terms of promotion and protection programmes.

Mr. Chairman: Are we budgeting any dollars for that particular subject?

Mr. Dukszta: If the minister finishes answering, I was just about to ask him.

Interjections by hon members.

Hon. Mr. Miller: Am I back on?

Mr. Chairman: There are a lot of questions to be asked here and a lot of money to be voted. I sat here for two or three days and really, sir, I must point out to you that there has been very little relative to estimates. It has been about almost every other subject but.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Dukszta: I have never heard such a thing.

Mr. Chairman: That is estimates in the true sense of how dollars are going to be spent.

Mr. Dukszta: Excuse me, were you listening when I was asking --

Mr. Chairman: Yes.

Mr. Dukszta: -- the questions about the various projects which applied for money to the minister? I was talking very clearly about money.

Mr. Ferrier: If you make any more speeches like that, I am not going to recommend you for the cabinet.

Mr. Chairman: I think there is a tremendous amount of money here; a tremendous number of votes and money going to particular items. I think it would be far better if you did ask about those particular items.

Mr. Dukszta: Mr. Chairman, if you keep interfering --

Mr. Chairman: It is under the clinical, applied, operation and health research item. That is under research.

Mr. B. Newman: It also comes under promotion and protection programme.

Mr. Dukszta: Could we return to the subject now, Mr. Chairman?

Mr. Chairman: Carry on.

Hon. Mr. Miller: We were dealing with mesothelioma.

An hon. member: I thought I heard some gold and I thought I heard a lot of other things.

Hon. Mr. Miller: I had trouble spelling hospital six months ago.

Mr. Roy: You still do. The word you can’t spell any more is ceiling.

Hon. Mr. Miller: S-E --

Mrs. Campbell: A.

Hon. Mr. Miller: The critical tiring I was trying to lead up to is that we determined the occupational health hazard based upon the historical incidence of disease related to the population at large. That was referred to yesterday when it was said that cancer was three times as prevalent in the workers at Elliot Lake as it was in the population at large. Statements of that nature have guided us to health hazards where they existed.

Unfortunately I don’t know how one truly predicts things in advance, and I think you would agree with me. In the case of lead, it has been used throughout our recorded civilized history and we have no evidence of lead poisoning on the scale one would expect if it was the hazard people assume it is at the levels we have incurred in Toronto.

Mr. Dukszta: I think there is a difference in how we interpret the data available. I think you are wrong, but I won’t pursue that subject

Let me ask you whether there is a group in your ministry and whether you have allotted any money to general research in occupational health.

Hon. Mr. Miller: Yes. We are working on this issue within the Ministry of Health in the occupational health hazards branch. I am very concerned about the problem. I don’t want anything I say today to make you believe I am not anxious to find an answer. I am meeting with ministers very shortly to co-ordinate to a better degree our attack on this problem.

Mr. Dukszta: Yesterday when I was making my opening statement, I quoted to you a report done in England on which new legislation was based. When the minister says he is meeting with representatives of other ministries, is this a move toward some kind of a co-ordinating committee which will deal with all occupational and health hazards in work situations and others?

Hon. Mr. Miller: I have to say I initiated these discussions myself because I felt there was a need for a higher degree of co-ordination.

Mr. Dukszta: Well then, congratulations!

Mr. Chairman: The member for St. George.

Mrs. Campbell: I want to get into this if I may. If this is all being co-ordinated, why is this government not giving greater protection to the local board of health? It has had to be on the front line of fire in dealing with the matters -- to the point where some of the members are subjected to penalties for having assumed a responsibility which is essentially provincial.

Hon. Mr. Miller: We have tried to help the local board of health and they have, as you know, been very divided on this. I have to say that at times I think they have been playing politics instead of worrying about health.

Mr. Dukszta: Excuse me, who was playing politics?

Hon. Mr. Miller: Pardon?

Mr. Dukszta: To whom is the minister referring?

Hon. Mr. Miller: The Toronto Board of Health.

Mr. Dukszta: Toronto Board of Health?

Mr. I. Deans (Wentworth): That is a headline grabber.

Mrs. Campbell: Yes, it is in Hansard.

Mr. Dukszta: Mr. Chairman, one of them, in fact the chief I think, is your appointee. Am I not right? Who is playing politics? Is that the minister’s appointee or is he saying the other members of it?

Mr. Deans: Now he doesn’t want to --

Mr. Dukszta: Is the minister going to answer, because he has accused the Toronto Board of Health of playing politics. Who is he specifically accusing -- Dr. Moss or others?

Hon. Mr. Miller: I am not naming any specific person. I just feel that there has been a lot of gamesmanship in the last short while.

Mr. Dukszta: One of them is the minister’s own appointee.

Mr. Roy: The minister has privilege here. No problem.

Mr. Chairman: The member for Cochrane South.

Mr. Ferrier: Yes, Mr. Chairman, I hope I can deal a little bit with the health unit allocation here.

As I understand it, a few years ago, you went to a global budgeting method of allocating money to the health units. You took the programmes that you had at that time and you decided that if they wanted to expand you would provide a little more money and so on. If a health unit had been particularly budget conscious and was holding down on spending and programmes and so on, when they did decide they were going to spend more money or would have to expand the programmes to bring the services up to what health units in other parts of the province were providing -- when they needed more staff and more money to do this -- they were penalized on the basis of the previous budget that they had.

I know people from my riding came down here and I think you gave them some extra money -- not as much as they wanted, but they got some. But when you started the programme, two or three years ago, the province was subsidizing the programme by about 75 per cent of the health unit cost. Then it started going down to about 67 per cent and I don’t know what it is at now. Perhaps the minister could let us know what it has dropped to.

The Treasurer (Mr. White) likes to tell us about how much extra money he is giving the municipal councils to operate things at the local level and how much better off they are because of the deconditionalized grants and this kind of thing. This is all welcome, but as I understand it from this ministry on health units, there is more having to be spent by local municipal councils than there was a few years ago.

The other thing is regarding the grants for health units. What special provision do you make for the extra expenses that health units in northern Ontario have vis-à-vis those in the south -- such things as scattered population and a lot more mileage required of inspectors and nurses going out to provide service to the population and that type of thing? Do you make any special provision for assistance to northern Ontario health units that you don’t make in the south? What is the variation between southern and northern units as far as the average cost is concerned?

Hon. Mr. Miller: I have per capita figures for the total expenditures of every health unit area in the Province of Ontario. I will give you a couple of examples: Etobicoke, $4.01 per person; Porcupine, $6.40 per person --

Mr. Ferrier: We have to pay a lot more then?

Hon. Mr. Miller: That’s the --

Mr. Ferrier: Is that the grant or is that what the municipalities have to pay?

Hon. Mr. Miller: That is the total. Etobicoke gets $1 of that $4.01 from us.

Mr. Deans: What does Porcupine get?

Mr. Ferrier: What do we get?

Hon. Mr. Miller: Porcupine would get approximately $4.70 of that $6.40 from us.

Mr. Ferrier: What is the percentage?

Hon. Mr. Miller: What I am trying to tell you is that you are getting a better deal per capita because you have higher costs per capita.

But, to go back, I am sure I don’t have to tell the member about the problems of the South Porcupine Health Unit. Is Dr. Killingbeck your MOH now? He has come there within recent times, I believe -- within the last year or so. Is that correct?

Mr. Ferrier: Yes. Two years ago.

Hon. Mr. Miller: He took over from a gentleman who had been ill for some time.

The real issue was not one of willingness or unwillingness to fund -- and you must remember that the programmes must have a certain amount of local financing too. Over a period of time there wasn’t an expansion of the programmes in your area. Frankly, we would have encouraged expansion up there, but it didn’t happen. Either there wasn’t the initiative at the local level or -- well, it wasn’t done in any case. I am not laying blame on anybody; it just didn’t happen. Somebody said it was because of the failing health of the MOH at that point in time, but I don’t know that that’s true.

You got a doctor who was aware of the shortcomings of your system, and he immediately set about, as he should, to try to upgrade them. But -- and this is where we run into problems -- the funding mechanisms are such that we have to approve the new programmes before they are funded. It is my understanding that certain programmes were started there without the necessary approval and when the funds weren’t available, your percentage of the total dropped from the 75 per cent that we support. Do you follow me?

That’s why you are faced, I believe, with a very large increase in the municipal contribution towards the health unit. As I recall, it was quite an issue in the Porcupine area, and in Timmins in particular, in early May. They were talking about closing down the health unit, turning it back to the province, getting rid of the programmes, getting rid of the minister and a few other things.

Mr. Ferrier: I didn’t say anything about the minister.

Hon. Mr. Miller: I was up there and they were very nice to me, to be quite honest with you. But they have very real problems. They came down to see us, and we did increase their grants because we did recognize the special problems you faced in catching up with the programmes offered in your area.

Of course they are not satisfied. I haven’t met a health unit yet that has been satisfied with the moneys it got, but our share in that case increased by $134,026 over the year.

Mr. Ferrier: Well, I would like to say that was a very good response the minister gave -- we are very happy about it -- that from here on in, if new programmes are presented and are shown to be beneficial and reasonable, there is a likelihood they will be approved and we will be able to keep up with the rest of the province.

I concur in all you say about Dr. Killingbeck. He is a very excellent medical officer of health. They are doing a splendid job there, and I thank you for the extra support and encouragement you have given to them. But are you still at that 75 per cent level of approved costs? You haven’t changed from that? So the figures they were quoting were not necessarily of getting 67 or 63 --

Hon. Mr. Miller: Yes, it is because of the unapproved content that they have got problems.

Mr. Ferrier: Is this unapproved content very prevalent throughout the province?

Hon. Mr. Miller: I can’t be sure of that. There is a great variation. The Toronto issue, as to why Toronto only gets 25 per cent, which started this discussion, hinges on the unwillingness of the seven municipalities involved to agree on what programmes should be the base programmes. People have a great difference of opinion as to whether a VD control programme, a VD education programme, birth control, family planning and things of this nature should be part of it.

Some areas have been anxious to broaden the programmes to put in denticare, and things of this nature. Other areas have been quite reluctant to add programmes. Where they felt a programme was worth their own dollars, some places have gone ahead and done it, knowing full well they were using 100 per cent tax dollars from that municipality to carry the programme. Is that correct?

Mr. Chairman: The hon. member for Parkdale.

Mr. Dukszta: Mr. Minister, I am certain you did not mean to impute bad faith to the whole of Toronto, so can you withdraw it or specify it?

Hon. Mr. Miller: You know, I’m usually a very temperate soul.

Mr. Roy: You are not going to back off?

Mr. Deans: You are not going to get away with it.

Hon. Mr. Miller: I suddenly find myself speaking like you people.

Mr. Stokes: What is gamesmanship?

Mr. Deans: Haying once said it --

Hon. Mr. Miller: I don’t think I’m willing to withdraw it, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Deans: What do you mean? If you are not going to withdraw it, what do you mean?

When you say there is politics being played by the board, that’s a very serious allegation. That means all of the implications that these people aren’t doing their job both properly and with integrity. If you are prepared to say that that board isn’t exercising proper integrity in the way in which it is carrying out its functions, then say so and tell us what it is and let’s get another board.

If they are not doing their job properly, then tell us what is they are not doing, and let’s then have the appropriate steps taken to replace them. But you don’t get up in the House and say that people are playing politics out there -- particularly with health. You might want to say it with other things, but either you’re prepared to substantiate it or you are going to withdraw it, or else you are going to spend all night talking about it.

Hon. Mr. Miller: I have 15 hours, sir.

Mr. Deans: That’s fine. We are going to have to spend a long time then, because that kind of an allegation is very serious. It goes right to the integrity of the whole board. It allows for the questioning of the way in which they carry out their job, not only in the way it relates to that particular incident, but as it relates to all other things that they do. If they can withstand the kind of allegation that they play politics on the one hand with that kind of a situation, then what do people then have to think about the way they do their job normally? I just don’t think that’s the kind of statement the Minister of Health should make in the Province of Ontario, unless he is prepared to substantiate it with some kind of evidence.

Hon. Mr. Miller: I think the evidence can be shown by the fact there are some court cases related to some of the statements made and some of the charges made before the courts. It is one of the areas I was concerned about.

Mr. Deans: That’s not playing politics. That is someone questioning the legality of what they did. But that again has nothing to do with politics; that has to do with whether or not the decision that they came to, based on whatever information or evidence they had, was legally defensible. That has nothing to do with whether or not they are playing politics. Playing politics is another racket -- that’s what you’re doing by making that statement.

Hon. Mr. Miller: And what are you doing?

Mr. Deans: What I’m doing is trying to get you -- That’s interesting. All right, I’ll tell you what I’m doing. I’m trying to make you responsible for your own actions. When you accuse the local board of health in the city of Toronto of playing politics, you can then draw the inference that they don’t take their job seriously. I just don’t happen to think that that is a proper statement for a Minister of Health to make.

If you’re going to make that kind of a statement, then you surely have an obligation to point out the incidents that allowed you to draw that conclusion. If you don’t think they’re doing it with the best intentions of the people over whom they have some jurisdiction, then say so. As far as the court cases are concerned, don’t draw that in as a red herring. It applies to whether or not the position they take is legally defensive, or whether or not it is acceptable to you politically.

Hon. Mr. Miller: By “politics,” I’m not talking NDP, Liberal or Conservative.

Mr. Deans: No. I understand that.

Mr. Deans: I realize you’re not talking partisan politics, you’re talking about game playing. That’s what you’re saying.

Hon. Mr. Miller: Do you really think I’m wrong?

Mr. Deans: Yes, I think you’re wrong. I think what they did, they did with the best interests of the people at heart. If you think otherwise, why don’t you say so?

Hon. Mr. Miller: I did.

Mr. Roy: He has.

Mr. Deans: Then what actions are you taking to make sure that it can’t happen again?

Hon. Mr. Miller: I have no control over the people on that board of health. I have no intention of having any control over the people on the board of health. I offered a subjective observation on what I’ve seen.

Mr. Dukszta: It can’t be a subjective interpretation. You have appointed one member to that board and you’re responsible for at least one member of the board. You’re responsible for occupational health and you cannot make a statement that implies the whole board, at the moment, is playing politics and not concerned with the lead poisoning which has occurred in the city of Toronto. You cannot say that.

You cannot accuse all those people who have spent time being concerned about the hazards to health. You cannot say they are simply playing politics and the whole thing is a game. It is not a game. You have just accused them of doing nothing but gaming, and also accused them of bad faith. I cannot accept this unless you’re going to specify what they have done wrong. Do you think the whole effort in determining whether there is a lead poisoning problem and their concern is all phoney? Is that what you have said?

Hon. Mr. Miller: I suppose one should often keep his thoughts to himself. First of all, you’re wrong on one point. I’m assured we do not have an appointee on that board.

Mr. Dukszta: What is Dr. Moss?

Hon. Mr. Miller: He’s not a member of the board, as I understand it.

Mr. Dukszta: He’s an officer of health and he sits on the board.

Hon. Mr. Miller: He sits on the board?

Mr. Dukszta: Well, he sits in an advisory capacity and can’t vote at the moment, but he is responsible for that.

Hon. Mr. Miller: He’s responsible for reporting to the board. He answers to the board.

Mr. Dukszta: He answers to the board?

Hon. Mr. Miller: You got into the issues about whether he had acted responsibly in terms of keeping the reports or making them public, whether he’d dealt with them. There were a lot of reactions in the city at that time which made me feel that if one was really concerned about the health of the people, one would attack the problem in a quiet way, as we have tried to do, in terms of defining the magnitude of the problem. I’ve only had, to the best of my knowledge, one contact in or, one request for a contact from this board to discuss the issue and all kinds of statements were made about the irresponsibility of this government toward the issue.

Mr. Deans: But don’t you think your response to the statement was irresponsible?

Hon. Mr. Miller: I’m not sure mine was irresponsible. It was probably untoward, but I don’t think it’s irresponsible.

Mrs. Campbell: Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman: The hon. member for St. George.

Mrs. Campbell: I would like to have one brief word on this subject since I am the one who apparently elicited this entire exchange; I don’t call it a debate. I think it’s important that the minister at least tell us exactly wherein he sees the responsibilities of the local boards. They function under provincial legislation. They have interpreted their responsibility, it is true, in a very different manner from that of former local boards.

In the past, the medical officer of health seemed to wield such power with the board there was very little action taken in the areas of responsibility. I would appreciate the minister defining for us what he feels is the responsibility within his legislation. I believe the people on the board were seeking to fulfil their statutory obligations. I would like to know wherein, in the opinion of the minister, they either failed to do so, or did so in an improper fashion.

Hon. Mr. Miller: I don’t think I’m going to start enumerating the proper responsibilities of that board until I am more clearly aware of them myself. I have been given a note which I am not prepared to interpret, so until I have a proper answer I will withhold any answer.

Mr. Deans: Can I ask about another matter then? I am really reluctant to leave this. I wish you hadn’t said it, quite frankly. I wish you hadn’t said it because I don’t think it is right. You may not agree with the way in which they have done their job, you may think they should have done it differently, you may feel that they created more public exposure than was necessary; that’s your right to think those kinds of things. But the fact that they did it differently from the way you might have done it doesn’t make them wrong and doesn’t mean they’re playing games.

I want to ask you about another matter. Yesterday, I raised with the Minister of Labour (Mr. MacBeth) the matter of a study of some sort that was being conducted into a coolant used by General Steel Wares in Fergus or thereabouts.

Mrs. Campbell: What do you mean Fergus or thereabouts? It is either Fergus or it isn’t Fergus.

Mr. Deans: Oh, well I think that might be considered irrelevant at this point. It’s the General Steel Wares plant. I’m not sure if it’s right in Fergus or in the neighborhood of Fergus. Okay? You have to be very careful around here!

What I am interested in is this: There was a study conducted by Dr. Tidey, as I recall, in the spring of the year into a coolant which was used by General Steel Wares and to which certain workers in the plant attributed the deaths of four people.

In a press statement made during the last two or three days, Dr. Tidey indicated that there had been a second study conducted. Let me read it. It is a news story.

It says that Dr. Tidey, director of the occupational health branch of the Ministry of Labour, said “the new report included data on inhalation and tests on animals,” and there was some indecision as to whether or not this report should be made public. I asked the Minister of Labour yesterday in the House, and I asked the Minister of Labour in the committee, and the claim now is that the study which Dr. Tidey indicated had been conducted was not into the original coolant but was rather into the coolant that’s currently being used.

What I want from you is this: First of all, I would like to know whether, in fact, it was done by Minister of Health officials. Secondly, I would like to see both of the studies, not just the conclusions from the studies. I would like to know what kind of study was conducted into the properties of the coolant and the way in which the coolant acted on the human body under different situations. I would like to know whether it was studied, for example, in vapour form, and whether it was studied with regard to the effect that it might have on the nervous system and on the lungs and heart if it were to be taken, either inhaled or in whatever other way, over a long period of time.

There is no doubt that many of the people who worked in the plant believe that the original coolant contributed to the deaths of the four workers, and there is no doubt that some of the properties as listed in the original report indicated that it’s quite possible that, if taken in sufficient quantity, it could have an effect on either the nervous system or on the heart.

I would like, if the minister could, if he would make available to the House the methodology used by his ministry in conducting the original study. I would like to know whether or not there was, in fact, a second study conducted into the coolant that was used at the time of the deaths, and I would like to know whether or not there was a study conducted into the coolant that is currently being used; in order that we can try to analyse what the differences are between What’s currently being done and what was being done, and the effect of what was being used on the people who worked in the plant.

Hon. Mr. Miller: I have the second report to which you are referring here. In fact, I had talked to the Minister of Labour today and told him this was quite available to you to have and look at, and it is available to you. You can have a copy of it instantly if you wish to have it. As far as I know, the first report is also fully available.

Mr. Deans: I have the first report.

Hon. Mr. Miller: We are saying, in the first case -- was it four deaths?

Mr. Deans: Four deaths.

Hon. Mr. Miller: An analysis of those deaths showed them to be not related types of death -- is that correct? -- and they weren’t related to the chemicals used, and yet I think the company, or at least one of the companies -- there were two involved; Westinghouse was one and General Steel Wares was another that I recall, back in May or June, whenever we were talking about this -- has voluntarily changed coolants --

Mr. Deans: Yes, I agree.

Hon. Mr. Miller: -- even before the results were in. The second coolant is one that is widely used in industry. It says here:

All over the world, there have been no cases of occupational illnesses attributed to this material. A TLV (threshold limit and value) of five mgm per cubic metre has been set to reduce complaints [rather than based on a health hazard, simply for nuisance value].

They have set a tolerable level, a threshold level for nuisance, rather than for health. It goes on:

There were no additives in the oil found in the factory and there was nothing added by the manufacturer himself and, in the opinion of the staff, under normal working conditions there should be no health hazards in the use of this crude.

As I say, there are a couple more pages of material here showing individual machines, the levels of the coolant in the air around them and so on. You are quite welcome to it and I invite any questions you may have, if you are not satisfied as a result of the answer.

Mr. Deans: I assume I am right, but that is on the existing code, the one that is used now. Okay. Are you able also to provide me with what I would choose to call the methodology -- I don’t know what the actual term might be -- on the first tests that were conducted on the coolant that was suspected to have contributed somewhat to the demise of four of the people who worked in the plant.

The reason I am asking, is I read the first report. I got it here in May or June, as I recall. I got a medical opinion on the properties that were set out and I was told that two of the properties in themselves were hazardous, though in the quantity used were likely not to be hazardous. The question I have for you is that what might not be hazardous under normal conditions could have an adverse affect on someone who had an already weakened condition. There is more at stake than just sort of deciding whether or not that coolant can or can’t be used.

I am really quite concerned about the families of these people. If there is even the remotest possibility that that was a contributing factor to their death, then those families are entitled to compensation. In addition to that, there are many other people who have worked in the workplace who might also be entitled to compensation as a result of that. I can remember asking the original questions about the coolant, and then within maybe six or seven days the report came back that the coolant was fine. I just don’t know what kind of study was conducted into the use of that coolant to determine in that short a period of time exactly what effect its prolonged use would have.

The minister worked in the paint industry, as I recall. In the paint industry you work in fumes, and if you work in fumes, the fumes sort of surround you -- envelop you is the word -- and you spend a lot of time in them. If someone were to test the paint, just simply test it, they may find that its properties in themselves really were quite harmless, but if one worked in that atmosphere over a long period of time, the properties could have an adverse affect on an individual.

I am curious to know whether there was an adequate study conducted; whether that study took into account the period of time the workers were exposed to it; the pressure under which they were working; and their own general health conditions at the time. It may be that that was a contributing factor, too, and might have changed the effect of the actual coolant itself on the bodies of those people.

Hon. Mr. Miller: Mr. Chairman, I have to say I am never satisfied that we have enough data to be totally sure about these problems. I know Dr. Tidey has been virtually driven to distraction in the last year with the shortage of staff and a large number of problems.

I have learned you don’t suddenly create people competent to deal with these kinds of problems. You can’t even recruit them, if I understand the problems accurately. We have been doing our best to recruit the people to help us.

Certainly in this case it wasn’t only our own testing procedures that were used to satisfy the first report. We drew as well on information on that coolant and its use in other places to provide a fairly good appraisal of the cause of deaths of the people who were involved.

As you know, when there is an occupational hazard that exists, the causes of death are similar and they are usually in the same organ or of a similar type.

So that I think that the statements were made in good faith, based on the evidence we had.

Mr. Deans: I am not questioning that.

Hon. Mr. Miller: No, I know that -- and they probably were accurate within our competence to deal with it. If we could always be sure that a clean bill of health was possible, I think we would be very much happier in our posts than we are.

I’m sure these people have to continue to be suspicious, as we are, of any possible hazard. In this case, they were as satisfied as they could be, based on their studies. I think I would rather set up an interview for you with these gentlemen to discuss it than just let you become aware of it.

Mr. Deans: That would be best.

Mr. Chairman: The hon. member for Thunder Bay.

Mr. Stokes: All right. Before we pass this vote, Mr. Chairman, I want to find out something from the minister. You are setting up these health councils and you have undertaken to do that in the district of Thunder Bay, where appointees of this ministry are going to act in an advisory capacity to your ministry to try to determine what the health requirements are for people living within the Thunder Bay district over a period of time.

You have an area co-ordinator of health services in the person of Dr. Baldwin, who knows a lot of the problems in the north. He has had an ongoing dialogue for the last two years, to my knowledge, of medical people and those who are responsible for the delivery of those systems.

I am wondering what kind of terms of reference -- now I’ve seen them in very vague and broad terms -- what kind of terms of reference are you going to give to the people on those district health units? I won’t say they will have complete autonomy, but surely they must have a job description or terms of reference that will enable them to make representations on our behalf to your ministry with a little bit more clout than that of an advisory committee.

The reason for my saying that is this: ever since I have been down here in this Legislature I have talked to a series of ministers of health, bringing to their attention the acute needs of providing adequate dental and medical facilities, paramedical facilities to many areas, which for a number of reasons can’t afford or can’t attract the kind of services that you people down here take for granted

I want to know what your ministry is going to do by way of commitment to provide the services so badly needed in those areas.

Mr. Chairman: May I remind the member you are really back on vote 2801?

Mr. Stokes: I am talking about health protection under item 1 of 2802.

Mr. Chairman: Okay, health protection, you are right on it. Health services was in the last vote.

Mr. Stokes: I am talking about official local health agencies and grants under the authority of the Public Health Act totalling $26 million. What are you going to do by way of meeting those needs, whether it be a permanent facility or some other? Let me give you an example.

My own municipality of Schreiber was told its ability to attract a doctor would be much enhanced if it would undertake to build some kind of clinic which could draw people together and provide a base of operation for a doctor. We are told by our consultants, and people much more knowledgeable than either you or I in that field, that’s the necessary first step. We are talking about an outlay in excess of $100,000 for a small community with a very narrow tax base. But it was absolutely critical to the whole situation that it come up with those kinds of funds just to attract a doctor.

When we ask for funds from your ministry or some other agency of this government, they are just not available. If we hadn’t been able to take advantage of the federal winter capital fund, that project wouldn’t have gone forward. We were very fortunate that there happened to be a scheme that assisted at least with the cost of labour.

But what about many other communities in the north that didn’t have that particular source of capital to rely on? I am not trying to create the impression that you have done nothing, because there are two such facilities -- one in Nakina, a small place along the north line of the CNR where, with some capital funds from your ministry, plus very good co-operation from the MOH and the district health unit, they have got what they think is all they can afford. They don’t have a permanent doctor but they have a doctor who comes in once a week from Geraldton and it’s working relatively well.

We have another one where we got $10,000 through the experiment at McMaster University for the small town of Savant Lake. We are in the process of trying to get water in this small clinical facility. Hopefully, we will be able to attract a doctor from Ignace, 80 miles away, to serve that on a weekly or twice-monthly basis. That’s fine as far as it goes. But what about the other areas where there is no service at all? I am thinking of a place like Armstrong, where you have promised that you have names of 46 doctors willing to go in there to see that they are given service.

Hon. Mr. Miller: Now 70.

Mr. Stokes: Now 70, but you still haven’t got a facility. There is a small trailer there. I don’t know how adequate it is. I haven’t been in there for several months and I don’t know whether they have got the windows all punched out of it or not; that sometimes happens in some of these remote communities. But what about a place like Upsala, 90 miles from Thunder Bay? What about small communities like Jellico; Pickle Lake and Central Patricia, that I drew to your attention last night? The native people living on the Osnaburgh Reserve have a much better facility. The people in Central Patricia and Pickle Lake could cry discrimination in reverse. There is an excellent facility on the Indian reserve at Osnaburgh that isn’t readily available to the people who are paying OHIP premiums 20 miles away. They must travel 347 miles in order to avail themselves of an existing service.

What kind of direction is the minister going to give to the district health unit to see that these needs are met? I don’t like to keep harping on this year after year and in every vote that I can relate it to. I want to get some kind of a commitment from the minister if I can, to see what kind of direction he is going to give to these health units and say: “I want you to come up with answers to these kinds of problems”. If the minister can give me that land of commitment I won’t say any more.

Hon. Mr. Miller: I think if I read the question, it fell into two parts. What were the terms of reference of a district health planning council, and what help will be given to small communities for a capital plant? Is that it?

Mr. Stokes: It’s a good start.

Hon. Mr. Miller: The district health planning council is a new idea in the sense that we have composed it. You are number two to be formed in Ontario. Number one was Ottawa-Carleton. Dr. Mustard has sketched out in general terms what we think the functions of the district health planning council are, but these, of course, require some degree of definition through actual operation.

The Ottawa-Carleton Health Planning Council, in fact, has embarked upon a study of just that. They’re getting the detail worked out at this point in time using a consultant to help them. We are encouraging that because we realize that there will be some cutting and trying as these start to function. You don’t start something that hasn’t existed without doing that.

I’ll be honest and say we may be wrong. Maybe they won’t work but the total weight of opinion -- of people and studies, it’s one of those things which has been studied to death -- always said it will work.

Therefore, rather than talking about it, we are creating them in the full knowledge that (a) we may have to change the models as experience dictates and, (b) the models may riot work. I don’t know of any other way to find out, though, except to try. So we’re dealing with areas such as yours which is showing the willingness to try, rather than with areas that may be reluctant to try at this point in time.

What are the basic duties? To take an inventory of the health care facilities in the area served.

Mr. Stokes: I can give the minister that right now.

Hon. Mr. Miller: All right. It’s not that easy.

Mr. Stokes: I can count the number of dentists on the fingers of one hand, the number of doctors on less than two of them.

Hon. Mr. Miller: I am talking about the health planning council area which includes the city of Thunder Bay.

Mr. Stokes: Yes.

Hon. Mr. Miller: Okay. As to inventory, not only the people, the manpower, the facilities, but to start looking for the deficiencies in the system, the needs of the area, the priorities of the area, the duplications in the area. Then, from that, we start forming a plan based on their estimate of local needs right down to, and possibly including -- if you follow Dr. Mustard’s suggestion -- the allocation of manpower into given parts of the area. That’s his recommendation right now. It’s one of those controversial ones. We, as yet, haven’t said that is one of the roles of the district health planning council. It may well become one, if the bulk of opinion says it should.

So those are basically the functions of that council. We’ve had some experience in other areas such as Hamilton. I referred to that last night in talking about where a health planning council has existed -- not the model necessarily which we talked about, but there was no model to go by. It has been very effective in preventing some of the things that the member for High Park (Mr. Shulman) referred to last night in Toronto when he said: “How many cardiovascular surgery units do you need in a city? How many of this do you need? How many of that do you need?”

We have found that where people in a given area sat down to determine these problems, even on a voluntary unstructured basis as they started out in Hamilton -- it become structured as time went on -- they’ve really solved many problems for us. Therefore, we’re convinced that we’re working in the right direction.

The second thing, the capital plan. One of the costs built into the OHIP fee schedule is the cost of real estate. I think you would agree that we have allowed -- I think the doctors tell me that 40 per cent of the fee schedule covers their overhead.

Mr. Roy: It depends where the doctor is.

Hon. Mr. Miller: Well, I am just suggesting this is a figure. I don’t know how accurate it is but it seems to be a figure --

Mr. Roy: I will bet you on an average it isn’t 40 per cent.

Hon. Mr. Miller: I don’t know whether it is or isn’t. I am only saying that built into the fee schedule is a component for all those things that make up for the operating costs of running --

Mr. Stokes: You have a fee schedule and yet you have specialists on your team saying it is absolutely essential that municipalities provide a facility for a doctor to practise.

Hon. Mr. Miller: Okay. I realize that. That doesn’t mean that the person using that facility isn’t paying the cost of that facility. I think you will find many communities that provide these community health centres for doctors who are in residence in that community.

Mr. Stokes: Operating costs but certainly net capital.

Hon. Mr. Miller: They have to pay a rent for that facility to that organization. The amount of rent they pay is related to a number of things: How badly did the group that sponsored that clinic as a community service want to recover its money? In other words, how badly did they need a doctor? Things of this nature. But to date the way we pay the doctor allowed for the cost of paying for a fair share of that facility.

In other communities -- was it Nakina you said? -- you know that a doctor can’t come in and be justified in that community. Then we have an entirely different responsibility and that’s why you have got money from us under what we call the demonstration project system. So we are trying to be flexible, but I can say safely that that kind of decision would be much easier when the health planning council was giving us advice.

We have limited funds for these things as yet, and we are not filling all the need, be we are trying to in certain areas that are desperate.

Mr. Stokes: I don’t want to belabour it but I just want to impress upon the minister that I represent the largest riding in the Province of Ontario -- 110,000 square miles. There are just in excess of 30,000 people but we have four dentists.

Mr. Roy: Tell us how many lawyers you have.

Mr. Stokes: We don’t have any lawyers, thank goodness, and we only have four dentists. You know, that is the magnitude of the problem. I realize you can’t have a doctor and a dentist in every small hamlet where people choose to live, but in the absence of that why don’t we have more arrangements like Nakina and Savant Lake? Why don’t you have paramedical teams who can go in there and sort of monitor things for health protection and disease prevention? That’s all I am asking; I don’t think it is too much.

Hon. Mr. Miller: I don’t either and I may say that is our objective, too.

Mr. Chairman: The hon. member for Welland South.

Mr. R. Haggerty (Welland South): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The question I want to ask the minister deals with the uranium milling in Ontario. I am sure he is well aware of the radioactivity that has been permitted to enter our watercourses, lakes and rivers in northern Ontario. What precautions are you taking that there is no serious health effect in this particular instance?

Hon. Mr. Miller: You are talking of the environmental pollution rather than -- well, again we act as advisers, as you know, to the other ministries who have the authority to do something about it. We have certain real problems in the north in same lakes, as you know, too.

Mr. Haggerty: That is what I am trying to get at, Mr. Chairman -- the problems up in that area. I would like to know just how serious it is. We can’t get the answer through the Minister of the Environment (Mr. W. Newman) because he usually says the matter comes under your department.

Hon. Mr. Miller: I was just checking with Dr. Tidey and it is his opinion, and I am sure it would be my opinion, that we are monitoring the situation and we feel there isn’t currently a health hazard problem from those sources.

Now let me point out that within the mines, which is an entirely different problem, we have had very real problems, but I understand that the latest tests show that the radon daughter problem within the mines is pretty well under control.

It being 6 o’clock, p.m., the House took recess.