Hansard Transcript 1974-Dec-02 | Legislative Assembly of Ontario

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I wonder if the minister can tell us what decisions have been made as far as personnel on the authority are concerned? A good deal was said when the authority was first announced, that John Robarts was going to be the moving spirit. You’ve used Leslie Frost for many years to justify a delay in action. Now that the authority is before us, by means of Bill 155, we’d like to know what individuals are going to be concerned in this matter.

Hon. L. Bernier (Minister of Natural Resources): Mr. Chairman, the only person we’ve selected to date is Prof. Vidar Nordin, who is the dean of the faculty of forestry at the University of Toronto. He will be the chairman. The size of the authority itself could be anywhere from five to 12 members. We’re sifting through the long list that we have before us now --

Mr. T. P. Reid (Rainy River): Have you got that many Tories?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: -- trying to get a broad cross-section of people with a background in timbering and logging and who have a fair regard for the recreational aspects of Algonquin Park and the other areas. We’re coming together with a package of very responsible people and that will be announced very shortly.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Have you got some formula for the distribution of the appointments? For example, are you going to have three people who are knowledgeable in the lumbering industry and three people who are from the park area or from the surrounding districts? Have you got a formula or are you just going to go through a list and see who you can catch?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: I think we want to take in a broad range. It’s very difficult, say if we have a seven-man board, to cover every facet; this is one of the reasons we’ve set up the parks council.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Does the ministry have some formula for the distribution of appointments? I want to know if there are any Liberals.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Well, that might well be. I am sure there are some good Liberals around who would like to participate in a very worthy exercise.

The parks council has about 20 members on it, and they will, of course, be the public monitoring mechanism to monitor the implementation of the master plan. They come from a long list of people right across the province, but the Algonquin Forestry Authority will be people mainly in the Algonquin forestry region and those people with some background in forestry.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Is the minister going to appoint any members of the Legislature?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: No, it is not our intention to have any members of the Legislature on this authority.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Not even Paul?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: No.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Not even Paul’s campaign manager?

Mr. Chairman: The member for Rainy River.

Mr. Reid: Mr. Chairman, I wonder if I could just follow along on that. Having reread the bill over the dinner hour just to make sure my first impressions of the bill were correct, I find it difficult to understand why the minister is setting this authority up the way he is.

He says he may appoint five or 12. If one goes through the bill there are all kinds of questions that arise as to remuneration, as to details, as to who will serve what, and what powers this board will have. If we look at section 4(2) there is a question there about the remuneration, and from section 9 it appears that the Algonquin authority is going to have wider powers than just dealing with Algonquin Park. Really it seems to me the minister should be in a better position tonight to give us some hard answers as to how he is going to proceed. Why does he envision needing as many as 12 members for instance --

Mr. J. E. Stokes (Thunder Bay): Especially when he is going to set policy.

Mr. Reid: -- when he is going to set the policy and they are going to be responsible to him? Quite frankly it seems to me, having gone though the Act again, that he would be better off to have it under his ministry, because it is not going to make any difference. All he is going to do is provide 12 more jobs for 12 more Tories -- and that is about all that are left in the province, I suppose, or he would have made it 40.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: They are hard to find.

Mr. E. R. Good (Waterloo North): A year from now they will be extinct. Better put them under the Endangered Species Act.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Mr. Chairman, it is obvious that some will say that five is too small and others will say that 12 is too large; we could go on to no end to pick out members.

Mr. Reid: You really have no idea what you are doing.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: We have set it up for that range and it may well be that we won’t need that many. It is in the Act and it makes it a little more flexible.

Mr. Reid: Are you accepting recommendations?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Certainly. If you give us somebody who has a good background, is knowledgeable in that particular field and can contribute something to Algonquin Park --

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Is it necessary to be a paid-up member of the PC association, the way it is for QCs?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: No, I am sure it is not necessary.

Mr. Chairman: Shall section 1 carry?

Mr. Stokes: No.

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

Mr. Stokes: I want to find out what relationship and what kind of liaison there will be. You have the minister, Mr. Chairman, dictating the policy; you have the authority supposedly carrying out the policy; and then you have a council of 20-odd members supposedly representing all interests right across the province. What kind of liaison is there going to be if the authority is going to work on the direction of the minister? What kind of input is the 20-man or 20-person council going to have in the overall priorities that will be established for the park, in reality determining the kind of park we are going to have? Other sections of the Act which we will get to a little later on set out in broad terms what the responsibilities of the authority will he, but certainly it will have to be in keeping with the direction and the overall policy laid down by the minister himself.

So you are going to have the minister dictating the policy, the authority presumably carrying it out, a 20-member council acting as a watchdog; and then in addition to that you are going to have an interministerial committee, which again is going to have some kind of input. Surely the minister should be able to tell us what kind of liaison there is going to be among those four separate bodies. How is he going to co-ordinate this?

Mr. Reid: Are they all necessary?

Mr. Stokes: If he gets a letter from somebody saying he doesn’t like the way they harvested timber in a particular area of park, is the minister going to say: “You’ll have to refer that inquiry to the authority”? And the authority will say: “We did that because the council recommended it.”

Or is he going to say: “That was a judgment call by my ministerial committee”; or somebody within the ministry who is going to have some kind of input?

What was the minister’s thinking when he brought in this bill? What discretionary powers are going to be left to the forestry authority as opposed to authority vested in the three other bodies I mentioned?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Mr. Chairman, I think the member has really missed the point. We filed the Algonquin Park master plan; it’s in there. All the details are in there; the reserves, the reservation, the amount of timber they can cut. It’s completely spelled out in the master plan. That master plan is up for review every five years.

The parks council will look over the whole operation. After they have public meetings, across the province as they deal with Quetico Park, Rondeau Park, Killarney, Polar Bear, it may well be they will receive some input about Algonquin Park in the master plan and say: “Maybe we should have a look at that and see what the Algonquin Forestry Authority is doing, or should be doing and is not doing.” It will be this type of thing. There will be public monitoring to make sure they comply with what we have accepted on behalf of the people of the province that they do.

The authority will be established. It will have a chairman and a vice-chairman and will appoint a general manager. There will be in that region a district manager from the Ministry of Natural Resources and they will be working very closely together. You will have the three. The Algonquin Forestry Authority will be dealing as a logging company, as a Crown agency harvesting the forest product, making the roads and hauling timber out to the industries that require it outside the park. They will be doing that kind of work. Like any other company, they have to file with us a plan under which they intend to operate under the Crown Timber Act, a management plan which all major companies and licensees have to file with us as to what they’re going to do and how they’re going to do it. Here again they must comply with what is in the master plan.

Mr. Chairman: The member for Rainy River on what section?

Mr. Reid: Mr. Chairman, on section 4.

Mr. Chairman: The hon. member for Rainy River on section 4. Is there anything before section 4?

Sections 1 to 3, inclusive, agreed to.

On section 4:

Mr. Reid: Mr. Chairman, to continue with that vein of thought and to ask particularly about subsection 2 of section 4 of the bill, can the minister give us a ballpark figure on how much this is going to cost? What kind of money are we talking about for the remuneration of these five to 12 directors, the general manager and all the bureaucracy that will automatically flow from the setting up of this Act?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Mr. Chairman, Management Board, about two or three years ago, established a certain formula as to the number of meetings these agencies hold over a period of a year, and that regulates the amount of remuneration they are paid. It may vary anywhere from $85 to $125 a day. It all depends upon how often they sit. It goes on that basis, but it is set by Management Board. The remuneration is already in place.

Mr. Reid: Does the minister mean this authority is going to operate like any other manifestation of government as set down by Management Board? Suppose they can’t do the work within the guidelines set down by Management Board?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: I think they’ll be able to do it. They can sit as often as they want, really.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Even if they have nothing to do.

Mr. Reid: What if they’ve got nothing to do?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: They can sit once a month. If you run a logging operation and are taking 16 million cubic feet --

Mr. R. F. Nixon: But you are setting a policy and policing it.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Under the Crown Timber Act we set the policy for all harvesting in the Province of Ontario.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: If you are policing it, what do you need them for?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: They are set up to run the day-to-day operation.

Mr. Reid: They are going to have to meet regularly, aren’t they?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: There are 18 companies doing it now; but there is going to be one company, in effect.

Mr. Reid: All right, but that’s the point. They are going to have to be meeting on an extremely regular basis, are they not? Really, what they are doing under this Act is they are making sure they are selling the logs for you. Instead of the 18 companies, they are selling the logs.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Harvesting them too, under strict environmental controls.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Isn’t it under environmental control now?

Mr. Stokes: That’s what you’ve led us to believe.

Mr. Reid: That’s the scary thing about it. We are to assume, then, that the rest of the province is being raped by the timber operators; and I don’t buy that either. I just don’t see any need for this; and surely the minister can give us some kind of an idea as to how much this is going to cost us in the next five years, say in a year-by-year projection. Do you really have no idea what it’s going to cost the taxpayers?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Mr. Chairman, there is going to have to be some seed money to start the thing up. We have to give them some money to start with.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Oh yes, they are going to have to have an administration building on Canoe Lake first thing.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: No they won’t. There is nothing like that --

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Oh yes, and a couple of planes.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: They will operate as a company, and there will be zero funding; there will be no cost to the Province of Ontario as it gets operational.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Who is going to buy their planes?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: It’s right in here, in a section of the Act; I don’t know just what section it is --

Mr. R. F. Nixon: They are going to use them for fishing.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: -- but if there is any profit that they garnish over the years --

Mr. Reid: Do you think there will be?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: -- then that will come back to the consolidated revenue fund. But there will have to be some start-up money.

Mr. Reid: Mr. Chairman, I don’t mean to belabour this point, but it bothers me that the minister should come in with a bill as vague as this and not he able to give us some idea of how much it’s going to cost.

I can’t accept for one moment what the minister said, that in time this will be a self-sustaining operation. Most of us have been in government long enough and watched the exercises of government to know what kind of bureaucracy and red-tape machine is going to be built up for something that, particularly to my mind, is not essential to begin with; and particularly as it’s manifested in this bill. It’s the old theory about Parkinson’s Law; and I can see it operating here. I can also see all these people being flown to the park either by Lands and Forests plane or charter aircraft, or being transferred up there, getting their $85 or $125 a day; the general manager with a nice big office and two or three secretaries, and then a few filing clerks.

In the bill you are providing they may request technical advice and consultants. It has become a business in itself for friends of the government to be consultants to the government at $500 and $600 a day.

You are asking us to approve a bill without being able to give us any facts and figures as to what it’s going to cost, or even what the size of the bureaucracy in this matter is going to be. I think the minister should give a sober second thought to setting up this authority in the way he has devised it here.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Mr. Chairman, there is nothing more I can add except to repeat what I have already said. It will not he a drain on the taxpayers; it will wipe itself out; and I hope there will be a profit eventually that can come back in the consolidated revenue fund.

Mr. Reid: Why not let your ministry do it?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: We have looked at that. We want it at arm’s length; we want an authority that will operate on its own as a business. It will replace the 18 licensees who are currently there, consolidate our efforts, result in a more efficient operation --

Mr. Reid: But it’s not going to be more efficient under this set-up.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: -- and obtain multiple-use benefits from the trees that are harvested there. As I said in my statement this afternoon, we will achieve more benefits with fewer trees. It is as plain and simple as that.

Mr. Reid: You are going to replace the trees with people, that’s what you are going to do.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Well, Mr. Chairman, if the minister is so concerned about the experience that he is indicating we are going to have, that it’s going to be a self-funding authority with an advisory committee but which reports directly to him, I don’t see how he can have this at arm’s length, with an authority administering the logging possibilities associated with the park and still have all of the policy coming directly from the minister.

I may regret saying this sometime in the future, but the experience we have had in Niagara, say -- and it’s not the same circumstance, but it certainly is one where a tremendously valuable park facility has been put under government control -- and the St. Lawrence parks are the same way. Why didn’t he at least examine the alternative of a commission? A commission which would have not only the responsibility for continuing the policy of logging -- which we cannot support -- but also the general administration of the park, so that he could get out of the business of running Algonquin Park.

There is no doubt in my mind that this bill perpetuates, with several screens between the minister and the public, the fact that the minister and those people who advise him are going to establish the policy for the development of the park.

Why didn’t he opt for a commission similar to that with which we have experience in other major park developments which have removed the responsibility from the direct political control of the minister or his successors?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Mr. Chairman, I think I went into that this afternoon. We chose to go for an authority, a Crown agency, as was recommended by the advisory committee on which there were members --

Mr. R. F. Nixon: They advised it?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Yes, they did recommend that we go to either a consortium or a Crown corporation. As I said this afternoon, Algonquin Park is interrelated to the entire Algonquin region. It’s not clearly defined. The borders are not sharp, because this authority will be able to operate outside the park. There may be areas outside the park --

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Internationally.

Mr. Reid: Interprovincially.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: What are you going to do internationally?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: It may well be the forerunner of something right across this province.

Mr. Stokes: It could be the start of something big.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: That’s right. It could be the start of something big.

Mr. Reid: You are trying to scare us now.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: It certainly could; and the member for Thunder Bay and I have talked about this on a couple of occasions. But it could well be --

Mr. Reid: Who is convincing whom?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: We are really going to get a lot of experience from this authority.

Mr. W. Ferrier (Cochrane South): You may end up a “red” Tory.

Mr. Chairman: Any further comments, questions or amendments?

Section 4 agreed to.

On section 5:

Mr. Reid: Yes, Mr. Chairman, I would like to go on to section 5, if I may. I don’t wish to be repetitious, but to underline what I and my leader has just said, in section 5 the Lieutenant Governor in Council -- who in his other manifestations will appear no doubt as the Minister of Natural Resources -- will appoint the general manager of the authority. The authority that you are setting up at public expense is not even going to have the authority to hire their primary and number one employee.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: They won’t be able to fire him either.

Mr. Reid: Now that just doesn’t make sense.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Mr. Chairman, it is quite obvious that the chairman of the authority and the vice-chairman of the board of directors will select their general manager.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Why can’t they appoint him?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: And we’ll appoint him.

Mr. Reid: You don’t give them the authority.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: We will go along with their recommendations -- their very strong recommendation -- because they have to work with him and they have to set it up.

Mr. Reid: That is not what the bill says. It says the Lieutenant Governor in Council.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: You’ll be running it out of your hip pocket.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Certainly when they come to us we will then appoint him in an official way.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Mr. Chairman, the hon. member, my colleague, makes an excellent point. It is very much like the way the county school boards were established in 1968. The Minister of Education had responsibility to appoint and therefore had the power to fire, the directors of education in every county across the province. Sure there was a great show of independence on behalf of the democratically-elected boards of education in each county or district. But they didn’t have the right to hire or fire their chief executive officers.

Now how can the minister indicate under section 5 that in fact he is removing the responsibility from his own jurisdiction to an independent authority, when in fact those people cannot hire or fire their chief executive officer? That person is going to be responsible to only one other person, and that is the minister or his successors.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Mr. Chairman, the general manager is appointed, and he will be selected with the full co-operation and support of the chairman of the board and the vice-chairman and the board of directors.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: You better believe it, because they owe their job to you, too.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: And he is subject to control and direction by the board of directors. It is very clearly spelled out.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: There is no assurance at all.

Mr. Reid: It is a farce, the whole thing.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: I can give it to you now.

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

Mr. Stokes: In section 5, there is no assurance in this bill that the authority will have any say at all. Sure you are making an assertion now that you will listen to your authority in the appointment of a general manager. But there is nothing reflected in section 5 that says anything other than that the minister will be appointing the general manager, whether the authority likes it or not.

It’s an intolerable situation. If you select somebody who just doesn’t work out, what does the authority do? What control have they got? If they are going to be the ultimate authority for carrying out policy within the park and they reach an impasse or a disagreement, a major disagreement, with your hired general manager, I think they should have the right to say: “No, this fellow isn’t suitable. He isn’t assisting us in carrying out the mandate which has been handed to us. We want the right to determine who that person shall be, the kind of training he has and how he sees the carrying out of that mandate” that is spelled out in more detail in another section.

Surely the minister should give the authority the right to choose who the general manager will be and the right to dispose of his services if, for some reason or other, they think he is not acting in the best interests of the authority in carrying out the policy that has been given to them? I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask that that be given in section 5.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: I might point out, Mr. Chairman, it states very clearly that the general manager of the authority shall be subject to the control and direction of a board, and it clearly establishes that he answers to it. So he won’t be answering to the minister, he’ll be answering to the board and they will have control. After all, they will be paying his wages.

Mr. Stokes: Yes, but as long as he is your man.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: They’ve got to pay him.

Mr. Reid: That’s right.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: No, it’s there in the Act.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Like the Lieutenant Governor.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: No. I think this is the right way to go, really.

Mr. Chairman: The hon. member for Cochrane South.

Mr. Ferrier: I want to ask about this, Mr. Chairman. You say that they are going to make the recommendation to him and you are going to make the appointment. But you are also going to set his wages. The board is supposedly going to run this operation -- a big operation that is now run by 18 private companies -- but you are going to hire the general manager, and while you tell us that they are going to make the recommendations you are also going to set the salary. This sounds to me as though the criticism that’s coming from this side of the House is pretty valid; that you are interfering in a very significant way. You are calling all the shots and they are going to be told by this fellow pretty well what to do. I think that this manner of appointment leaves a lot to be desired.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: That section 5 should never carry.

Mr. Chairman: The hon. member for Rainy River.

Mr. Reid: Do you want to reply to that?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: No.

Mr. Reid: All right. Let’s go on to section 6, Mr. Chairman, and we can repeat --

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I think we had better vote against section 5.

Mr. Chairman: Shall section 5 carry?

Mr. Reid: No.

Some hon. members: No.

Mr. Chairman: All those in favour will say aye.

All those opposed will say “nay.”

In my opinion, the “ayes” have it.

Section 5 agreed to.

On section 6:

Mr. Reid: Mr. Chairman, in section 6 I could repeat my arguments --

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Reid: -- the same arguments that we’ve talked about in section 5. “The authority may, subject to the approval of the Lieutenant Governor in Council, establish job classifications, personnel qualifications, etc., etc., etc.”

Mr. R. F. Nixon: You are running the whole thing.

Mr. Reid: Again the authority is in the hands of the minister. The minister has the final say as to who is going to be hired, what rates of pay they are going to get, what their job designations are, and so on and so forth.

Mr. Stokes: What a bunch of lame ducks they are going to be.

Mr. Reid: When you strip all the verbiage away we really wind up with the minister hiding behind his 12-man body saying, “If anything is wrong in Algonquin Park it is not the ministry of natural disasters, it’s not the minister, it’s the Algonquin authority that is responsible.”

Mr. R. F. Nixon: And all the time it’s the member for Renfrew South (Mr. Yakabuski) telling the minister what to say.

Mr. Reid: “If you have any complaints go to them and argue with them. I am at arm’s length; I don’t have any control over this.” Well, I think it’s a pretty shabby, shoddy and expensive smokescreen to put before the people of the Province of Ontario, and we’ll vote against this section also.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Good: Typical Tory tripe.

Mr. Chairman: Any further comment on this section? Shall section 6 carry?

Some hon. members: No.

Mr. Chairman: All those in favour of section 6 shall say “aye.”

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Pretty weak.

Mr. Chairman: All those opposed will say “nay.” In my humble opinion, the “ayes” have it.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: That is very humble.

Hon. A. Grossman (Provincial Secretary for Resources Development): That is a good opinion.

Section 6 agreed to.

Mr. Chairman: Are there any further comments or questions or amendments to any other section?

Mr. Reid: Mr. Chairman, I am glad you asked. I want to speak on section 7.

On section 7:

Mr. Reid: I don’t believe I am wasting the time of the House, because I think it should be clearly on the record what the minister is doing. In section 7, he gives the authority -- he doesn’t give the authority, but he suggests they may have the authority -- to engage persons other than those appointed or employed pursuant to section 6 to provide professional, technical or other assistance. I meant to mention in section 6, because it talks about personnel qualifications, duties and so on, that obviously we are talking about a lot of people. I wonder if the minister in answering my criticism of section 7 can tell us how many people he envisages being hired to begin with, and under what terms he feels that other people might be asked to provide assistance when he has all the civil servants and all that expertise in his ministry to begin with.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Mr. Chairman, it is very difficult to say exactly how many. This section gives the authority to hire professional and technical people if they so desire. If they want, say, a forester or somebody who is knowledgeable in the environmental field to look after the environment or the aesthetics, then they have the authority to go that road, but we don’t know how many at this point in time.

Mr. Reid: Have you any idea how many ordinary employees other than consultants there might be?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: I envisage it as a very small number, really, because much of the work will be on a contract basis.

Mr. Reid: What is a small number?

Mr. R. F. Nixon: You should know better than that.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: They will be contracting much of the actual logging operations and the hauling operations, so I don’t envisage a great big bureaucracy being established under the Algonquin Forestry Authority.

Mr. Reid: Ten, 20, 30?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: I think by leaving the authority in the hands of the Lieutenant Governor in Council, it does give us that control that it doesn’t get out of size. I point out that the setting up of this Crown agency is very similar to the NODC -- the Lieutenant Governor in Council picks the chairman and the vice-chairman, and sets the salaries, as we did on the Niagara Parks Commission. The same principle is being applied, certainly.

Mr. Chairman: The Leader of the Opposition.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I would suggest, Mr. Chairman, that the minister is being terribly naive in this. Of course, he is going to make the appointments, not only of the authority itself and its chairman, but of the important people who have technical positions who are going to be dealing with the authority and with the park. He’s going to find requests from this authority for a new headquarters up there on Opeongo or somewhere, and he is going to find that year by year the costs are going to escalate and that the people who are buying the timber from the authority are going to object, as well they should, that a bureaucracy -- the minister says he hopes it is not going to be a big bureaucracy, so we assume that he is looking at a middle-sized bureaucracy -- is going to be established up there in the park, and it is unnecessary.

He’s got all the powers. He’s got the technical staff to undertake the supervision and the inspection of the removal of logs. We don’t approve of the removal of logs in the long term -- and we have made that point on the principle of the bill -- but he has all the powers that could be exercised through his ministry as it now is.

Yet he is establishing this authority, and those people who are accepting the appointments from the minister are going to find that their real powers are almost, if not entirely, non-existent, that they will be wielded by the minister and in his name by some third assistant deputy in the offices over there -- and magnificent offices they are -- and that those orders will be phoned up to some area up there in the park where the taxpayers will once again be called upon to build some manifestation of the bureaucracy that the minister, I know, does not approve of.

But he somehow has been caught in the meat grinder and he is going to be ground out the other end simply because this is the vehicle which he has been persuaded should be used under these circumstances. I believe it’s a serious error. It’s going to add to the bureaucracy, and my colleague from Rainy River makes the excellent point that it’s going to be costly. The minister can’t even give us an indication of what is expected by way of costs.

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

Mr. Stokes: I want to review with the minister for a moment just what he is saying when he says that the authority may engage other people in keeping with the carrying out of its mandate in the park. We have a Minister of Natural Resources. We’ve got a Deputy Minister of Natural Resources. We have three Assistant Deputy Ministers of Natural Resources -- four, I am advised.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: One for northern Ontario.

Mr. Stokes: Right. We have a chief of the timber branch of the Ministry of Natural Resources. We’ve got a head of the timber sales branch of the Ministry of Natural Resources. We have regional directors for the Ministry of Natural Resources.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: That’s quite a bureaucracy.

Mr. Stokes: We have assistant regional directors for the Ministry of Natural Resources. We have the district manager for Natural Resources.

Mr. Reid: Regional timber men, too.

Mr. Stokes: Yes, we have the regional timber men. Then you get down to the district level, and you’ve got the district manager and you’ve got the district timber supervisor.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: They’ve hoodwinked this minister. They’ve all got top jobs -- better jobs than his.

Mr. Stokes: In addition to this, we’ve now got the Algonquin Forestry Authority, made up of anywhere from five to 12 members. We’re going to have a general manager who is going to be responsible for contracting out the harvesting and the sale of timber within the park itself. You’re giving them the authority to engage other persons -- “persons other than those appointed or employed pursuant to section 6 to provide professional, technical or other assistance to or on behalf of the authority, and may prescribe the terms of engagement and provide for payment of the remuneration and expenses of such persons.”

The minister has already stated that these people themselves are not physically going to harvest the resource in Algonquin Park; this is going to be contracted out to others. I want to find out who those others are. Are these the ones who traditionally do the harvesting in the park and on the periphery of the park at the present time? I’m asking because if you’re going to engage other personnel to assist and to advise in a professional way, I think what you’re saying is that you’re going to contract the actual physical work out to those who are ultimately going to be the buyers. If that’s the case you’ve got an immediate conflict of interest right now.

Where are you going to get this other level of bureaucracy that you’re going to bring in to advise and assist your general manager and to carry out the wishes of the authority, whose mandate is there by virtue of the fact that it is controlled by the minister himself? I’ve never heard of such a monstrosity as you’re setting up.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: That’s what it is.

Mr. Stokes: A real monstrosity.

I know the way the ministry works, and I think it works reasonably well the way it is. But When you’re getting this second and third and fourth level between the ministry and those at the district level who are responsible for carrying out harvesting and setting up management plans, who’s going to evolve the management plan? Is it going to be Prof. Nordin over at the U of T faculty of forestry? Is it going to be your general manager? Is it going to be these other persons who may be engaged at the discretion of the minister?

Boy oh boy, what a real bureaucracy you’re setting up. Surely you must have sat down before you brought in this bill and said, “Let’s have a schematic drawing and see how this thing will work,” before you threw together all of these sections of an Act and said it w going to work.

I’m convinced from reading this bill that it isn’t going to work. I don’t know how it could possibly work with all the interrelationships and all of the policy edicts coming down from the ministry. Who’s going to carry them out? I haven’t got a clue, and I’m sure if the minister has he’d better explain the mechanism and how this policy is going to be implemented.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Mr. Chairman, some of the members just don’t want to accept how it’s going to work. They just keep saying it’s not going to work and I tell you it’s going to work.

Mr. Stokes: Tell us how.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: I’ve told you three or four times now.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: The logs are going to come out of the park. You’re going to pay all these people top salaries.

Mr. Reid: We’ll quote you.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Okay, you can do that. And make sure it’s in Hansard good and clear.

Mr. Reid: What is your definition of a large bureaucracy?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: I have no idea. When you operate on just cutting 150,000 cunits of wood a year, I don’t envisage that as a large operation, really, when you look at the overall province and the amount that the paper companies take out.

Mr. Reid: What is your definition of a large operation?

Mr. R. F. Nixon: We will see; we will see what the costs are.

Mr. Stokes: That is what I suggested. You have people sitting under the gallery who are competent to do it.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: This is a very special situation.

Mr. Stokes: Then you are saying they are not competent?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: When we want the aesthetics and the recreational potential of the park treasured and husbanded and guaranteed for future generations, then this is the group that will do it; the authority will have that power under the master plan.

It will be all there for the local people, to whom you refer. There are some present operators now who are contracting. I envision them as entering into an agreement with the forestry authority. We are not going to move in and bring in a bunch of wood cutters and haulers from northern Ontario to work in Algonquin Park. People are there already; we want to preserve those 2,100 jobs. That was the whole idea; to bring them together under one authority and keep those jobs going. So those local people will still be involved.

There won’t be a conflict of interest because that will be removed completely. All the mill will be doing is processing the timber that is brought to it. The people who are actually involved in cutting, in hauling and making roads are there now; they are in place. So they will be contracted by the authority.

Mr. Stokes: Let me ask the minister one question. First, though, I don’t know who these people are that you are going to contract to do the harvesting at the discretion of the authority. There are 18 present licence holders in the park. Let’s assume that your general manager says, “We think that one of the prime licence holders in the park is ideally suited, equipped and capable of managing in the park and doing the harvesting.” Would you consider that a conflict of interest? You hire them to come in and do the harvesting, and then you haul it out of the park and sell it back to them.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Mr. Chairman, we don’t envision the authority involving a major processor in the operation. Now, there are several industries; they will be operating their mills, period. They won’t be involved in the harvesting. We won’t engage them. They may sell off their equipment; but a lot of them don’t have any equipment now. It is on a contract basis now with the smaller jobber operations that are operating around there. They are doing the work now. Those are the ones that we envision taking over and working closely with them; not a few big ones who may want to come in and dominate it. Not at all.

Mr. Stokes: All right, in the event that happens, how are you going to let out the contracts? Are these small contractors and jobbers going to be friends of yours or friends of the member for Renfrew South? What are you going to do? Are you going to set up a management plan and say, “We envisage that we will be harvesting so many thousand cunits of whatever species” -- whether it be conifer -- and will you say, “Okay, we will accept bids, and the lowest bidder will get it,” or, “We need so many thousand cunits of hard maple or yellow birch”? Is this the way you are going to do it -- on a tender basis -- or are you just going to pass it to your friends?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: No, it will be on a very closely-watched tender basis. I am sure the authority will run an efficient operation. Certainly, they will invite tenders and bids from a number of different operators in the area in order to get the best.

Mr. Stokes: Will you give us the assurance that it will be on tender?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Yes, I can give you that assurance. No problem at all.

Section 7 agreed to.

On section 8:

Mr. Reid: Mr. Chairman, not being a lawyer. I wonder if I could ask the minister to explain section 8 to me, and particularly the last line which says, “or for any default or neglect in good faith in the exercise of any of his duties or powers.”

Do I interpret that section to mean that if somebody hired by the Lieutenant Governor in Council, or by the authority, makes some kind of mistake that would ordinarily, perhaps, find that particular person being sued or in court, the general public or private Citizen cannot, in fact, sue that employee or person on the authority?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Yes, Mr. Chairman, this is a customary section in all these types of bills. It provides a certain amount of protection for those personnel who may be liable for acts or omissions in good faith in the exercise of any of their duties or powers as related to their work with the authority.

Mr. Reid: That part is all right.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: But this allows us to get good, qualified people who will act; who will not be subjected to any actions on their part.

Mr. Reid: All right. I agree with that. I’ve seen it before and I’ve asked the legal minds in this party who are usually very good on those kinds of matters, but it’s the last line which seems to indicate that in the event of had faith or purposeful neglect, you still can’t sue. Usually these clauses provide that if, in the ordinary course of a person’s duty something goes wrong, he can’t be held responsible. But in this section, in the last line, it seems to indicate that in the event of bad faith, or purposeful neglect, you still can’t sue -- even if it’s done on purpose.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: In any of his duties it applies.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Mr. Chairman, if you look at the section it says: “ ... for any default and neglect in good faith in the exercise of any of his duties....” Nobody would purposefully be neglectful, as the member pointed out; if he is acting in good faith then this protection must be provided.

Section 8 agreed to.

On section 9:

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I want to say something about section 9. Since this is the section of the Act that gives the authority the power to harvest Crown timber, this is the area where, surely, the government is prepared to accept the goal of phasing out this type of exploitation in these specific Crown lands -- Crown lands set aside for specific and very important park purposes -- a goal that was accepted by our predecessors in this chamber back in, what -- 1893? I was quite interested, certainly in reading and listening to the remarks made by some of the members from the area. I thought they were particularly vituperative and, in my view, they have dictated government policy on a very crass, narrow-minded, political basis for not accepting that as a goal.

The minister must surely realize that the objections that have been raised by myself and my colleagues and by the NDP have clearly established that we would phase out logging only on the condition that government policy provides an alternative for the 3,100 jobs that have been referred to. The minister has repeatedly failed to give us the statistics associated with those jobs -- how many are filled by those who come from other jurisdictions, particularly the Province of Quebec, and what the distribution is. It is no one’s intention to put those people out of work, nor to deny the right to the industries concerned to make a profit by their industrial initiative, but it is a goal that should be accepted on behalf of the people of the Province of Ontario.

I’m glad to see the member for Victoria-Haliburton (Mr. R. G. Hodgson) take his place because the debate has now gone on for 50 minutes in this regard without him being here. The member for Renfrew South isn’t here and he was quite prepared to be personally critical of anybody who thought differently than he did on the --

Mr. E. M. Havrot (Timiskaming): Where were you last week?

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: -- crassest, narrowest, political basis. The member for Renfrew South has never got over his defeat and his beating by the Hepburn Liberals. He’s never progressed beyond that. I think it’s a shame that his particular attitude in this Legislature is even permitted.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Chairman: Order, order.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I want to draw to your attention that the member for Renfrew South isn’t here.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. L. Maeck (Parry Sound): What has that to do with the bill?

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I think it’s an important matter that the attitude in opposition to the establishment of this authority has been so grossly misrepresented for the crassest political purposes by narrow-minded representatives from that area -- representatives who will never be elected again.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I want to say to you, Mr. Chairman, that the minister has accepted bad advice in this bill. It is a monstrosity -- the word used by the members for Thunder Bay and Rainy River. That’s exactly what it is. It’s an expensive monstrosity that is unnecessary. The government should have accepted the goal that has been put to it by reasonable observers from the community and by representatives of the opposition parties. Of course you’re not prepared to accept our recommendations, but I suggest to you, Mr. Chairman, that it is a serious error that section 9 be allowed to form a part of the bill and we intend to vote against it.

An hon. member: Good!

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Mr. Chairman, I just want to reply very briefly. We went all through this this afternoon, but I want to point out, with all due respect to the Leader of the Opposition, really --

Mr. Havrot: Where were you last week when he was here?

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Where is your loudmouthed member for Renfrew South?

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Maeck: He’s not as loud as you.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: -- the advisory committee established under the late Leslie Frost -- and you had a member on that committee -- strongly recommended that logging continue in Algonquin Park, that a consortium or a Crown corporation be established. We’ve accepted that recommendation, but now you want to change horses in midstream.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: That’s right. I think it is a mistake.

Mr. I. Deans (Wentworth): It was a mistake.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: You want to go in the opposite direction because it may be politically advantageous for you. Here in Toronto --

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Far from it. You know that.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Listen to the members up in Renfrew North (Mr. Hamilton) and Renfrew South --

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Yes, a hardware dealer from Barry’s Bay.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: They have got the feeling for the people up there. They know the situation.

Mr. Ferrier: You don’t want to try to find any alternative.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: They live with the situation. It’s their heart.

Mr. Stokes: Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman: Is the Leader of the Opposition finished? The hon. member for Thunder Bay.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I may have a little more coming on later.

Mr. Maeck: You haven’t got much to say anyway.

Mr. Stokes: Section 9 gives them their reason for being. It says, “The objects of the authority are subject to the Crown Timber Act, to harvest Crown timber and produce logs therefrom and to sort, sell, supply and deliver the logs.” Does this mean that the authority will be charged the regular dues that accrue to the province as a result of the exploitation of our timber resources anyplace else in the province? Are you going to go in and send scalers and say that a thousand board feet of a certain species is worth so much in stumpage dues, a thousand board feet of something else is worth something else?

Are you going to charge them that or are you going to let the authority off scot-free, so that if it is a very marginal operation it could be that the people in the Province of Ontario generally could get nothing out of it? I am wondering, when you say “subject to the Crown Timber Act,” do all of the provisions of the Crown Timber Act apply to the Algonquin Forestry Authority?

Hon. Mr. Bender: Yes, Mr. Chairman, I want to say I am surprised that the member for Thunder Bay would refer to the “exploitation” of our timber resources.

Mr. Deans: Exploitation is not a nasty word.

Mr. Stokes: I used to think that that was a nasty word too. Go and read it. Look in the dictionary.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: His emphasis is on that word.

Mr. Deans: Exploitation has a very simple meaning.

Mr. Chairman: Order.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: A member who has so much forest activity in his riding should refer to that as the harvesting of our forest sources because of the amount of jobs that our forest resources provide.

Mr. Stokes: You don’t know the meaning of the word.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: To refer to it as a raping or a devastation or an exploitation, to me is just not palatable with the operation of that member’s riding. I am sure his people back home wouldn’t like him to say that.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: No one used the word rape.

Mr. Ferrier: Your sermonizing is right off.

Mr. Stokes: If I thought it was rape, I would say rape.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: It’s amazing that you would refer to that.

Mr. Reid: He does know the difference.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Can we keep this clean, please, Mr. Chairman?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Mr. Chairman, all the aspects of the Crown Timber Act will apply. They will pay Crown stumpage dues and they will pay forest protection costs. They will be subject to any ordinary costs that apply to any company or any other licensee.

Mr. Stokes: When you say sell, obviously the authority is going to have to determine the price at which it sells the various species, having regard for the cost of getting it out. Because of the physical characteristics in Algonquin Park, some of the harvesting, if you find that more to your liking, is going to be more expensive than others, because of terrain and because of road access and things of that nature. Is all of this going to be done on a self-sustaining basis, so that we don’t go in and take over the responsibility for harvesting, sorting and selling from the 18 licence holders, but we say, “We will do it in the way that we think is in the best interests of the people of the Province of Ontario and you will pay cost, plus a fair return for the operation to make the entire operation self-liquidating”?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Yes, Mr. Chairman, that is exactly the way we are going. They have to operate on that basis. They will operate like a company. They are not there to make money; they are not there to exploit the industry.

Mr. Stokes: They are not there to make money?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: No, they are not.

Mr. Reid: They are not there to make money, but they are going to operate there.

Mr. Stokes: Tell me any other company in the province that isn’t there to make money.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: They are not. The goal is not a profit-making organization. It may well be that they will have a profit. If they do, there is a section of this bill where that profit can be turned back.

Mr. Reid: It mentions it right in the bill.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Why not make a profit?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: We don’t want to put those industries out of the economic market by pricing the product out of line. They have to operate as efficiently and as effectively as possible to make the deal easier or make it possible for those present industries operating in that area now to compete on the overall market. It may well be that on some days they will make a profit, because if they go with the market they could make money, but it’s not the ultimate goal. They will be paying their Crown dues, their forest protection charges and everything like that, which will accrue to the province.

Mr. Chairman: The member for Rainy River.

Mr. Reid: Mr. Chairman, section 9, subsection (4) --

Mr. Chairman: Are all subsections prior to subsection (4) carried?

Mr. Stokes: I was going to speak on subsection (2).

Mr. Chairman: Okay, subsection (2).

Mr. Stokes: Subsection (2) says, “The authority shall carry out its objects in Algonquin Provincial Park and in respect of Crown timber on such lands adjacent thereto as may be designated by the Lieutenant Governor in Council.” I want to know, if it’s possible, to what you are referring when you say other lands adjacent to the park. Are you talking about within the 50-mile periphery or those just immediately adjacent?

If that’s what it means, I would welcome it. I hope that the terms of reference laid down by the ministry for the authority are not only the harvesting or the exploitation of timber values but the silviculture that I spoke of this afternoon, so that you are not just going to mine the resource in the park, but you are going to see that it renews itself and, to use your own words, “you get a better park out of it.”

I suggest you should be doing this and it should be quite clear in the mandate given to the authority that they have the responsibility of managing the land -- not only the harvesting, selling and sorting of the resource, but managing -- so that ultimately you can phase out your operation in the park if you manage these lands that are referred to in subsection (2) of section 9, as “on such lands adjacent thereto.” If that is the kind of thing you are going to do, I welcome it.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: I refer the member to clauses (a) and (b) of section 9 (1) which clearly spell out the objects of the authority “to perform, undertake and carry out such forestry, land management and other programmes and projects as the ministry may authorize; and to advise the minister on forestry and land management programmes.” I think that is the point you were trying to make.

Mr. Stokes: Yes, but it doesn’t spell it out.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Well, it’s there.

Mr. Stokes: It doesn’t say anything about silviculture, reforestation, thinning or anything of that nature. We’ve got that land management in northwestern Ontario, but it has no meaning insofar as silvicultural practices go.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: I thought there was a section here that made reference to that, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Reid: Have you read the bill?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Oh yes: I’ve got it.

Mr. Reid: Do you know what it meant?

Mr. Stokes: I see no reference to proper forest management in this bill at all. I see land management; I see nothing about silviculture.

Mr. Reid: In section 9 on the next page all they are talking about is logging.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: The minister is going to decide all those matters. It says: “The minister may determine for the authority.”

Mr. J. R. Breithaupt (Kitchener): There will be regulations.

Mr. Stokes: Surely when you are going in to harvest the values in a provincial park, you have a responsibility to indicate, if not to the opposition, to the people of the Province of Ontario that you are going to give high priority to good forest management policies which would include reforestation, silviculture, thinning, proper selection of replanting stock and all of these things. There is no mention made of it at all in here, not even in the park let alone on the adjacent lands we were talking of just a minute ago.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Those things are clearly spelled out under the Crown Timber Act. When they submit to us their management plans, then we apply the restrictions to which you refer, as we do to any company.

Mr. Stokes: Yes, but it’s entirely different. Under the Crown Timber Act your ministry has accepted the responsibility for all of these things. I want to know whether you are transferring the responsibility for proper forest management to the authority, or after they have harvested the resource is your ministry going to go in and rehabilitate those sites? That is what the Crown Timber Act says.

You are going to have your authority contract out the work for harvesting, sorting and selling. Then when they get all finished, if I can accept your statement at face value, you are going to send people in from your ministry to rehabilitate those sites.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Here comes the answer by pony express.

Mr. Reid: It says play dumb.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Don’t answer.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: It has just been pointed out to me, Mr. Chairman, that the reference to forestry in that section --

Mr. Stokes: Do you mean forestry as we know it outside the park?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: -- takes in silviculture, regeneration, pruning and thinning.

Mr. Stokes: And that’s done by your ministry, you say?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: No, it’s done by the authority. It’s spelled out right here.

Mr. Stokes: No it isn’t. It’s done by your ministry. Under the Crown Timber Act it is done by your ministry; that is what it says.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: It’s spelled out right here.

Mr. Stokes: It says, “Subject to the Crown Timber Act, to harvest,” etc.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Right. As it’s done anywhere else in the province. Anywhere else it’s done the same way; the same things will apply. There is nothing different.

Mr. Stokes: So you are going to go in and rehabilitate the sites?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: With their co-operation, yes.

Mr. Chairman: Subsection 4. The member for Rainy River.

Mr. Reid: Mr. Chairman, again we have the minister directly controlling the authority and telling them what they can and can’t do. “The authority is responsible to and subject to the direction and control of the minister and then in sections (a), (b) and (c) we lay down three specifics, putting them directly under the thumb and the control of the minister. Again we see that there really is very little or no purpose to this bill as such.

In section (b) relating to the general requirements for which the authority must answer to the minister, it says: “Social objectives aimed at maintaining or improving employment levels in the forest industry.

I suppose that’s a social objective. I would have thought a social objective also would be to maintain, as much as possible, the ecology and wilderness aspect of Algonquin Park, and it’s rather interesting that that isn’t one of the main concerns of the minister in this section. He gets to that in section 11, of course, but it’s interesting that when he specifically lays down what the authority must answer for, that particular aspect isn’t also a concern of theirs.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Again, Mr. Chairman, I must point out to the hon. member that he must realize this authority is an agency of Her Majesty, and there has to be that kind of control in the interest of the public at large. The control that will by administered by the Ministry of Natural Resources has to be there in the best interests of the park and of all the people. This authority is just operating as an authority and is an agency of Her Majesty. If you keep it in that context, then it’s obvious we have to control it.

Mr. Reid: I think the minister, with unerring accuracy, has missed the point. We don’t see any reason for the necessity of this in the first place. And from what’s in the bill and your responses, you obviously don’t have any reason for it either, other than to provide a scapegoat for those people who are going to complain about the operations in the park.

Mr. Chairman: Shall section 9 carry?

Mr. R. F. Nixon: No.

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

Mr. Stokes: Will the minister accept an addition to this section which would read, say, “in keeping with the overall objective of the province for good silvicultural and forest management practices”? Nowhere does this bill even make a vague reference to it.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Say that again.

Mr. Stokes: In keeping with good silvicultural and forest management practices.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: You’d better get a better word than “good”.

An hon. member: Acceptable.

Mr. Stokes: “Acceptable” would be all right.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: That will stand up in court.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: There’s not a lawyer in the House.

Mr. Reid: They don’t want any part of this bill.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: The legal people tell me the Crown Timber Act clearly spells out what are good silvicultural practices. If those are followed, and they will be because it’s spelled out here that they must comply with the Crown Timber Act, there is little value repeating it in this Act in that way.

Mr. Stokes: It is just that you are dealing with the values that are contained in a provincial park where everybody is pretty uptight. Well, I am not saying everybody; but there are a lot of people who feel there should be additional safeguards in the orderly exploitation of wood fibre within the confines of a park as opposed to an area that’s specifically designed for the exploitation of wood fibre as a crop.

I am sure that those who set up a provincial park didn’t envisage that as a prime source of wood fibre. But if it’s necessary to sustain industries on the periphery of the park, because those values aren’t available elsewhere, I think that at least we are entitled to have some mention made of it in this Bill 155 setting up the Algonquin Forestry Authority. We should at least give a couple of words to the overall aims and objectives of your park classification right throughout the province.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Mr. Chairman, I just see no necessity of adding something that would be repetitions or maybe --

Mr. Stokes: Repetitious? Show me where it appears.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: It’s in the Crown Timber Act.

Mr. Stokes: It is not in this Act.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: It is here. It says “subject to the Crown Timber Act.”

Mr. Stokes: This is the first time that you have ever had a piece of legislation that authorizes specifically the harvesting of timber within the confines of any provincial park. Now I am not saying it doesn’t go on in other provincial parks. It goes on in Lake Superior Park. It did, until very recently, go on in Quetico Park.

But here you are talking about the multiple-use concept, that on the advice of an advisory committee you go ahead and do a minimum of cutting in a park. This is the first piece of legislation that I have ever known where you actually call for the harvesting of timber in a provincial park.

All I am asking is that you give us these kind of safeguards so that they will treat it in a very special way; so that it’s a policy that is a departure from anything that has gone on before.

We realize that Algonquin Park is something that everybody looks to as one of the most valuable recreational assets that we have in the Province of Ontario. All I am asking the minister and his ministry is to accept it for what it really is. You have already designated it as a multi-purpose resource. All I am saying is that in the orderly exploitation of the resource, as you call it, that you build in safeguards, so that five, 10 years from now, they will say: “Well they had in mind so and so, and by gosh we had better live up to that directive.”

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Mr. Chairman, I think the member hit on a point that’s in subsection (3) of section 11. If you will read that section, I think you will see that fulfills your requirement in looking after --

Mr. Reid: Oh, it doesn’t at all.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: -- the aesthetics. There is full regard for the aesthetics, the ecology and other qualities of park environment. That’s carefully spelled out there.

Mr. Reid: Is that subsection (3) of section 11?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Yes, subsection (3) of section 11.

Mr. Stokes: There is no mention made of it. All it makes is a reference to the master plan.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: It is in the master plan.

Mr. Stokes: I know, but who is going to look at the master plan five years from now?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Well now wait a minute; now just hold on, stop right there. That master plan was a lot of work. Seven or eight years of work went into that; a lot of public involvement, many meetings, reviews. That is the bible for Algonquin Park, and let’s not forget that. Let’s not treat this lightly.

Mr. Ferrier: Until there is a change in government.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: And that will be the same thing for every provincial park.

Mr. Stokes: Well, I just hope we are not back here two or three years from now saying: “Had you put that in the legislation” --

Mr. Reid: When I am minister, I will.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Sounds like a reasonable safeguard.

Mr. Stokes: I don’t think it is too much to ask.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Are you making promises?

Mr. Chairman: Section 9 carried?

Mr. Reid: No.

Mr. Chairman: All those in favour of section 9 please say “aye.”

All opposed say “nay.”

In my opinion, the “ayes” have it.

Section 9 agreed to.

On section 10:

Mr. Chairman: Section 10; the member for Rainy River.

Mr. Reid: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I wonder if the minister, in his wild imaginings, can give us some idea of the extra-provincial powers and rights that he envisages this Algonquin authority might have? Just what are you talking about and what do you have in mind?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: What section is that?

Mr. Reid: Section 10. We’re going at them one by one. The next one will be 11.

Mr. Breithaupt: It’s the one after 9.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: “The powers of a natural person.” That really is quite an amazing feat of the Legislature. Perhaps we could do something for the policy minister in that regard.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: This is a legal term, Mr. Chairman. It provides assurance to the commercial community that it can deal with the authority without being inhibited by a swamp of legal rules related to the capacity and the power of the corporation to act. I think, as an example, the authority may have to sue in court in another province or territory to recover a debt or to enforce some obligation, and under this section they are able to do that.

Mr. Stokes: Why do the people in the authority need these powers? It says “capacity of a natural person” and powers to act outside of Ontario. If their responsibilities, as outlined by this Act, are confined specifically to Algonquin Park and certain restricted areas on the periphery of the park, why do they need these additional powers, except extra-provincial powers and rights? What’s the need for these extra rights and extra powers?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: It’s a safeguard, really, for the community.

Mr. Stokes: For what? How do you envisage they’ll ever need it?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: In case they’re involved with some jurisdiction and have to go to another court. Maybe they have to go to the Province of Quebec for something that they’ve done, something that they’ve bought or something they’ve engaged in. There could be all kinds of reasons.

Mr. Good: Read the note.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: They may have to go to Quebec and bring them back or something. It’s just a safeguard, really.

Mr. Stokes: I’m no legal beagle but I’ve never heard of that.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: No, I’m not either.

Mr. Reid: Perhaps the minister could interpret subsection (2) then? It says:

“No act of the authority and no transfer of real or personal property to or by the authority is invalid by reason of the fact that the authority was without capacity or power to do such act or make or receive such transfer.”

It seems to me that McRuer said at one point that we should frame our laws so they’re intelligible to the ordinary common layman, so that he can pick up a piece of legislation and understand what it means; Does the minister know what that means?

An hon. member: The chairman will interpret for us.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Yes. This bill makes it very clear, Mr. Chairman, to the commercial and industrial community that there are no stumbling blocks when they deal with the authority. It gives them a little more teeth. It spells out all the legal problems that may came up for the authority.

Mr. Reid: Obviously the minister is as vague about this as I am. Are you trying to tell me that what we’re doing in subsection 2 of section 10 is saying, “even if the authority didn’t have the powers when you dealt with them, they have them”? That’s the way it reads.

Mr. Good: That’s right.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: They have them now. The thing is, they’re set up as a legal entity.

Mr. Reid: But if I can read plain English it says that the authority cannot do something that’s invalid, even if they didn’t have the authority to do it.

Mr. B. Newman (Windsor-Walkerville): Sure, the last two lines, “the authority was without capacity or power to do such act.”

Mr. Reid: I’m sorry, it boggles my mind.

Mr. Maeck: That doesn’t take much.

Mr. Reid: How can somebody not have the power to do something and yet still have the power to do it? That’s what you’re saying, in effect.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Come on, Jim, explain it to him.

Mr. Stokes: I never thought I would ever see the day when I would want to have a lawyer in the House.

Mr. Ferrier: You mean you cannot come to his rescue, Allan?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: This is couched in legal language and I am assured that it is a protection for the business community; further than that, there may be some lawyers that want to comment. My hon. friend here, who is a QC, may want to comment on it.

Mr. Reid: Mr. Chairman, I don’t mean to belabour this, but it says: “No act of the authority and no transfer of real or personal property to or by the authority is invalid” -- all right -- “by reason of the fact that the authority was without capacity or power to do such act, or make or receive such transfer.” How can the authority receive property or transfer property when they didn’t have the power to transfer or to receive that property? Does it make sense?

Hon. Mr. Grossman: This bill gives them that authority.

Mr. Breithaupt: Mr. Chairman, if I could speak on this section, at least as I understand it, the reasoning, I think, for putting in this kind of a saving power for the authority is to prevent the pleading in court under any claim or action that the authority was without the power to do certain things. This bars the pleading, in other words, of any defendant, who is stopped from stating that the authority did not have the power to do something. The end result is that a case would have to be heard on its mere, and the matter of constitutionality or the lack of authority is not something which could otherwise be pleaded.

Mr. Good: But it is a bad section.

Section 10 agreed to.

On section 11:

Mr. Chairman: Is section 11 carried? Section 12?

Mr. Reid: Mr. Chairman, we haven’t done 11 yet.

Mr. Chairman: Well I said “carried”, and nobody --

Mr. Reid: That was section 10.

Mr. Chairman: Oh I said section 11 too and went on to 12; but for the sake of the member for Rainy River I will go back to 11.

Mr. Reid: I just wonder about the wording of section 11. It says the minister shall prepare a master plan, and he was waving around the bible just a few minutes ago. Are you going to revise the plan your own little self and come up with something else, or is that it?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: This is it right here, Mr. Chairman. It was tabled in the Legislature some time ago.

Mr. Reid: Yes, I realize that; but why does it say “the minister shall prepare” when you already have it in your hot little hand?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: As I pointed out to you some time ago this can be reviewed by the parks council.

Mr. Reid: That’s the one we are going to operate on?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Yes. Every five years a certain section can be changed or altered; that is the reason it is worded that way.

Mr. Reid: On subsection (2) then, we are talking about amending it again. I notice that it gives the minister authority to amend the Act but it doesn’t give the authority any authority to amend the Act; which may be a good thing, but it doesn’t even give them any power or authority to make recommendations for amendments to the minister.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: I think this is set up, Mr. Chairman, through the overall parks council. They will be doing the monitoring of the master plan and the implementation of that master plan by the ministry and by the Algonquin Forestry Authority. So I would suspect that the input to the parks council would come directly from the authority itself and funnel up that way.

Mr. Reid: So we are back to square one. This authority is only going to manage the selling and harvesting of the lots?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Yes, that is what the terms of reference are for.

Mr. Reid: That’s right, and that’s a waste of taxpayers’ money.

Mr. Chairman: Section 11 carried?

All those in favour of section 11 please say “aye.”

All those opposed say “nay”.

In my opinion the “ayes” have it.

Section 11 agreed to.

On section 12:

Mr. Reid: Mr. Chairman, we are back again to something we have already talked about, the cost. I notice we are talking about grants and loans to the authority. Are we envisaging seed money to set the authority up to begin with and then loaning them money from there on for ever and ever?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: It may well be, Mr. Chairman, that we will want the authority to do certain work beyond and above their harvesting operations, in which case we would pay them a grant; or it may well be they will be borrowing money.

This allows us to loan them money to get them operational, and this will take time to establish. I don’t see the authority going into operation tomorrow morning, it is going to be phased in over a long period of time.

Mr. Stokes: I can see loans being a very real and valid part of section 12; but if it’s going to be self-liquidating and on a self-sustaining basis, why do you give grants?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: There may be, as I said, things arise, or actions that we want the authority to take in Algonquin Park that we can’t work any other way. The best we could do would be to pay them a grant and ask them to do that particular job.

Mr. Stokes: It is not within their terms of reference.

Mr. Chairman: Does section 12 carry?

Section 12 agreed to.

On section 13:

Mr. Breithaupt: Just one point on section 13, Mr. Chairman, and that is on subsection (3). I think it might be worthwhile for the minister to have the word “chartered” put in front of the word “bank” in the second line.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Yes, I accept that. Would you add that, Mr. Chairman?

Mr. Chairman: Yes: “The authority may, with the approval of the minister, maintain in its name one or more accounts in any chartered bank or trust company.”

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Yes, I’ll accept that.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Is that by motion?

Mr. Chairman: I guess to do it legally and right, we had better have a motion by the hon. member for Kitchener.

Hon. Mr. Bernier moves that the word “chartered” be added before the word “bank” in subsection (3) of section 13.

Motion agreed to.

Mr. Chairman: Is section 13 agreed to then?

Mr. Stokes: No, wait a minute. On subsection (2) of section 13:

“The authority may temporarily invest any surplus moneys not immediately required for its object in any securities issued by or guaranteed as to principal and interest by the Province of Ontario, any other province of Canada, or Canada.”

If you say we’re not in the business of making a profit, how do you rationalize that with subsection (2) of section 13? What do you see surplus moneys as being?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: We envision they will operate on the market demand. I don’t think that because they’re operating extremely efficiently and they do lower their cost, that that cost necessarily be borne or passed on to the industries in the area.

In other words, they shouldn’t be getting cheap wood because the authority is so efficient. They should be maintaining a fair market price for the commodity that comes out of there. This could well generate a surplus, if they’re operating in the overall picture and competing with the other 140 industries in the area. There may be funds accrue from that differential. It will come from that.

Mr. Stokes: All right. As a result of the harvesting operations -- sorting and selling within the park -- do you see any possibility of your authority setting the price that the purchaser, or the user, or the processor of that wood will pay that may detrimentally affect the ability of other users outside of the park?

I’m sure you have volume agreements. You have licences that are in effect outside of the park. There are many wood-using industries that purchase timber from private lands; not as much as we would hope, but there are a certain amount. How do you see the price-setting policies of the authority affecting those operations that are carried on within the periphery?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: That is the point I was trying to make a moment ago, that I don’t think that if the authority is operating so efficiently that it maybe could produce, say, pulpwood or veneer bolts at a very modest price, that should be passed on to those industries, because then there would be unfair competition, really, at the expense of the authority. I think the authority will have to look at the overall region and see what hardwood bolts are selling for per unit, and maintain that present structure and that present price level. I don’t think they should be underselling.

Mr. Stokes: Because you could, inadvertently, be putting a lot of people out of business.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: That’s exactly right; putting them out of business. This is where a surplus may accrue, and hopefully will.

Section 13, as amended, agreed to.

Mr. Chairman: Any comments on any other section of the bill?

Mr. Reid: I have some on section 18.

Sections 14 to 17, inclusive, agreed to.

On section 18:

Mr. Chairman: The member for Rainy River.

Mr. Reid: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have just one question of the minister.

Section 18 deals with the Provincial Auditor auditing the books of the authority and presenting his report to the minister and to the authority. Does this preclude or do away with the necessity of the Provincial Auditor reporting to the assembly through his general report, and thence to the public accounts committee?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: No Mr. Chairman, I think we would take the normal steps. We would set up the Provincial Auditor to do that audit. That report, of course, would be tabled through the Ministry of Natural Resources, so it would be open to all members of the Legislature, and the public accounts committee could examine it too.

Section 18 agreed to.

On section 19:

Mr. Chairman: The member for Thunder Bay.

Mr. Stokes: The minister in his statement this afternoon said that all present licences within the park will be cancelled and substituted for by volume agreements. Now in section 19 the minister says that the Lieutenant Governor in Council may, by order in council, terminate any licence heretofore granted under the Crown Timber Act.

Now there is a conflict in what is said in the Act and what the minister assured us of this afternoon. What is the status of present licences within the park? I understand that some of them have a year to go, some two years; I don’t know of any that are for a greater length of time than that. Does this mean that with the passage of this Act -- well, obviously it doesn’t, because it says “may” rather than “will,” as was stated by the minister earlier today.

Is there not a conflict in what the minister promised us in his windup remarks on second reading and what is actually contained here? It’s a discretionary power on the part of the Lieutenant Governor, when in fact we have had an assurance from the minister that all present licences will be cancelled. It doesn’t say anything about letting them run to the end of their normal life. Would the minister care to elaborate on what he said this afternoon and what is actually contained in this section?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Mr. Chairman, there are, as I pointed out this afternoon, 18 companies that hold licences in the park itself. As I pointed out on a number of occasions, we have extended the licence period on some of those. They are on an annual basis, so it wasn’t a real problem. Many of them terminate on March 31, 1975; this Act will just save us making all the orders in council and cancelling all those licences in that manner. We can do it by a section of the Act, and that is the purpose of this section, to do it with one fell swoop. So they all go at the same time. A notice goes out to the licensee and the holder now.

Mr. Stokes: What happens, then, with regard to those licences that may expire, say in March of 1975, as opposed to those which may run for a longer period of time? Aren’t you going to be in a position where it would appear that you are discriminating against certain companies by substituting a volume agreement in place of a licence, until you reach the time when all of the licences that are presently held in the park reach their expiry date?

There is a discretionary power left with the minister. There’s nothing that says you can renew them, but the assurance you gave this afternoon was that they would all be cancelled. Now there is some indication that you are going to let them run out to their full time or their expiry dates. So I think we have a right to know just what your intentions are in that regard.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Mr. Chairman, this section of the Act cancels all those licences. There is no further extension after March 31 on those 18 licences. As I pointed out, many of them expire on March 31. There are some that go to 1976; one or two go to 1981; but 95 per cent of them expire on March 31. So they will all go, regardless of when --

Mr. Stokes: Why don’t you say “will” instead of “may”?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: We could put “will.”

Mr. Stokes: “May” is discretionary.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Yes. “Will” makes it stronger; we’ll do it.

Mr. Stokes: Why don’t you change it to “will” then?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: I’d be glad to take your recommendation.

Hon. Mr. Bernier moves that the word “may” in line 4 of subsection (1) of section 19 be changed to “will.”

Motion agreed to.

Mr. Chairman: Any other comments on section 19?

Mr. Stokes: On subsection (4) of section 19, who will draw up the management plan? Will this be done by the ministry?

I can readily appreciate that just because you have a master plan there it wouldn’t cover every eventuality in the park. Say you had a budworm infestation as you’ve had this past year or two with regard to jackpine. Obviously the minister himself wouldn’t be in a position to monitor this on an ongoing basis, but somebody who is directly involved in the park on a regular basis might see that some kind of therapeutic or cosmetic treatment might be necessary.

Who is going to set up the management plans to cover any eventuality within the park?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Mr. Chairman, the authority would be responsible for setting up that management plan, of course. It would then be approved by the minister as to the Crown Timber Act, as to the Algonquin Park master plan and any of the things that you point out -- infestation from disease or something that may require some changes in the plan. So they would prepare the initial plan, and then it is approved by ministry officials.

Mr. Chairman: Any other comment on section 19?

Section 19, as amended, agreed to.

On section 20:

Mr. Reid: Section 20.

Mr. Chairman: The hon. member for Rainy River.

Mr. Reid: Mr. Chairman, section 20 continues the vagueness of the bill. Does the minister have any idea when the bill might go into effect? Is the reason it is not being proclaimed immediately because he hasn’t appointed the authority?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: That’s one of the reasons, Mr. Chairman. We are searching for the people for the authority, and we are shooting for a target of April 1, 1975. But it will be proclaimed in plenty of time for us to cancel licences and to start the operation moving ahead.

Mr. Chairman: Shall section 20 carry?

Section 20 agreed to.

Mr. Chairman: Shall section 21 carry?

Section 21 agreed to.

Mr. Chairman: Shall the bill, as amended, be reported?

Bill 155, as amended, reported.

Hon. Mr. Grossman moves the committee rise and report.

Motion agreed to.

The House resumed, Mr. Speaker in the chair.

Mr. Chairman: Mr. Speaker, the committee of the whole House reports one bill with certain amendments and asks for leave to sit again.

Report agreed to.

MINISTRY OF COMMUNITY AND SOCIAL SERVICES ACT

Hon. Mr. Brunelle moves second reading of Bill 148, An Act to amend the Ministry of Community and Social Services Act.

Mr. J. R. Breithaupt (Kitchener): Does the minister have any opening remarks, Mr. Speaker?

Hon. R. Brunelle (Minister of Community and Social Services): Mr. Speaker, I did not intend to. I could briefly outline the main purposes of this bill. The first purpose is to transfer the provisions establishing the family benefits board of review to this Act from the Family Benefits Act and to change its name to the social assistance review board. Four Acts will be administered under this board, the Family Benefits Act, the General Welfare Act, the Vocational Rehabilitation Services Act and the Ontario Guaranteed Annual Income Act of 1974.

Another main purpose of this bill is to enable the board to pay expenses of parties or witnesses to a hearing in case of financial hardship. This will apply mainly in remote areas of northern Ontario or eastern Ontario or any part of Ontario where the appellants may have to travel some distance. This was requested during the estimates and on another occasion.

The third provision will authorize the delegation of statutory powers and duties pursuant to written appointment by the minister.

The fourth main provision will provide qualified immunity from civil suit for individual employees of the ministry, which I understand is the practice in many other Acts. Those are the main provisions of this bill.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Kitchener.

Mr. Breithaupt: Mr. Speaker, there are just a couple of points in the bill that I would like to refer to and some suggestions for improvements I’d like to make which the minister might wish to consider.

Our main area of concern relates to the items set out in section 6, whereby in effect there is a new section 7c added to the Act. In section 7c confirmation is made that the hearings of this new board are going to be in camera. I think there are some very strong reservations, at least as they have been expressed to the opposition, among certain low-income groups that the in-camera provision should not be a mandatory one. We think that the bill would be improved if the minister considered an amendment which would allow an appeal to be heard in public if the recipient applicant requested that that should take place.

In the amendments made to the Family Benefits Act there is assistance extended now to an applicant during the period of time needed for the board to complete the review and render its decision. Now, in this matter the board has complete discretion, and the applicant really could be put to a serious disadvantage if he or she faces the prospect of being cut off from the support that has already been received from the statutory provisions that have existed for that person. The board has up to 40 days to hear an appeal and one would think that it would usually take one or two weeks to give its decision. As a result, I would suggest that the minister might well consider an amendment which would make the continuation of assistance mandatory during the period of the time that the board is considering the case and rendering its judgment.

This assistance, of course, might be considered to be recoverable if the board in its decision upholds the director, depending on the reasons for the director’s cutting off of assistance or for making certain changes. But I think there might be some value in considering that the persons who are appealing it, when their benefits have been cut off, perhaps should have the onus reversed. In other words, they should be able to continue to receive certain benefits rather than waiting until the appeal decision comes down. It is true we might not in fact recover those benefits, but I think that some thought might be given to the proposition that the persons who are appealing and doing so in good conscience and for valid reasons should be able to receive assistance, at least to the time that the decision is made.

Another item that we had considered in reviewing this bill earlier on is that the applicant should have access to the appeal records, so that he or she may have the advantage of knowing how the board has disposed of similar cases. It might indeed be worthwhile for the ministry to keep on hand, or at least available to applicants -- or to perhaps their solicitors or indeed to members of the House -- a framework of decisions that were made by the board, so that we would be in a position to take a look at how a similar case might have been decided.

Of course, it’s quite true that in circumstances like this each case is based very much on its merits and I don’t think we want to get into a stare decisis situation whereby we feel bound by a decision made on what might appear to be a similar case but which really might have some quite different aspects to it. However, I think it would be worthwhile if we had the opportunity of having some availability of reported decisions -- not reported as to name necessarily, but reported just as to general circumstance. If that were the case then we might at least build up an available group of cases or of decisions which would lead the applicants to come to some conclusions as to whether their application would be worthwhile or likely to succeed.

One other point that I would like to make, Mr. Speaker, is with respect to the matter of transcript. Now, under section 7c(4), the bill does allow oral evidence to be recorded either by notes or by transcript or other means directed by the board itself, presumably through a voice recorder, for example. There is, however, no provision that the transcript of a hearing should be furnished at the request of the applicant. I would think that if a transcript were wanted by an applicant, then that transcript should at least be available on request.

I agree that it is in most cases perhaps unnecessary to have transcripts provided automatically; they usually are rather expensive to take. But at least some record of the notes should I think be available to the person who is an applicant if that person requests it. I also feel that the availability of that transcript should be clearly spelled out, preferably in the Act, so that anyone looking to see what his or her rights may be by referring to the statute will know that this is available should it be asked for.

We must after all remember, Mr. Speaker, that we are perhaps likely to be dealing with persons whose general knowledge of the law that we are all presumed to have may be at best a little spotty. As a result, I would think, if we spelled out this item, we would be doing a service to persons who might be looking particularly to this Act and not know the general terms as to what may or may not be available to them.

Of course if a transcript of proceedings is provided, the applicant must ordinarily pay for it. I would suggest that in circumstances such as this we can afford the cost of the person requesting it to be covered by the ministry, and that such a transcript, if requested, or a copy of the notes or summary, would be made at no expense to the person who is applying.

Those are my comments, basically, with respect to the items raised in section 6. As the minister had suggested in his opening remarks, there are some other amendments which deal with those four points that he raised. We are prepared to support them and accept their inclusion in the bill. I hope the comments that I made with respect to the items raised in section 6 may be of some use to the minister as we proceed with this bill.

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

Mr. E. J. Bounsall (Windsor West): Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The major principle or change involved in this bill is the change from the board of review under the Family Benefits Act, which now becomes the social assistance review board in this Act to amend the Community and Social Services Act.

The problem here is that all the minister has done is to change the name, virtually, and this is certainly to be regretted. There certainly needs to be a change in the Review board itself, and this was a real opportunity to come in and really make some meaningful changes in the review board itself. Changes are certainly overdue. In the 1972-1973 board of review annual report of the Ministry of Community and Social Services, it was reported that of the 1,791 appeal cases decided, 71 per cent of them were denied. If we have this many cases going to appeal and 71 per cent of them are denied, it gives me some suspicion that the review board was not operating in a way in which the clients were best served. Only 24.2 per cent of the appeals were granted in full and another 4.8 per cent granted in part. Here again, as I say, that causes some questions in my mind as to who the review board is serving. We have an opportunity in this bill, when we change the name and bring this same review board to cover three other review boards, to have a change in the review board itself.

The members, the chairman and the vice-chairman in this renamed board are presently those people who are already in office and they’ll continue in that office until their normal term expires. So they’re making no change in the composition of the board in this name change, and this would be the opportunity to have done it.

In the Swadron task force report on employment opportunities for welfare recipients, Swadron speaks directly to the review board and what it should be dome. Swadron recommends directly that the review board be replaced by an independent board of review, capable of functioning swiftly, established on a regional basis. The minister has totally rejected this concept.

If he is going to establish review boards on a regional basis, he certainly hasn’t built it into the legislation here. There’s nothing in this bill that provides a regional basis for the review boards, which by itself would have helped to guarantee a swifter functioning of the review boards. With the members still all appointed by the Lieutenant Governor in Council and the old members of the review board just continued on, one really has some doubts about the independence of this board.

One other thing in the bill, with respect to the board, is that one man or one woman can form the review board and conduct a hearing and therefore, in effect -- because that person must be present whenever that decision is made and no one else can really have a solid input on the decision -- is going to be the person making the major decision. This can be as few as one person. Only one person is required as the quorum for the new, revised review board. There should at least be two persons, and that too should be written into the legislation, so that we would have more than one person having the major input on the decision.

When you look at some of the other review boards that have occurred around the country and see the way those review boards are set up, you realize just how poor a job, or low no job has been done at all in having a look at and revising this new review board.

In the Province of Manitoba, the review board there is a welfare advisory group composed of Indians, Metis and welfare rights groups. One of their tasks, as well as advising the ministry, is to be the appeal board. The quorum for any of those appeal boards hearings is three -- rather than being as low as one in this Act. And it must include the chairman or the vice-chairman.

As far as regionalizing it, appeals are often heard right in the community and sometimes even in the homes of the clients.

Clients there are being encouraged to enter appeals by being told of their rights in many ways by provincial and municipal workers; instructed to so do. A pamphlet is also widely distributed by the welfare advisory committee. Needless to say, since this has gone into effect the number of appeals has dramatically increased.

As opposed to the 71 per cent of the cases that came before the old review board in Ontario that were against the clients, if you like, in the Manitoba review board only 30 per cent went against the clients. There was a larger number dismissed than was the case in Ontario; but of those cases that went to the full hearing, only 30 per cent of them went against the client.

In Saskatchewan, the composition of these review boards, in comparison with Ontario, really boggles the imagination. We could have such a good system here in, Ontario. They have taken the Province of Saskatchewan and have regionalized it. They have broken it down into 11 welfare regions. Within some of those welfare regions they have organized local cunits. Here, again, on the local advisory committee there are nine people, three of whom function as the local appeal board.

And where do members of the advisory committee come from? They are set up to include, by a formula, elected representatives of the community at large and representatives of client groups. One of these boards has employed an Indian and a mothers’ allowance recipient. Another has a child welfare ward, who is now presently a student. Another one has yet a foster mother.

There is no provision at all in the regulations for departmental staff to be members of the local advisory committee, but the department provides to those committees secretarial help and advisory service at both the local advisory committee level and in the regional areas. We don’t have anything of that type here in this legislation, and we should have. This was the opportunity in this bill to do it.

Another point badly lacking in this bill and which should have been included, is the client representative. The Workmen’s Compensation Board is now at the moment trying this in Ontario; it is a little too new to know whether it is going to be successful. The Workmen’s Compensation Board is providing paid advisory help to those people appealing to the board. That is their sole function; to be out in the community helping the clients prepare their cases.

This also occurs in the Province of Saskatchewan in their review boards. They provide in each of the regional areas the appointment of an advocate with complete knowledge of the legislation and regulations; because that is all his job entails, by and large. He is available to represent any client who is unable to find someone to present his case and wishes to make a representation on his behalf. This is particularly important. I believe that your forms have been simplified a bit, but Swadron in his report has a word to say on this. “Without legal training, as matters now stand, the applicant or recipient has little going for him or her in being able to understand the review process.”

Here in Saskatchewan they have recognized that a review process may be a little bit complicated and in each region they have supplied an advocate whose only job is make the review process understandable to the client appealing and to help present that client’s case. This is something sadly lacking here.

We have some doubts about the Workmen’s Compensation Board method of doing it, in that they are board employees and get their salary from that source and see themselves as such. The Saskatchewan method of appointing an advocate in the region -- and he lives in that region and so on -- appears to be a slightly better system. In the appointments of advocates to represent the clients, we would prefer, I suppose, an advocate chosen by the welfare or family benefits recipients in the area. That advocate appointed for that area, or for that region, by those groups concerned would receive funding according to the amount of work done on a set formula provided by the province. This should be done rather than have the advocate appointed directly from the ministry to those regions, because there could be a suggestion, with time, that he simply becomes another ministry official. But that would be better than none at all and this bill was an opportunity to bring that into effect.

Also, the provincial regulations in Saskatchewan have been recently amended to remove the prohibition against providing assistance to strikers where that need arises. They’ve specifically removed the prohibition against that, and I think we in Ontario could be a little clearer on this point. Here again, an amending Act of this type would be a proper place to bring it in.

On or two other small points about the Act. In Section 5 the minister clarifies that items such as food, clothing and prosthetic appliances may be included in the purchases of services entered into by the ministry. That is a clarifying section, but nothing in this section that I can see allows specifically for an appeal before the review board if the special assistance is denied. The review board -- unhappy as we are with it in its present form, and we are just transferring it over to the new name in its old form -- should at least be able to be appealed to if special assistance such as that brought in and made clear in this section 5 on food, clothing and prosthetic devices, has been denied.

So, in speaking to the bill, Mr. Speaker, I’m concerned really about what has not been done more than with what is actually in the bill. In setting up the new appeals board this bill was an opportunity to ensure that this was a real change and one which served the clients in this province. Unfortunately, it is not.

We would certainly agree with most of the remarks made by the previous speaker with respect to giving to the recipient information and facts recorded at the board of review.

And we are in favour of subsection 7 of the new section 7c. It’s one which has been pressed for some time by the spokesman of our party in these matters, the member for Sudbury East (Mr. Martel). Where a request for a hearing has been made and the board of review is satisfied that there may be financial hardship in attending a board hearing, although we might go to the Manitoba situation where board hearings are held right in the client’s homes, the board may pay part of your witnesses’ travelling and living expenses necessary to attend that hearing. It seems rather strange that having now made that amendment to the Act, which is a step forward, you don’t make it much more strongly than that. The board, having satisfied themselves that there may be financial difficulties, that particular “may” should be changed to “shall.” If they have determined that there may be some financial difficulties, then surely it’s incumbent on the board to pay, and not have discretion at that point. The board cannot then decide whether or not they are going to.

And the second “may” should most certainly be changed to a “shall.”

“Having determined that there may be financial difficulties, the board shall pay the party’s or the witnesses’ travelling and living expenses before the board.”

Mr. Speaker, we are mainly disappointed in this bill in that so much could have been done in a bill dealing with a board of review; and that has not been done in this Act.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Windsor-Walkerville.

Mr. B. Newman (Windsor-Walkerville): Mr. Speaker, I don’t intend to make lengthy comments concerning the bill. But I would like to point out to the minister one item concerning the bill that does disturb me a bit. That is, we all agree with the change of the name from “family benefits” to “social assistance,” because I think the connotation of social assistance covers a wider range of assistance programmes than only family benefits.

But I don’t understand why the minister wouldn’t sort of follow the approach used by the Unemployment Insurance Commission in appointing boards on the local level. An individual who has a grievance with the Unemployment Insurance Commission and wishing to appeal the original decision, does normally have his appeal heard right in the community. To me, there would be no problem for the minister to set up appeal boards in the large urban areas so that your officials wouldn’t have to be travelling throughout the province.

For example, my own community could have an appeal tribunal or an appeal board set up right in its community. Setting one up like that would do away with the need for the individual who has the appeal in front of the review board to travel any distance at all. He could be heard by the review board right in his own community; he would be at home. I would think that he would be a little more at ease in his own community; rather than having to travel any distance, or having the board come into the community to hear him.

And likewise, in subsection (6), where only one individual may be the review board, this does disturb me a bit. Because you are going to have just one individual decide as to whether the appellant is going to have his case adjudicated or judged fairly. It would be Fetter by far if you would have at least two. If you hold it locally, you know yourself that the chance of having only one individual on the review board is very, very small. In my own community, unemployment insurance cases practically always have three people present for the case. The only time we have the two is when one of the three happens to be sick.

Now, the two areas that disturb me, Mr. Speaker, are the fact that you are not setting up these tribunals on a local level, especially in large municipalities. You are having the individual either travel to the review board, or you are having the review board come into the community. And the second is the fact that if you are having the individual travel to a review board, then it’s a lot different for the individual; he doesn’t feel that he or she is being treated in the same fashion that he would be treated were the case being held in his own community.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Cochrane South.

Mr. W. Ferrier (Cochrane South): Yes, Mr. Speaker, I just want to deal with one brief item: In changing the board of review to this other Act, as is being done here, I wonder if the minister might outline what policy be intends it to have in regard to bilingualism. Recently I bad a couple of young ladies come into my office complaining about a hearing that their mother had been at in a place called Ramore which the minister knows very well. They said that the hearing had been held in such a way that a lot of English had been used and the woman couldn’t understand it very well. I don’t know whether that was so or not, but I know that there is one bilingual person on the board from the minister’s riding, who is a very gracious lady and the kind of person we like to see on the board.

I would like the minister, if he would, in his remarks to tell me what policy direction he gives to his people in regard to holding hearings of the board of review or the new board as it is going to be called in French in those areas of the province where the person’s first language is French. I think that that should be guaranteed. I hope that he will see that this practice is followed, because it puts poor people at a disadvantage if that is not carried out. You might carry it a step further in some instances where a person may have a language that is neither French nor English. Are there provisions made for translations in those cases? Do you bring a translator or an interpreter in and make sure that the person understands all that is going on and that the issues are clearly explained to them?

Perhaps the suggestions that have been made about having the board of review regionally operative have some merit, although I think some of the people are appointed from different parts of the province. I understand in my own area that a lot of the hearings do take place right in the homes or in the offices of the ministry. The thing that really concerns me is to make sure that for those people who are primarily French speaking the hearings will be held in French and that they will clearly have the opportunity to understand. If you need to appoint more people that are French to hear these hearings, then I hope that you will be prepared to do so.

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

Mr. J. E. Stokes (Thunder Bay): I just want to touch on one brief item dealing with section 4 which gives Indian bands authority to establish recreation committees and broadens the authority to establish joint recreation committees. We dealt with this pretty fairly comprehensively in a previous bill but I just want to elicit from the minister, if I may, when there will be funds available for the setting up of recreational committees. I’m thinking in terms of an Indian band fairly close to an organized municipality. I can think of several, where you have an Indian band that doesn’t have much by way of resources of its own but would like to participate with a neighbouring community that does, so that it too can participate.

I can think of Longlac where they have two separate independent Indian bands within a matter of a couple of miles from the township of Longlac. I can think of Heron Bay which has an Indian band just 10 miles away from Marathon. I would hope that the ministry would look kindly upon some form of assistance to that Indian band through the Community Centres Recreation Act to assist them so they could participate with an organized municipality in some of their ongoing recreational projects that they would never be able to accomplish by themselves.

There is another thing that I would like to call on the minister to do. He speaks in this bill in terms of joint recreational committees other than with Indian bands, where you have an unorganized community, such as Jellicoe which is 30 miles away from the township of Geraldton, where there may be some areas where they could co-operate to provide a much better and a much more extensive recreational programme if there was some provision in the Act to give them a little bit of seed money.

I am not suggesting that we are going to have a curling rink, a community hall and everything else in every small hamlet throughout the north. But in order to give some meaning to this section 4, I hope the minister will take into account that there are a good many people who would welcome this legislation but find themselves in a position of financial embarrassment where they don’t have the seed money. In some cases maybe a few hundred dollars might make it possible for them to share a recreational director who would spend most of his time in the larger community, the community with the tax base; and by the expenditure of a certain amount of funds themselves, they would be able to get funding for partial payment of the services of a recreational director.

When the minister is formulating his regulations, I am asking if he will assist an unorganized community that can generate some funds by way of a bingo or the number of ways in which they do generate some funds in an unorganized hamlet, by taking into account those very special needs and by giving them a little bit of seed money. I am not talking of thousands of dollars, but in terms of a little bit of seed money that would allow them to participate in some of the recreational programmes and to have the expertise and guidance of a recreational director at least to institute some of the programmes that are appropriate either to Indian bands or to small unorganized hamlets that don’t have the resources to do it on their own.

Mr. Speaker: Do any other hon. members wish to speak to this bill? If not, the hon. minister.

Hon. Mr. Brunelle: Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to the various comments from the lion, members, and I wish to commend them. With the great majority, I am in agreement -- not all, but the great majority. I’ll deal with the comments of each member; and if I omit any of the comments that have been brought to my attention, I know they will remind me.

The hon. member for Kitchener, in reference to section 6, stating that hearings should be held in camera, said -- if I understood him correctly -- that he was not in agreement with that. But there is no change here; we are just transferring what was in the former Act to this Act. The reason for this is to protect the confidentiality of the hearing. However, Mr. Speaker, I wish to mention that there is nothing to prevent an appellant from having a solicitor, a member of Parliament, a minister or any person he wishes attend the hearing and assist him with his presentation. He is certainly permitted to do so.

The hon. member also raised the matter of interim payments. There is a provision in the Family Benefits Act for the board to order interim payments, after a request for appeal has been made to the board, until a decision has been rendered; and that is according to section 312(1)(a) of the Family Benefits Act.

The hon. member also mentioned that the ministry should make available decisions of hearings to the appellants. Mr. Speaker, since the beginning of this year, I believe, those decisions have been published, with the names of the appellants omitted. It is quite true that it is of help to those who wish to present their case to hear what decisions have been made in former cases, and that information now is made available.

The hon. member also referred to the transcripts of proceedings. If I understood him correctly, he said some record of the notes should be made available to applicants if they request that. It is my understanding, and I can be corrected, that this is possible; that these notes can be made available. I would like to mention, Mr. Speaker, that we certainly try to provide every assistance possible to the appellants.

The hon. member for Windsor West made several comments and I must say that there are many that I am not in agreement with. He suggested that there should be changes made in the board itself, in the composition of the board and the way it operates, and he referred to several provinces -- Manitoba, Saskatchewan and possibly others. I wish to say that our board of review, in my opinion, is a very competent board. It has been established since 1969 and I would say that it compares very favourably with any other board in Canada. Mind you, there are variations in some of the boards.

If I may say briefly, our board consists of 15 members who represent various geographical areas of this province. Out of the 15, three are bilingual and several members of the board speak several languages. I believe at least two, if not three, speak Italian fluently and there are some members of the board who speak several languages. The member made the suggestion that in Manitoba, I believe, they have on their board a representative from the native community, and I think that is a very good recommendation. It’s one that we certainly would be pleased to keep in mind when we do make additions to the board.

Offhand I just don’t know how many appeals are made by our native people. To my knowledge it’s a very small number, but regardless of the number I think it’s a very good suggestion. It’s certainly one that we would be pleased to keep in mind.

The hon. member and some other members mentioned that the board should operate on a regional basis; while others said on a local community basis. Again, there are various views on this. We believe that our system works quite efficiently. The members go to the various areas where there are hearings, and then every Monday they come back to Toronto where they meet as a board and review the various cases and have legal advice and any other assistance that is required.

I would say the board is a very independent board. It’s a board comprised of a variety of persons with quite wide experience. Many have had municipal experience. There’s one member on the board who was at one time a social recipient himself. We have one member on the board who is a member of the legal profession. We have housewives and we have business people, so we have quite a wide variety of experience.

Mr. B. Newman: How many actually received welfare at one time or another?

Mr. Stokes: One.

Hon. Mr. Brunelle: There is only one who was at one time a welfare recipient, but in order to deal fairly with and to understand the problems of those who are appealing their cases, I do not believe it is necessary that a person himself or herself has had to be a recipient of social assistance.

Mr. B. Newman: The one who received the social assistance understands the problems far better than the Bay St. lawyer.

Hon. Mr. Brunelle: It could be, Mr. Speaker. I am not questioning that. What I am trying to say is that those members on the board are very sympathetic and I have not to my knowledge, heard of any instances where there has been any criticism of the hearings of the board.

It was mentioned by several members that there should be more than one member. Normally there are at least two, and sometimes three, but it is not a requirement. I believe this came about from the report of Mr. Justice McRuer -- and I can be corrected on this -- that one member is sufficient. Normally there are at least two, and sometimes three, but even though there is only one member, as I said earlier, every Monday every case is dealt with by the entire board and it is thoroughly looked into. S there is involvement by the total board.

The hon. member for Windsor West suggested that special assistance cannot be appealed. Well, that is quite right. Under our existing legislation, as the hon. member knows, special or supplementary assistance is discretionary. It is given at the discretion of the local municipal administrator. However, I would like to mention that the board and also the director make every effort to contact the local municipality or county administrator, whatever the case may be, to try and assist the recipient in obtaining what he has requested. It’s quite true that it cannot be appealed, because it is discretionary.

The hon. member referred also to the expenses. I believe that’s section 7, which is a new section whereby the board may pay travelling expenses to appellants who incur expenses in going to a hearing, if the hearing is not held in their own community, and even in their own community if they have to take a taxi or whatever costs they incur. Am I correct that it’s the word “may” the member felt should be replaced by the word “shall”?

Mr. Bounsall: The second “may.” There are two “mays” in the paragraph. I think the first “may” is all right and quite appropriate -- it’s the second “may” that should be “shall.”

Hon. Mr. Brunelle: The wording is: “ ... that there may be financial hardship to a party or witness attending the hearing, the board may pay the party or witness travelling and living expenses necessary ... “ Personally, I would have no compunction in changing this to “shall.” Certainly we’re pleased to accept this recommendation. So we will change this to the word “shall.”

The hon. member for Windsor-Walkerville mentioned that he didn’t advocate the regional board but rather local boards within their own communities. Mr. Speaker, Windsor is quite a large city, and I’m not sure how we would do this. Whether we would have it on a population basis and have a board member in each large city -- I think there would be problems. Right now, as I mentioned earlier, our board is composed of 15 members who can speak various languages. For instance -- and I will come back to the hon. member in a few minutes -- if it’s, say, in a French-speaking area in eastern Ontario or northern Ontario, a bilingual person will go to that area.

Mr. B. Newman: But in the large urban areas there is more diversity as far as languages are concerned, and it would be better to be using it on a large municipal basis.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. The debate is over. The minister has the floor.

Hon. Mr. Brunelle: Well, it’s something, Mr. Speaker. On all these matters our views are to try to make the board as efficient and as responsive to the people as possible, and we would be pleased to consider this. We do not have closed minds on all these matters.

Mr. B. Newman: That is my suggestion.

Hon. Mr. Brunelle: So we would be pleased to look into this matter.

I think the hon. member suggested that there should be more than one member. Generally speaking, there is more than one member.

My colleague, the hon. member for Cochrane South, referred to the matter of bilinguals and the question of other languages. With reference first to bilingualism, as I mentioned earlier we have three members who are fluently bilingual and it is our policy that wherever a person is French speaking we try and have at least one member of the board who can speak French at the hearing.

When a member speaks languages other than French or English and does not understand either language, whatever the language is -- German, Ukrainian, Spanish or Italian -- we do make every attempt to provide interpreters for the hearing for the appellant. Certainly it is a very good recommendation.

Mr. Speaker, I may have omitted some of the matters that the hon. members have brought to my attention. If so, I would be pleased to try to reply.

Motion agreed to; second reading of the bill.

Mr. Speaker: I understand there has to be an amendment so it will have to go to the committee of the whole house.

Agreed.

GENERAL WELFARE ASSISTANCE ACT

Hon. Mr. Brunelle moves second reading of Bill 149, An Act to amend the General Welfare Assistance Act.

Motion agreed to; second reading of the bill.

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

Agreed.

VOCATIONAL REHABILITATION SERVICES ACT

Hon. Mr. Brunelle moves second reading of Bill 150, An Act to amend the Vocational Rehabilitation Services Act.

Mr. Speaker: Shall the motion carry?

Mr. B. Newman: Mr. Speaker, I wanted to make a few comments and suggestions to the minister. I was sort of shocked to hear this afternoon on my way to Toronto that there is no type of formal training for vocational rehabilitation officers to the best of my knowledge and to the knowledge of the individual with whom I discussed this topic, and he happened to be a rehabilitation officer with the ministry. Everything seems to be on a trial and error, learn by experience basis.

May I suggest to the minister that he suggest to his colleague, the Minister of Colleges and Universities (Mr. Auld), that courses be set up in the community colleges and/or the universities to train and develop rehab officers, so that at least he would have a pool of individuals who could come right in and help him administer such legislation?

Hon. Mr. Brunelle: Mr. Speaker, I think it is an excellent recommendation and I would certainly be pleased to consider it.

Mr. Speaker: The motion is for second reading of Bill 150. Shall the motion carry?

The member for Windsor West.

Mr. Bounsall: Just very briefly, Mr. Speaker, on Bill 150, An Act to amend the Vocational Rehabilitation Services Act, this is the same sort of amendment Act in which the board is changed to come under the Ministry of Community and Social Services Act as before, the social assistance review board being the new name.

The comments that I would make on Bill 150 are the ones that I made on Bill 148, in terms of the composition of the board, and would have been the same under Bill 149 and would be the same under Bill 151, when and if we get to it.

Motion agreed to; second reading of the bill.

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

Agreed.

FAMILY BENEFITS ACT

Hon. Mr. Brunelle moves second reading of Bill 151, An Act to amend the Family Benefits Act.

Motion agreed to; second reading of the bill.

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

Agreed.

THIRD READINGS

The following bills were given third reading upon motion:

Bill 149, An Act to amend the General Welfare Assistance Act.

Bill 150, An Act to amend the Vocational Rehabilitation Services Act.

Bill 151, An Act to amend the Family Benefits Act.

Bill 155, An Act to incorporate the Algonquin Forestry Authority.

Hon. E. A. Winkler (Chairman, Management Board of Cabinet): Mr. Speaker, before I move the adjournment of the House I would like to say that tomorrow we will proceed in accordance with the direction that was given to the bills on Friday, and I will endeavour to have the provincial Treasurer (Mr. White) here to deal with his bills that were called.

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

Motion agreed to.

The House adjourned at 10:30 o’clock, p.m.

December 2, 1974

ALGONQUIN FORESTRY AUTHORITY ACT

MINISTRY OF COMMUNITY AND SOCIAL SERVICES ACT

GENERAL WELFARE ASSISTANCE ACT

VOCATIONAL REHABILITATION SERVICES ACT

FAMILY BENEFITS ACT

THIRD READINGS