Legislative Assembly of Ontario

The House resumed at 8:10 o’clock, p.m.

ESTIMATES, MINISTRY OF CORRECTIONAL SERVICES (CONCLUDED)

On vote 1403:

Mr. Chairman: The member for Essex-Kent.

Mr. R. F. Ruston (Essex-Kent): I wonder if I could ask the minister, and I think it would follow what the member for St. George (Mrs. Campbell) was speaking about the last time we were in the estimates here with regard to the Oakville centre: I was wondering if the minister could give us a rundown on the assessment centre at Oakville and just how it is operating?

Hon. R. T. Potter (Minister of Correctional Services): I think the hon. member probably knows that the purpose of the assessment centre at Oakville is, in the first place, to provide an in-depth study of the needs of each individual child who is sent there from southeastern Ontario. In other words, any child from southeastern Ontario who is sent to a training school, under section 8 or 9, goes to Oakville; and the purpose there is to do a proper study to determine what type of facility is best suited to that child.

Since we’ve had the centre in operation, for instance, we found that of roughly 800 who were sent there about 20 per cent of them were sent back to the community and the others were sent to either training schools or to one of the two DARE camps. Of those who went back to the community, 34 went to their own home, 48 of them went to foster homes and the others went to either treatment facilities or to ministry group homes, and as you are aware, we now have 39 group homes in the province.

When you consider the average per diem cost in an institution as compared to care in a group home or in a foster home, there is a considerable saving. On an average, it works out to $45 a day in one of our training schools. In the group home it is anywhere from $20 to $30 a day. Of course, in the foster home it’s much less -- anywhere up to $10 a day. So there is a considerable saving to the taxpayer from that standpoint, as well as performing a very useful service as far as the individual is concerned.

In addition, at Oakville we’ve had students participating in the programme there -- social work students, recreation students, child welfare students -- as well as ordinary academic teachers who have been working in the facility and helping make the programme a little more useful. But I think, all in all, it is doing what we hoped it would do. We hope it will continue to expand and we hope to continue to improve the qualifications of our staff and be much more useful in the future.

Mr. Ruston: Mr. Chairman, has the minister the statistics or any rough count on how many of the people who were charged went into the training schools in the last year, compared to say five or 10 years ago? Have you any statistics on that, as to how that is working out now?

Hon. Mr. Potter: I have figures here from 1966 to 1975, that 10-year period. For the fiscal year of 1966-1967, we had 10,377 court appearances. Of those 1,091, almost 10 per cent, went to training schools for an average length of stay of 9.21 months. In 1973-1974, 10 years later, court appearances increased from 10,377 to 14,869. The number admitted to training school was some 40 fewer than in 1966; it dropped to 1,052 for an average length of stay of 6.79 months.

So you can see that the use of the group homes has been gradually increasing. Certainly, the number of new probation cases has been increasing and we have closed, in that length of time, both Glendale school and Elmcrest school.

Mr. R. S. Smith (Nipissing): I have a question, Mr. Chairman, in regard to the Wendigo Lake facility. I presume it is now a training school. I’ve had some difficulty keeping up with just what kind of an institution that is. It started out to be administered under Burwash and there was some talk that it was going to be moved to the administration of the district jails in the area. At one point one of the ministers indicated that to me. Is it now a training school?

Hon. Mr. Potter: It’s a DARE camp. It is one of the camps we operate in conjunction with the training school.

Mr. R. S. Smith: Could you tell me the capital expenditure over the past year, and how much will be spent in this coming year; and what the per diem costs are there? And what they will be after you have spent all this money on them?

Hon. Mr. Potter: I haven’t got it with me tonight, but I will get it for you. You want the cost of the camp, the average per diem cost of it?

Mr. R. S. Smith: How many people is it being built to house with the new changes that are being made there?

Hon. Mr. Potter: It’s 36 to 60; minimum of 36 and maximum of 60.

Mr. R. S. Smith: I looked at this place some time ago, and then I went back and looked again. There seems to be quite a change. The further back in the bush you get, the more money is being spent. I really question whether this is really the direction your ministry is taking generally, or whether this is some type of a special case. I’m sure when you are finished with all the money you are spending there your per diem costs are going to be just so high it’s going to be almost as high as some of our hospitals, $80 or $100 a day.

Hon. Mr. Potter: Of course the per diem costs will be brought down by the increase in numbers in the camp. But there is no question about it, the camp at Portage Lake and the camp at Wendigo are two different types of camps. The one at Portage Lake is a much rougher type of camp, a logging type of camp, than the one constructed at Wendigo Lake.

I am afraid I agree with you. I think the other type of camp is going to turn out to be much more suitable, but the two types of camps were constructed to determine which would be most suitable. It’s almost completed. Hopefully this year it will be up to about 60 inmates, and then we will have a better idea on how much it is going to cost per day.

Mr. R. S. Smith: But you agree there is a lot of money being spent there for what the return may be insofar as treatment, if you can call it that, is being given under the programme.

Hon. Mr. Potter: Well there is no question that as far as treatment under the programme is concerned it’s a good programme. I’ve been out there myself both --

Mr. R. S. Smith: Oh I’m not questioning that at all, but the cost --

Hon. Mr. Potter: I’m not in a position to say whether it’s too much at the present time, because I don’t know how much it is; but I am going to get it for you.

Mr. Chairman: The hon. member for Sudbury.

Mr. M. C. Germa (Sudbury): I would like to ask the minister if he recalls the incident I wrote him about having to do with inmates at the Portage Lake camp under your DARE project on the Lost Channel Lake road. You recall these kids had put a rope across the highway and it scared a lady and her family. They were coming out from their summer camp in the dead of night on a very lonesome road. This woman came across a group of people whom she did not recognize or identify in the dark and a cable or rope had been tied to a tree on one side of the road and was in the process of being tied to a tree on the other side, I believe.

It scared the wits out of this woman with her young kids; she gunned her car and broke through the rope, with this crowd of people around.

Now that must have been a very nerve-wracking experience for that young lady and her children to be confronted by a group of people in the middle of the night. I know the road intimately; it’s a very lonesome bush road.

I did write to the minister and he did investigate. I’m satisfied with the way the minister responded to my complaint, or my drawing of that incident to his attention.

I just wondered who was delinquent -- the security people at this institution, the correctional officers? What steps have been taken to preclude any such event -- not necessarily a rope on the highway or on the roadway but any other event which might scare the wits out of the citizens in that particular district? Was anyone chastised or penalized? Were any penalties levied?

I understand to some degree what you are trying to do with the DARE project. It is to give these kids some initiative by putting them in the bush, sort of on an experimental project, to test their wits and their ability to survive at night. I know about your survival treks through the woods at night, and I recommend them. I think it might give these kids from the city some idea of survival; and it’s a challenge. But at the same time Mr. Minister, I think you have to --

Mr. R. F. Nixon (Leader of the Opposition): If they can survive in downtown Toronto they can survive anywhere.

Mr. Germa: I think this is precisely the kind of person we have. They have learned to live in their own environment, probably on the streets of Toronto. They have probably done that very well, and they would survive on the streets of Toronto. But, unfortunately, that does not make for a good citizen or the best citizen we are looking for.

A little challenge in the bush in northern Ontario does a lot for the soul. I think it cleanses the soul and toughens the muscle and gives you a little bit of fresh air as well.

The idea of the project is to get these kids from the pavement into the bush; show them how a frontiersman has to live, how he has to adapt, since the whole world is not centred around the pavement in Toronto and you’ve not really arrived when you have learned to live on the sidewalks of Toronto, there’s more in the world than that; and that’s what the project does.

Of course these kids are in a strange environment, there’s no doubt about it, when they’re up in the bush in northern Ontario.

I just wondered if the minister could respond and tell me what was the sequel to that complaint I raised with him. Is there any likelihood things are going to go haywire again as far as that Wendigo Lake camp is concerned. I think it’s a good project. I’m not being critical or anything like that, except on that one incident that was brought to my attention.

How many kids do we put through that kind of a course in a year, and what is the effect? Do the kids, once they graduate from this course in the bush, show much improvement? Has their attitude toward society changed? Is it being effective and is the money we’re spending at Portage Lake and on other frontier camps money well spent?

We have lots of open space up there and we have lots of bush. If this therapy, this survival in the woods in northern Ontario is a good thing, maybe we could expand on the project. I would like to see it expanded if, in fact, it is the kind of therapy which is going to correct the idiosyncrasies that some of these kids have.

Hon. Mr. Potter: Yes, I will be quite honest with you. It was just damn poor judgement on the part of the supervisor on the occasion that incident happened. He and another staff member were reprimanded at the time. I won’t say that something like that won’t happen again, because I am sure you are aware that in any type of programme such as this, occasionally something is bound to happen. The law of averages is such that you can’t go on continually without something happening.

But we must be as careful as we can. It’s the responsibility of those in charge to be as careful as they can to try to make sure that nothing does happen. I can’t assure anybody that it won’t. But I doubt very much that it will with the two individuals who were involved, given the publicity we got from it. I’m sure the others, too, are being just as careful with what they’re doing.

We think the programmes are successful. As far as recidivism is concerned, it hasn’t been cut down very much, but we’re continually monitoring the programme. The results for first offenders is worthwhile, in our opinion. We, too, would like to see the programme improved upon; but you can get carried away and --

Mr. R. F. Nixon: You have been.

Hon. Mr. Potter: How far are you going to go? The suggestion has been given to us that we should have some kind of a brigantine, or whatever you call it, and put on a six-month cruise in the summer.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: They could take the minister down to the Caribbean.

Hon. Mr. Potter: Yes, the next thing we know they will be wanting to have trips to Europe or someplace else. I think we have to be a little careful about some of these things. I think working in the bush and everything they do is good, but I think you can go too far in providing some of the amenities. I think the whole programme must be continually assessed from this standpoint. I would like to see it enlarged, but I would like to be sure we don’t get carried away on it.

Mr. Chairman: The Leader of the Opposition.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Thanks, Mr. Chairman. The minister’s answer really leads into something that concerns me. It concerns me in more ways than one, because I don’t want to be seriously critical of the fact that you are asking for another $6 million, raising the service for juveniles to a total cost of $31 million this year. Let me talk about the other side of the thing.

It must concern us that these people who are put into the care of the ministry by the courts are not put in permanent care in any way. In fact, you are trying to train them to go back into their own community, hopefully to their own homes. I am sure the minister is aware that many of these young people are going to return to homes which have a far lower standard of living than is provided by the taxpayers. We don’t want to take them into care and somehow make them suffer so that they are going to be glad when they go back to their homes. I think perhaps White Oaks would be one of these. Is that right?

Hon. Mr. Potter: Right.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: In the Sprucedale complex, I think with excellent foresight, the minister and his predecessor put them into homes in the area, oftentimes with staff complement almost one to one. I wouldn’t say that if you had five or six kids in a home there would be five or six staff people there, but over a 24-hour period there would be. Part of the programme -- I hate to criticize this -- is that the kids are taken to town or taken to the show and given spending money.

I don’t know what the answer is. I don’t know whether you call it a term, because presumably there isn’t a term, but when it is deemed they can return to their families or go back into the community, they are not going to be pleased at all. Most of them, if they have any judgement at all, are going to think: “My goodness, these group homes and other facilities are far better than anything our family has ever been able to provide for us.”

I have heard of this DARE camp. I am quite sure the young people from any family would be delighted to have access to those facilities. It is difficult to put this, because the last thing we should be doing is giving them inadequate facilities. Yet the basis of training these young people so they are going to be able to move forward in the education system and stake out a place for themselves must be a problem for the minister and those people who advise him.

We are moving this forward another $6 million. I don’t want to sound red-necked or parsimonious, but what about this problem? What are we going to do for these young people to really assist them to adapt to the community as it is, and not to the kind of community that can be provided by the taxpayers, unless we are adapting them to go back into the community with the expectation the taxpayers will look after them for all time?

The second point is, in a facility similar to White Oaks, are the staff paid on an hourly basis? I have been told they are. It seems to me we should be prepared to pay an adequate salary to those people properly trained to care for the young people who come under the jurisdiction of this ministry. But if we have led them to expect that their responsibilities are on an hourly basis, then somehow we have fallen short of the mark. I don’t think we can have people accepting this kind of responsibility if, in fact, it is eight hours on duty and they survive through the eight hours, keep the kids calmed down, and then away they go. There has to be a commitment to the welfare of these young people and a certain sensitivity that very few people would, I think, be capable of providing. I wanted to raise that point.

The last point is, do we have group homes that are completely independent of institutional supervision; that is are there, through the countryside, simply properties that have been purchased by the ministry, or perhaps by individuals or certain independent groups of people who, with the assistance of the ministry, are providing for young people put in their care?

I had the occasion to visit a home described to me as a group home under the Ministry of Correctional Services, which is in the Blandford area of the county of Oxford, where there were about 10 fine young men, no doubt, who seemed to be under the supervision of only one person, who was hard pressed to see that there were enough hot dogs to feed these kids at 6 o’clock at night. I had the impression that these young people were in care on the basis of court orders. I wanted to inquire -- perhaps I could have done so privately but since the minister is available with his experts I thought this might be an appropriate time to ask -- if there are group homes under the Correctional Services ministry operating independently of the institutions that are presently established?

Hon. Mr. Potter: Yes, Mr. Chairman. Regarding the costs of the group homes that the hon. leader was talking about in the first place and the types of accommodation being provided, as he says, you are sort of between the devil and the sea. One minute you are criticized because you are not providing adequate facilities or because something is going wrong, and the next minute you are criticized because you are doing a little bit too much. It is a very difficult thing to do. We are trying to make it as much of a home-like environment as possible, but again, what is a home-like environment to one child might be like living in a castle to another child.

Recently I was at the Cecil Facer facility in Sudbury; we had lunch with the children and after lunch I was talking to the superintendent. I asked him why some of these children were still there, and he was pointing them out to me; those who had been returned home and who had asked to come back; or those who were ready to go but there was no place to put them, their home conditions are such that it just isn’t fair to the child to put him back in that environment.

As a matter of fact we have some funds, limited as they are this year, with which we are hopeful that in a couple of areas we are going to be doing a little experimenting. We feel that in too many cases the child really is suffering because of something for which he isn’t responsible, that it is the parents or the family that is involved, and we want to get the social worker or family counsellor involved to try and work in the home with the child and arrange for his placement there.

What we do in some of our facilities now is, we arrange for one of our social workers to go home with the child on weekends, for instance, and try to work with the family and try to see how it would work out. But it is a very difficult thing to do and we are working at it all the time.

The hon. leader spoke about the group homes: All of our group homes are separate from the ministry. We don’t have any group homes connected with any of our institutions. They are all privately operated homes.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: How many have you got?

Hon. Mr. Potter: We have 37 now and there will be another eight this year. They are all contracted on an individual basis.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Well, perhaps the minister has gone over this previously.

Hon. Mr. Potter: On the salaries, believe me, they have just got a 30 per cent raise.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I am not talking about that; is it by the hour?

Hon. Mr. Potter: No, it is not by the hour. They are paid on an hourly basis, but they don’t work just by the hour.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Oh boy, I wonder; I wonder if they don’t work by the hour.

Hon. Mr. Potter: The salaries at the present time range from $10,500 to $12,500, which, as I say, is up considerably from what it was, but as far as I am concerned it is not high enough, compared to what labour is getting today. These people are dedicated people; they are putting in long hours and I think they are doing a hell of a fine job. I think we have a responsibility, and certainly I am fighting for it all the time, but we still have to do something for an improvement in their salaries.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I want to ask further about those group homes. Since I presume, for example, at White Oaks, those individual units -- I would call them group homes; they must have another name, you know, but they are individual cottages or homes with a number on them --

Hon. Mr. Potter: No, those are ours.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: But the minister said all his group homes were independent, so I wanted to ask about those independent ones. They are established on the basis of a contract, so somebody could come to the ministry and say: “Look, I’m going to buy this farm and this house and I have these facilities.” Do you have a standard contract? What is the level of inspection?

The one I visited -- and believe me, I don’t want to be directly critical because I admire those people who take on that responsibility -- but here was an instance where there was a group of what I surmise to be eight or 10 boys in their very early teens, if that old. As far as I could see they were being supervised by only one young man, admirable although he may be, who was thoroughly involved in cooking supper. Half the kids were out doing the things that I suppose kids will do, which certainly in my view would have been something that would have required some parental supervision in a normal circumstance.

What is the financial arrangement, what is the basis of inspection, and are you satisfied the kids are getting the proper care?

Hon. Mr. Potter: When we come to set up a group home, certainly we make inquiries in an area to see if there happens to be a group or an association or a society or a group of individuals who are particularly interested. Then we are prepared to sit down and talk with them to see who they are, what they are, what kind of qualifications they have. One of the probation and aftercare officers in the area acts as a liaison with the group home and with the ministry in operating it.

We just don’t let anybody come along and say: “I have a house that will take eight kids. I want you to pay me $15 a day and I am in business and things are pretty good.” It isn’t quite that simple. We must satisfy ourselves that the individuals who are running that home are capable of running the home.

In fact, we have one case, for instance, in Moonbeam of a woman and her daughter. The facility she is running for the Indians in that particular part of the province is best suited for the people in the country and she is doing a terrific job. My deputy says she is a psychiatric nurse.

In two or three locations we have them operated by a chain, Viking Homes, which operates four or five for us. Then we have other locations where we might have a man and his wife and, of course, they have available to them psychologists and social workers as they are needed.

But it is not just a case of somebody deciding this is an easy way to make a buck.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Oh, I wouldn’t say it is easy.

Hon. Mr. Potter: No, it’s a difficult thing and we must make sure that they are properly supervised. I think it has been working out very well in most areas of the province and that’s why we are prepared to recommend that we open another six or eight this year.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I don’t want to prolong this, but just one last mention. Is it the ministers intention to phase out the facilities such as White Oaks and Sprucedale in favour of the group-home concept, since it actually contracts out the care and responsibility under supervision?

Hon. Mr. Potter: Yes, but through you, Mr. Chairman, the hon. Leader of the Opposition is probably aware that I intimated I would be bringing in legislation very shortly to remove section 8 from the Act. Section 8, which has been so controversial, is the one where a child can be committed to a training school now without ever having committed a crime. Section 8 will be removed.

Most of the children we have at White Oaks now are these section 8 children who have been getting into difficulties. They are problem children, so to speak, without ever having committed a crime and they require a great deal of supervision.

We have been working with Community and Social Services and the social policy field on this matter, because if we remove section 8 we must be sure there is some other way these children are going to be looked after besides the justice policy field.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Does that leave it with the Children’s Aid Society?

Hon. Mr. Potter: What we are suggesting is that this is a facility we would probably turn over to Community and Social Services for their use, to look after those children who don’t fall within the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Correctional Services.

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

Mr. R. S. Smith: I have a question on these two points he has just brought up.

Mr. E. J. Bounsall (Windsor West): I have one right on the last vote.

Mr. Chairman: All right.

Mr. Bounsall: It follows fairly logically so we won’t get off the topic.

I am glad to hear that in this area you’re working in co-operation with Community and Social Services so that children with this obvious need but who have not committed a crime are still going to continue to receive some attention in our society. The minister may not know, because he’s turning the problem over, how these children are going to get there. Would it be through referral by the Children’s Aid Society of those who come to their attention through that route? Or could a private person who has a problem child come to the ministry or some ministry and ensure that the child gets placed in a treatment centre of this sort? How is that going to be accomplished as you see it?

Hon. Mr. Potter: This can be done through the present child welfare legislation. We want to be sure the proper system is set up before we proclaim the removal of section 8 of the Act so that there’s not going to be a lag during which the children can’t be looked after. There is an interministerial committee now working out the details on this so we’ll have the answer.

Mr. Bounsall: We can be assured there will be no vacuum in this area while this changeover is occurring? It won’t come out of your Act until they’re ready to go in the other area? I’ll be interested in hearing the announcement of how it’s going to work in the other area.

This leads me to a point which is very closely related. I suspect the minister hasn’t got an answer but if he has some thoughts in the area I would very much like to hear about them. What prospects can you hold out to the parents of children as they reach the age of majority? That is, children who have been in and out of the juvenile centres within your ministry and who continue to show the problems which got them there in the first place? Perhaps there were violent tendencies or unmistakable signs of mental and emotional disturbances on which you can put a name. They have been in and out for the last few years and now, as they reach age 18, are perhaps out of the institution for a while, yet their parents can see they have not completely benefited from the help which they should receive in order to straighten them up. They can look ahead a couple of months and see they’re about to become 18, adults in their own right, when they alone would have the say about where they go to get treatment. Yet they know it’s only a matter of time until they commit a violent act, perhaps, and end up in the adult criminal system. Or they may continue their particular sexual aberration which up to this point has not led them into serious trouble but is known to exist and could very easily be serious in the future.

Are there any prospects at all that you can hold out to parents of children about to become adults, who’ve been in and out of your institutions and, as they approach age 18, happen to be outside?

I have a case in Windsor and the family is very much in this situation. The child has just turned 18 and they would like to receive further help for him. They know it’s only a matter of time until this young man does commit a crime for which he needs to be sent away. There seems to be nothing they can do, immediately prior to his reaching age 18, so that he could get help. Does the minister have an answer to this area?

Hon. Mr. Potter: Mr. Chairman, I wish I did. I have a very close friend who has had exactly the same experience. There just doesn’t seem to be any answer. At the present time the federal government has the young offenders Act in draft form. Hopefully, that will help in cases like this. It is proposing they would have continued care until they’re 21 which would give them three more years during which something might be done to assist them.

We have heard a lot about the type of home these children come from. That isn’t always necessarily pertinent to the case and I think you can probably bear that out. It doesn’t matter what kind of home they came from.

In this case I am talking about, the child couldn’t have had more. He had a damned good family life; he had very doting parents who did everything they could for him without spoiling him. But it just didn’t seem to matter a damn what anybody thought; he was going to do it his way and that was it. He has been in our institutions and he is now in a federal institution. It breaks your heart when you see these cases but, believe me, it’s very difficult.

I had an occasion to talk to one of the senior psychiatrists in the federal system about this just two or three weeks ago. His only reply is: “You know and I know there is something the matter with him, but what it is and what we do about it is a different proposition.”

I’m hoping that, working with the feds on this, if this new Act comes in we will be able to at least find some way of getting treatment to them.

Mr. Bounsall: Do you know the details of the new Act at all? What I am concerned with is how can the person just prior to age 18 or maybe just after it -- under this Act, how does he get into this, to where he is looked after or some treatment given to him up to age 21?

Hon. Mr. Potter: The only word I have from them is that they were contemplating putting this in the Act and that they would be sending us a draft to look over. We have a meeting on this at the end of May in Vancouver and I expect we will have it before then so that we will have an opportunity to study it. I haven’t seen it yet.

Mr. Chairman: The hon. member for Nipissing.

Mr. R. S. Smith: Yes, Mr. Chairman. I have some similar questions, but I would like to get back to section 8 and those children who are now being held -- and that is really what they are, they are being held under that section.

There is a real concern in the social services community that when this section 8 is removed these children will go out into the community and there won’t be the services available to them. The minister says he is working this out with the Community and Social Services so that they will be able to take over. I would like to know just what he means by that.

Are we going to have more group homes established that are privately operated and come under the aegis, in some way, of Community and Social Services? Or are these young people going to be moved to the Children’s Aid Societies and then placed by those societies in maybe a variety of types of settings, including perhaps the Brown camps or some of the other institutions that may deal with what may be their specific needs? I would like to express to him that there is a real worry in the social community insofar as this is concerned.

There is another thing I would like to ask. Obviously, then, you are going to be moving out of the type of group home that your own ministry is operating, and the group homes are going to be privately operated mainly, and you have a per diem setup for those privately-operated group homes. Can you tell me if each group home per diem is established separately or do you have a per diem and that’s it, right across the province?

Hon. Mr. Potter: No, the per diem is established separately, mostly because the homes differ, just like nursing homes. There is the standard of care that is required because of the children who are being placed there -- they require more supervision, they require greater care, and you are going to have to pay more to get that.

At the present time we have three rates -- $21, $24, and $30 a day -- that we pay to the various homes.

We are not trying to just slough off this group of children and say, “Let somebody else look after them.” We appreciate that these children do have to be looked after and they do have to have facilities such as White Oaks; or some of them do have to have group homes and some of them can be cared for in private homes. But we are doing that now in this ministry. Our concern is that they are committed by a judge to a correctional institution or correctional service without ever having committed a crime and yet they are treated in the same way. Sometimes some of them are in the same institutions as children who have committed crimes and we don’t think that’s right. A lot of people don’t think that is right.

Mr. P. D. Lawlor (Lakeshore): This latter-day awakening is not typical. You sound outraged. You have lived with it for an awfully long time.

Hon. Mr. Potter: What we’re saying is that section 8 should be removed. They shouldn’t be committed like this. We’re not saying that nobody will look after them; I said that earlier. We think that should fall within the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Community and Social Services.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: The federal government can pay half. Is that right? It would pay half?

Hon. Mr. Potter: As a matter of fact, as of today it is. The federal government of Canada has signed an agreement with us today whereby it is paying $30 million this year toward our correctional services for children.

Mr. R. S. Smith: That’s under the Canada Assistance Plan. It’s been there for years.

Hon. Mr. Potter: Pardon?

Mr. R. S. Smith: It is under the Canada Assistance Plan.

Hon. Mr. Potter: No, under the Canada Assistance Plan that was excepted. Like the usual dealings we had with Ottawa they cut us off. For seven years we didn’t have it but this year they’re giving it to us.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Is it under correctional services you’re getting this money?

Hon. Mr. Potter: Yes.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Good for them. That’s very liberal.

Hon. Mr. Potter: Good for us.

Mr. Lawlor: I am amazed you got it. You are the only Tory minister who gets along with Ottawa.

Hon. Mr. Potter: Don’t kid yourself. This is the result of the last three ministers working like hell to get it out of them. I’m just cashing in on it.

Mr. Lawlor: Oh, is it? This is a unique ministry, I can tell you that. Talk to the Treasurer (Mr. McKeough).

Hon. Mr. Potter: This is a unique ministry.

Mr. R. S. Smith: Maybe they should have made you move it out of there before they gave it to you because that’s why you couldn’t get it before.

Hon. Mr. Potter: It’s going out of here. What I’m saying is that this shouldn’t change one iota. The children are going to be looked after. They’re going to be looked after in the same way but they’re going to be looked after by the Ministry of Community and Social Services rather than Correctional Services.

The funds allotted to us for that will be transferred to that ministry so it won’t cost any more money. It will use the same type of facilities and the same kind of programmes unless they can improve upon them.

Mr. R. S. Smith: Okay, fine. The other question I have is you talk about a per diem rate of between $21 and $30. Obviously, these young people are not in the same category of physical or mental need as those people who are sent to many other institutions such as the Browndale camps where the per diem rate is $59.40.

I think there is a discrepancy here because I believe there are many children held under section 8 who need a very similar type of treatment and adjustment to be available to them because they are emotionally disturbed. How do you put these two together? Supposedly in the next little while under one ministry you’re going to have this wide plethora of different types of treatment for these people. You’re moving a number of people from under the direction of your ministry to the other ministry and perhaps to an altogether different kind of treatment. Obviously the cost of treatment is very different between that which is being provided by Community and Social Services and your ministry and Health for that matter. It’s very difficult to see what the differentiation is, particularly when some of these young people require the same type of treatment.

Hon. Mr. Potter: There’s no question the rates are different and I think if you would check them through you’d find our rates are probably lower than any of them. At the present time, once again, there is an interministerial committee looking into the whole question of group homes -- the need for group homes throughout government, not in just this ministry or in Health or Community and Social Services -- comparing the types of services provided and what the costs are. I’m trying to get a handle on that now.

Mr. R. S. Smith: I’d like to make the point that as far as our party is concerned we’re glad to see these people under section 8 moved out of your ministry. They should have been moved out of your ministry years ago and you would have got the 50-cent dollar from Ottawa. That’s why you didn’t get it. I’d like to make that point quite clear.

Mr. Chairman: The member for Sudbury.

Mr. Germa: Mr. Chairman, I was glad to hear the minister say a little while ago he had been up to the Cecil Facer School recently. I didn’t know you had been and you sure go in and out of town pretty quietly. Usually your colleagues come in with trumpets blaring and flags waving. I’m glad to see you are in there to do your job, rather than do a little bit of politicking.

Mr. B. Newman (Windsor-Walkerville): Don’t give him any ideas now.

Mr. R. S. Smith: I was in North Bay too, but I heard he was there.

Mr. Germa: I wanted to ask a couple of questions about Cecil Facer, which started out as a boys’ school and the ministry has seen fit to turn into a co-educational institution. I just wonder what jerked this minister into the 20th century all of a sudden to recognize that there are two sexes in this world, that eventually they have to live together and maybe they should live together there. I just wonder what sort of facilities and what kind of arrangements there are within the institution to accommodate them?

I’d also like to touch on a matter that was raised by the member for Brant, the salary scale. I presume he didn’t raise it just by pulling things out of the air; he must have had some complaints. Certainly I have had some complaints about the salary scale for teachers at Cecil Facer School in Sudbury. The minister told me the scale runs between $10,500 and $12,500; I presume the same scale must apply right across the province for those people in the teaching profession.

I would point out to the minister that the scale paid now at Cecil Facer probably is running $1,000 a year behind what a primary schoolteacher is now making in the city of Sudbury. This was brought to my attention not more than one week ago when I was sitting with a person who complained that when Cecil Facer first started, the wage scale was ahead of the rate in the city of Sudbury, but since that time -- and Cecil Facer has not been there that long -- your wage structure has deteriorated to the point where it is now running second to the wage scale in the elementary school system in the city.

I would also like to know how many inmates we have at Cecil Facer, and how many staff we have there in the different categories. I’d also like to know the global budget of the Cecil Facer School for the past year. What are the past figures you have?

Hon. Mr. Potter: Mr. Chairman, that’s the first time I’d heard that there was any teacher at Cecil Fraser who was dissatisfied. I hadn’t had any complaint, contrary to what you might think. When I was out there I met with a great many of them, and nobody had any complaints. Actually, I was under the impression that our teachers were quite competitive as far as their salaries were concerned, but I will certainly look into this and find out if that’s the situation. I hadn’t had any complaints about it.

I was referring particularly to the correctional staff, who spend so much more time in some cases than the teachers themselves do in these areas. But I made the statement not because I had had complaints but because I have felt for a long time that we have a responsibility, if we expect to upgrade the status of our correctional officers; if we demand more of them and expect them to be counsellors, advisers, listeners, psychologists, social workers, you name it, teachers and all, then we must be prepared for it.

We are very fortunate in the calibre of the people we are getting today. Many of them are MAs in correctional work. Very seldom do I find any clock-watchers, people who are anxious to get out. I’ve been visiting all over the north and most of the southern part of the province; it doesn’t seem to matter what time of the day or evening I go, I can find correctional officers there working with the residents. That’s why I’m so anxious to see that they get a fair shake.

Cecil Facer School has 80 boys and 40 girls, and they have cottage-type accommodation. The annual budget is almost $2 million and the school has a complement of 101 staff.

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

Mr. B. Newman: Mr. Chairman, I wanted to ask of the minister what involvement is there with his ministry and Twin Valley School in Thamesville, near Rodney?

Hon. Mr. Potter: I don’t know. Twin Valley School is new to me. That doesn’t mean anything to me.

Mr. B. Newman: Are you sure there is no involvement at all and that there is no financial assistance? Twin Valley School is operated by St. Clair College in Thamesville near Rodney.

Mr. J. P. Spence (Kent): In Elgin county.

Mr. B. Newman: In Elgin county, my colleague says. None whatsoever?

Hon. Mr. Potter: No.

Mr. B. Newman: I noticed in public accounts of a previous year that there was a total of some $15,630 spent by your ministry for that institution. I am assuming then that this is an ongoing programme that you are subsidizing at Twin Valley School.

Hon. Mr. Potter: There is a special rate treatment home where we send children. At Thamesville, did you say?

Mr. B. Newman: At Rodney.

Hon. Mr. Potter: Yes, we do send children who require special care there on occasion at special rates.

Mr. B. Newman: So there is an involvement?

Hon. Mr. Potter: No, it’s not one of our schools but we do send children there.

Mr. B. Newman: I didn’t say it was one of your schools. I simply wanted to know what connection or involvement there is between your ministry and the school. Is there continuing involvement with that school? Do you have plans for using the facilities there or sending juveniles for some type of treatment to Twin Valley School?

Hon. Mr. Potter: On occasion. It depends on the needs of the child that we have. If we feel he can be best cared for in that institution, then we would ask it to take him.

Mr. B. Newman: Has your ministry checked out the school? Are you satisfied with the operation of that school?

Hon. Mr. Potter: Yes, we are, as far as I can see.

Mr. Chairman: The hon. member for Lakeshore.

Mr. Lawlor: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have a few things about training schools I want to peruse with the minister. I think it’s fair to say that training schools haven’t been given the attention in past estimates. We’ve dealt with reformatories and adult institutions largely and sometimes at very great length and in detail. Yours being the first set of estimates this year, you are not being subjected to the same sort of résumé. You may thank your lucky stars. As a matter of fact, I suspect, should you be the minister in some forthcoming session, you might even bring yourself on at the beginning.

In any event, I think we may have been remiss in our dealings with training schools as a whole and should give them more attention. There has been a great deal said in the past few months about these schools. It’s hard to fault you on it because you are moving. The central notion is to empty those schools and to go off into the group home where a very much closer relationship, a more direct and personal relationship between older people and the young and the young working within their peer groups takes place. It’s the visitations and the effects of therapy and the recognition that if people can express themselves and can feel confident and trusting in that process, which they can do in a localized setting, then the possibilities of some remote form of rehabilitation obtains.

The record of the schools up until fairly recently has been appalling. Your own figures of fairly recent date show 34 to 48 per cent recidivist rates, with 48 per cent of them ending up in other institutions. In other words, they are schools from which they graduate to the penitentiary so that the echelons of the mass education system obtain within the element of delinquency as in other places. It is a breeding place of delinquency as is pointed out.

One of the things I want to discuss with you, since you yourselves say you don’t see the elimination of these training schools but their substantial reformation and an alteration and change, is the internal system of enforcements that are used. It was mentioned the other day and it has something to do with a thing called the Skinner blocks. Our old friend B. F. Skinner always talks about freedom and places everybody under penalty -- the conditioned reflex boy with his salivating dogs, which he applies to children. You are a peculiarly good minister to talk about this sort of thing. To the extent that it exists, eliminate it, get rid of it. I say you are a particularly good minister because you have had, as Minister of Health, an intimate acquaintance with this sort of thing, with this punishment and reward syndrome, this taking of little things away and giving over here, this point system for human deportment.

If I remember correctly, about three years ago, in this House or outside, you and I had quite a discussion about the way in which the elderly demented patients at the Brockville Psychiatric Hospital were treated. There was a special wing set up in that hospital where all these people were taken from under the regular routine of the hospital and placed over here in a kind of experimental laboratory unit. If they wet the bed, they lost three points. If they got up on the right side of the bed, they might gain back two again.

I think you eliminated it, finally, under pressure; with goodwill too. I think you saw into the meaning of it and how deleterious to human conduct and what an inhuman robot-like way of treating human beings it was.

It nevertheless subsists in your training schools.

If it is wrong for older people, there is no reason in the world in my opinion why it shouldn’t be equally wrong here. It’s wrong in principle. Human beings are not to be reduced to conditioned reflexes. That type of psychology is for Neanderthals. I know it exists and it is tried throughout the system. So give some thought to it and do try to eliminate it. It’s endemic of negative responses all the way through. It’s a form of condition, a response mechanism that will not bring you a lower recidivism rate.

On the contrary, as the hero in “Brave New World” reacted and the fellow in Orwell, you get back at the system.

“They don’t condition me. They don’t put the screws of the electro-encephalogram on my brain and try to bring about a certain effect. I’ll fall from the window and fool them and, on my second return, they’ll know what it is all about.”

I’m thinking of “Clockwork Orange” at the moment, if the minister hasn’t seen it. It’s a negative enforcement thing depicted in the movies and probably one of the most obscene movies I’ve ever seen. There’s no obscenity in the strict sense in it as far as that goes, but it has it in the way in which it treats people and its attitude towards human beings.

The problem is that they have no time of their own. They have no privacy. They wear a kind of uniform. There are no doors in the cans in some of the places. Sometimes the sentencing is indeterminate. I am told that if you permitted some of the young people to smoke -- much as you may dislike that as a doctor -- that you would remove a good many of the problems internal to the institution. If they’re going to smoke, they’re going to smoke, despite you. It’s like what the schools have to contend with.

I wouldn’t encourage it. On the other hand, you can’t use mandatory measures because there is a secret trafficking in the prison. The hierarchies are arranged. The boys in the know, the ones who run the show, are the ones who control the cigarettes. That is very often true, as you well know, in the reformatories too. That’s where the power comes from. That’s their currency and trade. Whereas you guys trade in filthy lucre, they trade in cigarettes. It’s the same kind of thing.

Let me range a little bit on this thing. The Premier of this province (Mr. Davis), in his present campaign, in a piece of white knightery against all forms of human immorality, is using this as kind of an election base to appeal to all the red-necks and the know-nothings out there in this particular regard.

You produced the society -- we all did -- which is a deeply atavistic one where every man’s hand is raised against every man. The palms, all the premiums, go to the greatest aggressors, to the ones who can forge ahead and step over the bones of everybody else. They are the ones who are the masters of industry. They are the ones who are looked up to.

Then you come along and say violence is rife in this society. Of course it is rife. The society has bred it. It is supposed to be a mark of virility or something. You can’t suddenly switch in the dead of the night and say, “Oh, we find this lamentable, having gained our station by those very methods and our whole attitude having been formed around this particular premise.”

Hobbes rules the modern world. That’s why I am a socialist -- because I don’t like it. But how you who are Tories, and supported and bred it and affirmed it and gave palms and accolades for it, can then, out of the other side of your mouths, say something quite different in the throes of an election campaign without any gestures toward the modification of the society, without giving any of the enfranchised gains, seems to me a piece of blatant hypocrisy running contrary to your whole grain.

That’s all I want to say about that at the moment but I will come back to that.

Mr. J. A. Renwick (Riverdale): Well said, too.

Mr. Lawlor: A number of people of recent date have been pilloried, jettisoned, thrown out of their jobs by your ministry or the environs thereof. There is a man by the name of Jerry O’Sullivan. I would like to know a little bit more about Jerry O’Sullivan and about individuals who speak out against a ministry or a minister -- people who work inside that ministry for long periods of time, learning the innards of the beast, knowing how it operates, finding it inhuman, and who then speak out in public and are sanctioned immediately because of that. Don’t you think that is rather narrow-minded and purblind? Your invoking of the Official Secrets Act in this context is absurd.

There are grounds, as the Globe and Mail has pointed out, for people in the Treasury to be held in the strictest secrecy with respect to monetary matters, fiscal matters. But in matters affecting the whole public, in matters of humane treatment, in matters of social import -- in that range -- surely you should free the people in your ministry. They approach you and are silenced, or you are inattentive that day, or this is a field that doesn’t interest you particularly. Why ought they not come out and speak, and why should you bring a bludgeon to bear upon their heads?

William Brewer was called before a secret ministerial hearing to answer the charges against him. He himself called witnesses -- juveniles who had been in training schools -- to back up his statements. His terminology was, “They are places of brutal sadistic goings-on.”

I know that is unpalatable to you, and I know it would offend you as the minister; but to the extent that these statements can be proved, made evidential, given validity in public, they ought to be so given. Why should you hold your secret hearing and put the clamps on? Would it be an airing of some dirty linen on your part if you had a more open spirit and permitted this to be? Then the rectifications would automatically take place.

Most of these schools are run by private institutions. I think on the whole they run them well over the life of the thing. But your degree of supervision and the fact that they are within the private realm does permit a certain area of self-determination that falls outside your ken. You only move in on cases of overt behaviour.

The routinized cruel course of the daily proceedings in these places are not your immediate concern. When a child lacerates himself in the process, then you have an immediate interest. Or if there are complaints emanating from sources like over here, then you are aroused. How can you help but be when it comes from one of your own people, who knows the internal workings there? I hardly think it’s fair. Donald Sinclair, when he was deputy minister for Correctional Services, was not fired for telling the press there were a million things wrong with the way the ministry handles juveniles, but William Brewer was fired.

Sometimes I think it’s far better to hold these estimates downstairs, where the deputy minister is a free man to speak, where people like Donald Sinclair can be called in and interrogated and trade notes. We can then come to grips with the problems of the ministry through those who really know them from the inside.

I think it would be highly beneficial to you, yourself, in the process, to have this done. I would hope that if we ever happen to be in a position to appoint the minister, the men over here would be prepared to have these open hearings. I think there’s no validity in them becoming officers of the government as cabinet ministers if they are not. They should stay out in that case and let you fellows run the show in caves, in secrecy and within the walls.

I don’t know what happened to Brewer and his appeal. Perhaps you can tell me. I am most interested to learn the ultimate results there.

Now we have a number of questions I would like to ask the minister. The first has to do with sections 8 and 9. I don’t think we will dwell on it long tonight, because you will be introducing legislation shortly and we can give it a fairly thorough going over at that time.

The question my colleague, the member for Ottawa Centre (Mr. Cassidy) was most interested in was the extent that you anticipated section 9 would be used in lieu of section 8, having eliminated 8. Section 9 is, after all, still there. I know that it says that if a child has contravened any statute in force in Ontario, such contravention would be punishable by imprisonment if committed by an adult.

That is a severe restriction, Mr. Minister, but it is not all that difficult you know to find grounds for laying charges which would have the impact these particular charges indicate.

Over against a disgruntled or unmanageable child, or parents who are unhappy, it’s always assault of one kind or another. There is also damage to property. There are also malicious intents of various kind. All of these are operative in any one of these situations.

I would like you to address us just shortly on how you see the changes within section 8 as affecting section 9, if it will at all; or whether you would trust that section 9 would not supervene and become effectively what section 8 already is; which is what we are trying to get rid of.

I understand you are going through a series of regionalizations to create eight regions in the province. Does that mean there will be eight training schools set up in the province? Perhaps you could give us some idea of what they might be.

How will this decentralization you are attempting affect the Oakville assessment centre? Will it change in any way, or is it just a conduit pipe, an assessment area, from which people will be sent out to the various areas?

I understand from the notes that I have been given here there’s a third set of questions. If adult courts judge the gravity of a breach of probation before the prisoner is sent back to jail, why can a training school superintendent return a kid to the training school with no family court hearing?

I haven’t checked the law in the matter. I assume that this question is veridical, is a true question, and that the superintendent apparently has this kind of power. If he has, do you intend to change the system?

I have a number of other questions, but I think we don’t want to place the load too heavy on any particular occasion, so I will abide with some of the answers from the minister.

Hon. Mr. Potter: Mr. Chairman, I’m surprised at the hon. member referring tonight to the conditions in some of our institutions; he was referring to a 1972 report on conditions in 1966 and 1967, which was long before we had started our group homes and long before we had many changes in our institutions. I am only sorry that he hasn’t taken the opportunity to let me take him to some of our homes to see for himself what the situation is.

Mr. Lawlor: I take umbrage with that. You know as well as I do.

Mr. Chairman: Order please. Order.

Mr. Lawlor: I wasn’t in to see you for nothing either.

Mr. Chairman: Order.

Hon. Mr. Potter: He would have seen for himself, rather than just reading the comments of other people who were determined that they were going to close our training schools, which doesn't necessarily give him the true picture.

For instance, I have here a copy of a letter sent to the editor of the Ottawa Journal regarding the training school controversy. This individual, who is a social worker, wrote:

“It’s just simply not true that training schools are all black and that they are disabling rather than enabling to their wards -- ”

Mr. Lawlor: Nothing in this life is all black.

Hon. Mr. Potter: This person went on:

“From my experience in child welfare, the following formulation of the use and abuse of training schools would seem more accurate: Because children develop in a wide variety of ways, their needs vary widely too.”

Mr. Lawlor: We are just concerned about your shades of grey, doctor.

Hon. Mr. Potter: The letter continued:

“The typical child is able to operate with increasing freedom in the community, as he or she grows older, because he learns how to live without being destructive to himself and others.”

And the writer goes on to say why training schools are an essential part of the programme and should never be abolished. So for every person who writes to say we’ve got to close them out, there’s somebody else who will write to say there’s every reason why we shouldn’t.

Mr. Lawlor: Well, I think it should be gradually eliminated.

Hon. Mr. Potter: I’ve also sat here and listened to the complaints of one of our employees who resigned and then took it upon himself to divulge information to the press; in fact, the member from Ottawa himself made reference to it here.

You know, we destroy a child’s records in Correctional Services when he becomes 18 so they will no longer follow him around. But apparently there are those who believe it’s quite all right to make reference to these same children in the Legislature here and to have their names recorded in Hansard, where they will stay indefinitely and never be destroyed.

Mr. J. F. Foulds (Port Arthur): Fortunately, nobody reads Hansard.

Mr. Lawlor: The minister is the only person who reads Hansard.

Hon. Mr. Potter: In this particular case, I do want to point out that an impartial investigator of good standing has been appointed to look into the substance of this former employee’s complaints.

There was also a reference to a Mr. Brewer; and, as the hon. member is probably aware, Mr. Brewer was released for a wide variety of reasons. I would like to discuss them, but I daren’t at the present time because he still has the opportunity to appeal before the Public Service Grievances Board. If Mr. Brewer himself wants to speak up, he can; and when this is finished I would be delighted to tell the whole story. Believe me, maybe you’ll then have changed your opinions.

Mr. Lawlor: Maybe, maybe not. But the principle stands.

Hon. Mr. Potter: Regarding section 8, Mr. Chairman, at the present time about 30 per cent of the children who come to us are sent under section 8. As far as we can check it out, probably about 30 per cent of that 30 per cent could be committed under section 9 by a judge if he so wishes, but he has sent them in under section 8. Probably he thought it would accomplish the same thing; and rather than put it on record that they had been convicted of a crime, he sent them for care under section 8. As a matter of fact, at the present time we’re finding that they’re beginning to use it less and less all the time.

Regarding the eight catchment areas, we won’t be opening any new training schools, I hope, unless something drastic happens. If the feds increase the age from 16 to 18 and if the need arises that we must have more facilities for them, of course we may have to do so. But it is my hope that since we started the programme of closing out our training schools gradually we will be able to continue this programme and make much greater use of the community facilities.

Mr. Lawlor: Are these schools closed because of section 8 going out?

Hon. Mr. Potter: Pardon?

Mr. Lawlor: Are these schools closed?

Hon. Mr. Potter: No, no. Does that cover what? Oh, you were asking about the superintendent being able to send the child back to training school. That is the law and I’m afraid I can’t do much about that.

Mr. Lawlor: You mean under the federal statute?

Hon. Mr. Potter: Yes.

Mr. Lawlor: Two more things. I did ask about the Oakville situation vis-à-vis the decentralization, but you have given one of the other members some assessment of the Oakville situation and I think I may leave it alone for the time. What is the cost of the supervision of kids with their families? I may say juveniles; this word “kids” is getting me down. It was costing $45 a day for the training schools, and $20 to $30 a day for the group homes. What about the supervision of children in their own families?

Hon Mr. Potter: It’s $7 a day in foster homes.

Mr. Lawlor: Seven dollars. That is paid by your ministry and not by social services?

Hon. Mr. Potter: Yes.

Mr. Lawlor: The other day -- and you may not have had an opportunity yet -- you were going to get me some information on what I call “solitary confinement” within the schools; as to what extent that is carried out.

In addition to that, I am a little concerned about this self-mutilation bit, as to what the incidence of that is in Ontario training schools. I quote from the Lambert and Birkenmayer 1972 report -- these are Americans, I think -- that self-mutilation is carried out by 10 per cent of training school inmates. They say there are many cases of self-mutilation that are not reported to the medical staff and most likely are not recorded. It takes the form of anything from minor tattooing to friction burns, to fairly serious gouging of arms, legs and genitals with broken glass, razor blades and this sort of thing.

Obviously, this is a masochistic exercise where, through sheer anger and frustration, the human being, on being unable to do anything with respect to system -- in other words being unable to sock the guard -- socks himself. He is the only available object to carry out his rage against and to punish. So I am not surprised.

The reason I ask about it is it gives a good indication of the quality of the school and the quality of the relationships there. If there is a fairly high rate of self-mutilation, obviously the coercive, downing effect of the institutions runs in a way that can only breed further criminality. If they are going to take it out on themselves today, they are going to be taking it out on you tomorrow.

Hon. Mr. Porter: On the matter of what you call “solitary,” what we call “quiet rooms” approach, I mentioned this the other day. We have --

Mr. Lawlor: You call it the quiet room. That’s what the Inquisition called the rack room.

Hon. Ms. Potter: Well, no, it’s a little different with us. I mentioned the other day that in a 12-month period we had 12 children who were in there for more than 48 hours. In each case, of course, there had to be a report submitted by the superintendent advising us of the reasons and everything else. At the same time, there were over 1,500 who had spent anywhere from five minutes to 48 hours for various reasons. Many of these children were there because they asked if they could be left alone for a while, for a period of time, and of course some of these were the same children who had repeated on several occasions.

Self-mutilation is another matter. We’ve checked this out and we’ve done a spot check on several of our schools. For instance, at Cecil Facer School there were three boys out of 88 and five girls out of 25 who had scratched themselves, or cut themselves, or injured themselves in one way or another.

The girls and women seem to go for this more than the men do and usually it is in the way of tattooing. It has been suggested that most of this is done in the institutions, but we’ve found, for instance, in one group of 63 girls who were admitted, 10 of them had been tattooed when they came in.

Mr. Lawlor: How many were tattooed when they went out?

Hon. Mr. Potter: It’s one of these things that you have to be on the watch for all the time. Believe me, they can always find some way of getting a pin or needle or something and start sticking dye in underneath their skin.

Mr. Lawlor: Yes, but you don’t slough it off like that. Come on!

Hon. Mr. Potter: It’s not a question of sloughing off. It’s a question of saying that no matter how careful you are, unless you’re going to have somebody supervise every inmate on a continual basis this is going to happen.

Mr. Lawlor: I don’t agree with you, doctor.

Hon. Mr. Potter: Maybe you don’t, but I’ve been in many institutions in this country and in other countries and it’s the same the world over. Believe me, it happens and I defy anybody to stop it.

Mr. Lawlor: When did you tattoo yourself for the last time? Members of this Legislature can bring a sufficient amount of pressure upon you and a sufficient amount of frustration, I trust, that might drive you to it, but you have never done so. These young people do. There’s something damned strange about it.

You may think that this is a tribal custom, some form of ritual that is peculiar among the young. I just say that people don’t mutilate their bodies unless they find the conditions very condign, very destructive indeed. It’s a way of taking it out on themselves against the society and it is the group around them that has imposed these conditions that have driven them to it.

You seem to think that they do it as some kind of elixir, some kind of joy, that it’s a way of expressing themselves. I would look at that very carefully if I were you.

You’ve given me the figures for one school, Cecil Facer School. What’s the incidence of that throughout the province? Is it fairly widespread?

Hon. Mr. Potter: At Brookside, among 58 boys there were no such instances, but there were three girls out of 23. So there were three out of 81 at Brookside and there were eight out of 113 at Cecil Facer. There were 19 girls out of 83 at Grandview.

Mr. Lawlor: Out of 83?

Hon. Mr. Potter: Yes.

Mr. Lawlor: That’s practically an epidemic.

Hon. Mr. Potter: Eight of these were tattooing.

Mr. Lawlor: Eight of them were tattoos?

Hon. Mr. Potter: Yes.

Mr. Lawlor: What were the rest of them, slashing of the arteries? I mean that speaks volumes. You go take a look at that joint, really. Somebody had better go and take a look at it.

Hon. Mr. Potter: Oh, we’ve had a look at it, don’t worry.

Mr. Lawlor: Nineteen out of 83.

Hon. Mr. Potter: The psychiatrist reported at this time it was a wave that was started by one girl scratching her boyfriend’s initials on her arms or hands and then, of course, when the other girls saw this they wanted to follow suit and started a fad. This does happen, believe me.

Mr. Lawlor: It sure does happen, that’s right. It’s like the symptoms of a disease, isn’t it? When you begin to break out in places you begin to detect that maybe there is something very wrong in the anatomy or even the physiology. There is something very wrong there and we’ll have to watch the incidence of that particular thing.

I suppose we could go seriatim, one by one, through all the various 36 training schools of the province and test this. I think we know enough to say, standing here right at the moment, that it’s not an unknown phenomenon -- as a matter of fact it’s fairly deep-seated -- and what was said in that report of Lambert and Birkenmayer is reflected in our own jurisdiction. There’s nothing strange. But they found it, as I do, indicative of a diseased condition or something that must be closely scrutinized.

The atmosphere, the surroundings, the pressures that are operative in places that cause that particular type of response must be scrutinized, and it is your sovereign responsibility to see to that. It would be interesting to follow those statistics from year to year in this particular regard and see what happens with these schools.

Just before I sit down, I would like to mention a subject about which a great deal has been said over the years. I have in front of me the Harvard Educational Review special edition containing an article about the rights of children, which I trust the minister has seen, and particularly his staff, so they may inform him of the highlights and be thoroughly clued in on this subject.

I would also mention a matter which I know the minister is cognizant of -- and I’m not going to beat the beast, I’m not going to flagellate the hounds tonight; the stuff was brought to my attention, and probably to the attention of the minister. It concerns a particular approach to the whole matter, arising out of the University of Chicago and Harvard with respect to a concept of a moral development approach, based I suppose to some degree on Piaget, the famous French child psychologist.

When you talk about moral development, you become moralistic, and I’d rather avoid that. All they say is that there are stages in life’s way up to 11, from 11 to about 14 or 16 and so on, and different attitudes form themselves. I think we all know this with our own children, that around 14 or 15 they really turn off, because they are growing, they are setting up their distance from father and mother and becoming their own person, asserting a kind of independence.

The training school concept is so rigorous, so aligned and so institutionalized that the resistances they come up against are unyielding and tend towards a uniformity and military-like regimen. That kills the human spirit, because with our children we are pliable, we back up and move forward and we understand. We seek to give a certain play so that the growth may occur and be encouraged and all that sort of thing. That’s just the difference between the two types of institution.

What they come to here is really worth looking at in terms of internal discussions, in terms of participation, in terms of feeling their own personal worth in being listened to and in taking responsible decisions with their peers and running the institution up to point. These various things are well known to you. But I wish to bring to your attention the full impact, the spectrum in this particular area and I would hope that you are thoroughly aware of it.

The manual that I’ve got in my hand is a manual of Lawrence Kohlberg, Kelsey Koffman, Peter Scharfe and Joseph Hickey. It is quite a thick volume, going into the discipline boards, the various ways of sharing, the collective responsibility concept, particularly the beneficial effect upon girl or women prisoners. They seem to emerge from that particular milieu and the rate of recidivism is statistically proven to fall substantially if this particular approach is taken to the problem.

The earliest stage of moral development, curiously enough, is more closely allied, phylogenetically speaking, to the earliest times of the human race. In other words, the savage starts, the savage is egotistical, the savage is the egotist; the second level is the level of division, etc., when the authoritarian aspect comes into play. Then there is the area of the third stags and each of these stages have two stages but the third stage is a sense of the world, a wide sense of others and not just others in a confined environment but others everywhere, that we are all in the boat together. This widening sense establishes an identity with the human race so they are not enemies of the people; they are not enemies of everybody. They start off as enemies of everybody but the gradual widening of the consciousness, the types of conflicts that occur and the fact of resolving them in discussion helps at least. Talk isn’t going to save the world but it helps up to a point otherwise parliaments wouldn’t exist.

Hon. Mr. Potter: Mr. Chairman, I am surprised. The member mentioned last week about how helpful our newsletters were to him and I’m beginning to wonder whether he really reads them. In one of our newsletters last June and another one in December we described our programme in moral development, one at Thunder Bay and one at St. John. Mr. Hickey is helping out with the one at St. John. I’ll send these over to him and he can see for himself.

Mr. Lawlor: Don’t bother about that -- I have got the damned things. This whole report on St. John.

Mr. Chairman: The member for Kent.

Mr. Spence: Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask a question of the minister in regard to students taking social services courses at Humber College. During their studies they go to your institutions and carry out work on a part-time and unpaid basis. I had one young student in my office yesterday who said he was told by one of your officials in one of your institutions that when he completed his studies and got a diploma he would not qualify for a permanent position in those institutions, which was a great disappointment to him.

I often wonder, Mr. Minister, if you are familiar with these courses. I would say the Minister of Colleges and Universities (Mr. Auld) should upgrade these courses if the students can’t qualify for a permanent position in institutions which come under your portfolio. They should certainly be familiarized or informed before they ever start these courses on what they can qualify to do after they have graduated or got their diploma. Is the minister familiar with these students who carry out part of their studies in the institutions and who can’t qualify for a permanent position after they receive a diploma?

Hon. Mr. Potter: Yes, he can qualify for a permanent position with the ministry but it’s probably a different position he was asking about. If he wants to work as a social service worker with the ministry, he must get either a BSc, BSW or an MSW. The social service course at a community college isn’t a degree course and doesn’t qualify him as a social worker. It would qualify him to apply as a correctional officer and he would be eligible for that position.

Mr. Chairman: The member for Windsor-Walkerville.

Mr. B. Newman: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to return to the Twin Valley School in Rodney. We discussed this earlier. Would you tell me of the association between your ministry and the institution? What type of services does that institution provide to the people you send there? What is the age level of the people you send there and what are the general qualifications of the people who run the school to provide the type of services you require of the institution?

Hon. Mr. Potter: We purchase service from the institution and we send children who require special care.

Mr. B. Newman: Such as?

Hon. Mr. Potter: Such as very badly disturbed children. I can’t tell you the qualifications of the individuals on the staff but my staff have been satisfied that they do have the necessary qualifications to give the type of care which is recommended for those children who are sent there.

Mr. B. Newman: In any other institution, would the individual giving treatment to the youngster be required to have certain types of qualifications before he would be allowed to provide this type of guidance and counselling?

Hon. Mr. Potter: Certainly we would expect them to be psychologists and social workers, depending on the individual.

Mr. B. Newman: Then are the minister’s officials satisfied that those responsible for providing the services and the guidance and the counselling at Twin Valley have that special degree so that the individuals who are sent there by the ministry are receiving proper attention?

Hon. Mr. Potter: Well, we have been satisfied. If you have information you think we should have, I would be delighted if you would let me have it.

Mr. B. Newman: I don’t have any information but I just want to know, Mr. Minister, because I understand that that is an adjunct of St. Clair College.

Hon. Mr. Potter: We have been satisfied, yes.

Mr. B. Newman: I am trying to find out the association between St. Clair College, this, and now your ministry.

Now, is the institution paid on a per diem basis?

Hon. Mr. Potter: I would expect so. That is the usual procedure.

Mr. B. Newman: Do these funds go to St. Clair College, or do those funds now go to Twin Valley?

Hon. Mr. Potter: Twin Valley School.

Mr. B. Newman: Twin Valley School.

Mr. L. Maeck (Parry Sound): Back on that again?

Mr. B. Newman: And what is the per diem rate, Mr. Minister?

Hon. Mr. Potter: I cannot give you that.

Mr. B. Newman: Well, your officials probably can. They come under some category of institution.

Hon. Mr. Potter: No, I cannot give it to you now for the Twin Valley School, but I will see that you get it.

Mr. B. Newman: Would you likewise send to me any assessment that you have made of the Twin Valley School, and why you selected it, and the general picture of the whole thing so that I could know the association between it and St. Clair College?

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

Mr. H. Worton (Wellington South): Mr. Chairman, the minister replied to the member for Kent in regard to qualification of graduates of the community college. What are the requirements for a correctional officer; and what are the educational standards?

Hon. Mr. Potter: Grade 12.

Mr. Chairman: Shall vote 1403 carry? The hon. member for Sudbury.

Mr. Germa: Mr. Chairman, I raised earlier the question about the teachers’ wages in the Cecil Facer School. The minister responded that he was surprised that I had raised it, and that the member for Brant had raised it, and that all that he had seen was peace and harmony in his institutions.

I’m surprised that he hasn’t read the newspapers during the past four to six months. I have here the Globe and Mail of Nov. 8, 1974, and I’m quoting now from the article:

“Leaders of about 500 special teachers in 18 provincial schools for the retarded, disturbed, deaf and blind, are making plans to protest against the government’s year-old refusal to bargain with them over salaries and fringe benefits.”

Now that was just in November of last year. That’s not too far back, Mr. Minister.

I should point out that at that time all that was left in the bargaining unit were the people from the schools for the retarded, disturbed, deaf and blind. The people from your institutions who had been in that group from the beginning of bargaining had by that time already settled. I understand they had settled in September.

Hon. Mr. Potter: Yes, but they renegotiated with us.

Mr. Germa: That is what I am coming to. I understand that the final settlement didn’t come until Dec. 5 when the Minister of Education (Mr. Wells) announced in the House that this group had settled. But it indicates to me, Mr. Minister, that you had lack of harmony in September, for one reason or another.

Now I don’t know how you split one group from the teachers in the deaf and the retarded schools. I don’t know how you split off the teachers in the correctional institutions. But anyway you did, and they settled for a lower contract than what these other people finally arrived at. Now, I think the minister intimates that he had gone back and had brought their level up. Can you tell me the details of that particular situation?

Hon. Mr. Potter: Yes. Each has its own association. In our particular ministry they were indeed quite satisfied. We signed an agreement with them in September; the other groups didn’t. When the government started negotiating with the other group, we went back and suggested that we should renegotiate ours too and negotiate as a whole bunch, because we didn’t see any reason why they shouldn’t have the advantage of the increase in pay if the others were getting it. But to start with they were quite happy.

Mr. Germa: They had started out as an original group with the other two groups concerned.

Hon. Mr. Potter: Each had its own association.

Mr. Germa: Had they not been negotiating collectively with the government on behalf of all the groups?

Hon. Mr. Potter: No, they hadn’t.

Mr. Germa: That’s not the way I read it. I understand that there had been a joint committee bargaining with the government, and I know the old gimmick in bargaining.

Hon. Mr. Potter: They had never bargained before with the government.

Mr. Germa: I recognize that. This was their first time at it. I recognize the old trick of divide and conquer. I have been caught in this trap before as a worker in the Province of Ontario.

In one way or another you divided that group off. You peeled them of. I am glad to see you did go back. When I look at the wage scale, the beginning rate right now is $6,300 a year. That’s really not too fat a salary for a school teacher as far as I understand it.

Mr. Chairman: Shall vote 1403 carry?

Vote 1403 agreed to.

Mr. Chairman: This concludes the estimates of the Ministry of Correctional Services.

Hon. A. Grossman (Provincial Secretary for Resources Development): Mr. Chairman, the House leader has advised me that probably it would be just as well if we adjourn the House at this stage.

Mr. Lawlor: Did he ever have an easy time this year.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: He did a good job. That’s why.

Mr. Lawlor: Pure Vaseline jelly.

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

Motion agreed to.

The House resumed, Mr. Speaker in the chair.

Mr. Chairman: Mr. Speaker, the committee of supply begs to report a certain resolution and asks for leave to sit again.

Report agreed to.

THIRD READINGS

The following bills were given third reading upon motion:

Bill 31, An Act to amend the Succession Duty Act.

Bill 32, An Act to amend the Gift Tax Act.

Hon. E. A. Winkler (Chairman, Management Board of Cabinet): Mr. Speaker, inasmuch as I was somewhat surprised that the situation developed and we are finished with the minister’s estimates, I would like to say that I will move the adjournment of the House. Tomorrow we will deal with the sixth item on the order paper.

Mr. S. Lewis (Scarborough West): Mr. Speaker, since that may take only five or 10 minutes, what would follow?

Hon. Mr. Winkler: I am rather inclined to believe that that won’t happen, but should it happen I will call the 15th order.

Mr. J. R. Breithaupt (Kitchener): Speaker, if I might comment, the minister responsible (Mr. Welch) has two other bills available on the order paper, which perhaps could be dealt with too, if he is of a mind so to do. It might be convenient.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Certainly, I don’t want the people across the floor to think that I am not co-operative.

Mr. Lewis: The minister is not curtailing debate. We just want to clear the deck for him.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Certainly, I would call those orders as well, if time permitted. I have a feeling, if I understand this House --

Mr. Lewis: We want to leave June open to the government.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: -- that it just won’t be that way.

Hon Mr. Winkler moves the adjournment of the House.

Motion agreed to.

The House adjourned at 9:55 o’clock, p.m.