Legislative Assembly of Ontario

The House resumed at 8 o’clock, p.m.

Mr. Speaker: I presume we are carrying on with the order of business we were engaged in before 6 o’clock when the member for Riverdale had the floor. He may continue.

ONTARIO ENERGY CORP. ACT (CONCLUDED)

Mr. J. A. Renwick (Riverdale): Mr. Speaker, before the supper break I was almost on the point of moving on to what I believed to be my second point, but fortunately during the supper break I was able to think up a few more things to say on the first proposition that I was establishing, so I think I will revert briefly to it. There are, indeed, two or three questions that I want to raise.

The proposition that I was establishing for the minister was that there really is no role in Ontario for the kind of venture that he, through this Ontario Energy Corp., feels that this province must embark upon. I was indicating that within the field of our own indigenous resource of uranium, with whatever water power is still available in the province for exploitation through the development of hydro power, is quite example field for the resources of this province to be devoted to in the field of energy -- not just for our own purposes but for the whole of Canada.

I was citing very clearly the obvious opinion that with that indigenous resource within our own boundaries, we are the ones who, in fact, can do more than anyone else to develop what the Premier (Mr. Davis) in one of his statements -- in a statement at the first ministers’ conference, I believe -- indicated was an essential ingredient: A safe, modern, progressive technology for the production of electric power through the use of the uranium resources of the province, and for the protection of the environment in the course of that.

I say to the minister that provinces and territories which have other resources have the primary obligation to develop those resources for their own benefit and for the benefit of the rest of Canada. We in this party agree basically with the principle that there should be a national energy policy. We agree basically with the position of the government that probably in the final constitutional analysis the federal government has the power to regulate the price of oil and gas at the wellhead. Those are statements which can be argued about, but we tend to associate ourselves with the government’s position on those questions.

I think the difficulties -- if I could use that term -- which are now being experienced at the Pickering plant and the delay inherent in that which will be caused at the Bruce plant and at Nanticoke, with respect to the Candu nuclear reactor, are sufficiently serious to recognize that whatever moneys the province has should be used to stimulate the kind of research and development that will be necessary for the correction of whatever the fault and error is.

There was the strangest statement on CBC radio at 10 o’clock on Monday night last that Ontario Hydro -- and therefore the minister -- believes it has nothing to do with anything except faulty installation. Yet the government is proceeding with very expensive modifications, which would appear to me to indicate that it isn’t just faulty installation but that there is something potentially seriously wrong with the generation of power at the Pickering plant.

We’ve had these very gentle statements from time to time by the minister as to the extent to which those plants are being affected by what is taking place. But if the CBC report was right on Monday night, the government is talking about several hundred thousand dollars -- I think the figure used in the radio programme was $700,000 -- to carry out the modifications. There were indications as well that it was going to result in a delay in the Bruce plant being completed which was measured in some years. I don’t know whether it was from 1976 to 1978, but it was a period of time during which there was going to be a substantial delay. That problem should engross the total attention of the government of Ontario.

I use the difficulties at the Pickering plant only by way of illustration. It’s all very well to compare the methods by which we generate electricity through the use of nuclear power as distinguished from the method used in the United States and as distinguished from the method used in Great Britain.

It’s all very well to talk about the sale overseas of the Candu reactor. It’s all very well to talk about the exploitation of the uranium resources by companies such as Denison Mines and the contracts which they entered into. I wouldn’t be at all surprised that our capability to have within our control our energy needs is, in fact, going to lead to a cutback in the exports by companies like Denison Mines. It seems to me to be quite passing strange that Denison Mines says we are selling wherever they were selling the last one to -- to Japan in order to produce the funds which will allow them to develop their ore bodies in the Province of Ontario. I don’t really think that that is the way in which we should be exploiting the uranium resources of the province, and I don’t think that the entrepreneurial way in which Denison operates should be the pattern.

The government knows what our position is with respect to the uranium resources of the province. We happen to believe that they are vested in the people of the Province of Ontario through its government. We happen to believe, as the Premier and, indeed, the Minister of Energy (Mr. McKeough) do, that the Atomic Energy Control Act of wartime, which took the control of uranium from the Province of Ontario to the federal government, is outmoded and is probably invalid at the present time. We agree with that kind of statement about the position of the province with regard to its uranium resources, but we simply disagree totally with their exploitation by companies such as Denison Mines.

This comes back to the basic proposition which I’ve stated, that we do not need the Ontario Energy Corp. for the purpose of furthering the technological development over a period of time of the nuclear power resources of this province. That’s what we should be doing; that’s what we can be doing; and if the proposition which I quoted a little earlier, and I take the liberty of repeating, is true, then this is what we should be doing.

“Taking a long-term view, the federal energy study predicts that electric energy could provide 90 per cent of all energy needs in Canada by the year 2050. Electricity will undoubtedly be used extensively to provide power for rapid transit [etc.].”

That’s where the focus should lie. In any statement that has been made by this minister about this Ontario Energy Corp., there has been no indication whatsoever that that’s the purpose for which that will be used. I don’t think that the minister will even stand up tonight and attempt to suggest that yes, it will be used for that purpose.

When the very voluble minister wanders around the province making these various speeches, one finds first of all that he is trying to interest the private sector of the economy in research and development in the field of the production of nuclear power. He is asking them and urging them to submit bids with respect to the production of heavy water in the Province of Ontario. He is relying upon the major companies which are producing the power plants, such as Howden Parsons and others, to provide the technology, the skills and the abilities to produce that kind of modern nuclear power generating technology that is so very necessary. But nowhere has he said that one single cent of the Province of Ontario’s money will be used for that purpose.

We don’t agree, as my friend from Cochrane South (Mr. Ferrier) was saying a few minutes ago, with the reprivatization -- which is the dreadful word coined by the Minister of Energy -- of the electric power producing plant of the Province of Ontario; nor do we believe in this strange creature which the minister now is wanting to establish, which is neither flesh nor fowl. There is no way in which this energy corporation, in our judgment, is going to be of any use in doing what we here in the Province of Ontario can best do.

For the sake of the record, I am simply going to refer to the fact that the position of the Province of Ontario with respect to uranium and associated nuclear fuel, as stated by the Premier on March 26 of this year, is a statement with which we don’t find any particular fault.

“We think it is absolutely essential that consistency in mineral policy and the necessity of Ontario assuring a secure supply of uranium dictates that Ontario should seek the restoration of the control of uranium and thorium to its jurisdiction. National concern should be fully satisfied if the government of Canada retains plutonium. The international and interprovincial movement of uranium and thorium should continue to be under federal control. The policies of the federal government with respect to equity control of uranium mines is such that exploration and development is greatly impeded. Modification of these policies should be sought.”

I don’t know what that last part means, that the restriction of the ownership of equity capital in uranium mines is in some way inhibiting the development of those resources. We are the ones who should be developing those resources, much along the lines of thy way in which I spoke a little while ago.

It was very clear again tonight on television that the result of the Prime Minister’s visit to President Ford today has resulted in Prime Minister Trudeau telling President Ford, and certain of the senators with whom they met, that Canada was determined to phase out the export of oil to the United States and, I took it, was determined to phase out the export of natural gas to the United States. That caused some irritation because presumably they are going to put in some kind of controls on the use of gasoline.

But if that policy is true, then we are substantially on the way to self-sufficiency with respect to that kind of fuel, oil and gas. It seems to me that our major thrust, if it were in the field of uranium, would mean that oil and gas would become supplementary, and not the major sources that we are tending to produce by the kind of focus which the policy of this minister is about to adopt for the whole of the province.

I now want to pick up where I was just before supper time to indicate that he’s going off on a frolic of his own. He wants some kind of a piece of the action in support of the Canadian Arctic gas pipeline or in support of the polar gas explorations and development. That, I think, is really what the minister is setting up this vehicle for. He seems to think that Ontario, for some reason or other, must become some minor form of multinational corporation and engage in the exploration and development through Ontario funds of the Mackenzie Valley pipeline.

Well, I draw his attention -- I don’t know what day it was -- but William Wilder, of course, who was at the economic council meeting the other day, the chairman of Canadian Arctic Gas Pipeline Ltd., puts forward his own apologia that there’s lots of gas in Canada.

Mr. R. C. Hodgson (Victoria-Haliburton): Lots over there.

Mr. Renwick: I don’t know where this all comes out now, because if we are in fact going to phase out over a period of time our exports of gas to the United States, then the whole theory of piggybacking in order to get the Mackenzie Valley pipeline built is one which doesn’t seem to us to have any validity any longer. It also seems to us that those companies which already have taken the risk, and to which the minister is so fond of extolling the virtues of the big oil companies and the great risks which they take and the tax benefits which we give them because of the so-called risk which they take, are the ones who should in fact be exploiting and developing the use of those Arctic tar sands and the gas in the Northwest Territories and in the Yukon Territory and not the government of the Province of Ontario.

My understanding is, from one of the speeches made by, I think it was, the ambassador from the United States to Canada when he was talking about this energy situation, is that the United States’ multinational oil corporations have over $35 billion invested in Canada and that’s more than is invested in any single country by all of the multinational corporations other than in Canada. A substantial part of the ownership of our oil and gas resources is already in the hands of the multinational corporations.

It’s time, perhaps, if the minister is at the newsstand one of these times, for him to pick up the last issue and this current week’s issue of the New Yorker magazine, and read the first of a series of articles with respect to the operation of multinational corporations around the world. It is probably one of the finest articles that has ever been written about the nature of the decision-making process of those corporations and I include in that the multinational oil and gas corporations.

Mr. P. D. Lawlor (Lakeshore): Yes, and particularly the benign face of capitalism across the face of the earth -- child labour in Singapore.

Mr. Renwick: The government has simply got to say to itself, “That’s their league. We will make them do it if they won’t do it.” And they will, of course.

They will go to any length to preserve their so-called profit picture. They will go to any length to recover the return on their investment that they believe is essential for them to continue as viable organizations and we don’t need to have any part of it; and we don’t need to support in any way what they are about.

The minister, when he introduced this particular strange creature that we are asked to approve tonight, made the oddest statement: “I make it abundantly clear,” I wish he would drop that phrase, I would try to drop it --

Interjection by an hon. member.

Mr. Renwick: -- for reasons which I think are obvious -- “I made it abundantly clear in my statement on natural gas,” and the members must remember that when he is talking about the Ontario Energy Corp. the only other reference that he makes to any kind of energy is, for practical purposes, natural gas and that’s why I make the point that lie’s really going on this strange frolic of his own.

“I made it abundantly clear in my statement on natural gas that there’s no disposition for the Ontario Energy Corp. to undermine the activities of the private sector, quite the reverse,” he said. “It is not in Ontario’s interest to further exacerbate the tensions between private energy corporations and government or to increase the uncertainty that afflicts the industry. The purpose of this corporation is to secure the interests of Ontario in the matter of energy supply, and this will not be accomplished by prejudicing the circumstances of those corporations -- ”

Mr. Lawlor: They don’t make Steve Roman feel a bit bad.

Mr. Renwick: “ -- public or private, that are contributing toward this end. The Ontario Energy Corp. will, in a sense, stand between the public and the private sectors of our community.”

We don’t need the Ontario Energy Corp. to stand between the public and the private sectors of the economy of the Province of Ontario. It’s the government of Ontario which is responsible for the policies which we are to carry out, and we don’t need this strange kind of buffer that’s going to be used to funnel moneys out of the consolidated revenue fund into a corporation structured as a multinational corporation.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Renwick: “It will reinforce the contributions of both.” Why, he sounds like the chairman of Dow Chemical. But it will not rush about attempting to displace private activities in those many areas where activities are efficient, appropriate, timely and relevant to the real needs of Ontario.

The minister is not talking about chicken feed; he is talking about a lot of money, and he is talking about providing it for some of the largest corporations in the world. He structures it as a profit-making operation, and he says, but of course we don’t want to make any profit out of it.

So, what is he going to do? He is going to provide a large fund which is going to be made available and will find its way into the hands of the corporations, at the expense of the people in the Province of Ontario, and that supplementary financial assistance, in the many ways in which it will be made available to those corporations, will be made in such a way that the people who will benefit are simply the large corporations and their shareholders, and not the people of the Province of Ontario; except in the strange, roundabout way that the minister speaks of these matters: “Give them any amount of money, because we will have the benefit of the jobs which they create.”

That’s been the rationale for so long for the government giving these handouts to all sorts of corporations that it ought to have learned by now it is not a valid way for the Province of Ontario to conduct its business.

There’s so much legal, garbled, gobbledygook in that bill that it’s obvious that we could spend a lot of time chatting amongst ourselves, as the corporate lawyers -- if there happens to be one under the gallery -- or whoever dreamt up some of the phraseology, and it doesn’t deserve our time in the assembly and we’re not going to waste a lot of time about it. But the minister, in substance, is saying -- and he might, in the New Yorker magazine of a few weeks ago, read about the New York authority; what was that fellow’s name who practically ran New York? --

Mr. J. R. Breithaupt (Kitchener): Robert Moses?

Mr. Renwick: -- yes, Robert Moses -- think of the danger of establishing this kind of body. When the minister establishes this kind of body what will happen? The accountability to the Province of Ontario is reduced to one thing and one thing only, the tabling of an annual report in this assembly. There’s nothing else.

There’s nothing in there to say that the Minister of Energy will have to account for this corporation here. There’s nothing to say that the funds will be out of moneys appropriated by this assembly. There’s not a single thing about that. He is setting it up with a board of directors -- from where they re going to come, I don’t know. I don’t know where they’re going to come from. I suppose he will do the same as Mr. Macdonald, his counterpart up in Ottawa, when he was asked about that kind of question, as to where they were going to get the people who would form their advisory body to advise them on Mr. Wilder’s proposal for the Canadian Arctic gas pipeline consortium.

Mr. Macdonald was asked, has the department made a study that shows the Mackenzie line could not be built without piggybacking on the US demand -- that is, that shows that the line could not be built to supply Canadian markets alone? He said: “I must say that my department has not undertaken that study. What we have done is told the consortium that they’re going to have to make a case on this lime before the National Energy Board, and we have formed an advisory committee on northern pipeline financing, and they will provide some of the financing information to the department that we will need to evaluate the National Energy Board. We have formed an advisory committee on northern pipeline financing and they will provide some of the financing information to the department that we will need to evaluate the Canadian Arctic gas consortium case.”

Is this advisory group on financing from the private sector? This is a group drawn from the Canadian financial community attempting to pick them, so far as possible, from people other than the advisers of the Canadian Arctic Gas Study group. It must have been hard to find someone from the financial community without a vested interest in such a big scheme. How do you pick a Canadian chartered bank that is disinterested, Mr. Speaker? The answer is that you can’t really. They are all interested in the operation, but at least these men are not direct counsellors of the consortium. The men the minister appoints to the board of directors of this energy corporation will be from that community. They will be oriented toward the private business community; they will be oriented toward large capital formations; their judgment will not be subject to the scrutiny of this assembly or any body that will publicly require them to account for their policies. The government is going to provide this money and it is going to insulate this mammoth organization so far away from the assembly that it makes a mockery of accountability to the parliamentary process. The minister must be aware of that because the bill so provides.

I have got so carried away, Mr. Speaker, I have lost the bill. No, I have got it. There is nothing in the bill which tells us what this corporation is going to do. The legal jargon is such that it can do anything it wants or it can do nothing. The funds are out of the consolidated revenue fund, without any control to be paid over by the Treasurer, which simply means that the minister is going to use it for purposes which are going to be adverse in the long run to the public interest. Again I quote from the minister’s statement:

“As far as possible it is intended that the corporation will ultimately progress into a financially self-supporting and commercially viable enterprise.”

He goes on to say that it is not going to make any profit. In some nebulous way it is going to protect the public interest. There is no way in which it can protect the public interest, because that is the purpose of this minister. I think in substance what I have been trying to say and what I have been trying to say on behalf of our caucus is that it is not going to be used for purposes within the Province of Ontario. It is no longer necessary with respect to the exploration and development of the Arctic gas and oil reserves of Canada. They will be developed by private industry or by the federal government or by the provinces and territories within which they lie.

If the minister wants, as he originally thought, to establish a fund out of which he could make a kind of special investment from time to time that he thought made sense -- for example, if the federal government goes ahead with its national energy corporation and if the minister wanted to participate in that by way of loan or by way of participation with them -- that would be fine. But that could be done by a fund. He doesn’t need his own corporation for that purpose.

I am just so frightened with what the minister is doing with the energy policy, pursuing as he does his version of this reprivatization, that we are going to find that Ontario Hydro is beyond our control. We are going to find that the Ontario Energy Corp. is beyond our control. It would appear even that it is going to be beyond the control of the Ontario Energy Board. There is nothing that I can see that is going to have its policies reviewed or its investment policies decided upon or its activities subject to any kind of a review.

Why I am convinced -- and then I am going to sit down -- the minister is really talking about natural gas, is that in the same statement he tabled the order-in-council which will permit Ontario companies before the Energy Board in the gas field to include as part of their rate base the investments which they make outside the Province of Ontario in the exploration and development of gas reserves outside the province. Those are matters that are perfectly clear because the government has not touched the oil industry itself. The only one it’s touched is the gas industry and the gas industry can very well get long without the Province of Ontario, or if the Province of Ontario wants to participate it should participate jointly with the federal government through the National Energy Corp.

This is a misconceived vehicle. It’s designed to protect the public interest and it’s structured as a multinational corporation. It’s going to use funds that are not appropriated by this assembly on any annual basis. There’s never going to be a debate about the policy decisions which are made. We’re going to receive a corporate annual report once a year and the way this government operates, of course, even the standing committee on government commissions that used to be or the various standing committees now, will never have any opportunity to thoroughly discuss or understand what the Energy Board is about.

We’re opposed to it for all of those reasons, and if we can muster this evening five members of our caucus in the Ontario Legislature, we will vote in any event but we may very well ring the bells on the division.

An hon. member: The member for Windsor West (Mr. Bounsall) told me he wants to make a speech on this subject.

Mr. Renwick: Oh, does he? I can keep on. I’ve got a lot of stuff to read here. I am filling in time because my colleague does want to speak on the bill.

Hon. W. D. McKeough (Minister of Energy): Well, why don’t we adjourn until he gets here instead of wasting time?

Mr. Renwick: I don’t know, I would just as soon talk to the Minister of Energy.

Mr. Lawlor: The member for Riverdale may cast some pearls of wisdom before the Minister of Energy.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: We would be glad to adjourn while we’re waiting for the member’s colleague.

Mr. Renwick: The oil companies the minister doesn’t do anything about. He hasn’t touched them since he came to power. He hasn’t touched them during this crisis. He’s not going to touch them at any particular time.

Mr. Lawlor: There are things much to sacred.

Mr. Renwick: They are multinational corporations. They have a tremendous investment in Canada. They can take all of the risks which are involved and they don’t need a penny of the money of the people of the Province of Ontario to support them in that objective. So far as natural gas is concerned, it’s the minister’s fixation which is going to lead us into that kind of activity along with, presumably, his corporate friends and the Canadian Arctic gas pipeline consortium headed by his friend William Wilder who says: “There’s lots of gas.” In his speech to the Canadian Club in Toronto he said there’s lots of gas -- lots and lots of gas. His only concern is that we get the Mackenzie Valley pipeline built because he is afraid that if we don’t get it built now it will never be built. But all that he says is that there is lots of gas.

We don’t have to get involved in that. That gas will be exploited and we will have the benefit of it without a penny of this province’s money being spent. So far as uranium is concerned I simply state that the focus and attention of what we should be doing is within that field.

I’m very much concerned that there isn’t a single word in this bill, and from the time of the Throne Speech there hasn’t been a single word from the government, on the whole question of the environmental impact of all of these developments. There isn’t any of any kind and the hydro-electric power corporation in its developments is still using its own guidelines of Jan. 18, 1974, because the environmental impact bill has never seen the light of day. My guess is that it will never see the light of day in this session and probably in this parliament it will not be passed. That’s how little the minister cares for the environment, even though his Premier states it as one of the four major objectives of the policy of the government of Ontario.

We just think that the Ontario Energy Corp. is a farcical misconception which happens to appeal to the minister’s particular form of ego and his strange bombastic attitude toward the 19th century laissez-faire economic establishment of the Province of Ontario which he supports so happily.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Welland South.

Mr. R. Haggerty (Weiland South): Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to add a few comments related to Bill 158, An Act to establish the Ontario Energy Corp. I, like previous members, am perhaps a little skeptical of the government’s venture into the programme with government and private investments. It seems to be such a broad field, particularly when it covers many, many different segments of the operations, such as the construction of pipelines and the manufacturing of hydrocarbon systems. I suppose this is another venture that they can get into, and perhaps produce the manufacture of oil and gasoline to its final stages, and deal with exploration and research.

I will talk a little bit about exploration. I was thinking about the policy of this government in the past two decades. I happen to come from an area that was a heavy gas-producing area, along the shores of Lake Erie. I can recall that there were a number of small developers in that particular area that had small investments in gas wells in that area. Lo and behold, this government through its policy had put them out of business. Those wells weren’t too large wells -- they maybe produced 100,000 cu ft. some maybe 50,000, but they were serving a purpose.

I can well recall when Provincial Gas Co. was operating in that area, it supplied practically the whole peninsula until Consumers’ Gas moved into the picture and took over Provincial Gas, and brought in the western gas. Of course, these wells have been all plugged off. I don’t know if the minister now, in his conservation of energy, is going to go back and unplug some of these wells and let the small businessman get back into the picture again.

What actually disturbs me most, is that I think in one of his comments in his press release or statement in the House, he talked about enhancing the availability of energy in Ontario by stimulating resource exploration and development and expanding production capabilities throughout Canada and elsewhere. “Elsewhere” could be -- I wish the minister perhaps would indicate where elsewhere is. It could be over in the Arab countries or Middle East. It could be down in Venezuela; it could be in Africa; maybe even in the Province of Saskatchewan. I almost hesitate to think that the minister is moving in this direction; perhaps he is more of a socialist than we realize he is.

Mr. Lawlor: Oh, don’t say that about him; this will make him feel bad.

Mr. W. Ferrier (Cochrane South): He is a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Mr. Haggerty: You want to believe that.

Mr. Lawlor: He is a sheep in wolf’s clothing.

Mr. Haggerty: I suppose when we get into this matter, when we are dealing with moving from one province to another in the transportation of energy, the establishing of plants and facilities raises the question of the constitution here in Canada -- just whose responsibility it is in this particular field, when it becomes interprovincial, and perhaps out of the province’s agreements with other countries, and so forth. I was wondering what the minister’s inclination is to this particular matter about the constitution in Canada; whose jurisdiction it falls under. Does it fall under the provincial government, or the federal government? I believe it is federal policy, federal control.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: I am sorry, when the matter is...?

Mr. Haggerty: When we are dealing with the matter of interprovincial agreements, and agreements outside of the country -- and I think the minister’s talking about exporting perhaps gas and oil to the United States and perhaps to some other country, when he is talking “elsewhere” -- the matter deals with, particularly, just whose responsibility it is. I believe it is the responsibility of the federal government. Perhaps the minister would like to add a few comments on that later on.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Yes.

Mr. Haggerty: I am a little bit alarmed at the present time that there is the present disagreement between the province and the federal government now and the question of jurisdiction; and the matter of the taxing of royalties here in Canada. This perhaps raises a rather large issue with Alberta and Saskatchewan.

I was glad to see, today, I believe it was, that the Premier of Alberta had changed his views on taxing the oil companies on further royalties. Perhaps he is beginning to see the light and that it is actually federal responsibility when it comes to the question of taxation of industry across this dominion of ours.

The matter, particularly, of the Saskatchewan government, where they have tried to establish their own energy corporation, raises the question here again to me whether this isn’t the step or method by which perhaps he is trying to circumvent federal taxes by establishing a provincial Crown corporation. Perhaps this is another matter that the minister may want to add to his comments -- whether this government is trying to set up a Crown corporation so that the oil companies that are going to venture into this partnership will not be paying federal taxes.

The member for Riverdale mentioned the feasibility of the government participating in the cost of the installation of the pipeline, I guess it is, from the Arctic islands down to the Province of Ontario. I believe it was suggested in the Throne Speech that the government was interested in it, so perhaps it is going to participate in it. As the member stated, it’s questionable from the environmental studies that were made whether the gas can be moved down through that corridor by a pipeline from the Arctic islands to Ontario.

Again, that raises the question of what this is going to cost the taxpayers. Are we going to have the same deal as we have with the provincial pipelines now from Alberta down to the southern part of Ontario, down through the States, and so forth?

Finally, when we do get the product down here to the Province of Ontario, it’s being transmitted to a private corporation. I know the minister has said he doesn’t want any part of the gas corporations in the Province of Ontario -- such as Consumers’ Gas or Union Gas, which are doing an excellent job here -- but what is it going to cost the taxpayers for the end product?

The government is going to ask the Province of Ontario and its people to participate in it. It is going to ask them to spend perhaps millions of dollars -- billions of dollars, I should say -- because we don’t know what it is going to cost. What are we going to get in return for public investment in this? Are we going to get a fair price for our gas? Is it going to be based on $1.25 a thousand cubic feet? Who is going to make the profit from it? And where is the profit going to go? The minister said before, I think, in his statement that there will be no profit made. If there is no profit made, then I’m afraid he is not going to get the private investors into it, because they are going to be looking for something in return.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: I didn’t say that.

Mr. Haggerty: I thought the minister indicated that in his speech. Well, then I understand that there is going to be a profit made from it, hopefully, and some of this will be coming back to the consumer in the Province of Ontario. Are we going to have lower prices for home gas? If that is the case, I think the government probably may sell it to the people of the Province of Ontario. But I kind of hesitate, because it’s rather expensive to get involved in such a large corporation and such a large venture into this field.

I was a little bit alarmed when I picked up the newspaper -- I think it was yesterday in the Toronto Star where it said that the petroleum companies are reducing their exploration and development spending because they say overlapping higher federal and provincial taxes make it insufficiently profitable to look for oil and natural gas. Now, if after all the tax concessions that the federal government has given to the oil companies over the past decades in tax relief, fast write-offs and depletion allowances they can just pull out like that and say, “We are no longer interested in the development of the tar sands here” -- Syncrude, I believe it is -- there are three oil companies in there which have said they are no longer interested in it. Could this same thing happen here with this corporation that the government is going to establish in the Province of Ontario after the taxpayers’ money is put into it, so that we find out perhaps they are going to have to pay taxes on it and they say they are not interested in it and pull out? I think it’s under the federal jurisdiction, and perhaps when we come to an oil policy or energy policy it should be dealt with at the federal level, with the province participating at that level, and when we look at it from there, I think perhaps the governments should make this venture alone. Both governments or perhaps all the governments of Canada should be shareholders in this, and not deal with private enterprises whatsoever.

Last spring or last summer the federal government came out with an energy study to tell us how well off we were, that we had reserves for the next 30 or 40 years, but in this last week or so they came out with another study and said that in perhaps eight years, Canada would be facing an energy crisis. Are the reserves there? We don’t know that, do we? I mean, it is going to be expensive if they get into the exploration deal.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Does the hon. member want me to answer the question?

Mr. Haggerty: No, no. He can answer it when he replies.

What I am suggesting to the minister is that statement means that the oil companies are backing off and that we don’t have the reserves here. I think there should be an energy policy controlled by the federal government. I don’t approve of the Quebec government going over to France and saying, “Look, we are going to sell you all the uranium you want.” I think this minister has indicated that he was interested in taking over the uranium mines in the Province of Ontario. The more I think of it, I think he is more of a socialist than anything.

Again, when it comes to energy, I think it should be a matter of one central government making the decisions, but with negotiations with the provincial governments. That can be done at the federal-provincial conferences. I don’t approve of this minister establishing a corporation here, and another government establishing another corporation, with everybody going off in all directions. I think energy is too important to Canadians. I think we should establish Canadian priorities first; if we have excess oil, then by all means we should export it.

The other matter I am concerned about is the minister’s statement that he would encourage the development of processes and equipment which would avoid the wasteful use of energy and minimize environmental damage. Well, the member for Riverdale and, I believe, the member for Huron (Mr. Riddell), have indicated that we don’t have enough technology or knowledge about the nuclear wastes that are being dumped into our waterways and into our air in Ontario.

I know the minister has indicated previously that he is a great promoter of building more nuclear plants in the Province of Ontario, but again I have to question this attitude when I think of the recent United Nations report that said Canada’s position is going to remain almost unchanged as far as expansion of population is concerned. I think the United States is in the same boat.

I wonder if this minister is going to follow the same policies as those of the former Minister of Education in the past decade, when he went out and built all those schools and then we found we didn’t have enough children to put into them. Are we going to do the same thing in terms of our energy policy? Are we going to build all those plants that are on the drawing boards simply for the purpose of exporting power to the United States?

One of the members who spoke previously mentioned that we control almost 80 per cent of the uranium in Canada. I would say, in that regard, that there should be some tighter controls so that we don’t allow too much uranium to go outside the country, because I believe it isn’t necessarily going to be used for energy; it might be used for more drastic purposes.

Regarding the development at Nanticoke, where we have some problems with the fossil fuel plants, I don’t see why we should have any problems with technology dealing with steam-generating plants, since it has been used in this province and elsewhere in the world for the past 60 years. For the life of me, I can’t find out why we are having those problems which have completely shut down a plant as large as that one and we don’t know when it is going to start up.

I am more interested in the new city of about 300,000 that the government is talking about building in the Nanticoke area. When one drives by that plant, and particularly when one sees that big mound of earth there -- I believe it is a holding tank to control the heat of the water before it is returned to the lake -- considering the minister’s emphasis on the conservation of energy, perhaps we should be using that excess heat and steam in the new city to give the people all the steam heat they want to heat their homes. I think it is worthwhile looking into.

There is another matter concerning the conserving of energy, which this minister hasn’t indicated here. You look around and see these government buildings lit up night after night; we look down here at the Frost Building, all lit up -- we look at any of the government buildings here. And right now we are in an energy crisis with the phasing out at the present time of the two plants -- part of the one at Pickering and Nanticoke -- and we do have a shortage of hydro electricity in Ontario. There has been no move by this minister to say: “Turn out some of these lights.”

This minister hasn’t given any direction to the automobile industry here in Ontario to perhaps build a smaller car, put a smaller engine into it to conserve gasoline. There is no indication from the minister; he has sat on this now for almost a year. I believe I raised a question to him in the House concerning this particular matter, that perhaps if we are serious about the future energy here in Canada, that we should be looking at smaller cars.

Getting right back into the meat of the bill, the select committee on economic and cultural nationalism recommends that a long run goal of non-renewable natural resources policy is to ensure that at least 75 per cent of the equity of all new ventures in the non-renewable natural resources sector, after the implementation of the committee’s recommendation, be owned by Canadians. So what they are saying there is that -- I can’t find in the bill just what percentage that the Province of Ontario is going to control -- I think it is 51 per cent. It goes on to say single non-resident, or related groups of non-residents, own more than 10 per cent of the equity of debentures in the non-renewable natural resources sector, and I believe that part is in the bill.

The other matter I raised about the 51 per cent ownership here is that I think when the committee suggests 75 per cent, the minister should be looking at that goal; 75 per cent controlled by the Province of Ontario. And the reason I mention this, is that the Treasurer (Mr. White), just here a week or so ago, when he had just come back from the Middle East, with the oil-producing countries over there, said perhaps this is where the big investment of capital is going to come from. With the windfall received by the OPEC countries there and the multinational corporations, I can see some of the windfall coming back to the Province of Ontario for investment purposes in such a corporation as the minister has suggested.

It’s kind of hard to take, isn’t it, when you have to have an oil-producing country, as Canada is, go outside the country and bring back foreign investment to the Province of Ontario -- in fact, to Canada. I believe the federal government has netted well over $1 billion on the tax on the present oil-producing provinces. With that amount of money and the province wanting to invest into an energy corporation, you would think that the province would be looking to the federal government and going in partnership with them more than with the private industry.

I think this is the direction in which I would hope that the minister would be moving -- that it should be strictly controlled by the federal government with the aid and assistance of the provincial governments.

The other matter I was concerned about was sections 12 and 13 of the bill. I am not quite sure what he means by a Canadian resident; by that I guess they should be living here 12 months of the year. I may question that. You know, Mr. Speaker, if you look out to Alberta, some of the oil kings there can have residences in Canada, but live outside Canada. I would have to question that particular section and the interpretation of a resident Canadian; I would like to see the words “Canadian citizen” there.

Well, Mr. Speaker, with those comments, I am rather hesitant to perhaps support the bill, but I will wait to see what the minister has in response to the questions I have asked him. Maybe he can shed some more light on to it and maybe by that time I may change my mind.

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

Mr. E. J. Bounsall (Windsor West): Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I rise tonight, certainly with mixed feelings on this bill. Mixed feelings because this is the type of bill, setting up a Crown corporation in the energy field for the purpose of exploration and development and research in the whole field of energy, that normally would be legislation our party would feel quite comfortable in supporting.

I have severe reservations, as does the hon. member for Riverdale, on the accountability to the public and to the members of this Legislature that is not found in this bill. I might just draw the attention of the Minister of Energy to exactly what happened in an amendment to the Workmen’s Compensation Act last December, in which section 81 (c), subsection 2 of that Act read the same as section 22 (2) of the bill before us, this Act to establish the Ontario Energy Corp.

What was added to the Workmen’s Compensation bill is precisely what needs to be added to section 22 (2) of this bill. The wording is identical, but what is missing in this bill is in reference to the annual report. Section 22 (2) refers to the annual report of the Energy Corp. What is missing is the simple phrase, “and the report shall then be referred to a standing committee of the assembly.”

It’s very crucial that that phrase be added, Mr. Speaker, so that at least yearly the directors of this corporation and its general manager, or whatever structural form the corporation takes, come before this House so that any members of this House can question what it has been doing; what directions the corporation is going to take in the future; the disposal of its assets, and why; and what assets it is acquiring, and why. That information must become public; and also, at the same time, other members of the public in Ontario should be able to come in and address themselves to that annual report.

I would hope the minister would simply take the wording as I’ve pointed it out to him, the wording which was inserted in the Workmen’s Compensation Act amendment -- so that the members of this House and the public could finally have the Workmen’s Compensation board accountable, at least once a year -- however poor a two- or three-day-a-session shot at the Workmen’s Compensation board may be, we have them accountable to us. That is the least that should be added to this bill so that yearly, after tabling of that report, it be referred to a standing committee of this assembly so that everyone in this assembly and the general public can in fact have a thorough discussion over a two- or three-day period, however inadequate that may be, of what is going on in that corporation in all its movements and machinations.

There are several other things I’d like to say, Mr. Speaker, about this particular bill. Perhaps it’s unfortunate that the present minister is the Minister of Energy at this particular time when a bill like this comes before us. As the minister is no doubt aware, I have felt ever since he became the minister, not perhaps right at the start but subsequent to that, that he has been mesmerized by conventional fuel sources -- by coal and by hydrocarbons, meaning the crude oil and natural gas, and fossil fuels. To date we have no evidence that this minister has raised (his eyes to the future at all to contemplate what may be the forms of energy, other than the conventional fuel sources available now, that we in Ontario will be required to use. There’s no evidence this minister has taken even the slightest glance into the future to see what we should be doing. If that is not the case, I would like the minister to stand up and tell us that and tell us about the glances and what directions he has been taking.

There are really four areas I would like to touch on very briefly which the minister should be glancing toward. One is the nuclear power stations which we have. The minister, through Ontario Hydra, has a full plan of the building of nuclear power stations for the generation of electrical energy in this province.

I have one word about that. That programme seems to be well along, but I think many of the Hydro stations are being built in precisely the wrong places, in the developed areas of southern Ontario. The series of stations along the north shores of Lake Ontario cannot be justified in their locations.

In terms of the nuclear power plants themselves, as far as I can determine, as both a chemical engineer and a chemist, those are safe plants. I have no hesitation in defending them in terms of technology or in terms of their day-to-day operation.

I believe those plants to be safe in day-to-day operation and virtually sabotage-free. They would only be of some danger to the population in time of war. If war comes along we are all in danger anyway; so the added nuclear problem of power stations becomes an academic point in time of war.

What does concern me about the nuclear stations -- and I am on record two or three times in this House -- is the disposal and retention of the nuclear-active waste. That is a problem we need to be concerned about. It is a concern that stretches thousands of years into the future. I am not yet relieved in my mind that we have really come to grips with the enormity of that problem. Having said that, the need for this is one of the matters about which the Ontario Energy Corp. should be concerning itself and should be assuring itself, that is the safe storage, for years into the future, of those radioactive wastes.

Having said that, I want to turn to a subject on which I have again spoken in this House several times. Rather than going to the expense of extensive exploration for natural gas sources in this country, which are inevitably going to run out, what with the finite lifetime on the availability of those resources, the minister and the energy corporation should be turning their eyes very seriously in the future to the production of hydrogen gas as a replacement for natural gas. It is a very simple procedure. It uses only water as its source and needs electricity for the electrolysis. These plants could be built right next to the nuclear power stations, if one could solve the nuclear waste storage problem. The transmission of this hydrogen gas is more simple and cheaper than the transmission of electrical power.

If one is going to look at energy from the point of view of how it is best transmitted, then one uses the electrical power at the source to make hydrogen gas.

The waste product from hydrogen gas is simply water again, and the cycle of returning the water which one uses up in electrolysis is complete, with water the only end product at the burning. It is a very simple, complete cycle with no complicated intermediate occurrences.

Hydrogen gas, once produced, is simple to transmit. We have a natural gas transmission system anyway into which hydrogen gas could be fed, Mr. Speaker.

When I asked the minister a question related to the production of hydrogen, when he introduced the Ontario Energy Corp. Act in the House the other day, he said at that time -- I haven’t got the Hansard to quote it directly -- he said as far as he was concerned there were enough research funds being spent on the technology of hydrogen so that this energy corporation would not be, in his opinion, required to spend any development or research funds in that direction.

This is precisely where I think the minister should be spending his research funds. We are about 10 to 15 years away from hydrogen production by electrolysis being technically feasible. By some expenditure of research funds now and with patents on the technology that we devise through the expenditure of those funds to develop that hydrogen technology, we could materially move up the date. I would like to know from the minister in his reply if he can at this point tell us what amounts of funds are being spent on hydrogen technology development, where and in reports to the minister when he expects this hydrogen technology to be ready for our use, rather than what would be the extremely expensive problem of finding natural gas somewhere up in the Arctic and transmitting that down with all the hundreds and thousands of miles of pipelines that would have to be built, at very high expense to get is to the market areas.

Third, as energy sources I don’t think the minister has really taken seriously the proposals of my colleague, the member for Sandwich-Riverside (Mr. Burr), in the areas of solar heat which certainly has potential in my opinion, and of wind energy which I must admit I know much less about than I do solar energy and perhaps should not be commenting upon at all, except that I’m sure an expenditure of some research funds in this area -- perhaps it need be only library research at the moment -- would indicate to us in the House and to the public in Ontario, and particularly to the minister himself, just how feasible wind energy may be as a source of energy to relieve some of our problems.

I look at this bill, Mr. Speaker, as a bill which on the face of it I would normally support. I have severe reservations over the accountability -- that is the lack thereof -- to the public of the operation of this entire corporation. I am not convinced that the minister has really taken any sort of a lead at all in looking at the sources of energy and the means of getting that energy to us for the future that the Minister of Energy in Ontario should. He perhaps is leaving it entirely to the board of directors of the corporation to decide to get into this entire area. If that is the case, it would be interesting for us, and not only interesting but very desirable, that there should be a debate before a standing committee of this House as to precisely what actions are to be taken and what amounts of money this corporation was going to be spending in this area. We would then get a feeling of how serious they were in commitments to non-conventional fuel and energy sources. We would get a feeling of whether they were committed to all forms of energy and not just the conventional fuel sources.

I would feel a bit better about this bill if every year for two or three days we could question very carefully the managing director and the board of directors of this corporation. In the absence of any clear direction or clear leadership by the Minister of Energy other forms of fuel and other forms of energy should be extensively studied and gone into. I fear very much that I will have to vote against this bill although I must point out to the minister that nothing in section 6 precludes the corporation from going into the areas that I have talked about. There is still no commitment on the part of the minister or on the part of this government to so do.

Mr. Speaker: Does any other hon. member wish to take part in this debate? The hon. minister.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Mr. Speaker, I have appreciated the comments made by the three hon. members this evening who have spoken.

Mr. Haggerty: Four.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Four, I’m sorry. We’ve covered a rather wide range of subjects. I’m not sure that some parts of it -- I wouldn’t hesitate a guess as to how much -- would have anything to do with the Ontario Energy Corp., but you, sir, have been your usual benevolent self and have allowed the debate to range widely. Perhaps on a quiet evening that isn’t the worst thing in the world. I will try to answer the questions that were put, not necessarily in the order of their asking.

The first thing I have to point out -- with the greatest of respect and not meaning to be provocative -- is the very apparent contradiction which emerged between the statements of the member for Huron on the one hand, supported by the member for Windsor West I might say, and of the hon. member for Riverdale.

The member for Riverdale spoke of the enormous resources which were needed, in terms of capital, in terms of money and in terms of manpower to develop nuclear energy; he really suggested, if I heard him correctly, that that is what we should be devoting all of our resources to. With the greatest of respect to the member for Windsor West and the member for Huron, they said we should be charging off and becoming world leaders in other areas. I don’t say that to be critical; I simply point out the contradictions in what the hon. members have said.

I think I would probably come down, if I were asked to come down on one side or the other, to agree with my friend from Riverdale that there is a great deal we don’t know about nuclear technology. We have become world leaders in terms of the success of the particular brand of nuclear technology with which we have gone -- the Candu nuclear technology. We have, as taxpayers in this province and in this country, we have through AECL, every reason as citizens of this province and Canadians to be very proud of what other Canadians have achieved in terms of a highly successful, safe system of producing electricity in the Candu nuclear technology. Despite the fact that one unit at Pickering has been out -- through in lay terms, in my view, an engineering problem, a metallurgical problem as much as anything -- since August, the nuclear generating plant at Pickering is still the most successful plant in the world. It will turn out power at a higher rate of production in 1974, as it did in 1973, than any other large nuclear plant in the world. Despite that problem, which will be solved, we have a great deal to be very proud of.

Having said that, there is no question but that just simply to keep abreast and to move ahead, enormous resources of men, of material, of women, of dollars, will be necessary to maintain our position. That is not to say that we should not be interested in other forms of energy or that we should not keep our eye on developing sources of energy. I think if I were coming down on one side or another of the issue as portrayed by hon. members opposite, I would probably come down on the side of my friend from Riverdale and say that if we had a choice we do have an enormous commitment to make, and to continue to make, in terms of nuclear technology.

I want to point out to my friend from Riverdale that this bill is not all-embracing. He quoted the very fine goals stated by the Premier at the first ministers’ conference on energy in January. I have forgotten exactly what they were, but they included self-sufficiency, price, conservation of energy, and so on. I don’t think this bill does damage to any one of those goals, but it certainly is not intended to satisfy all of those goals in itself.

One of the hon. members made mention of the fact that we tabled at the same time, complementary to the purposes of this bill, the order in council for the Ontario Energy Board hearing with respect to the rate base investments of the Ontario gas utilities. That is another aspect, and there will undoubtedly be more. I certainly would not want to suggest that Ontario’s energy policy and Ontario’s energy programme are wrapped up completely in Bill 158. There are other bows in our quiver which will come forth in the fullness of time.

I want to say to the member for Durham (Mr. Carruthers) who asked about -- well who made reference I suppose to the editorial which was in the Globe -- who asked about the kind of directors that will be appointed. They have not been appointed, nor have they been chosen. But they will be, I trust, the kind of people who can give -- and I make no apology for this, this will be very much of a business corporation; it is a business corporation under the Business Corporations Act and it will be as business-like and efficient as it can be.

I don’t think it needs to have the broad range of viewpoints, for example, which one finds, and which we take some pride in on this side of the House, which one finds on the board of Ontario Hydro, a complete spectrum of Ontario society. We won’t be striving to achieve that, in my view, on the board of the Ontario Energy Corp.

They will be, much as that is objectionable to my friend from Riverdale, they will be a board of directors in that best sense of the word and they will be businessmen or women. They will, hopefully, have a bent toward economy and efficiency and running a profitable operation.

What I said in the statement when I introduced the bill, is that the primary goal of this corporation will not be to make a profit; it will be to provide energy to the people of Ontario.

That is not to say it is a non-profit organization; anything but; however the primary goal will not be to make a profit. Hopefully they will make a profit. They will take risks and they’ll make losses. Overall we would expect that they will make a profit, and I return to that, but that is not their number one goal -- and that’s all I said in the statement which I made on the introduction of the bill.

I think the member for Huron said I had a preoccupation with natural gas. I suppose that may be our most critical problem at the moment and that’s been the reason we have had more of a preoccupation with natural gas than other forms of energy. What expertise we had in the government in terms of energy, other than electricity -- and I don’t say this in any critical sense -- but in a very narrow way was in the field of natural gas through our regulation of the Ontario utilities. We had little or no expertise in terms of coal or in terms of oil. Within the ministry we are gradually and slowly building a little bit of knowledge, which may be a dangerous thing. I suppose, but we are building up some sort of an expertise. But we did not have it to begin with and that’s why, perhaps, we have devoted more of our attention to natural gas, which I would say at this moment probably is the most serious among our problems, a soluble problem, but probably the most serious at the moment.

Mr. Renwick: How is the Hydro experiment with western coal coming along?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: The tests this summer?

Mr. Renwick: Yes.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Hydro burned -- they didn’t burn as much as they hoped to or they didn’t get all they had hoped to get -- but they had wanted 500,000 tons for test burns this summer and most of it went very well, I am told. Some of it was mixed with oil, some with gas, and some was blended with American coal. By and large the tests went rather well. Hydro is negotiating, and negotiating hard at this moment in time, with the full support -- perhaps there is a stronger word than that -- with full support of the ministry with producers in western Canada, hoping to achieve very large quantities of coal from Western Canada, up to 6,000,000 tons -- put that figure on the record -- as soon as two or three years from now.

There is money being spent in this country on solar energy, on wind energy, on geothermal energy. if I have appeared at times perhaps not to take my friend from Windsor as seriously as I might -- he is a very serious person and I should take him more seriously -- I do assure the House we are keeping an eye on this. It isn’t one of our high priorities, wind energy; nor is solar energy. We don’t have that much sunlight in Canada as compared to Arizona or the south of France; it lust isn’t here. And because we don’t have as much it is not as economic here as it will be in Arizona or as it will be in the south of France -- and it is not economic there at this moment in time. It will be many years, in my view, before solar energy or wind energy is economic. If electrical energy cost were of no concern -- and it is of great concern to the people of this province -- I suppose we’d say, sure, let’s go for some of these things faster rather than later. But as long as the most economic forms of energy are from the conventional fuels and from uranium, then that is the direction in which we will be pushing.

That is not to say that we are not monitoring what is going on in these fields, and we have a person on staff who is paying particular attention to these things. In terms of solar energy in particular we, with the Ministry of Housing, have been working on something, which is small and experimental, but we are lending our support to it and arranging, we hope, for a modest amount of money. In terms of wind energy, members will recall that the Speech from the Throne this year spoke of, with the urging of my friend the Minister of Community and Social Services, the member for Cochrane North (Mr. Brunelle) -- one of his great passions, if I can put it that way, since he was first elected to this House, has been the electrification of the very remote communities in northern Ontario, not only in Cochrane North but throughout northern Ontario. The Speech from the Throne spoke to that this year, and I would hope that perhaps before the House rises, if not, soon after, we will be able to present to the members -- I won’t be doing it, it’ll probably be the Minister of Transportation and Communications (Mr. Rhodes) -- really a rather complete picture of what we hope to be able to achieve in terms of improved communications.

You saw one of the stories in the paper the other day, Mr. Speaker -- about the $18 million, which is an awful lot of money. That in turn depends on electrification of a number of communities, not lust for purposes of communities, not just for purposes of communication but also for the benefits which electricity can give to those communities. In several instances we are looking very seriously at using wind power, either as a supplement or as more than a supplement, for some of those communities. I don’t want to raise anybody’s enthusiasm that much. Wind-driven generators don’t produce that much power; you can’t count on it. But perhaps as a supplement to what is going to be a very, very expensive programme to provide power in northern Ontario, which will be subsidized for years, it may be that on the basis of the amount of subsidization that is necessary to provide power in a remote community, in that very remote community -- and I can’t think of any place else that it might be true for a long time to come -- it might be that wind power as a supplement might make economic sense. In the course of the next year or so I think we’ll be saying something more about it.

I put those two things on the record simply to indicate that we do take --

Mr. Lawlor: What about lignite deposits?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: -- my persistent friend from Sandwich-Riverside more seriously than he sometimes thinks.

Mr. Lawlor: What about the lignite, Mr. Speaker?

Mr. Speaker: Order please.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: The lignite?

Hon. R. Brunelle (Minister of Community and Social Services): That’s a good question.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: That’s another great concern of my friend from Cochrane North.

Mr. Ferrier: It’s been a question of concern for 30 years.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: The member should ask the Minister of Natural Resources (Mr. Bernier) that question rather than me. At this moment, from Hydro’s point of view it’s in the wrong place. It’s not a high Btu lignite. Lignite from Saskatchewan is much better lignite in terms of burnability. But it becomes more and more attractive to Hydro every day as the cost of everything goes up, and it may have other uses. I don’t think I’d like to say more than that at this moment, but the Ministry of Natural Resources is very much involved in discussions and negotiations and in studies. And I leave it at that for the moment.

Conservation: My friend from Riverdale is not here at the moment and my friend from -- oh, somebody else; I do have more than one here tonight -- said that we weren’t concerned with conservation.

Mr. I. Deans (Wentworth): More than one friend? That’s the problem, has he more than one friend?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: I would refer my friend to section 6 (a) (v) of the bill:

“ -- encourage the development of processes and equipment that will avoid the wasteful use of energy and that will minimize harm to the environment.”

Conservation is very much part of the aims of the corporation.

Having said that, I would stress that I think for some time -- let me come at it this way -- the member has asked what the corporation is going to do and then, I must say, he has also criticized the corporation, or me, because I said that the goals of the corporation, in my view, in the first instance are going to be related to natural gas. He has asked me on the one hand to be more specific, and because I have been so he has said I shouldn’t be.

The energy corporation, as I see it, will have a principal role in the first year or so to try and bring some order out of the natural gas situation. They will undoubtedly move on to other forms of energy, but they are not going to be able to do everything at once. It might have been better not to say that gas in my view would be the priority, I might have said that they were going to cover the waterfront, but realistically they will not.

Mr. Bounsall: Gas is fine. It is just the wrong gas. The government has just chosen the wrong gas.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Oh I see. Hydrogen gas? I will come to that in a minute, if the member wishes.

Conservation for a while, despite the fact that this is a stated purpose and a goal of the corporation, I think will be within the government. The private sector will be coordinated more within the Ministry of Energy than within the corporation itself, although that ultimately can be a goal -- the powers are there.

We will, I would hope in the next couple of months, be presenting to the House a rather full report on energy management programmes. That’s the term we are using -- energy management programmes as opposed to just energy conservation. We hope to have that report ready for members in a couple of months’ time.

On uranium, I would say to my friend from Riverdale that the further development of the nuclear process -- perhaps even the hydrogen economy which so very much depends on electrical energy to begin with -- may well be more in the continuing ambit of Ontario Hydro as opposed to the Ontario Energy Corp. Certainly the nuclear programme will.

I don’t envisage that the Energy Corp. will have anything, or not very much, to do with the generation of electricity per se. They may very well get involved in uranium in one form or another, but Hydro’s mandate is electricity and we would hope to leave that mandate with them; the Energy Corp. would stay out of that mandate and concentrate on other forms of energy. Obviously there will be crossing over, but basically that division, we hope, will be maintained.

Some people have said, of course: “Well, why didn’t you put what you are proposing to do here into Hydro?” Hydro, in our view, is large enough and complex enough that it doesn’t need additional roles or additional jobs to do. It has its hands very full.

My friend from Riverdale said: “If there’s lots of gas” -- and he was quoting Mr. Wilder -- “then why do we have to piggyback?” With respect, the proposal would not be to piggyback Canadian gas; we are talking about piggybacking American gas. Regardless of how much Canadian gas there is, unless we want to export it, we need the combination of the gas for the Canadian market coming from Canadian sources and the gas from Alaska going to American supplies -- the combination of the two, in CAGSL’s view -- to make the pipeline as economic as it can be.

Now I am not putting the rubber stamp of approval on that. I am simply explaining to the member what “piggyback” means, which has nothing to do, really, with how much Canadian gas is available or how much the Canadian demand is. It’s the combination of the two things that is important.

I would have to say, of course, to my friend from Riverdale that he was never better than at the ending of his remarks, and I am not going to say very much. It was a very doctrinaire speech. He would be much happier, obviously, if the bill simply said: “We’re going to take over the uranium industry, the oil industry and the natural gas industry and get it over with.” If we don’t do anything else but that, then he’d be happy. Really, that came through. They are getting so moderate over there, it was refreshing to hear a really good socialist speech which he did make tonight.

Mr. F. Laughren (Nickel Belt): You’re damn right.

Mr. Breithaupt: The last hurrah!

Hon. Mr. McKeough: It really was. It was complete nationalization.

Mr. Lawlor: We have such a difficult time keeping up with the minister.

Mr. Renwick: Would the minister answer a question?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: I’d be delighted.

Mr. Renwick: Mr. Speaker, would the minister let us know whether or not the federal government is prepared to relinquish its control over the uranium industry and restore it to the Province of Ontario? Is any progress being made in those discussions?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: In a word, I would say the answer is no. They have no intention of relinquishing it and have moved the other way completely. In answer to the member’s question, they have now moved rightly or wrongly, in Bill C-32 which is now before the House of Commons, to exert their control very strongly over oil and natural gas. The member reads the bill broadly enough, this includes probably electricity as well, but specifically oil and natural gas. Without commenting on the constitutionality of Bill C-32 -- which may well find its way into the courts, according to what I read emanating from both Alberta and Saskatchewan -- I would say this, that the constitutionality of the seizure, the term we use for the control of uranium, is undoubtedly legal. The reasons for it may have disappeared, but the law officers of the Crown would advise us that if we try to do much about it we wouldn’t get very far.

Mr. Renwick: Is that right? I didn’t know there was any emergency power under the constitution.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: I’m not a lawyer, but they’ve had it for so long we should have screamed a lot sooner. I think, in lay language, that’s the gist of the argument

Accountability is worrying some of my friends opposite. I suspect for a few years at any rate there will be an annual appropriation in the estimates each year to build up either the investment by Ontario in the Ontario corporation or loans may well appear in the estimates or supplementary estimates. Perhaps they will by the end of this year, if a significant amount has been spent by the end of this year.

Mr. Bounsall: It is important

Hon. Mr. McKeough: It’s certainly important and that’s what ministers of the Crown are all about. The way one expresses that is, he says that the minister lays a report before the assembly. I might say that that’s exactly what the Saskatchewan power legislation says, which I had occasion to look at the other day, and a number of other pieces of legislation in that socialist Valhalla out west. The minister shall lay the report before the assembly.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Renwick: It is a people’s government out there.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: I would point out that the Act establishing both the Hydro commission and the Hydro corporation, which has been around for 60 years, says nothing more and nothing less than that the minister shall lay the report before the assembly.

Mr. Bounsall: It should be amended too.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: I would point out that my estimates this year -- and members were very charitable and very kind and didn’t even want to reduce them to a dollar or my salary to a dollar -- took about 16 hours. I would guess that at least 10 hours of that were debated on Hydro policy, although there isn’t one penny in the estimates of the Ministry of Energy or any other ministry of this government for Ontario Hydro. Members spent well over half of the time which I am charged with in accounting to this House for my actions both in the past and in the estimates before the House, in debating the policies of Ontario Hydro.

Mr. Renwick: They used to come before a standing committee.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: This little red herring of accountability --

Mr. Renwick: They used to come before a standing committee.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: If the members wanted them to go to a committee, they might have requested it.

Mr. Ferrier: Why didn’t the minister offer to do it?

Mr. Deans: We can’t get them before a committee. We are having a hell of a time getting the WCB before a committee and that is where they are supposed to go.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Really, that little outburst doesn’t become the member.

Mr. Deans: It’s true. It does become me. We’re having a hell of a time getting them before a committee.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: He should discuss that with the minister. The rules of this House clearly say that estimates are dealt with here or they’re dealt with in committee --

Mr. Renwick: It should be dealt with here.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: -- and if the members feel keenly enough about my estimates going to a committee they should say so here, and I will say that we are going to deal with them here; because I will deal with them, and not my officials; but we will have that discussion some day.

Mr. Deans: But how do we get Hydro to a committee?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: How do we get Hydro to a committee?

Mr. Deans: How do we get them there?

Hon. McKeough: Get me to a committee first, and then if we want Hydro to come, fine and dandy.

Mr. Laughren: The minister said he wouldn’t go.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Certainly. The members have never asked me to take my estimates to committee. They have never asked me to take my estimates to committee. They never have asked.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order please. The hon. minister has the floor on the second reading of this bill.

Mr. Breithaupt: Since when are we asking him?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: If I had been asked, I would have considered it -- and in due course rendered a decision.

Interjections by hon. members.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: However, there is no question about accountability. You know, those socialists should really practise what they preach, and look at some of the successful socialist enterprises -- and there are some -- or government-controlled enterprises -- that are around. Look at the United Kingdom. Find out if British Steel, which is 100 per cent owned, lays a report before the House of Commons. It doesn’t. Look at British Petroleum. Ask if their report is laid before the House of Commons. It is not. British Petroleum is probably one of the better petroleum companies around.

If the members are going to talk about nationalization, and doing it well -- and that is what they have spouted tonight -- then for heaven’s sake they should know what they are talking about. When they talk about accountability they can’t go on talking out of both sides of their mouths and I say that with the greatest of respect.

Mr. Bounsall: That’s a big blue herring.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: One of my friends opposite said we shouldn’t be doing this at all; we should be putting our money in Petrocan. It was one of my good friends who said this. I would simply point out that the Province of Quebec attempted to put some money in a Crown corporation -- Panarctic -- and the government of Canada, for reasons which I don’t understand, said no.

Mr. Haggerty: Has the minister discussed it with them himself?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Yes, we have, and I would be embarrassed to tell the member their reasons. I said that we saw gas as a priority. I think coal, and investments in coal; may well become a priority of the energy corporation. Oil, no doubt, is a priority. The amounts of money are staggering.

The press asked today whether we might be interested in taking up the share in Syncrude. Let me just put that on the record. Look at the amounts of money which are involved. The stated cost of Syncrude was $1.2 billion. It has risen to something over $1.5 billion, and will probably end up at close to $2 billion. Out of that, Ontario would get 30,000 barrels a day if we went in for one-quarter of that action -- somewhere between $400 million and $500 million of the taxpayers’ money. We would get a guaranteed supply of 30,000 barrels of oil a day, and this province is using something in the neighbourhood of 600,000 barrels of oil a day. The amounts of money which are required for either the development of the tar sands or for exploration and development, are truly staggering. I don’t say they are beyond the resources of the people of Canada, but we will have to say, as the press said to me today -- and I am sure they were very well meaning -- would you consider taking up that quarter which was abandoned this morning by whoever it was?

Mr. Ferrier: Atlantic Richfield.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Atlantic Richfield -- and for 30,000 barrels of oil -- which, for example, is what Hydro will use alone -- we could provide a customer. That is what Hydro will use -- well, they will use more than that -- I think it is closer to 50,000 -- between Lennox and Wesleyville, when those plants both come on; staggering amounts of money.

I don’t preclude -- and I think I have said this -- investment in uranium. The member for Welland South said, “Where is elsewhere?” I said to the press the other day it could be the North Sea. The members didn’t mention that. Some of the propositions which have been suggested to us as worthy of investment -- and we are not close to making any investments -- might involve some acreage on a shared basis, in western Canada, something in the Arctic, and they have got a little piece of the action in the North Sea. The bill deliberately would allow us to go into that kind of a partnership -- it’s not where we would be, by choice -- and I suspect it would probably divest us of that investment in the North Sea, or wherever outside Canada, rather quickly, but perhaps not -- so that is why the bill is as broadly drawn as it is. We are not looking to invest in the North Sea, although perhaps some legislative committee in terms of accountability would hope that we might do that, and we would have to make an annual inspection tour -- I say to my friend from Huron-Bruce (Mr. Gaunt) who, as a member of various committees, has been an inspector par excellence over the year. I have answered that.

There is no question, regarding my friend from Welland South, most of what we were talking about, if not all, will be under the federal regulation or jurisdiction in one way or another; so be it. We won’t be exporting or importing in and out of this province; we may not be transporting within this province without being under federal regulation. We accept that. We have no disposition to challenge that position in this corporation.

The question of whether it is taxable or not was asked by my friend from Welland South. As long as it is 90 per cent owned by the Province of Ontario, then it is classed as a Crown corporation -- and despite Mr. Lang’s mutterings, in our view, under the constitution, it is not taxable. A Crown corporation is not.

Mr. Renwick: I am glad the minister is going to stand and fight on that one.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: I would hope we would -- and the member for Riverdale, because he is going to nationalize everything, would have to support us on that.

Mr. Renwick: Yes, we will.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: We could go right down to the wire on that one.

Mr. Renwick: Anything the minister will do to uphold the constitution we will support.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: We would be in bed together on that one; we really would.

The member asked about ownership, and I think it is section 17:

“The minister shall, from time to time, subscribe for and purchase and hold shares in the corporation on behalf of Her Majesty in right of Ontario and shall hold at all times a majority of the issued shares of each class of equity shares of the corporation [which would mean 51 per cent]. That would be held by the minister if the shareholder, on behalf of the public funds invested by the province.”

I don’t say that will hold for ever. That is our purpose now. At some point -- there is no intention to go public with the other shares for awhile -- we have to see what investments we make, how profitable they are --

Mr. Deans: Unless it is really profitable, and then the government can go public.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Well, the member would go public and have the people put their money into something that isn’t profitable. If you are going to sell shares to the public --

Mr. Deans: No, just use the people’s money -- if it isn’t --

Hon. Mr. McKeough: If we are going to sell shares to the public, we would like to think that it is a reasonable proposition for them to buy. I don’t suppose my friend would understand that, but we understand it here, and even my friends in the Liberal Party understand it.

Mr. Deans: “Let’s use the taxpayers’ money to get it all going, and then we give it away.” We understand it.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: At some point the intention would be to go to the public; or at least that may be desirable. And even the 51 per cent rule, which would require an amendment, might be changed at some point in the future; but that is a decision for another day.

My friend asked about the difference between reports -- if I could put it that way. The energy policy for Canada, which was tabled by EMR in July of 1973, said, and it was quoted: “We have lots of oil.” The NEB report tabled two weeks ago said we were going to be importers by 1982.

It is a question of deliverability. We have enormous amounts of oil, geologically, in this country, off the east coast; we think, perhaps even in Hudson Bay; certainly in the Arctic, in the Arctic islands; and probably a great deal more in western Canada. And that is what EMR said.

What EMR also said, in “An Energy Policy for Canada” is that “You are going to have to spend a lot of money to get it out.” What the NEB is saying, and it reported two weeks ago, is that the money isn’t being spent in sufficient quantities and the resources aren’t being applied in sufficient quantities, and as a result, by 1982, we are in trouble unless we speed things up. Now, that is an oversimplification of the two things, but they are really not in conflict. They are two separate statements of fact.

I say somewhat facetiously -- not facetiously but somewhat with tongue in cheek -- that the member for Welland South mentioned he wasn’t enthused about the idea of exporting electricity. I say this: If we don’t improve our position in terms of oil, if we start to become importers of oil, then this country will be faced with one God-awful balance-of-payments problem. I saw figures the other day that said by 1982, in view of the oil situation, we would have a balance of payments on oil alone of something like $3 billion a year.

If we have to pay that bill, if we need that oil, and we will -- for gasoline, for feedstock, for heating purposes, for asphalt; you name it and we’ll need it, no matter how much energy conservation we apply. We may cut that bill -- it might be cut to $2.9 billion -- but it’s a staggering amount in terms of balance of payments alone. Perhaps then we shouldn’t say so glibly that we shouldn’t be exporting electricity made out of Canadian uranium, because maybe it will be better to be exporting electricity. I’m not saying this is policy. I’m not advocating it at this moment. But let’s not just say we are not going to export electricity when we are facing the prospect of perhaps being massive importers of oil in the very near future. I simply leave that on the table.

Mr. Speaker, I think I have covered most things. Hydrogen economy is 25 years away in our view, and very expensive. It’s a job for Ontario Hydro, and they are spending some time and effort with AECL on keeping an eye on it; perhaps they are not spending as much as they should; but we’ll get a report on that some day for the hon. member. But AECL do follow that and I think we look to them, with confidence, to keep an eye not only on fusion, but on some of the other more exotic developments in those fields.

In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, I do want to stress that the bill is not the solution to all our problems by a long shot. Whatever I said before was wrong; it is simply one of the arrows in our quiver, others of which will be shot in due course. We do think that it is a necessary step on the part of Ontario to ensure that we continue to receive adequate and secure supplies of energy and at a reasonable price. That reasonable price is going to be much higher than we paid in the past, but it is to be hoped that it will be more reasonable than if we did nothing. We do regard this as a step forward, and I hope that all members will find it in their hearts to support this progressive, free-enterprising --

Mr. Laughren: Stop it.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: -- but slightly red step forward on the part of this government.

Mr. Bounsall: Neither hot nor cold, but only to be spewed from the mouth.

Mr. Speaker: The motion is for second reading of Bill 158.

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

Ayes

Nays

Allan Apps Auld Beckett Belanger Braithwaite Breithaupt Brunelle Campbell Clement Downer Edighoffer Evans Gaunt Gilbertson Haggerty Hamilton Havrot Henderson Hodgson (Victoria-Haliburton) Hodgson (York North) Jessiman Johnston Kennedy Kerr Lane Leluk McKeough Miller Morningstar Morrow Newman (Windsor-Walkerville) Nixon (Dovercourt) Nuttall Parrott Reid Rhodes Riddell Root Ruston Singer Smith (Simcoe East) Smith (Hamilton Mountain) Spence Taylor (Prince Edward-Lennox) Timbrell Walker Wells Winkler Wiseman Worton Yakabuski -- 52.

Bounsall Deans Ferrier Foulds Laughren Lewis Martel Renwick Samis -- 9.

Clerk of the House: Mr. Speaker, the “ayes” are 52, the “nays” are 9.

Mr. Speaker: I declare the motion carried.

Motion agreed to; second reading of the bill.

Mr. Speaker: Do I understand that this bill is to go to committee of the whole House?

Agreed.

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 morning we will move into committee of the whole House on Bill 158. Following that we will call Bill 157 and Bill 125. If the House is co-operative and we happen to finish that bill of fare, we will call item 2.

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

Motion agreed to.

The House adjourned at 10:35 o’clock, p.m.