Legislative Assembly of Ontario

The House met at 2 o’clock, p.m.

Prayers.

Mr. R. G. Eaton (Middlesex South): Mr. Speaker, I’d like to introduce to the House a large number of constituents from Middlesex South, seated in the west gallery and the Speaker’s gallery. They are on a trip organized by the Strathroy Progressive Conservative Association and I ask you to join with me in welcoming them to the House.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Rainy River.

Mr. T. P. Reid (Rainy River): Mr. Speaker, I’d like to introduce to the House some 40 students in the charge of Mr. Bob Derkson who are from the community of Emo in the Rainy River district. These students and their teachers have come over 1,200 miles. Mr. Speaker, by bus; as you are aware that is further than the distance from Halifax. They are down here to see the Legislature, the Science Centre and all the other things of interest in Toronto.

Mr. Speaker: The Minister of Natural Resources.

Hon. L. Bernier (Minister of Natural Resources): Mr. Speaker, I know the members will want to join me in welcoming one particular group here in the gallery this afternoon. They are from the Evergreen Public School in Kenora. Earlier this morning we had a group of students from the Pinewood Senior Public School in Dryden.

Mr. Speaker: Statements by the ministry.

MERCURY POLLUTION AT INDIAN RESERVES

Hon. A. Grossman (Provincial Secretary for Resources Development): Mr. Speaker, because of unacceptably high mercury levels, inhabitants of the Grassy Narrows and Whitedog Indian reserves have been advised not to eat fish taken from the waters of the English-Wabigoon river system.

On April 26, I and my colleague, the Minister of Natural Resources, visited these two reserves to discuss the question of alternative fish supplies. We met with Chief Andy Keewatin, of Grassy Narrows, and Chief Roy MacDonald of Whitedog, and with councillors and band members of both reserves.

As a result, Mr. Speaker, we have agreed to undertake the following actions as quickly as possible.

1. Community freezers will be installed on both reserves for the purpose of storing uncontaminated fish for the use of band members.

2. Access will be provided to nearby uncontaminated lakes so that fish may be obtained by the bands for their own consumption.

In arriving at the foregoing, sir, we were assured by the bands that they wish to administer the programme when it is established, and they will choose fishermen from the bands to keep the freezers stocked with fish obtained from these lakes. This programme provides a clear alternative to the consumption of mercury-contaminated fish and, if followed, should eliminate the health hazard associated with this problem.

We are hopeful that with the increasing co-operation of the band council, who are aware of the problems posed by the mercury-contaminated fish, with an increased emphasis on nutritional education and with an alternative fish supply available, the consumption of contaminated fish will cease. I have already spoken to the federal Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development. We will be meeting shortly to work out the details of a co-operative programme with respect to the foregoing.

Mr. Speaker, other matters of concern to the Indian bands were also discussed at length and the Minister of Natural Resources will deal with these.

Mr. E. W. Martel (Sudbury East): Does he want to know what’s going on?

Mr. S. Lewis (Scarborough West): Does the minister want applause for that? That’s quite impressive after all these years.

Mr. Speaker: Order please.

Mr. Lewis: Freezers on the reserve four years later.

Mr. W. Ferrier (Cochrane South): Just before an election.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

EMPLOYMENT ON INDIAN RESERVES

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Mr. Speaker, further to the statement by the Provincial Secretary for Resources Development, I would like to make some additional comments which stem from our recent visit to the Grassy Narrows and Whitedog Indian reserves.

At the outset, let me say that I was most impressed with the attitude, the interest and the desire of the two chiefs and their people to find gainful employment in order to replace welfare.

Mr. Lewis: That’s nice of the minister. That’s really sweet.

Mr. J. A. Renwick (Riverdale): I wonder if they were impressed by him.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. The hon. minister will continue.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: The ministry staff are exploring commercial fishing opportunities in uncontaminated waters in the general vicinity of the two reserves.

Mr. Lewis: They must be pleased. White father gives them a little beneficence.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Because of the size and other characteristics of these locations, it may be that commercial fishing would be limited to alternative years or particular species.

As well, our staff will continue working with the people of the two reserves to provide additional advice in the development of cutting plans for timber already licensed to the bands concerned to increase employment and production. It may also be that some assistance in training and the use of particular equipment or the acquisition of equipment itself may be required.

Arrangements are being made to engage local native people for work in clearing the rights of way in the vicinity. This is the type of work that can be scheduled for times of the year when other employment opportunities do not exist. For instance, this work can be scheduled so as not to conflict with gathering of wild rice, commercial fishing or guiding.

Finally, Mr. Speaker, my ministry will be taking steps to ensure that wherever employment opportunities exist in our normal programmes, such as tree planting and fire-fighting, these opportunities will be made available to the people of the Whitedog and Grassy Narrows area.

Mr. Lewis: That’s pretty impressive stuff.

GRAND RIVER FLOOD INQUIRY

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Mr. Speaker, this afternoon I will be tabling the report of the royal commission inquiry into the Grand River flood of 1974. The commissioner, His Honour Judge W. W. Leach, presented his report to me this morning, and I am pleased to make his findings public.

As my hon. colleagues in this House will remember, the royal commission was set up on my recommendation through an order in council approved on June 26 of last year. Under the Public Inquiries Act, a commission was issued to appoint Judge Wilfred Wesley Leach, judge of the county court of the judicial district of Haldimand, to inquire into and report upon the nature, extent and causes of the flooding of the Grand River on May 16, 17 and 18, 1974; the resulting damage from the said flooding; and in particular the action of the Grand River Conservation Authority, participating municipalities and the relevant ministries of the government of Ontario in the operation of major dams and reservoirs and the flood warning and communication systems; and to make such recommendations as he might deem fit.

As Judge Leach says in his report, the inquiry began on July 9 of last year and sat for 43 days over a period of four months. More than 100 witnesses were interviewed and other investigations were carried out. Sittings were held in Grand Valley, Kitchener, Cambridge-Galt, Brantford and Cayuga. The large majority of the time was spent in Cambridge-Galt, which had suffered the heaviest damage from the flooding.

The findings of this independent inquiry is in a 94-page report. Judge Leach offers 21 recommendations and winds up with the conclusion that he was satisfied that the Grand River Conservation Authority, prior to and during the flood, operated the dams properly and in accordance with the established policy:

“With only two dams, they are trying to carry out a seven-dam responsibility.”

In, addition, the commissioner supports the comment about the conservation authority that: “They did the best they could with the system they had, under the circumstances.”

Mr. Speaker, the Grand River flood last year caused a great deal of hardship and property loss to many residents of the watershed. It was with the intention of discovering the most effective warning system and of preventing as much as possible serious damage and hardship in the future, that this inquiry was recommended.

As I advised the House last week, this year’s flood crisis in that watershed two weekends ago, passed with relatively little damage. Of course the crisis did not turn out to be as bad as last year’s, but I think it is also fair to say that the situation was faced better -- with proper warning and preparation by all concerned -- partly because of the awareness that was raised through the discussions of the commission hearings during the past summer and fall.

Judge Leach says floods are a natural phenomenon and cannot be totally abolished no matter what remedial action is taken in the watershed. He adds: “As long as people continue to live in the flood plains, there will be flood victims.”

Mr. Lewis: Did he decide that? That’s quite a judge. He’s probably reading about Noah.

Mr. A. J. Roy (Ottawa East): Did the minister agree with that?

Mr. Lewis: Who is this man? He has the wisdom of Solomon.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: However, his recommendations include the following:

Immediate construction of the Montrose reservoir to control the Irvine River and to provide flash flood storage. This would substantially decrease flood damage in the Cambridge-Galt area;

That the Grand River Conservation Authority carry out au exhaustive analysis of the alternatives before proceeding with the construction of other reservoirs;

That basin planning in the Grand River be tackled by a multi-disciplines planning team established by the provincial government;

That flood warning systems be upgraded by the conservation authority and by the municipalities, and that communications between them be improved;

That a co-ordinated flood disaster plan be initiated by the provincial government; and

That the flood plain be thoroughly mapped and no building or development be allowed within the regional flood lines.

Judge Leach also makes specific recommendations concerning Cambridge-Galt, Kitchener-Bridgeport, the Grand River valley, and Dunnville.

In his account of how the flooding came about, Judge Leach mentions that the reservoir at Guelph is under construction. This $15-million project is approximately one-third completed and should be ready for the spring runoff next year.

As the hon. members will find, Judge Leach has produced a very readable and attractively presented report with the hope that it may get widespread attention. In that spirit, Mr. Speaker, we are holding a news conference in Cambridge-Galt this afternoon in which I will participate by conference telephone, so that local media representatives can read the report at the same time as their counterparts in the press gallery here.

A final point: Judge Leach comments in his report that this year the Grand River Conservation Authority, the city of Cambridge-Galt, the regional police and the Emergency Measures Organization have responded to his urging to develop a workable plan to help alleviate flooding in the future. As he says:

“It was most satisfying to me that the GRCA and the officials of Cambridge-Galt, who were at loggerheads following the flood, are now approaching the problem in a constructive and reasonable manner, with a desire to try and avoid the mistakes of the past.”

Hopefully, Mr. Speaker, I commend the Leach report to the attention of this House for all to read and to appreciate.

Mr. V. M. Singer (Downsview): Did the Treasurer (Mr. McKeough) not tell the minister that he did away with EMO?

Mr. Lewis: There are some revelations in that one.

Mr. Speaker: Oral questions.

The Leader of the Opposition.

MERCURY POLLUTION

Mr. R. F. Nixon (Leader of the Opposition): Mr. Speaker, I would like to put a question to the Provincial Secretary for Resources Development following his statement on the nutritional system in Grassy Narrows. Does the minister feel that this government has fulfilled its responsibility to the Indian community there simply by the procedures and the solution that he has put before us -- the provision of freezers and so on?

Would he not agree that someone is responsible for the permanent interference of the basic fishing grounds for those Indian communities, which were guaranteed to them as long as the grass grows and the wind blows, and that somebody should be taking some initiative to see that they are compensated for the loss of this fishing ground?

Would the minister not feel that he, in his particular policy position, along with the chief law officer of the Crown, is the one person in government who should be in a position to give some initiative to assist the Indian community in this long-range responsibility and not just to provide the freezers. If that is the solution after four years what the devil has been holding him up?

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Mr. Speaker, my colleague has pointed out that programmes are going to be put into effect which would replace the lost income of those people who were involved in commercial fishing. The whole matter of the responsibility, and whatever action the Leader of the Opposition feels should be taken, is under consideration by the government, having regard for the very complicated matters involved in it.

Mr. Roy: Blame the others.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: The federal government apparently has absolved itself of complete responsibility in most of these matters. We are doing our best.

Interjections by hon. members.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: In fact, we are stepping in many instances which, technically and legally speaking, are the responsibility of the federal government.

Mr. Lewis: That’s thoughtful.

Mr. M. Cassidy (Ottawa Centre): The minister usually hid behind the technicalities.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Because we have some concern and we know that neither the Indians nor anyone else cares to be involved in an argument about whose responsibility such an important thing is, we are doing our best to step in even when the responsibilities aren’t legally ours.

Mr. Lewis: The minister looks concerned.

Mr. Roy: That’s what he is doing.

Mr. Lewis: It took him five years to visit the place.

Mr. Speaker: Any further questions?

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I would be the last to say the minister is not concerned, but surely if he is going to be part of a government which deals with all of the people in the province, including the Indian residents --

Mr. Mattel: He could do some dredging.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: -- would he not think he should take some initiative to foster some kind of court action which will lead to the compensation of the Indian community for the loss of these hereditary fishing rights, which are apparently now permanently lost?

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Mr. Speaker, obviously if the Indians have lost any of their hereditary rights that is a legal matter, a constitutional matter.

Mr. Roy: Right. What is the minister going to do to help them?

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Those people who are involved in considering the constitutional and legal matters with respect to this particular problem are studying it at this particular time.

Mr. Cassidy: The minister said he wouldn’t hide behind the gallery.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: I haven’t even got my honorary QC yet.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: He is concerned, he said so.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: I’ve a list over -- of course, we are concerned and those people, the law officers --

Mr. Mattel: It only took him four years.

Mr. Lewis: Why doesn’t he just turn down the thermostat?

Mr. Speaker: Order please.

Interjections by hon. members.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: The member was castigating the government because it was doing nothing to substitute for the loss of the --

Mr. R. F. Nixon: After four years it has given them a freezer.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: -- protein food supply for the Indians in those particular reserves. We’ve resolved this problem and now all the member can think of to say is it’s a little too late.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: One can’t say that’s responding. It is not responding.

Mr. Cassidy: Is there power there or is the government getting a long extension cord?

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. A supplementary from the member for Scarborough West.

Mr. Lewis: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Why need there be a legal battle at all since the contaminants causing the pollution of the rivers and the fish were released within provincial jurisdiction? Therefore, why is it not possible, as part of the minister’s response, to provide a financial formula showing the difference between the income earned in 1970-1971, before the cessation of fishing; the welfare payments subsequently paid, and what the income would have been throughout that period? There might then be some compensatory income, until all the Indians on the reserve are re-employed in the fashion which has been announced today by the Minister of Natural Resources.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Mr. Speaker, we are doing everything we possibly can within the ambit, as I say, of our legal responsibility -- and over and above that -- to compensate for whatever loss the Indians have sustained because of the contamination of the water in those lakes.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: The government is not going to compensate them at all.

Mr. Lewis: What does that mean?

Hon. Mr. Grossman: We are doing everything we can; just what I say.

I can tell members we are the only jurisdiction at this particular moment which is taking any interest in it at all.

Mr. Lewis: All right. I have one further supplementary.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: As a matter of fact, I will tell the member -- I want him to hear this; this is very important --

Mr. J. M. Turner (Peterborough): He won’t understand it anyway.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: It is very easy, when in opposition, to say one should do this and one should do that, and take an interest in this and take an interest in that. I wonder if he appreciates the fact that in Manitoba, where there is an NDP government, the government has completely opted out of giving any kind of health services to the Indians on the reserves on the basis that it is a federal responsibility.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Come on now.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: We haven’t done that. We insist on looking after those people whether they are a federal responsibility or ours.

Mr. Lewis: What is he talking about?

Mr. J. E. Stokes (Thunder Bay): The pollution comes from Ontario.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Is the minister not aware, for example, that in the Province of Quebec, where there isn’t an NDP government --

Mr. Lewis: Not yet.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: -- there has been an agreement of the transference of a very large sum of money to the Indian communities which have lost their hunting and living rights in areas which have been injuriously affected by decisions of the government? They have lost their rights and they are being paid. Why shouldn’t the Ontario Indians be paid?

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Mr. Speaker, that’s a completely false comparison. There is no relationship to this situation at all.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Not at all.

Mr. Singer: The comparisons the minister makes are nothing.

Mr. Lewis: Mr. Speaker, one last supplementary, on a completely consistent comparison I hope: How is it that the government found money to compensate the St. Clair fishermen for mercury contamination of exactly the same kind, but never found money to compensate the Indians of Whitedog and Grassy Narrows?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Mr. Speaker, if I can reply to that particular question, the member is entirely wrong, because the Indian commercial fishermen in Whitedog and Grassy Narrows received the same treatment as the St. Clair fishermen; exactly the same treatment.

Mr. Lewis: But not the guides, not those who were depending on the income; just the commercial fishermen. Why did the government not compensate the guides for loss of income?

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. A final supplementary from the member for Rainy River.

Mr. Reid: Can I ask the minister if he and the Indians arrived at any programme for the continuing monitoring of the Indians’ health; and what he is going to do to improve the Indians’ actual health in this regard?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Mr. Speaker, if I could respond to that particular question, this is an ongoing programme and the federal Department of National Health and Welfare are very closely connected with this particular matter. So I am confident that as we move ahead the Indians will be involved in that particular type of monitoring.

I might say that as my own ministry monitors the levels of mercury in the fish in the Wabigoon and the English river systems, the local Indian people will be involved as part of the work force in that particular field.

Mr. Speaker: Any further questions by the Leader of the Opposition?

PROTECTION OF TREATY RIGHTS

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I would like to put a question to the Attorney General: Has he given any consideration to entering into a suit on behalf of the Indians at Whitedog and Grassy Narrows to achieve compensation for the loss of their undoubted fishing rights, based on the treaties which say they have those rights as long as the wind blows and the grass grows?

Hon. J. T. Clement (Provincial Secretary for Justice): No, Mr. Speaker, I have not considered that matter with my officials, but I will look into it. I am not familiar with having received any advice or instructions or help from my law officers in that matter.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: A supplementary question: As the chief law officer of the Crown, the minister would agree that it is his duty to protect the rights of all citizens, including the Indians in the northwest part of the province; and will he, after he looks into this matter, give us a report as to the possibility of such legal action on behalf of those residents of Ontario?

Hon. Mr. Clement: Mr. Speaker, assuming for a moment that the Indians may well have some form of action -- and I am not admitting this, because I am just not familiar with it -- it would, of course, be a civil action, and it’s unlikely that we would undertake the carriage of a civil action on behalf of any group; on behalf of the people of the province collectively, yes, but not on behalf of any individual group.

Mr. Stokes: Where do they have the funds to initiate a civil action?

Mr. Singer: What is the government bringing the Dow action for?

Mr. Speaker: The member for Ottawa East, a supplementary?

Mr. Roy: In view of the minister’s answer that this is a civil action --

Hon. Mr. Clement: I say I suppose.

Mr. Roy: Yes, let’s suppose that it is -- why won’t he do like the federal government, which has been providing funds to Indians to make appearances at commissions and this type of thing; or would he approach, for instance, the Law Society and the Legal Aid Plan to give them some assistance on that basis, should it be a civil action?

Hon. Mr. Clement: Mr. Speaker, at this point it’s difficult to talk in a conjectural vein, but I am just saying that I don’t think it is the duty of the Ministry of the Attorney General to undertake civil litigation on behalf of any individual group; on behalf of the people of the province collectively, yes, if there was a cause of action.

Mr. Singer: Mr. Speaker, by way of supplementary, would the Attorney General not agree that the Dow action was undertaken apparently on behalf of the fishermen in Lake Erie and that loans were made out of another fund; and at least the Provincial Auditor thought, like some of us, that if the Dow action ever got to trial and the province was ever successful the loans made to the fishermen would be repaid out of the profits of that action. If all of those presumptions grew up, how can the minister now opt out of aiding the Indians, when he and his colleagues attempted to aid the fishermen in Lake Erie by this devious method?

Hon. Mr. Clement: Mr. Speaker, I understand that the Dow action was brought on behalf of all the people of this province, not only on behalf of the fishermen in the Lake Erie area; and accordingly that is why the matter was instituted at the request of the Attorney General.

Mr. Martel: I am sure all of Ontario would support the ministry in this instance.

Hon. Mr. Clement: But I repeat, I do not think that it is incumbent upon the Ministry of the Attorney General to undertake civil litigation on behalf of any particular group in this province.

Mr. Roy: It could assist them.

Mr. Lewis: That’s an interesting statement.

Mr. Speaker: Further questions? A supplementary.

Mr. Lewis: Given the very particular circumstances here where the province was responsible for the loss of economic well-being, does the minister think anyone in the province would object if he intervened, either on behalf of or in conjunction with the Indian bands in the northwest, to seek court action -- although I think there are other ways of doing it?

Hon. Mr. Clement: Mr. Speaker, I don’t quite understand the question from the leader of the NDP. I don’t think that it’s wrong; in fact it’s the obligation of the Attorney General to intervene in those matters, particularly constitutional, where the rights of people of this province are affected. I say I don’t think it’s incumbent on our ministry to undertake civil litigation on behalf of any particular group within this province.

Mr. Speaker: Further questions? The Leader of the Opposition.

GRAND RIVER FLOOD INQUIRY

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I would like to ask a question of the Minister of Natural Resources, following his statement about the tabling of the royal commission report. When he is on the press conference, whatever it’s called, this afternoon, is he prepared to announce to the people of the community affected by this year’s floods that the same financial assistance -- that is a three-to-one matching of the dollars raised for assistance locally -- will be the continuing programme of assistance? And is the minister also prepared to say to the municipalities, which this year had an early warning of the flood situation and spent money to protect their citizens, that the government is prepared to compensate those communities for the special expenditures entered into by way of protection against the flood waters?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Mr. Speaker, I think I indicated to the members of this House in a question asked of me last week that I was asking for a full report from my staff as to the extent of the damage, that we would look at it from a broad point of view and that each area and each question would be dealt with individually.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: A supplementary: Is there any reason the same formula used last year would not apply this year? And why would the minister not be able to announce that municipalities would get the special assistance they really require if they’re going to make use of the early warning system that has been forthcoming from the royal commission hearings?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Mr. Speaker, I am sure the hon. member is aware that the actions of the conservation authority in the various municipalities and an early warning system prevented much of the damage that could have occurred had they not been prepared. So the indication to me at this point in time is that the extent of the damage was nowhere near what occurred last year. In fact, in essence, there wasn’t any flood disaster.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Yes, but it’s just as bad.

Mr. Speaker: Further questions?

Mr. R. F. Nixon: A supplementary: Wouldn’t the minister agree that while the damage is not as extensive because of the early warning system it is just as bad for those individuals whose homes were flooded? I mean, it’s certainly as bad for them as it was last year.

Mr. I. Deans (Wentworth): That’s what the minister seems to miss.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: That’s what I’m saying, Mr. Speaker, and the hon. member doesn’t get the point. We’re going to look at each one individually.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Oh yes, I get the point.

Mr. Speaker: Any further questions?

Mr. M. Gaunt (Huron-Bruce): Supplementary, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: One final supplementary.

Mr. Gaunt: When does the minister feel that all of the estimates of the damage will reach his office? I had understood that would be done last week.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: I have no indication from the staff, Mr. Speaker, at this time when the estimate will be in. I think it will be in very shortly.

Mr. Speaker: Any further questions?

GOVERNMENT ADVERTISING PROGRAMMES

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Yes, I would like to put a question to the Chairman of the Management Board of Cabinet, if I could have his attention for a moment.

Was the Management Board, with the approval of the various ministries, concerned with the special advertising programmes that we are seeing on television and hearing on the radio and reading in the dailies and the weekly newspapers, that by a good estimate would amount to a $10 million supplementary advertising programme that is under way now, involving the first-home buyer programme, the student jobs programme, the fair share of Ontario’s tax credit programme, the consumer advice programme, the seatbelt programme, the liquor ads programme and the Wintario programme? Was this put to the Management Board for special consideration, or was it, in fact, a decision made by the Minister without Portfolio from London South (Mr. White) who was in charge of saving the Conservative Party’s bacon at the next election?

Hon. E. A. Winkler (Chairman, Management Board of Cabinet): Mr. Speaker, the programmes really have nothing much to do with the member for London South --

Mr. R. F. Nixon: They have everything to do with him.

Mr. R. F. Ruston (Essex-Kent): Everything.

Mr. Cassidy: The minister stonewalled on this question last week; now don’t do it again.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: If the members are listening for the balance of the answer they may learn something.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Teach us, teach us.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: All right. Now all of the programmes that are in place right now are part of the ministerial budgets; with the exception of the homeowner grant programme, that was considered on a special basis and granted about two weeks ago.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: A supplementary: Will the Chairman of the Management Board, who in fact is responsible for the approval of these expenditures, table in the House the information associated with all of these programmes which are coming thick and fast? We want to know what agencies are responsible; and we particularly want to know the tendering procedures which resulted in the award of the contracts.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Mr. Speaker, I have already given notice to the House of almost all of the estimates of the government. They are all there and in place and can be questioned when the minister is before the Legislature.

Mr. Speaker: Any further questions?

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I would particularly like to ask the Chairman of the Management Board then if he is refusing to gather this information, which is of some considerable sensitivity, since there are those who are subjective enough to think that it is clearly an advertising programme to put forward the Conservative Party in an election year?

Hon. Mr. Winkler: That is absolutely untrue, Mr. Speaker. Some of these were in place long before any of the influence of the member for London South’s position was brought forward and had nothing to do with him or whatever his duties might be.

Mr. Speaker: Any further new questions?

Mr. Lewis: Supplementary: Is the Chairman of the Management Board saying, with respect to the figures attached to this omnibus “save-the-bacon” campaign which the government has launched, that he won’t undertake tabling the information that was asked by my colleague the member for Ottawa Centre, and asked again today?

Hon. Mr. Winkler: No, I am not objecting to it. It’s a matter that requires a great deal of detail and I think it should be --

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: The government will never get to those estimates.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Just a moment, Mr. Speaker, in all common sense it’s a question where, if they want that detailed a reply, it should be on the order paper.

Mr. Reid: We don’t get answers.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: What is more, my hon. colleague the member for St. Andrew-St. Patrick (Mr. Grossman) objects to such questions as saving anybody’s bacon.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Lewis: The minister should not object to it when it comes from the provincial secretary.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: He doesn’t object when we go to the Arabs to borrow money.

Mr. Lewis: Supplementary.

Mr. Speaker: Order please. I think we have had enough questions on this matter. We have spent about 18 minutes now. Any further questions from the Leader of the Opposition? The member for Scarborough West with his questions.

COMPENSATION TO INDIAN FISHERMEN

Mr. Lewis: I have a question of the Minister of Natural Resources. How many Indian fishermen engaged in commercial fishing were compensated by the government subsequent to the mercury contamination?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Mr. Speaker, there was no compensation paid to any commercial fishermen in the Province of Ontario anywhere.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: They were loans.

Mr. Lewis: All right, loans. The minister has implied that the loans will become grants, so he had best he careful. How many Indians in Grassy Narrows and Whitedog were compensated on a programme equivalent to that of the Lake St. Clair fishermen, whether by loan or by grant?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Mr. Speaker, if my memory serves me correctly, there are about 552 or 560 people in Grassy Narrows and I think there were 17 commercial fishermen. That shows the extent of the commercial fishing industry in that particular community.

Mr. Lewis: Did those 17 get loans prorated the way St. Clair Lake fishermen did? For all the others who acted as guides and whose livelihood was dependent on fishing of one kind or another, was there any compensation worked out?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Mr. Speaker, the member knows quite well that we don’t pay compensation. The government has never accepted the responsibility for compensation for pollution damage and for loss of job opportunities. I would say to him that the Indian people, as the member for Thunder Bay accepts, do not depend on one source of income; for example guiding, to which he refers. That is only one of the many jobs they take during the course of a year. They could be picking wild rice in the fall, they could be fall-fishing later on, they could be cutting pulpwood during the wintertime or they could be trapping in the spring. It’s just part of an overall parcel in their economic life.

Mr. Lewis: Can the minister table the dollar value of the loans made to the Indian bands in northwestern Ontario?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: I’d be glad to.

Mr. Lewis: Thanks very much.

THIRD WORLD GRANTS

Mr. Lewis: Can I ask the Minister of Culture and Recreation -- I think this would fall within his portfolio -- what is the government’s response to the interchurch brief, the endless requests to his government for Ontario matching grants in aid to the third world?

Hon. R. Welch (Minister of Culture and Recreation): Mr. Speaker, my policy minister, the Provincial Secretary for Social Development (Mrs. Birch), convened a meeting last week with representatives of that particular group. There was to be some follow-up but I wouldn’t presume to answer the question for her. Perhaps the member would like to redirect it.

Mr. Lewis: Fine. Could I redirect it then to the Provincial Secretary for Social Development? What is the government’s response to the repeated requests of the interchurch committee for matching grants from the Province of Ontario in fields of economic aid to the third world?

Hon. M. Birch (Provincial Secretary for Social Development): Mr. Speaker, last week the Premier (Mr. Davis) and several of my colleagues had a very good meeting with representatives from the various church groups interested in this specific request. After 2½ hours of dialogue we decided there would he continuing consultation with Mr. Hilliard, who has been appointed as a special consultant, and senior members of the government, to continue to discuss ways and means that this province can be of help.

Mr. Lewis: By way of a supplementary, is it true to say a decision still hasn’t been made on matching grants, which many of the other provinces have now agreed to.

Mr. Renwick: The government turned it down.

Mr. Lewis: It’s still up in the air.

Hon. Mrs. Birch: It’s still under consideration.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: By way of a supplementary, can the provincial secretary explain what Mr. Hilliard’s duties will be? Is he going to be travelling the third world to look at the need and see how our food products or our expertise might fit into that programme? Finally, has there been any assessment of the cost of the participation that has been asked for by the interchurch group?

Hon. Mrs. Birch: To answer the Leader of the Opposition’s last question first, as he knows they are asking for $9 million from the Province of Ontario.

As far as Mr. Hilliard’s duties are concerned, the terms of reference are very broad. He will be travelling, he will be talking to people in the third world; and he will be talking with people at the federal level, as well as continuing discussions with the members of the church groups that were represented and with CIDA.

Mr. Lewis: Who is Mr. Hilliard?

Hon. Mr. Welch: He is the former Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Food.

Mr. Lewis: He’s going off to the third world? What is he going to do?

Mr. Deans: He’s going to look around.

Mr. Lewis: Is he going to buy some land? What is the minister talking about? He will use up the $9 million in travel.

Mr. J. R. Breithaupt (Kitchener): He’s opening an Ontario office in Saigon.

Mr. Speaker: Was that a question?

Hon. Mrs. Birch: Perhaps, Mr. Speaker, the leader of the NDP has not seen the press release announcing Mr. Hilliard’s special duties. I’ll make sure that he receives one.

Mr. Lewis: No, I didn’t. Thank you.

EQUAL PAY FOR WOMEN

Mr. Lewis: May I ask the Minister of Labour a question? Has he set up a ministerial steering committee on equal pay legislation to discuss concepts and implementation of equal pay for work of equal value? Does Marnie Clarke, now in the ministry’s women’s bureau, head that committee? Is that committee having difficulty getting funding; and in fact to this date has not yet met?

Hon. J. P. MacBeth (Minister of Labour): Yes, Mr. Speaker, there is such a committee set up, and I believe Marnie Clarke is the woman who is chairing it -- I’m not sure, but I think it is Marnie Clarke who is chairing it.

As far as I know, there is no difficulty with money. We’re having shortages for the whole ministry’s operation. We’d like more money, I think that’s general, but I don’t think there’s any specific shortage in regard to hindering their work at all.

Mr. Speaker: Are there any further questions?

DAYCARE REPORT

Mr. Lewis: I have one question of the Minister of Community and Social Services. He has an interministerial committee on residential services for children, which produced a report by John Anderson and Edward Magder. The report was submitted to the cabinet in early April. Will that report on residential services throughout the province be tabled in the Legislature?

Hon. R. Brunelle (Minister of Community and Social Services): This was an internal report, Mr. Speaker, submitted as the hon. member mentioned, to the social policy field. At this time I do not believe we will be making it public.

Mr. Cassidy: Why not?

Hon. Mr. Brunelle: It is an interim report and the matter has not yet been finalized.

Mr. Cassidy: That is rubbish, just rubbish.

Mr. Lewis: Can the minister explain to me why, in one instance after another, whether it’s daycare, family planning or group homes, his ministry suppresses valuable public information? Doesn’t he think a report which deals with zoning bylaws, per diems and quality of care should be a public document when drawn up by people so eminent in the field?

Hon. Mr. Brunelle: Mr. Speaker, as I just told the hon. member, this is not the final report. It’s an interim report.

Mr. Lewis: But it is a very thorough one.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Sarnia.

HYDRO RATES

Mr. J. E. Bullbrook (Sarnia): Mr. Speaker, I have a question to direct to either the Minister of Energy or the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations (Mr. Handleman) -- whosoever wishes to reply. Is the minister aware that Ontario Hydro charged for their December billings at the January increased rates and ripped off the people of Ontario to the tune of millions of dollars? Is he aware that this has been verified by the Ontario Energy Board for me? Is he aware that the Ontario Energy Board has no jurisdiction in this connection?

Would he consider, on the facts, that he might recommend to his cabinet colleagues the appointment of a board of review to look into this ripoff and to order the rebate of these millions of dollars to the people of Ontario? While he is at it would he order the Ontario Energy Board to order Union Gas to do the same thing?

Hon. D. R. Timbrell (Minister of Energy): Mr. Speaker, if I may answer the second part first, I think it was probably the very first question I was asked following my appointment as Minister of Energy.

Mr. Bullbrook: Forget about the second part; answer the first.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: No, don’t forget the second part.

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: The rate case is continuing with Union Gas and that is being considered by the Energy Board.

I’ll take the first part as notice. I don’t know how long the member has had what he considers to be proof of this. I wish he had brought it to my attention sooner.

Mr. Bullbrook: I will send it to the minister and the Premier forthwith.

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: Make it “fifthwith”; right now.

Mr. Roy: He wouldn’t know. He is only the minister.

Mr. Bullbrook: I will get it to him right away.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Parkdale.

COMMUNITY HEALTH PROGRAMMES

Mr. J. Dukszta (Parkdale): In the absence of the Minister of Health (Mr. Miller), can I direct this question to the Provincial Secretary for Social Development?

I wonder if the provincial secretary could tell the House how many community health programmes and centres have been now funded? How many is she extending the funding for? How many are under consideration and is she going to fund any of those proposals which have been submitted to the Minister of Health?

Hon. Mrs. Birch: Mr. Speaker, I’d suggest the question would be more properly directed to the minister of the operating ministry, Health.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Ottawa East.

USE OF FRENCH IN COURTS

Mr. Roy: Thank you, Mr. Speaker, I have a question of the Attorney General. On May 3, 1971, the Premier made a statement that he would be studying ways to permit the use of French in our courts, and this was subsequently backed up in the Throne Speech of 1972. Could the minister outline for us what steps have been taken to realize this objective?

Hon. Mr. Clement: Mr. Speaker, about six or eight months ago, under the direction of my predecessor, the law officers of the Crown embarked upon a programme to attempt to prepare a summons, starting with summary convictions matters, both in French and English.

They have met with considerable difficulty in translating some of the phrases which are used extensively in the courts in English -- following too closely and this sort of thing -- and interpreting them into French so that the meaning would be known to the reader of that document. There is no difficulty in having the printed portion of the form either in French or English or both. The difficulty is in the translation of the nature of the offence, and this is the difficulty in which we find ourselves at the present time.

There is a second difficulty, which is somewhat temporary at the present time, I hope. That is, if one embarks -- I think it would probably be on a regional or area basis. hopefully --

Mr. Roy: Just follow my bill.

Hon. Mr. Clement: -- upon the straight use of French in the provincial courts of this province -- or some of them -- one must of course have personnel both at the bench and at the bar --

Mr. Roy: We have them.

Hon. Mr. Clement: -- and court interpreters or stenographers capable of dealing with the matter in the French language.

To this, Mr. Speaker, is added a third consideration, and that is if a matter proceeded to appeal there would be the question of a translation which can be looked after very quickly, because as you know, most appellant bodies in this province are not bilingual. We would necessarily have to interpret into English the evidence which was given at the trial in the first instance in French. These are matters with which we are concerned and on which we are presently working.

I cannot give a firm target date at this point but I want members of this House to know we are concerned about it, particularly in the northeastern Ontario section, a certain area in southwestern Ontario and portions of northern Ontario.

Mr. Roy: May I ask one supplementary to this?

Mr. Speaker: One supplementary.

Mr. Roy: In view of the fact that these statements were made in 1971; and in view of the fact that as far as the translation is concerned the government could have got assistance, I suppose, from the Province of Quebec; and in view of the fact that when one talks about appellant courts we have French-speaking judges now in the appellant courts and in the Supreme Court of Ontario; but lastly, would the minister not do something expeditiously so he will avoid situations such as he has presently in Ottawa -- which I brought to his attention a couple of weeks ago -- where certain individuals are prepared to defy the law if they don’t receive summonses in French and, in fact, they are prepared to go to jail?

Hon. Mr. Clement: Yes, Mr. Speaker, the member did mention two instances to me, I believe some three or four weeks ago. May I point out to the member -- and he knows very well -- that the interpretation of phraseology in the English language is a matter of interpretation by the courts and is constantly being decided by the courts, and has been ever since courts originated. Then to suddenly embark again into another language and ask for the judicial interpretations of phraseology in another language again compounds it. I suspect --

Mr. Roy: The minister is giving the same answers his predecessors did.

Hon. Mr. Clement: No, I haven’t even read the answers that my predecessors gave; but I want to assure the member, and other members of the House, that it is a very difficult matter. You just cannot literally translate some of the phraseology and retain the meaning from the English to the French. And it’s very difficult to find the answer.

Mr. Roy: They have a system in Quebec.

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

OPERATIONS AT REEVES MINES

Mr. Ferrier: I have a question of the Minister of Natural Resources growing out of the meeting we had with him and officials on April 1 concerning the closing of the Johns-Manville Reeves mine. Can the minister inform the House if the medical team that he said would be going to Timmins to inspect the miners will be going and when? Secondly, has he been able to set up the meeting of the senior official of Johns-Manville, himself and a member of the head office staff of steel workers?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Mr. Speaker, I have had discussions with my colleague, the Minister of Health, on this particular point, and he has confirmed that a medical team will be going to Timmins. The exact timing I haven’t available at this point in time. I would hope to have that in the next day or two. In connection with our meeting with the Johns-Manville officials, I think it is fair to say that we have had some difficulty in convincing them they should meet with us; but we intend to proceed and they will be meeting with us. The exact date of that meeting is not confirmed at this time.

Mr. Speaker: One supplementary.

Mr. Ferrier: Is the Johns-Manville company refusing to meet with the minister?

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

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Waterloo North.

ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT

Mr. E. R. Good (Waterloo North): Mr. Speaker, I have a question of the Minister of the Environment. Is the impression correct that the provincial Treasurer gave at the PMLC meeting last week that he does not intend to proceed -- or there is no immediacy to proceed with the passage of the Environmental Assessment Act? He more or less gave me the impression that it may not be brought forth in this session. Is that correct?

Hon. W. Newman (Minister of Environment): Mr. Speaker, that is incorrect. I did meet with the PMLC last week to discuss the bill. I met with the Canadian Environmental --

Mr. Good: Did he? I was there.

Hon. W. Newman: I did. I was there last week. The member thought I wasn’t there, didn’t he? He just wasn’t watching. I was there.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Hon. W. Newman: Mr. Speaker, I did meet with them -- well, whenever the last meeting was; a week or 10 days ago. They asked for a further meeting with me with staff. I said we would set it up. I believe we have a date set up for that meeting. They are asking for a further report to the PMLC, and they want to meet with me when that report is in. It is expected around the middle of May.

I met with the Canadian Environmental Law Association this morning. I have a couple of other groups who want to meet to discuss the bill. I said when I tabled the bill in the House that I would leave room for discussions with the various groups. Maybe the member would like to hand me his comments on the bill some time prior to second reading in the House.

Mr. Speaker: One supplementary.

Mr. Good: Since my colleague, the critic, and I have already received at least 10 or 15 copies of letters to the minister reflecting gross concern about the inadequacies of the bill, is the minister prepared to bring it in in quite a different form before we do pass it?

Hon. W. Newman: Mr. Speaker, we feel it is a very fine bill, but I am not prepared to suggest what changes I may or may not make until I have met with all the groups involved.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Sudbury East.

CLOSING OF BURWASH CORRECTIONAL CENTRE

Mr. Martel: To the Minister of Government Services: Has Bruce Martin Real Estate in Sudbury been hired by the ministry to get rid of the houses in Burwash?

Hon. J. W. Snow (Minister of Government Services): No, Mr. Speaker.

Hon. J. R. Rhodes (Minister of Transportation and Communications): Is that the member’s house?

Mr. Martel: A supplementary question: Does the Minister of Government Services intend to announce shortly what the government intends to do with the facilities at Burwash?

Hon. Mr. Snow: Yes, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Martel: When?

Mr. Speaker: The member for Kitchener.

NEW KITCHENER COURTHOUSE

Mr. Breithaupt: I would like to direct a question to the Minister of Government Services with respect to the postponement of construction of the new courthouse in the city of Kitchener. Can the minister advise us of the reasons for the delay, and as a result the continuing inconvenience to some 200,000 people of having to have various cases handled in very inadequate, although hopefully temporary, quarters in the former Preston municipal building?

Mr. W. Hodgson (York North): We need one in York first.

Hon. Mr. Snow: Mr. Speaker, as I am sure the hon. member knows, the site has been purchased for the new courthouse and registry office in the city of Kitchener. An architect from the city of Kitchener has designed a new building. That building was not included in the group of projects that was approved by cabinet to proceed in this particular year. It is ready to go, but it was not included in the priority list of projects for this year.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Wentworth.

ONTARIO LOTTERY

Mr. Deans: Mr. Speaker, I’ve a question of the Minister of Culture and Recreation. If I’m correct in my understanding that the proceeds from the lottery are to go to cultural and recreational endeavours in the province, would it make sense that the sale of tickets be undertaken by many of the groups which might benefit from the proceeds, thereby enabling them to take advantage of the commission, so that they might not need quite as much money?

Mr. Breithaupt: Like service clubs.

Hon. Mr. Welch: Yes.

Mr. Deans: Will the minister then undertake to take a look around the province, isolate such groups and offer them the opportunity? For example, the seniors’ club in Stoney Creek probably could benefit from such a thing. Maybe one or two of the hockey organizations could benefit. In other words, there are all kinds --

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Churches.

Mr. Deans: -- that I might suggest to the minister -- that would be enabled to raise funds.

Mr. Roy: The NDP associations.

Hon. Mr. Welch: Mr. Speaker, that’s certainly an excellent comment. In fact, when we were debating the lottery corporation bill on second reading, the point was made quite clearly --

Mr. Deans: Is the minister going to do it?

Hon. Mr. Welch: -- that within the framework of the commission money I would hope that there would be an opportunity for many non-profit, fraternal, or service clubs to sell tickets.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I think the Canadian Legion should have the whole thing.

Mr. Roy: The distributors will like that.

Mr. Deans: How can they get into it?

Hon. Mr. Welch: All they do is get in touch with the Ontario Lottery Corp., which in turn may get in touch with the distributors.

Mr. Deans: Will they get priority over the distributors?

Hon. Mr. Welch: As far as I’m concerned, if the member has any that he would like me to pass on to the Corporation, he should let me know; I’ll look after that right away.

Mr. R. S. Smith (Nipissing): Supplementary.

Mr. Speaker: Supplementary.

Mr. R. S. Smith: Would the minister make the same apply in regard to the distributors, where the real problem is and where the real money is being made by certain people across this province?

Hon. Mr. Welch: Mr. Speaker, I think when the member for Nipissing raised some question about the distributorship, it was explained to him that the lottery corporation, in order to get the lottery under way, took a very deliberate decision to utilize a distribution system already in place.

Now, the member isn’t commenting on the effectiveness of that system, but I’ve asked the Ontario Lottery Corp. for some explanation. They found a system already in place and put the tickets through that distribution system, having called all those distributors in and satisfying themselves, as an independent body established by this Legislature, with respect to their ability and capability in fact to do the work. There were seven or eight other areas and I’ll be glad to provide the member with a list of these distributors.

I think experience obviously -- and I’m speaking from an individual viewpoint -- is showing that there are many retail outlets that don’t have tickets and that the distribution system might well be reviewed by the lottery corporation with respect to its effectiveness and, indeed, as the member for Wentworth pointed out, that the emphasis should be placed to a large extent in sharing some of this commission money with nonprofit and service clubs which was always --

Mr. Roy: Now we are talking.

Hon. Mr. Welch: Just look at Hansard. I said that at the time of second reading.

Mr. Deans: It didn’t happen, though.

Hon. Mr. Welch: Now if in fact it is not, then I think the member for Nipissing would agree that we should ask the corporation to take a look at the distribution system, and take a look at the number of retail outlets. It’s obvious that with a draw of this kind -- it is modest compared to the Olympic lottery -- there is a need for literally thousands of retail outlets in this province.

I can’t see any reason why we would stand in the way of having as many people as possible selling the tickets. It is to the advantage of the lottery corporation and ultimately to the programmes to be supported by the lottery.

Mr. R. S. Smith: Mr. Speaker, the minister went off again not on the distributors but on the retail sale of the tickets. What I am interested in is the distributors and I would ask him if he would ask the Ontario Lottery Corp. to review the situation so that some change could be brought into that area of distribution to the retail outlets.

Hon. Mr. Welch: Mr. Speaker, with the greatest respect to the member for Nipissing I don’t know what he has been doing for the last five minutes but I said just that: I would ask the lottery corporation to review, among other things, the distribution system.

Mr. R. S. Smith: He said so much else on it --

Hon. Mr. Welch: I think it is important -- the member for Nipissing might not agree -- to make sure that the full picture is told quite carefully, not just one isolated area. I think the success of the lottery speaks for itself. We want to make sure it’s sustained and I am sorry the success of the lottery is troubling the member for Nipissing.

Mr. P. J. Yakabuski (Renfrew South): He doesn’t like it.

Mr. R. S. Smith: The minister should have two red tickets for the member.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Windsor-Walkerville.

HURON STEEL PRODUCTS CO. LTD

Mr. B. Newman (Windsor-Walkerville): Mr. Speaker, I have a question of the Minister of Industry and Tourism. Is the minister aware of the difficulties facing Huron Steel Products Co. Ltd. in Windsor to remain open longer than the end of May? Will the minister have his officials look into this situation and do everything he possibly can to see that company stays in operation so that the 115 or so employees may have employment?

Hon. C. Bennett (Minister of Industry and Tourism): Mr. Speaker, I shall take that as notice and reply to the member later.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Sandwich- Riverside.

TAINTED FISH IN ST. CLAIR RIVER

Mr. F. A. Burr (Sandwich-Riverside): Mr. Speaker, a question of the Minister of Natural

Resources: Has the minister been able to determine what is causing the tainted fish in the St. Clair River? Has he yet been able to ascertain this?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Mr. Speaker, I don’t have a full report on that, and as soon as I have I will make sure the member is fully aware.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Essex South.

GOVERNMENT BOOKSTORE STOCKS

Mr. D. A. Paterson (Essex South): Mr. Speaker, a question of the Minister of Government Services: Is the minister aware of a letter from the Ontario Nurses’ Association complaining about the lack of availability of certain statutes at the government bookstore, such as the Crown Employees’ Collective Bargaining Act and related Acts? If the minister is aware of this, what steps are being taken by his ministry to make sure that these best seller documents are available to the public of Ontario?

Hon. Mr. Snow: Mr. Speaker, I do recall a letter from a nurse; I don’t recall it being the association but it is quite possible she was representing the association.

We have been working for over the past 1½ years on implementing a policy of printing additional copies of all statutes possible and having them available. We have a great many of these statutes now printed and available but we have not got through the total programme as yet. One of my staff was personally in touch with this lady and explained this to her, and since that time I have replied to her letter.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Thunder Bay.

SPECIAL-OCCASION PERMITS

Mr. Stokes: I have a question of the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations. When is the minister going to undertake to allow people at the regional level in the Province of Ontario the authority to issue special-occasion permits rather than having them go through all the bureaucracy down here, particularly in view of the poor postal service we have in the province?

Hon. S. B. Handleman (Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations): I certainly concur with the member on the need for regionalization and decentralization. This is one of the proposals he will find in the suggested code for procedures and regulations which was sent to him about a week or 10 days ago. We are waiting for comment before proceeding with actually enacting regulations.

Mr. Stokes: I have given the minister comments.

Hon. Mr. Handleman: We certainly feel there is a need for regionalization. That is one of the proposals we have made and we are waiting for reaction to it.

Mr. Speaker: The oral question period has expired.

Petitions.

Presenting reports.

Hon. Mr. Bernier presented the report of the royal commission inquiry into the Grand River Flood, 1974.

Mr. Lewis: Does it really say that floods are a natural phenomenon? Does it really say that?

Mr. Martel: It says floods are almost as nice as that mine in northern Ontario.

Mr. Ewen from the standing administration of justice committee presented the committee’s report which was read as follows and adopted:

Your committee begs to report the following bill with certain amendments:

Bill 3, An Act to regulate Political Party Financing and Election Contributions and Expenses.

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

An hon. member: No, committee.

Mr. Speaker: Who is the minister involved with this? It has to go to committee of the whole House, yes. All right, so ordered then -- the committee of the whole House.

Mr. Morrow from the standing procedural affairs committee presented the committee’s report which was read as follows:

Your committee recommends:

That the sittings of standing committees, with the exception of the estimates committees, be not recorded.

If a matter or bill referred to a standing committee is deemed to be of special interest, the consent of the House must be given to have the deliberations of the committee recorded.

Mr. Speaker: Shall this report be adopted?

Mr. Deans: No.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Mr. Speaker, if I may, if the report is to be debated, I would appreciate it being referred to the order paper on a government order, and we will call it later for debate.

Mr. Speaker: Agreed.

Mr. Deans: Well, how can you do that, Mr. Speaker, if I said I don’t concur in it being adopted?

Mr. Singer: It is being put on the order paper.

Mr. Speaker: It is being put on the order paper for debate. This is the same thing that, I presume, is going to take place now. So ordered.

Motions.

Hon. Mr. Winkler moves that estimates of expenditure for the fiscal year ending March 31, 1976, be referred to standing committees as follows:

To the social development committee -- the Ministry of Community and Social Services, the Ministry of Colleges and Universities, and the Ministry of Culture and Recreation;

To the administration of justice committee -- the Ministry of Consumer and Commercial Relations;

To the resources development committee -- the Ministry of Industry and Tourism, the Ministry of the Environment, the Ministry of Transportation and Communications, the Ministry of Labour;

To the miscellaneous estimates committee

-- the Ministry of Revenue, the Management Board of Cabinet, the Provincial Auditor;

To the procedural affairs committee, the Office of the Assembly.

Mr. Speaker: Shall this motion carry?

Mr. Deans: May I ask a question in regard to this? This is why we had to deal with the other one first. Am I to assume from the opening sentence of the report, which you have referred to the order paper, Mr. Speaker, that all of the committees dealing with the estimates will in fact be recorded?

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Yes, I will reply to the point this way; that I will call that order prior to the consideration of any estimates and then that solves the member’s concern.

Motion agreed to.

Mr. Speaker: Introduction of bills.

TRAINING SCHOOLS AMENDMENT ACT

Hon. Mr. Potter moves first reading of bill intituled, An Act to amend the Training Schools Act.

Motion agreed to; first reading of the bill.

Hon. R. T. Potter (Minister of Correctional Services): Mr. Speaker, the effect of this bill will be to repeal section 8 of the Training Schools Act, 1965.

PUBLIC UTILITIES AMENDMENT ACT

Mr. B. Newman moves first reading of bill intituled, An Act to amend the Public Utilities Act.

Motion agreed to; first reading of the bill.

Mr. B. Newman: Mr. Speaker, the purpose of the bill is to provide for a utilities review board before a public utility can shut off water, hydro, gas or oil. It would set uniform procedures before any of these utilities could be turned off.

ANSWER TO WRITTEN QUESTION

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Before the orders of the day, Mr. Speaker, I would like to table the answer to question No. 8 on the order paper.

Mr. Speaker: Orders of the day.

Clerk of the House: The first order, resuming the adjourned debate on the amendment to the motion that this House approves in general the budgetary policy of the government.

BUDGET DEBATE (CONTINUED)

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

Mr. J. A. Taylor (Prince Edward-Lennox): Mr. Speaker, when the House adjourned yesterday I was about to comment in regard to the assistance afforded by this government to the local municipalities. I would point out that the growth of payments by the province to local municipalities has increased dramatically within the last five years or so.

For example, if we look at the years 1968 to 1973, which is a five-year period, we will see that the transfer payments to the municipalities and their agencies increased from a total level of $1 billion in 1968 to a total of $2 billion, or double, in 1973. If we look at the support given to the boards of education we will see that the province’s level of support now averages 60 per cent of school board spending.

I would also like to point out that there is a commitment on the part of the province to ensure -- as a matter of fact, the word guarantee could be used -- an increase in transfer payments to local governments at the rate of growth in the province’s total revenues. In other words, as the gross provincial product increases so will the transfer payments from the province to the municipalities increase by that proportion.

A pledge was also made by the province at a tri-government meeting in Edmonton, at which time the three levels of government were represented, and that pledge by the Province of Ontario is to pass along to local governments 100 per cent of the revenues from any increase in unconditional grants with the federal government. In other words, any increase in tax sharing with the federal government will be passed along to the municipalities.

In the current budget there is an increase in transfer payments to the municipalities and their agencies covering some $380 million. This is a growth rate of 16.3 per cent.

I think it significant that the increase in unconditional grants is being directed towards policing costs. There is a concern for law and order, no doubt, throughout Ontario and I dare say throughout the whole of Canada. The Province of Ontario has responded to a public awareness of an increase in violence and an increased concern, even apprehension, for the breakdown of law and order in many cases and for the disrespect for authority throughout society. There seems a lack of respect, not only in the homes for the parents, but in the schools for the teachers, in the streets for the policemen and even in our court system. This, no doubt, is a problem that is confronting in general terms the whole of the western world. I think it important that we respond to the need for peace, order and good government, especially to ensure that police forces throughout this province have adequate equipment and personnel to ensure that their communities are properly policed.

I think. Mr. Speaker, that the federal government should give leadership in this regard. I think that leadership might be first shown by respect on the part of the federal government for our existing laws. In that sense, I am talking about the perennial commutation of the death penalty which is to be administered when a police officer or a prison guard is murdered. That has not been the case for the past 12 years. Notwithstanding the law in that respect, it seems that the federal cabinet sees fit to commute those death penalties. In my opinion, it is essential that strong leadership be shown at that level and that that message be passed along to the provinces and, of course, filtered through to the entire community.

Mr. Speaker, I will wind up my remarks on that note. I understand that the Leader of the New Democratic Party is anxious to get on with his address. I thank you for your attention.

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

Mr. S. Lewis (Scarborough West): Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate the opportunity of replying to the budget address in the absence of my colleague from York South (Mr. MacDonald), who is pursuing other and profitable matters, I hope. I also recognize, and I think I should say this at the outset, that the Treasurer (Mr. McKeough) is not here for a good and sad reason. He had an engagement which took him away and he was kind enough to phone me in advance and let me know of his absence. And it is the kind of absence which, alas, occurs; and members of the Legislature have to attend to such duties. I hold no resentment whatsoever.

The budget, Mr. Speaker, already has a sense of déjà-vu about it. It’s been scrutinized, analysed and largely eviscerated by the opposition. What little lustre it had is already gone. I’m therefore going to turn my attention a bit to some other aspects of the budget; a slightly different interpretation of budgetary content.

Before I do, if it isn’t untoward, I’d like to make some comments on the submission by the budget critic of the Liberal Party. He made an extended contribution to this debate, Mr. Speaker. It was a most literate presentation, as I think he himself knows. The member for Kitchener (Mr. Breithaupt) has a deft and pleasing turn of phrase. In reading back over the remarks, I rather enjoyed them.

The analysis, as the Speaker knows, was also deft, except for a small $0.5 billion error. But we are all prone to those oversights, now and again. A mere string of beads of the Liberals, I would have thought, to make a $0.5 billion error -- what’s $0.5 billion? And I wish, on the occasion of the delivery of the speech, that there has been many more government members present, and particularly cabinet ministers, because it was the kind of a presentation which should have been listened to more carefully.

As I listened to the member for Kitchener, and as I reread his remarks, I took issue with the speech in three areas. I want to put them on the record, because they’re perhaps relevant to the chamber, if nowhere else.

First of all, in the whole extended address -- knowledgeable though it was -- there were virtually no alternatives provided from beginning to end in that budget address. It was filled with implicit impossibilities, but nothing really elaborated, which has become indicative of the Liberal Party of Ontario. There were, I admit -- let me think -- in the areas of health and land servicing, specific indications of what the Liberal Party would prefer. But overall there was no sense of an alternative in terms of social and economic priorities, in terms of the way in which the tax system might be used. In that sense, I think it was shot through with contradiction.

There were mutterings of restraint in the speech -- very many of them delivered by the member for Kitchener -- but when you look at the remarks devoted to education, to colleges and universities, to health, to the civil service, the total implication of the speech is of expansion. So, on the one hand there is restraint; on the other hand there is expansion -- and it becomes a budget reply into which any one can read everything; a kind of chemistry lab with endless contractions and evaporations. “Now you see it, now you don’t,” is a Liberal view of the budget.

The member for Kitchener is as good a Houdini for the Liberal Party as anyone else. I was much struck by the sentence which began to talk about cost-cutting and then ended with the removal of health premiums. When the Liberal Party put forward its tentative proposition of removing health premiums, there was no suggestion as to where the money would come from. Then Norman Webster had the inelegance to write his column, and it became necessary to show where the money would come from, and the member for Kitchener said he thought it would come from an income tax surcharge. Fair enough, except that the loss of OHIP revenue is $564 million, and an income tax surcharge to cover that loss would be a surcharge of 33 per cent in all of those income categories, excluding pensioners and those on assistance and the very low-income earners, to which the member for Kitchener himself referred. He made that very particular exclusion, and he’s right of course. I think it’s probably worth noting then when putting a policy that it would cost everyone who pays tax in Ontario 33 per cent more of their personal income tax than they are now paying. That may be a beneficial decision to make.

We too would wish to eliminate premiums in one or two stages. But we know the addition to the income tax it’s going to take, and we have talked, as I will talk, of the additional revenue through resource taxation which will be available. What is being advocated is that the provincial tax should move from 30.5 per cent of the federal income tax to roughly 40 per cent of the federal income tax to compensate for the loss of over $500 million. I would have thought that a party that is putting alternatives in advance of an election would want that spelled out.

The second thing that worried me a little about the presentation was the total absence of policy, which was then atoned for in the finale in those apologetic and defensive touches. They weren’t always apologetic and defensive. The member for Kitchener who dearly loves his colleagues described them as occasionally fractious and in high individual spirits. That’s quite a characterization of the Liberal caucus, causing the member for Huron-Bruce some internal distress. I externally manifest in laughter. I would have thought that fractious is certainly true.

Mr. M. Gaunt (Huron-Bruce): I always laugh when I am distressed.

Mr. Lewis: Yes, he always laughs when he is distressed. He is better than many of us -- better than most.

I would have thought that that was a fair characterization of the Liberal caucus. The member for Kitchener then went on to say:

“It is consistent with our philosophy of individualism that we require substantial involvement from our members in the formation of policy and responsibility from the leadership of the party to account for positions and actions taken. The process is well under way and the results of it will see a platform in place whenever the election is called.”

That’s reassuring to Ontario. If it were called tomorrow, the Liberal Party would have one platform. If it were called a month hence, it would have another platform. Individual participation, consisting as it does of filling out questionnaires, is salutary for the democratic process.

I worry though about that fellow from Carleton East (Mr. P. Taylor), that chap, that newly elected MPP who went to Brockville and said -- I will paraphrase him almost exactly. In fact, there is a fantastic blow-up of it in the office of the member for Ottawa Centre (Mr. Cassidy). If the Liberals want to feel momentarily enthused, let them walk around the north wing to the oval office. As they peer in the window, they will see his blow-up of the remarks of the member for Carleton East, who said in Brockville, of course, the Liberal Party had policies. He just didn’t know if they applied to Ontario.

Mr. R. G. Eaton (Middlesex South): Right on.

Mr. Lewis: That’s not bad for a political party that wants to be government. I often think that whenever the member for Carleton East stands, he sends a shiver of fear through the entire Liberal caucus, if not through the government. But he’s doing yeoman’s service. I have to speak at the member for Ottawa Centre’s nomination later today and I have enough quotes from the member for Carleton East to fill a night. It is only because I have more from the Ministry of Industry and Tourism (Mr. Bennett) that I’m not using them.

I wanted to say something about the other part of the Liberal presentation, because I listened carefully while the member for Kitchener put it. It was his effort at the end to place the Liberal Party in philosophic context and a very careful effort to define the Liberal Party as a party of individualism, of civil rights, of general civil liberties. As a matter of fact, if I recall, he quoted John Stuart Mill, and he used that famous quote, that if there is one amongst us, in effect, then let him be heard or let him overrule the majority. I want to say something about that because it has been bothering me for weeks or months. I suppose it doesn’t mean anything in the Legislature of Ontario but I am going to put it on the record anyway.

I was at a meeting in St. Catharines with the now Minister of Culture and Recreation (Mr. Welch) and the member for York Centre (Mr. Deacon) not very long ago. It was a meeting of teachers at which we were all asked to begin by defining our political philosophies in five or 10 minutes or less. The member for York Centre put again the same proposition of individual liberty, civil rights and fundamental freedoms as being what distinguishes the Liberal Party from other parties. I really choke on that. As a democratic socialist I want to say something about it.

As I thought back over the last 20 or 30 or 40 years of Canadian history and when I rambled intellectually and mentally on my poli-sci courses with Paul Fox and others, four epic moments of the deprivation of civil liberties came to my mind. One was the Press Act, which I think was Aberhart; one was the padlock law, which was Duplessis; one was the incarceration of the Japanese Canadians in the Second World War, courtesy of the federal Liberal government; and one, of course, was the War Measures Act.

I want to say something about that, Mr. Speaker. The first two -- the Press Act and the padlock law -- were acts of a quasi-fascist regime in both cases; one fundamentalist and authoritarian, the other authoritarian and racist.

The incarceration of the Japanese Canadians is one of the saddest chapters in our history and well I remember Howard Green -- I guess he was then the Tory member for Vancouver-Quadra or Vancouver Centre -- and Andy Brewin fighting the Liberal Party desperately in that period on the question of civil liberties. It was the same in some ways with the War Measures Act with isolated and incidental federal Tories joining with certain New Democrats.

I wanted to say, Mr. Speaker, it has been true about Liberals -- whether it is Smallwood, Hepburn, Thatcher, Trudeau or Mackenzie King -- that there lurks in the Liberal Party a basic authoritarianism. It is just beneath the surface and it is perfectly capable of strangling civil rights in this country on a whim or a fancy in a way which I have not yet seen evident in other traditional political parties.

There is a kind of combination of intellectual elitism and philosophic opportunism which allows for both views -- the positive view and the negative view -- to be put simultaneously; even in a kind of microcosm here in the Legislature it’s possible. It’s possible for the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. R. F. Nixon) to be talking about the free collective bargaining rights of teachers at precisely the moment when the members for Ottawa East (Mr. Roy) and Carleton East are saying they should be ordered back to work by law.

It is possible for the Leader of the Opposition to be saying, “We believe in free collective bargaining between boards and teachers” at precisely the moment when the member for York Centre is advocating taking an entire school board under public trusteeship. It is possible to make all the ritual incantations about civil liberties at precisely the moment when the member for Carleton East is talking about power being the name of the game.

I don’t think there is anything in John Stuart Mill or anybody else applicable to contemporary Liberalism. I agree with the member for Kitchener. Sir Oliver Mowat was the last survivor of true Liberalism -- and he died in 1903. From that day to this, for 70 years, the civil rights have been easily trampled by Liberals in this country. This claptrap about individual liberty, civil rights and individual freedoms is not a distinguishing feature except where it chronicles the Liberals in an adverse way.

It is an ironic thing. The Tories, as much as I could happily do them in, all of them, tomorrow morning and see them lose every seat in the House with great pleasure --

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Mr. Lewis: There is that funny linking between Burke on the one hand, best represented in his letter to the electors of Bristol, and the populism of a John Diefenbaker on the other, as silly and intemperate and arbitrary as he can often be, just as the occasional arbitrary instincts of the left are often tempered by a certain Utopian inheritance from the 19th century as well. I do not see that, and have never seen that, in the Liberal Party, federally or provincially. Those whose convictions were a matter of social philosophy rather than expedient manipulation -- and I speak of the Crolls and the Kieranses and even the Gordons -- those for whom conviction wasn’t infinitely manipulative for the sake of political gain, those people have left the Liberal Party, because it makes no sense for them in terms of civil liberties.

Well, I’ve said it, it bothers me. It has bothered me through the provinces. I’ve heard it uttered for the last number of weeks and months, Mr. Speaker. It’s a false argument. It’s a party that’s more capable of arbitrary behaviour than any I know and one whose record is stained beyond belief in this country in all of the chapters that I’ve indicated. I thought there had to be a certain ultimate irony in the member for Ottawa East standing up to introduce a Bill of Rights for Ontario as though rights were central to Liberal philosophy. They’re central when they are expedient and they are abandoned when they are expedient to abandon.

As for the budget document itself, I’m not going to cover and recover the ground. Very simply put, Mr. Speaker, the basic flaw with the budget is that it’s a political document rather than an economic analysis. For a number of years, up to and including the Treasurer’s last budget, the budget was in fact an economic analysis. I can remember sitting in this Legislature -- I suppose this will be the last budget address I may make in advance of an election -- I can recall sitting in the Legislature years ago when Ken Bryden represented the NDP for Beaches-Woodbine, and Ken always making the argument with the member for Haldimand-Norfolk (Mr. Allan) who I guess was Treasurer at the time, that the budget should not just be a statistical compilation, nor should it be an assertion of political priorities. He argued that a budget should be a document which gives some economic analysis, some long- range terms, some rationale of what the social and economic priorities of the government are. Gradually the hon. Mr. Allan’s budgets began to reflect that inclination and so did those of his successors.

In this budget document, it’s all abandoned. It has abandoned the basic integrity of economic analysis. It embraces pre-election polemic. The budget is a pamphlet, not a budget. It is a political pamphlet and as such it will be abandoned in toto after the next election by whichever political party comes to power, presuming it will not be the Tories. The budget takes liberties with the truth, it toys with assumptions, it uses inaccurate figures and it has exaggerated on unsubstantiated claims.

As a matter of fact, it is interesting that when the opposition responded to the budget initially, the provincial Treasurer, while he was in the hustings, invoked major critics to shoot us down. In his most recent speech, I guess to the Chamber of Commerce or whatever it was, such a group -- my colleague from Riverdale (Mr. Renwick) showed me -- the Treasurer, in order to prick the bloom of opposition sentiments, quoted the criticism of Donald O’Hearn -- we all know him, he’s a columnist, itinerantly about in Queen’s Park -- and Joe Morgan, a commentator on CKEY.

You will forgive me if I don’t throw in the towel, Mr. Speaker. Okay? I mean, Donald O’Hearn and Joe Morgan, that’s pretty potent intellectual company -- if either of them read . . . read the budget -- but I’m not willing to give up, Mr. Speaker, whatever the provocation from those two giants of financial analysis. As a matter of fact, it says something about the hon. Treasurer that he has to rely on Joe Morgan and Don O’Hearn. I don’t read Don O’Hearn -- somebody will tell Don that -- and I don’t hear Joe Morgan -- someone will tell Joe that, and that should give him another little diatribe tomorrow morning for five minutes. The member for Oshawa (Mr. McIlveen) can run out and tell him and then perhaps cast his lot in another riding. I listen to Peter Gzowski these days and others on other days.

The budget was filled with bravado and audacity but it lacked wit, analysis and content. There are a number of things that we in the New Democratic Party want to say. My colleagues will elaborate on them as the budget debate proceeds. I want to cast our response in a slightly different context and offer a New Democratic Party view of alternatives and, in many instances, state our priorities and how we would have achieved certain goals and how we would use the same dollars that were taxed from Ontario or released for Ontario by the Treasurer.

I am going to take issue on 10 points. Some of them are categorical, some of them are elaborative and some of them will have statistical documentation that I hope I understand, let alone the Legislature understanding. I shall start this way.

Point No. 1: The assumptions of the budget were wrong or perilous. The budget made an assumption about the rate of real growth which is already categorically wrong and the member for Kitchener put it on the record. The budget makes an assumption of a rate of real growth of 2.5 per cent; it is more likely now that the rate of growth for Canada will be zero per cent and that for Ontario it will be a minus factor.

The budget makes an inaccurate assumption about housing starts. It makes an inaccurate assumption about energy prices; certainly since Hydro tabled its request, the assumption about energy prices is completely false. The talk of restraint in the budget is particularly false. There is constant invidious comparison in the budget of what the Province of Ontario is doing by way of restraint, compared to the federal government, and then we look at a little table on page B-17 of the budget which shows that the federal expenditure intentions of 1975-1976 over 1974-1975 are up 11 per cent while in the same period Ontario is up 16.8 per cent. So much for assumptions and premises.

Whether the budget is measured on a national accounts basis or a full employment basis, it is an expansionary budget. I am not sure we object to that, but it is inflationary in any event; and if it is inflationary, it should be admitted as such and the context in terms of the tax policy becomes quite different. What we want from the government, as we have asked many times, is leadership and straight talk; in this budget we get neither.

The most absurd rationale of the budget, however, Mr. Speaker, is the assertion in the budget that the upswing in the Ontario economy prophesied by the Treasurer -- which is unlikely to occur on the basis of any economic assessments of the last several weeks -- that the upturn in the Ontario economy is tied to and will flow from the upturn in the economy of the United States under President Ford.

As a matter of fact, the budget says: “In this environment [that is, the United States] stimulative fiscal measures are in process which should grip in after midyear and begin to turn the economy around by year-end.” Boy, we’ve come a long way since 1971, haven’t we? In August, 1971, it was William Davis vs. Richard Nixon; in April, 1975, it is Darcy McKeough courts Gerald Ford.

It’s really ironic that a party that fought the 1971 election largely in opposition to the tariffs which had been put in place by the United States in August of that year, should now be counting on the United States to allow an upturn in the Ontario economy in the third and fourth quarters of this year. So low have the Tories fallen that they tie their strings to Gerald Ford. You know, Mr. Speaker, you can rely on anyone in the world -- but don’t use the president of the United States and that economy and the Republican Party and the recession they are now in as some kind of security for Ontario. Tie us to that and you have tied us to an albatross, Mr. Speaker. There may be a very serious economic impact from the United States. That is something that is cushioned and countered in Ontario. That’s not something which Ontario assumes will come to our benefit.

It’s a ridiculous way to base budgetary prophecies, to tie us to the United States. Has this government no shame? Are they lackeys forever? Must they even now assume that if the United States doesn’t upturn, Ontario won’t either? There isn’t a major economic assumption in that budget which is worthy of the name or worthy of respect, and that’s why it’s a political document, not an economic document.

As point No. 2, Mr. Speaker, the debt is perilously high. It is, as my colleague, the member for Riverdale, pointed out in one of the debates on the tax legislation, not higher than the Smith committee allowed of nine per cent of gross provincial product, as I recall. And it is now 7.1 per cent -- somewhere in that vicinity -- of gross provincial product. So there is still some room for movement, but you are perilously close to the line in this sense, that in order to service the debt this fiscal year -- in order to pay the simple interest on the debt this fiscal year -- will require $677 million of the taxpayers’ money.

I don’t know whether you have looked at the budgets of the various ministries, Mr. Speaker, but $677 million is more than the individual budget of three-quarters to four-fifths of the ministries of the government. There is something profoundly wrong in a government which pays out so much public money on interest to service a debt.

It is worse than that, as has been pointed out, Mr. Speaker, because so cowed was the government by the figures which emerged of $1.7 billion, that it has for the first time managed not to include Ontario Hydro’s borrowing accounts in the measurement of deficit. They knew, as we know -- and I will deal with that a little later -- that if they put the Ontario Hydro’s insatiable lust within these deficits, they will never be able to explain it to the people of Ontario.

It seems to me that the accumulation of a debt this high is not so much measured in terms of the range that it has yet to go within the gross provincial product. It seems to me that it is not so much measured in terms of per capita cost. But it seems to me that with a debt this high, what is more important is the amount of money required to service it. That’s what really bothers me; the interest bothers me more than the debt. The debt we can in a sense sustain. The interest we cannot sustain. What the problem is is the disincentive to setting reasonable social and economic priorities.

Every time a government sits down and is faced with that measure of debt and with that measure of interest, they are retarded in their planning. It is like an obstacle course before every social priority they set, so they can’t compensate the Indians of the Grassy Narrows and Whitedog reserves. Why? Because the simple amount of money, however minuscule, now causes a trauma in the Treasury Board, given the amount of money that they are spending. The mountain labours for years upon years, and it brings forth a freezer for Grassy Narrows and a few promises of economic benefit. But the compensatory equivalent is not part of that. And, as I am standing here, Mr. Speaker, it’s like every other government policy.

Now anything which has a dollar sign is measured, not in terms of merit, social value or worth, but in terms of the size of the debt and whether or not that debt is negotiable politically. That’s what’s wrong with the debt. That’s what’s wrong with the interest payments and that’s why something has to be done about it.

Point No. 3: The centrepiece of the budget, in their political grandiose terms, in their stage management, is the reduction of the sales tax from seven to five per cent for nine months. Mr. Speaker, it has been said a thousand times that that’s not only a cynical matter -- I forgot something, but I will bring it in later -- that’s not only a cynical matter, but it is a discriminatory matter once again penalizing the poor.

Now I am going to put an argument here which is carefully documented and which we think is significant. In the monetary euphoria of tax relief the implication was that on a reduction from seven per cent to five per cent somehow the benefits will be distributed in a way which all will mutually accept and all will find mutually useful. Many of the implications are forgotten. In fact, the incidence of the tax is a perfect example of what the Tories think and how the Tories behave.

The research group in the New Democratic caucus put together a number of figures which I find really fascinating. It’s a good research group, as the members know. The figures which they provide stand up on all occasions. I’ve often thought to myself, because I take such pleasure in using the material, that we have here the core of an economic planning board for Ontario were we to have the fortune of forming a government. We have six or eight people in total; maybe a few more who do research for us at maximum. The government has an entire civil service. The figures which have been found about the reduction of the sales tax are really interesting and let me give them to you, Mr. Speaker.

What the NDP research group did was to tabulate the actual savings per family at various income levels for the nine months of 1975 to which the reduction applies. Is the member for Oshawa with me? I can see he is mesmerized by learning of the numbers. The fact is we took from TEIGA -- Treasury, Economics and Intergovernmental Affairs -- the tables which it prepared for 1973 incorporating the sales tax change from five per cent to seven per cent. We corrected for inflation in 1974 and 1975, obviously, with the removal of the food component. We tabulated over a year and then reduced it to the nine-month period.

Just listen to what benefits the people of Ontario feel from the Tories and the way in which those benefits are distributed in income terms.

If one is under $3,000 family income, the nine-month saving in 1975 is $11.24. It’s about $1 plus a month. Am I right? I haven’t figured it out.

Mr. I. Deans (Wentworth): No, it’s less than that.

Mr. Lewis: I’m sorry, that’s right. No, it’s for nine months, so it’s $1 plus a month. That’s really quite something. What does it work out to? About four cents a day? Is the government sure it can afford it?

For $3,000 to $4,000, it’s $18.59. For $4,000 to $5,000, it’s $26.75. For $5,000 to $6,000, it’s $32.53. For $6,000 to $7,000, it’s $37.91. For $7,000 to $8,000, it’s $37.90. For $8,000 to $9,000, it’s $44.72. For $9,000 to $10,000, it’s $45.28. For $10,000 to $11,000, it’s $52.50. For $11,000 to $12,000, it’s $61.37. For $12,000 to $15,000, it’s $66.27. For $15,000 and over, it’s $91.49.

Mr. E. J. Bounsall (Windsor West): That’s graduated in the right direction.

Ms. Lewis: Yes, that’s certainly graduated. What’s interesting about this is that when the calculations were first made in 1973, these figures were listed this way to show how the incidence of the increased tax would only marginally harm the lower income groups. But when we take the tax off, a different impression emerges.

Do the members know what happens statistically? The saving for each income class in percentage terms is approximately 0.58 per cent in this flat rate reduction. If that flat rate reduction, Mr. Speaker, were a constant -- if we were dealing with something that went on for a long period of time, gradually eradicating the effects of a regressive tax, then one could accept it. But when it is applied for a nine-month period so that all we have got is a kind of absolute dollar value clutch for those nine months, making no significant impact on the households or families who experience it, what happens is that everybody with an income of $12,000 and over is provided with $66.27 and those with less than $4,000 get $18.59. A touch of inequity has been allowed in the budget which only Tories can mastermind. It is almost beyond belief that any group of people could come up with a reduction in tax so injurious in its application to those at the lowest level of income.

What I want to add -- I fear I am going to be late for my nominating convention, but I warm to all this; it’s fascinating material and it leaves the budget in tatters, I think. What I want to show those members of the Tory party who are here in such numbers, is that there are other ways of doing it. Suppose they are a provincial government, which they are, and they are looking at a way to generate consumer purchasing power, to generate disposable income, and they have a number of alternatives at hand. What is the alternative they choose? The reduction of the sales tax from seven per cent to five per cent for nine months?

What might they have done? Let me give one example. What they might have done, which we would have done under any comparable circumstances -- although let me hasten to preface this by saying that our social and economic priorities would not be so bizarre; we would never find ourselves in this position. What they might have done was to create a new tax credit, largely reflecting the increases in the cost of living, which would give a credit of $150 to those with a gross income of $6,000 or less, and slides downwards, so that those at $15,000 get nothing. Now there is the use of redistributive tax policy in a way that removes injustice rather than reinforcing it. What the Tories have never understood in their budgets is that you don’t reinforce inequality, which is precisely what they did with their budget initiative.

The sliding scale would be based on the following formula: A tax credit of $150, minus 1⅔ per cent of taxable income, just to keep the parallelism with present tax credits. The total cost of the system for one year would be an estimated $322,430,000. That estimate is based on what would accrue to a family of four. You see, for $330 million over nine months the government has consolidated inequity. For $322 million over a year we would redistribute income in a way that is beneficial to those at the lower income levels.

Let me tell you how it works out. If you are earning between zero and $6,000 of gross income, you get $150. If you earn between $6,000 and $8,000, you get $124.62. If you are earning between $8,000 and $10,000, you get $83.57. If you are earning between $10,000 and $12,000, you get $52.23. If you are earning between $12,000 and $15,000, you get $18.07. And if you are earning $15,000 or over, you get nothing.

How does that compare with the government’s reduction of the sales tax? It means that at a level of $6,000 -- let us take that arbitrary figure -- the NDP would have returned $150 to the families of Ontario, whereas the government returns $43.38, the difference being $100 or better. At $8,000, we would have returned $99.23, while the government returns $50.53, a difference of $50. At $10,000, we would have returned $67.90 and the government returns $60.37, for a difference of $7. At $12,000 and $15,000 the government continues to return more and more as we return less and less. Over $15,000, the government returned between $88 and $120, whereas we would return not a single penny.

How is it that a political party can fashion in one blow a tax reduction which is so expediently designed to coincide only with the period of an election campaign and, in the other blow, have it apply unequally and unfairly to the families of Ontario? One has to admit that it takes a certain inspiration to conceive of such inequality simultaneously administered. But that’s what the Tories have done. They’re not a happy crew over there and they’re not an ept crew over there either. The cynicism with which every single proposal the government advances is greeted is a measure of the lack of public trust in the way in which it manipulates budgets and people.

Point No. 4 is housing. The budget fails in three fundamental aspects in housing. It doesn’t provide supply. It, therefore, has nothing to do with price and it has absolutely no application to the tenant rental market whatsoever. Every subsequent figure and analysis which has emerged bears this out. I’m going to put some of the more recent stuff on the record in machine-gun fashion.

A comparison of the housing starts in June, 1974, through to March, 1975, compared to the similar month in the previous year reads as follows: June, 1974, down 45 per cent; July, down 19 per cent; August, down 42 per cent; September, down 41 per cent; October, down 45 per cent; November, down 41 per cent; December, down 57 per cent; January, 1975, down 30 per cent; February, down 53 per cent and March, down 63 per cent.

In Hamilton, the fiscal year decline in 1974-1975 over 1973-1974 was 29 per cent. In Kitchener the decline was 48 per cent. In London the decline was 34 per cent. In Ottawa the decline was 43 per cent. In St. Catharines-Niagara the decline was 27 per cent. In Sudbury the decline was 51 per cent. In Thunder Bay the decline was 35 per cent.

The programme announced by the government, compared to its intentions stated earlier for the year 1974-1975, works out this way. For OHAP, the shortfall was 66 per cent. For family housing, the shortfall was 59 per cent. For senior citizens, the shortfall was six per cent. For community integrated housing, the shortfall was 47 per cent. For the HOME programme, it was 18 per cent and for community sponsored housing, 20 per cent.

It is inconceivable that a more abysmal record could have been achieved by any group of men and women working at it assiduously around the clock, which clearly the ministry has been doing. The budget sets out a geared-to-income housing component of 10,600 units. As a party, we now have checked the waiting lists in the various largest municipalities across Ontario, and here they are for your consideration, Mr. Speaker.

In Metro the family waiting list is now 8,247; Windsor, 518; London, 226; Hamilton, 879; Ottawa, 728; Sudbury, 227; Thunder Bay, 175; and Sault Ste. Marie, 298; for a total waiting list of family units of 11,298. For senior citizen accommodation in Metro, there are 2,890 on the waiting list; in Windsor, 1,185; in London, 700; in Hamilton, 1,621; in Ottawa, 914; in Sudbury, 296; in Thunder Bay, 458; and in Sault Ste. Marie, 427, for a total of 8,491 or 19,789 families and senior citizens now on the waiting list for housing, for which programme there has been projected a total of 10,600 units.

In other words, the government has deliberately planned for a kind of housing dread to infect large numbers of families who will never have any prospect of geared-to-income housing under the present budgetary proposals. The figures I read are terribly deflated. The numbers on the waiting lists are very low. Not only are they higher on the waiting lists for small communities for which we have no information but the number of people who are not on the waiting lists frequently outnumber those who are, because people get tired of applying for housing in this province, Mr. Speaker, and simply don’t do it. There is no point, as my colleague from Wentworth says, sotto voce. Therefore, the real truth is they are looking for 36,000 units in Ontario for 18,000 families and 18,000 senior citizens and 10,600 are available.

Let me add something to that because it speaks again to something which the member for Wentworth said in the chamber -- I guess when we were discussing the reduction in the sales tax on machinery and equipment -- about the numbers of jobs which could be created by additional housing starts. Let me just give the members these figures to ponder over.

If we require 18,000 family units and we were to build 18,000 units, it would cost us $18,347 per unit based on the calculations from Housing Ontario, 1974, for a total of $330 million. The senior citizens’ per unit cost for 18,000 units is $9,737 or a total of $175 million. If we add that total cost together we have almost exactly $500 million; it is $505 million.

The federal allocation for public housing for Ontario in 1975 is $50.4 million and assuming the same in 1976, it would mean we could expect $100 million from federal funds. The total cost to Ontario to satisfy the needs of those on the waiting lists for family housing and senior citizen housing in the next two years would be $404 million. The remission of sales tax on machinery and equipment in that period of time is $410 million. The figures exactly match.

The difference -- and it is a difference which strikes right at the heart of what divides Tories and New Democrats -- as anybody from the Urban Development Institute to Housing Ontario can tell us, is that the number of jobs created for every unit of housing starts and the number of jobs released through a programme of this kind would reduce our unemployment rate spectacularly. The number of jobs released by virtue of reduction in the sales tax on machinery and equipment cannot even be tabulated by this government because not a single job will be created in the $410 million ripoff for the corporations.

We have suggested a thousand times, if once, the purchase of land, and mortgage money provided through the Ontario Savings Bank with interest rates pegged at six per cent through use of a tax credit. We know where additional money can come from and how the housing money can be made available but I shall deal with that in my peroration.

Point No. 5, Mr. Speaker; the sales tax exemption for production machinery. I’m not going to beat it to death. We’ve said before, we say again, there is no evidence for its implementation. As a matter of fact on the night of the budget, the Treasurer slipped in that he had brought in the reduction in sales tax because of the request of the United Auto Workers. He didn’t correct that until the next day and said, the Ontario Federation of Labour. I’m not sure which of those groups recommended it. I can’t believe the auto workers recommended it and I find it difficult to believe the Ontario Federation of Labour recommended it. When I look at the United Auto Workers’ brief to the cabinet for the purposes of job creation, what do I find? I find, (1) a request to remove the price differential between Canadian and American cars; (2) a greater subsidy to mass public transit so that the Canadian sector of the automotive industry can be encouraged to build public transit vehicles; (3) housing; (4) services to people; (5) the processing of natural resources in Ontario; (6) keeping farmers on the land so that they don’t have to work part-time at Chrysler or Ford, whether it’s Windsor or Talbotville and (7) elimination of overtime permits. The one thing I don’t find in the recommendations is a suggestion that the sales tax be reduced on machinery and equipment. Do you know why, Mr. Speaker? Because the reduction of the sales tax will not provide a single additional job.

Mr. E. W. Martel (Sudbury East): Right on.

Mr. Lewis: There is nothing that offends more in the Legislature of Ontario over the last month than the willingness to give to the corporate sector $108 million in this fiscal year and $410 million by 1977.

I want to say something about that, Mr. Speaker. I want to give you a sense of NDP priorities, because we are not going to play the game of generalization and abstracts. I want you to know how we treat these taxes. We want you to recognize the difference in social philosophy and how it would be approached. If we had that kind of money, $108 million on the one hand or $410 million on the other, let me tell you some of the uses to which it would be put if we were creating a budget.

I’ll go right back to the UAW brief. About public transit -- this is really very, very interesting and, again thanks to research colleagues, the figures point a fascinating finger. I am glad the Minister of Transportation and Communications is here. The transit freeze -- short-lived -- was removed in early March of this year after it was announced in the budget of 1974. Fares have subsequently risen in Metro, Belleville and I think even Sault Ste. Marie. How do you like that, Mr. Speaker? The Minister of Transportation and Communications takes off the freeze, and the fares rise in Sault Ste. Marie.

Is it not enough that the minister’s re-election is jeopardized on every front from teachers and workers and transit drivers and middle class and working class and upper class and everyone? Doesn’t he feel the walls closing in around him? Is it not enough that his days are numbered? Is it not enough that he runs around Sault Ste. Marie trying desperately to dissociate himself from the Tory party? Is it not enough that he says, “I’m John Rhodes,” hoping that they will forget that he is a Tory?

Hon. J. R. Rhodes (Minister of Transportation and Communications): When have I done that?

Mr. T. P. Reid (Rainy River): Come back to the Liberals.

Mr. Lewis: Is it not enough that with every group he speaks to he isolates himself from the encumbrances around him? Then lo and behold, he lifts the transit freeze. And where does it clobber first? Sault Ste. Marie.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: That is local autonomy.

Mr. Lewis: And on whose fate is the seal placed? On none other than the enviable, amiable John Rhodes. There will be a job for him. We will need sports announcers aplenty when governments change.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Let the member do me a favour. Let him send his sister back again.

Mr. Lewis: Foster Hewitt himself has said to me, “If only I had a John Rhodes as an understudy.” Far be it from us to prevent that man having his dreams fulfilled.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: And his dad and his mother. Let him send his family up again.

Mr. Lewis: The fact is that, having risen in Metro, Sault Ste. Marie and Belleville, they are threatening to rise in Cornwall, London, Port Hope, Welland, Hamilton and Ottawa. The effect on ridership is to reduce the percentage increases taking place naturally from 12 per cent down to four per cent. What is really unpalatable about it, Mr. Speaker, what is really unholy about it is the way in which the government could have made it possible to maintain the freeze.

Let me put these figures on the record, because it hasn’t been done yet. The 1975-1976 estimate of provincial transit operating subsidies was $52 million before the freeze was lifted, compared to a current estimate of $43.9 million --

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Those figures are not correct.

Mr. Lewis: -- coming from Bernard Jones, I guess, during the budget. Well, the minister will correct them, I am sure. It went from $52 million down to $43.9 million for that. If the government was right as often as they are, it wouldn’t be courting defeat, so deride them not.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Tell me about the member’s majority last time.

Mr. Lewis: My majority last time? My majority last time was 167 before the recount and 170 after it.

Mr. Deans: It got him a seat in the Legislature.

Mr. Lewis: I fully expect it will reach 175 or 180 next time with no difficulty at all. I’ve learned that any margin is sufficient to gain re-entry into this house of ill-repute --

Mr. Deans: Ask the member for Downsview (Mr. Singer).

Mr. Lewis: -- certainly of intellectual ill repute, if nothing more.

For $8 million the government could have kept the freeze on transit fares. As a matter of fact, for some $22 million more, it could have provided operating subsidies up to the level of 75 per cent; it could have paid for operating deficits. It chose instead to remove the freeze. It seems to us that if one is dealing with $108 million and the way it might be apportioned in the life of a government, he does something for public transit; he doesn’t give it to the corporations.

I want to make one more point about that. Again, with that delectable insight that they have as Tories, in the raising of the transit freeze, they introduced regressivity into the expenditures on public transit, they reinforced regressivity into the expenditures on public transit and that, like the sales tax reduction, is what is so wrong about this government.

The minister is looking at me with furrowed brow. Has he seen Statistics Canada, Catalogue 62-537, reproduced as table 5.2 in the supporting documents of Soberman? Well let me tell him what it says, because I have never seen it before and it is, in fact, quite fascinating. “The average expenditures on local public transit by families and unattached individuals.” Now listen to this: If you are earning an income of less than $3,000 a year, you pay $33 and the percentage of income is 2.2 per cent. If you earn between $3,000 and $4,000, you pay $63 and the percentage of income is 1.8. If you make $4,000 to $5,000, you pay $69 and the percentage of income is 1.5. If you make $5,000 to $6,000, you pay $80 and the percentage of income is 1.45; and if you make $6,000 to $8,000, you pay somewhere between $60 and $76 on public transit. The percentage of income that that represents is one or 0.9 and the percentage of income that public transit represents lowers significantly as incomes go up. So the raising of the freeze means that the low-income earner pays a greater percentage of his income on transit fares than the middle or high income earner.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: It is the same with everything.

Mr. Lewis: No, it’s not the same with everything. It becomes the same with everything when, by deliberate government policy, they exaggerate inequality.

Hon. M. Birch (Provincial Secretary for Social Development): The member has been reading Illich.

Mr. Lewis: Illich? I don’t read Illich. Tories toy with Illich. Others of us read him 10 years ago. The truth is that these percentages are things they have now reinforced through their lifting of the freeze. The minister can shake his head until kingdom come --

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: It’s the same on anything one buys. It’s the same with food.

Mr. Lewis: Sure it’s the same. It is invariably the same that people on lower incomes pay more for necessities -- food, transportation, shelter, etc. Okay, we speak the obvious. Then it becomes a matter of government policy to change that imbalance; it becomes a matter of government policy to use the tax system and budgetary measures in order to redistribute income so that people at the lower end of the scale don’t pay a disproportionate sum. When they reduce the sales tax from seven to five per cent they reinforce the inequality, and when they raise the freeze on transit fares they reinforce the inequality.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: We didn’t raise the fares.

Mr. Lewis: Of course this government raised the fares. What does the minister mean, they didn’t raise the fares?

Mr. M. Cassidy (Ottawa Centre): This government told Paul Godfrey to raise them.

Mr. Lewis: The minister raised the fares as though he himself sat in this Legislature and ordered their increase. In every instance the government raised the fares.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: No. We never raised the fares. We removed the freeze. Locally they raised them.

Mr. Lewis: I’m sorry. They removed the freeze -- all right.

Mr. Martel: We have got to him. We have got to him.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: They all didn’t. Ottawa didn’t, for example. Ottawa didn’t raise them.

Mr. Lewis: As a matter of fact --

Mr. Cassidy: Paul Godfrey wanted to raise them and the minister said, “Okay, go ahead.”

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Paul Godfrey is one man. We didn’t act for him.

Mr. Lewis: As a matter of fact one would almost wish this government campaigned on that. “We lifted the freeze and they raised the fares.” How many angels dance on top of a TTC car? What kind of nonsense is this?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: The member has been watching them longer than I have.

Mr. Lewis: What kind of distinctions is he making? This government raised the fares as sure as the minister is sitting there. He said that in community after community in Ontario there will be a rise in transit fares. And then, as sure as he is sitting there, he said it will fall more agravatively on low-income earners than on middle- and high-income earners. And that is the result of the minister’s policy.

Well, we would have used the few million dollars extra -- $8 million or $9 million more -- to maintain the freeze. Let me tell the minister, in terms of social priorities that makes a hell of a lot more sense than $108 million to the corporations. As a matter of fact, it might even provide jobs to those who would wish to build public transit vehicles if there were a greater ridership, which the government has also managed to reduce.

It is like the hand of dross descending on every policy. If there is a flicker of something that is positive, these people will snuff it out. This budget does that systematically on one front after another.

Mr. Martel: Right on.

Mr. Lewis: It is not merely the question of creating jobs or providing other alternatives. Take a look at the plans they could have given in its stead.

The New Democratic Party has done some important work, I think, in terms of costing and evaluating a dental plan in Ontario. We will be dealing with that -- as we have dealt with it in the past -- but in more and more definitive ways over the next few weeks.

But, I want to add something to what I have put to the House already about the uses of money and about Tory and New Democratic priorities.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: We know the difference.

Mr. Lewis: Believe me, the difference comes clearer and clearer every day, which is a pleasure.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: We see it in BC.

Mr. Martel: Right on.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Right on, all right.

Mr. Lewis: We see it in BC and Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Yes, I am agreeing. Well, it is rumoured that Saskatchewan may have an election in June. Let’s see the outcome for the NDP there, and watch the fortunes of the Tories here.

Mr. W. Ferrier (Cochrane South): How many Tories are there in Saskatchewan?

Mr. Lewis: Let me tell you something about dental care.

Mr. Roy: As many as there are NDP in Quebec.

Mr. Cassidy: There may not be any here, either.

Mr. Lewis: I don’t want to make any invidious comments about the Minister of Transportation and Communications but --

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Be nice.

Mr. Lewis: I am; but I think he should listen to this matter of dental care very carefully -- very, very carefully. All right? Any who read Hansard can interpret that at will, but I want the minister’s ear, as it were.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Yes, sir.

Mr. Lewis: So that he can consider his teeth.

Mr. Martel: The front row is turned around. Perhaps that’s the trouble.

Mr. Lewis: If we had used that money in a different fashion, we could have provided in the first year of coverage for dental nurses in clinics throughout the province treating six-year-olds, at the full number of beneficiaries, which is approximately 130,000 in each age category.

Mr. A. J. Roy (Ottawa East): Sounds like our policy.

Mr. Martel: The Liberals haven’t got a policy.

Mr. Roy: Let the member read the resolution.

Mr. Lewis: Resolution? The Liberals pass resolutions? His colleague, the member for Carleton East doesn’t know whether or not they apply in Ontario.

Mr. Roy: Read the resolution.

Mr. Lewis: Maybe they are drafting them for Hyderabad, or wherever it is that they make them for.

Mr. Roy: Tell them about the NDP policy on --

Mr. Martel: The Liberal Party leader will declare his policy on the day the election falls.

Mr. Lewis: We will get to them all. We will get to them all.

Mr. Speaker: Order please. The member for Scarborough West has the floor.

Mr. Lewis: He’s barracking. The member should keep his self-consciousness to himself.

Mr. Roy: The NDP leader should pull himself together.

Mr. Lewis: I know they have no authenticating of Liberal policy. I know they have never put dollars to it. They shouldn’t feel badly about it.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Call me when the member is finished. I will come back.

Mr. Lewis: All right. Sit back there for a moment.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: I am sorry; I thought he was going to carry on for a while.

Mr. Lewis: I am going to carry on for a while, but when it comes to the minister’s teeth I want him to listen.

A total of $11,736,000 would cover the costs for full dental care, for all beneficiaries of the age of six in the first year, provided by dental nurses and clinics across the province. In the second year, for ages from five to seven, it would be covered by $21,461,000. In the third year, for ages three to eight, it would cover everyone at a level of $31,137,000. In the fourth year, for ages three to 10, it would cover everyone for a cost of $36,701,000. That’s calculated at full utilization, of approximately 130,000 children in each age category. The average cost per beneficiary, incidentally, based on the plan which I believe is now being discussed in the Social Development secretariat, on private plans and on the Saskatchewan plan, would run at between $35 and $39 per beneficiary, once the second and third years are included.

For a total of $101 million over four years, the government could have provided dental care for every child in Ontario between the ages of three and 10. New Democrats would see that as a legitimate use of money. Instead, the Conservatives take almost the same amount, $108 million, and fritter it away on a reduction in the sales tax on machinery and equipment which will provide absolutely nothing.

Now, let me go on to another matter --

An hon. member: The Liberals enunciated that policy in 1970.

Mr. Roy: We’ve got it on the order paper.

Mr. Martel: The Liberals just copied it from somebody. They have never introduced a policy of their own at any time.

Mr. Roy: No? Well, read the bill.

Mr. Martel: That’s what they call flexibility.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. The member for Scarborough West is ready to go ahead.

Mr. Cassidy: There is no bill.

Mr. Roy: We said that in 1970.

Mr. Martel: The member for Ottawa East is five years late. He is one of the new boys around here.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. Will the hon. member for Scarborough West proceed?

Mr. Lewis: What bill is the member referring to?

Mr. Roy: The resolution. Look in Monday’s order paper. If the member had been here on Monday, he would have seen the resolution on the order paper. Because we can’t put in a bill to spend money, we put in a resolution.

Mr. Lewis: Oh, they put in a resolution? I see.

Mr. R. Haggerty (Welland South): Where was the member on Monday?

Mr. Lewis: I was here on Monday just before they adjourned the House.

Another area in which the New Democratic Party would have suggested an alternative use for the funds that are being released by way of the special arrangements for the sales tax for corporations is in the whole field of farm stabilization.

Ironically, when the United Autoworkers came before the cabinet they made the point that if the farmers could be kept on the land, if they had some guaranteed income support programme such as that requested by the Ontario Federation of Agriculture or that enacted in the Province of British Columbia, then it would be possible to forgo the part-time jobs, the dependence on industry and to return integrity to the farm community.

So what do the Tories do? They give $410 million to the corporations over three years and they give $20 million to the farm community in one year. If they think that’s going to mean anything to the Ontario Federation of Agriculture or in terms of rural support, they have another think coming, because they just don’t understand the farm community any longer.

I have never pretended to have the knowledge or the expertise about the farm community that others in this House have, but I fully understand that $20 million is a drop in the bucket, meaning nothing to the farmers of Ontario.

As a matter of fact, Mr. Speaker, the $20 million is designed to add on to the federal farm stabilization bill. But the federal farm stabilization bill -- if it ever becomes law, given the nature of the federal Liberal Party -- will not mesh very well with provincial programmes, as is demonstrated in British Columbia, where the federal government doesn’t wish to participate. As a matter of fact, the federal government bill may never come into circulation. If it does, it’s two or three years away at best.

Well then, what does a provincial government do that is serious about the farmers of Ontario? What they do, I think, is what the British Columbia government does. They set a support price, based not on a 90 per cent average over five years but on actual costs and return on investment this year; not on some market values several years ago but on actual costs. They establish the support price in the various commodity area that are designated. In the Province of British Columbia there are already nine commodity areas designated. The government pays to the farm community an amount of money which is equivalent.

The Minister of Agriculture and Food (Mr. Stewart) using the British Columbia support programme covering nine essential commodities as a model -- this estimate was made in a speech to the Association of Agricultural Societies on Thursday, Feb. 20, 1975 -- indicated a cost of approximately $140 million for 1975. The government is providing $20 million. The hope is that the federal government will come in to pick up the slack. It won’t come in to pick up the slack.

What this government has to do for the farmers of Ontario is provide the $140 million in 1975, the $148 million in 1976 and, conceivably, the $157 million in 1977, making a total of $446 million, in order to give to the farm community absolute agricultural stability for the next three years.

Is it worth it? You’re damn right it’s worth it, Mr. Speaker. There is no sector of this economy which merits it more. If we ever have to make a choice between $400 million plus to the machinery and equipment manufacturers, and $400 million plus to the farmers, the place to give it is to the farmers. At some point the federal government --

Mr. B. Gilbertson (Algoma): It’s not the manufacturers. It’s the ones buying the equipment who are getting the benefit.

Mr. Lewis: The ones buying the equipment are getting the benefit?

Mr. Speaker, what we are putting is an alternative policy for that money. Give it to the farmers not to the corporate manufacturers. This amount of money would provide a farm income stabilization programme sufficient to maintain prices at an adequate support level in all of the important commodities for the next three years. If the federal government joins in first rate; then the Tories can diminish the amount of money correspondingly but at least the farmers will finally have a fair share.

One picked up the paper this morning. I think it’s the Globe and Mail; yes, it must be, it’s the business section. It’s Nicholas Cotter and, to speak to the member for Algoma, the headline reads Machine Tool Orders increase In Some Sectors. The story indicates that the investment intentions in the manufacturing sectors already noted are increasing without any incentive from the government. As a matter of fact -- I’m working from memory -- the investment intentions in the private sector last year were up 19 per cent; and even in the budget the government projects a 15 per cent increase in 1975-1976.

Why give them another $410 million? Their investment intentions are already set. They don’t need the government money. How come it’s going to the corporations? Why not to the farmers? If there was a New Democratic government in this province that inconsistency in fiscal policy would be revealed.

Point No. 6 -- Excuse me, Mr. Speaker, for a moment -- what about the GAINS programme? Or the related social allowance schemes? How many flaws, how many omissions can one budget have? Certainly, the Tories have taken some of the people off tax rolls, we understand that, to correspond to what the federal government has done. And they’ve raised GAINS a fraction. Should we prostrate ourselves before them for that noblesse oblige?

What about the injustices, transparent, urgent, compelling? Has this budget no time for them? When the government was looking at ways to spend its $410 million how come it decided to go to the corporations rather than to the farmers? If I can put another alternative in terms of social programmes -- all of which, I hope, will come together when I make the final point I want to make -- how is it the Tories couldn’t have redistributed that money to a family of four in Ontario now on a social allowance? Why is it that the Provincial Secretary for Social Development doesn’t have as much influence in the cabinet as the corporate caretakers?

Dealing directly with the ministries involved, the average monthly income paid to a family of four on family benefits in the Province of Ontario is $400 a month. It’s $4,800 a year. If we look at the Canadian Council on Social Development, particularly David Ross’s book, The Canadian Fact Book on Poverty, we find that the poverty line in 1975 for a family of four is $7,028, which works out to half the average median income of the average family of four. We pay $4,800 in Ontario and the poverty line is $7,028.

It obviously doesn’t bother Tories that there be such a discrepancy. Let me point out to members by a neat piece of arithmetic that the difference of $2,228 yearly multiplied by the 48,000 family units works out to $107 million a year. In other words, one year of the tax rebate on machinery, and equipment is equal to bringing 200,000 people in Ontario up to the poverty line.

Now I ask the Tories about their social priorities. I ask them to measure them even in their Tory crucible. Two hundred thousand people could have been brought up to the poverty level in one year by the use of the same money. They are talking about disposable income; they are talking about increasing consumer purchasing power; they are talking about giving a stimulus to the economy. That’s a darned sight better way of stimulating the Ontario economy than giving $108 million to the corporations through a rebate.

Mr. Martel: That goes to their treasure chest.

Mr. Lewis: What about the GAINS programme itself? When I got home last night, I had the following letter waiting for me. It is very short; I want to read it to the Legislature:

“Dear Mr. Lewis:

“I would like to know when is our present Ontario government going to help people in our position? My husband has been an old age pensioner since 1970 but I had to give up work in 1973 as I am 63 years old in October. Since my unemployment payments stopped last September, 1974, our only income for this year is his combined old age and Canada Pension of $197 per month. Since we lived through a war and depression and raised three children, we did not save much on a labourer’s wages, or my own in a factory. But what little we did manage to save is going very fast. I doubt it will last until I am 65 years old. That’s what bothers me. It was supposed to be for when we were both on pension. However I have tried to get a part-time job, without success, age being a big barrier. I presume we are not entitled to supplement as I have filled forms and got nowhere.

“Don’t you think that it is about time the government did something for people in our position? You are too old for a job and too young for a pension.

“Trusting you will have the decency to answer me as Premier Davis did not when I wrote him,

“Yours very truly,

“Mrs. C.”

I am going to make the assumption that the Premier (Mr. Davis) will yet answer.

It’s an interesting letter, isn’t it? Let nobody in this Legislature tell me they haven’t received letters like it. Let nobody tell me that, because I know we all do. I know the dilemma of what we do with people between the ages of 60 and 64 in this province, who are too old to work or are disabled but not categorized under GAINS and have not yet reached the age of 65; that is an immense problem in Ontario. Letters like this, poignant though they may be, come to members’ desks all the time. One spouse is invariably between the ages of 60 and 64 and they have to live on the income of the other spouse who is over 65. Like here, it’s $197 a month with probably a little bit of savings in the bank.

Do members think it’s fair? I mean this is a Legislature of honourable people --

Mr. Martel: Empty!

Mr. Lewis: I’m going to come to that.

Presumably, if it were within the capacity of human beings to fashion it, we would like to do away with such situations. Why do people like that who have worked so long have to subject themselves to such humiliation? Why is it all so blessed unfair so much of the time? When the Treasurer introduced his budget this year and he made his comments on the GAINS programme, he ended with the throw-away line, if memory serves me, that we were now at the highest level in Canada. Fair enough, but what he didn’t say is that in the Province of British Columbia those between the ages of 60 and 64 are covered and that makes all the difference in the world.

Now so that those people over there know what we’re talking about, those who throw away money so willingly on the corporations, let me show them what the tabulations were and what we, as a government, would have done with that kind of money. They could have phased in, over a four to five-year period, all of those between the ages of 60 and 64 into the GAINS programme for the following costs; I’ll just put the table on the record.

In year one, covering the age 64 group at a cost for couples of $10.9 million and for individuals of $6.1 million, the total cost this year would have been $17 million to bring in everybody of the age of 64 into GAINS.

The second year, to bring in those of the age of 63, would cost $34 million; and then $51 million; and then $68 million; and finally $85 million to include everybody from age 60 to 64. The 1971 census indicated that the number of people in each age category between 60 and 64 is approximately the same so the cost increment is approximately the same in each age category.

Is it arguable from people in this Legislature on the government’s side that they made the appropriate choice in giving $108 million to production machinery sales tax rebates and not $17 million, then $34 million, then $51 million, then $68 million and then $85 million to bring everybody from the ages of 60 to 64 into the GAINS programme, so that this kind of letter would never again have to be received by members of the Legislature? Where are their priorities? Why is it that people always count for so little and machinery always counts for so much?

The other thing the Treasurer might have done with the GAINS programme in this budget while he was introducing it -- and I’m going over the point briefly -- is to have removed the nasty, almost vicious distinction between permanently unemployable and disabled people so that the 3,000 or 4,000 people in Ontario -- let us say 3,000 who are left -- who are permanently unemployable but not disabled would have been brought within the GAINS programme.

Again, I can’t believe that members of this Legislature aren’t subject to pressure on that front. I can’t believe all members of this Legislature don’t get it when my colleague from Sudbury East gives me a letter dated April 12 which was sent to him.

Mr. J. R. Breithaupt (Kitchener): It says, “Dear Mr. Shulman.”

Mr. Lewis: I take it that Mrs. Sobchuk applied and was turned down?

Mr. Martel: She was turned down.

Mr. Lewis: Sorry, I don’t have to give addresses. My apologies for mentioning the name and I trust it wouldn’t be proceeded with. The letter reads, “There seems to be some confusion regarding Mrs. S’s application for a disability pension.”

Presumably she is a permanently unemployable woman who applied for GAINS and was turned down because she was not disabled.

Here’s a letter from a doctor to my colleague which says:

“There seems to be some confusion regarding an application for a disability pension. In order to clarify this matter, the above-mentioned is physically incapable of doing work which would mean that she is totally disabled. I hope that this will enlighten this whole situation.

“Yours truly,

“Dr. de la Riva,

“Sudbury.”

Some of us know him.

But that medical advisory board in the family benefits branch, boy, they need help. There is something wrong with their mental processes, I want to tell the House. I don’t know about diagnostic considerations, but there is something profoundly wrong with those people. Permanently unemployable means disabled. The distinction is preposterous and every case of this kind which is reviewed and turned down is a reflection on the medical advisory board and the Ministry of Community and Social Services, not a reflection on the applicant. The woman whose case I brought to the attention of the members, Mrs. A., in my riding, has hypertension and diabetes and has had a very serious cancer operation and five successive heart attacks, the last two putting her in intensive care for weeks --

Mr. Bounsall: But she’s not disabled.

Mr. Lewis: -- and she gets a letter from the Medical Advisory Board saying, “We agree to continue to view you as permanently unemployable, but we cannot view you as disabled.” Are they mad? I mean what possesses these people?

I have a letter dated April 27, 1973, from the then family doctor for Mrs. A, the last paragraph of which reads: “Mrs. A has a very severe disability because of a coronary artery condition and if she returns to employment it will result in her demise.” I am quoting directly.

I speak to her present general practitioner, who cannot believe that anyone would see her as other than disabled. I speak to her heart specialist whose file is read to me over the phone as they chronicle the nature of her disability in hospital. And the Medical Advisory Board turns down women like this, and Mrs. A in my riding, because we have conceived of a distinction which is devilish -- permanently unemployable but not disabled.

Mr. J. E. Stokes (Thunder Bay): How can they sit over there and do nothing about it?

Mr. Lewis: It is absolutely unbelievable.

What does it mean? It means that instead of $143 a month, these people would get $240 a month; that’s what it means. It means $97 more a month for them; and if there are 3,000 people at $97 a month, times 12 months, it works out to $3,492,000 a year.

Does the government know how much it has just spent on Krauss-Maffei for the next five years -- committed -- $6.1 million. It has just returned $108 million on a rebate to machinery and equipment manufacturers. Is somebody trying to argue in this Legislature that in the range of human and other priorities those things count ahead of matters like this, that are so easy to correct, that are so compelling. How is it that the government values things human in such a minuscule way, and values things material in such an enthusiastic way?

Point No. 7: We still dispute as a party the whole financial base of municipal government, which the members opposite, as a government, have fashioned. Despite all the contributions which have been made, property tax and school tax and every other tax you care to name continue to rise almost unabated.

The Treasurer says in his budget speech, and I quote: “Total provincial payments to local governments and agencies increased from $1.4 billion in 1970 to $2.3 billion in 1974.” He makes much of the fact that the government is now transferring revenues to the regional governments and local municipalities at a rate which parallels that of the growth in provincial revenue. In fact, had the province been transferring at the rate of growth in provincial revenue over the years 1970 to 1974, the figure would stand at $2.4 billion rather than $2.3 billion, so let them stop patting themselves on the back. The difference is almost indistinguishable.

Similarly, while unconditional grants have increased from $73 million to $295 million over the period, they still represent less than 12 per cent of financial assistance. Again, Mr. Speaker, the answer lies, for us, in the provision of two points of the income tax to the regional municipalities. We have always thought that the income tax pro-rated in that fashion makes greatest sense and that’s how we would wish do it.

The impact that that would have is as follows -- and it’s interesting again the way in which figures so neatly coincide in this budget in order to allow us to give the government a range of social and economic priorities which it continues to disavow. If we took two points of the provincial income tax and applied it to local government, in addition to unconditional grants which would remain at this level, in 1975 it would have meant $124 million, in 1976 it would mean $145 million and in 1977 it would mean $170 million, for a total of $440 million to local governments of an expanding tax revenue. The expanding tax revenue, in other words, is something which would have again equalled the $140 million, more or less, given the kinds of priorities the government has established.

Obviously, one can only use $108 million or $410 million in an alternative way but once. What I have tried to do is to suggest a whole range of social and economic priorities, each and every one of which is better than the choice the government has made, both in terms of job creation and in terms of social priorities. The truth is that if we gave if to the municipalities on this basis not only would it have been possible to prevent any increase in the mill rate whatsoever, it would also have been possible to maintain a much greater degree of employment at the local municipal level.

The income tax, of course, expands now at the rate of about 17 per cent a year and giving municipalities access to a constantly expanding tax is extremely valuable. Do members know what has just happened in the Province of Manitoba? Ontario said it couldn’t be done; lo and behold, Manitoba has done it.

Manitoba has given two points on the income tax and one point on the corporation tax to the municipalities, no strings attached. Somehow, Manitoba has been able to negotiate with the federal government, which was supposedly resistant but clearly will support it, an actual line on the income tax form indicating the municipal points of income tax and corporate tax. It’s all there. As one makes out one’s form one sees it in front of one. The provincial tax has been lowered correspondingly.

It is possible for taxpayers in Manitoba to know the amount of tax paid to the federal government, the provincial government and the portion of it to the municipal government. What is more, the Premier of Manitoba has said, “If you wish to increase the points which we would transfer to the municipalities, by all means submit it to the provincial government and we will relinquish more of our points and transfer them to the municipalities.”

What is important is that everybody in the province understands the transaction, so they are putting it right there on the tax form. The municipalities will feel accountable, just as the provincial government feels accountable, and they will have access to an expanding tax base. It’s an extremely intelligent approach and the kind of thing that could have been done with the money which was available here and which we chose to give to the corporations rather than the municipalities -- which brings me to point eight.

Point No. 8: As bad as is the use we’ve made of the money now employed, the revenue sources are still unintelligently exploited and they are also distorted badly as a percentage of revenue. The amount of money we are receiving from corporate income tax and from personal income tax is badly out of whack. The corporate income tax continues to provide a percentage ratio which is much below that of the personal income tax. Again I have misplaced the document, but simply to say it, I think, probably suffices.

We are paying more by way of personal income tax than we are by way of corporate income tax to the total tax revenues of the province. That is unacceptable. The reason I wanted to find that was to show the discrepancy between revenue and expenditure which accompanies it in Ontario; but I can’t find it and the world will not end if I don’t.

What is most important, however, about the revenue sources for the province, is not so much what we are getting from corporation tax and what we are getting from personal income tax but what we are not getting from the mines’ profit tax.

We get from the corporation tax, based on total gross revenue -- let me base it one total tax revenue -- only 19.2 per cent of revenue this year. We get from personal income tax 31.4 per cent of revenue. We get from the mines’ profit tax 2.4 per cent of revenue.

What the NDP is saying is that instead of $202 million combined -- from the mines’ profit tax and the corporation tax for 1974-1975 -- we would have wanted some $458 million. Based on a 15 per cent tax on total production, now over $2 billion, and on $100 million from reserves, and the addition of the corporation income tax, that would give us $458 million compared to $202 million and allow us to do for the people of Ontario the things which need to be done. That’s a tax, which for whatever reason, the Tories continue to resist applying.

Point No. 9: The budget, in its whole range of social and economic programmes, still neglects one area which is terribly dear to our hearts in this caucus. Again, in the context of alternative priorities, I want to put it to the House, that nowhere in the budget this year, nowhere in all of the tax estimates which emerge in the document, is there any significant additional money for occupational or environmental health. The Ministry of Health in the last fiscal year, spent 0.04 per cent of its budget on occupational and environmental health. The Workmen’s Compensation Board spent four per cent of its budget on environmental and occupational health.

Mr. R. F. Nixon (Leader of the Opposition): The member is overstimulating the former Minister of Health (Mr. Potter).

Mr. Lewis: The former Minister of Health has, I may say, snoozed gently in this Legislature on other occasions when I have spoken and when others have spoken. I find it’s comforting; it’s reassuring.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: It has a calming influence.

Mr. Lewis: It has a calming influence. It’s time --

Mr. Ferrier: He’s deep in meditation.

Mr. Lewis: I told him not to take that Valium. It’s stimulants that are required.

I would have thought, Mr. Speaker, that it would be possible to improve the budget of Ontario in a way which would allow for something more than four-tenths of one per cent -- four-one-hundredths of one per cent -- to go from the Ministry of Health and a total of four per cent from Workmen’s Compensation. As usual, the Ministry of Natural Resources will not give us access to the figures used on occupational and environmental health. We simply can’t get them from that ministry.

All right, let me put it this way. If the government is going to make a significant commitment to environmental and occupational health in Ontario, it is going to have to provide money for the monitoring of chemicals before they are introduced into the workplace; for standards so tough that management cows whenever somebody from the occupational health branch appears on the scene; and for enforcement procedures, which by way of penalty and law are merciless; and by way of compensation for those who have been diseased or suffered fatality as a result of government neglect are few. When Linda Thomas, whom some members will know, was preparing this little memo for me, she wrote in it -- I’ll put it in the record in her words -- “Ontario’s present testing is to allow chemicals to be introduced, wait 20 years and then count the bodies.” That’s a pretty vivid way of putting the government’s position on occupational and environmental health.

The government has silica dust facing it; asbestos facing it; the whole Petrosar development in Sarnia facing it. In economic terms that may be valuable but in chemical terms, it should be subjected to the most intense scrutiny. The government has the rubber workers in Kitchener-Waterloo who are anxious about everything from polyvinyl chloride to chemicals they know not of. We have now emerging trichloroethylene and perchloroethylene both of which are used as cleaning solvents all over, by cleaners throughout Ontario. They are used as solvents in the clothing workers and textile workers trades and are presently under analysis at the National Cancer Institute in the United States for the possible hazards to human health.

We have the lead problem in downtown Toronto and the mercury problem in northwestern Ontario, and the government has given four one-hundredths of one per cent of the budget of the Ministry of Health to deal with occupational and environmental health. And the Provincial Secretary for Resources Development (Mr. Grossman) comes into the Legislature and intones a statement which pretends to good faith. Well, there ain’t no good faith unless it is supported by financial figures; and they are not there, they are simply not there.

The great tragedy of this, Mr. Speaker, is the opportunities we are missing. Let me put one on the record. In the Province of Quebec, at the University of McGill, there are two inspired researchers who are currently doing work in the asbestos hazard consequences to the asbestos workers in Thetford Mines. They are doing lung biopsies. They are doing all kinds of cytology. They are measuring the consequences in the community for wives and children. They are doing it partly with the government of Quebec and partly with the Department of National Health and Welfare.

A leading doctor at Sick Children’s Hospital visited the head of the occupational health branch of the Ministry of Health not very long ago and said: “Look at this research. It’s original research in Canada. Why don’t we combine it with comparable research of the Johns-Manville workers in Scarborough and the Johns-Manville workers at the Reeves Mine in northeastern Ontario?” He was told that the Ministry of Health didn’t have the money.

How does the government lose opportunities like that? That’s the best use of applied clinical science. That’s the best way to deal with occupational and environmental health. You have a defined group of workers, you can compare data from Quebec and Ontario and you have funding from the federal government. Why is it not possible within the Province of Ontario to embrace the same enlightened rationale that is being embraced by the Province of Quebec?

In all of these occupational areas something has to be done to shake the government out of its lethargy or in little plants and in little industries, just as there was at Elliot Lake and just as there has been at Johns-Manville, from time to time there will be a kind of reign of terror where we count the bodies. There is no reason for that in the world, Mr. Speaker. Which brings me to the last point I want to make in this presentation, and in some ways it is pivotal.

Virtually a whole budget paper attached to the budget presentation dealt with energy. I want to say some pretty tough things about that paper, and I want to provide some figures by way of contrast to what the paper provides.

Under the category of energy, the budget statements are bogus, the figures are bogus, the rhetoric is bogus; and one is now wont to ask just what is the Premier up to and whose side is he really on?

Last year, at almost exactly this point in time, the Premier participated in an arrangement which sixth sense alone should have known was wrong. He abandoned Ontario to rapacious oil and natural gas interests, and we have paid a heavy price for it.

Budget paper A deals with the Ontario economic recovery, so-called, and the energy factor. The budget itself is hopelessly ambivalent in dealing with this matter. As a matter of fact, it is almost comic.

The budget describes what Premier Davis entered into in 1974 as losing us $310 million in gross provincial product, $420 million in consumption and 22,000 jobs. It chronicles the very serious consequences. It says those consequences, “adversely affected all sectors of the provincial economy . . . .” It talks about “this economic shock [that] has not yet been fully absorbed . . . .” It talks about direct transfers of more than $1.1 billion. It talks about the massive shift in funds. Then it goes on to say: “The comparative advantage of $6.50 per barrel over the past year has provided essential breathing space for the Canadian economy to adjust in a balanced and orderly fashion. In one sense, it’s a shock, massive and adversely affecting the economy. In the next breath, it has comparative advantages and gives breathing space to Ontario.

Now the price we in this province pay for the Premier’s errors, Mr. Speaker, is untold. This year we witnessed the return of the vanquished, standing like Canute at that conference while the oil lapped at his feet. It will drown the Tories yet, because the Premier’s stand on energy leaves so much that is wanting that anyone who pretends he could fight an election on it hasn’t thought it through.

The Premier said in Ottawa that he was digging in his heels, he would allow no increase, he wanted security of supply. And what did he mean? He meant that the oil companies should receive more money from the increase, $3.80 to $6.50 a barrel, than they have been receiving.

We in the New Democratic Party say that the figures in the budget are bogus, and that the Premier went to that conference and took a position which he understood in advance allowed for a different interpretation. And let me give you that different interpretation, and I ask the members to hear with me.

What the Premier said in effect was that the company cash flow at the level of $3.80 a barrel was $2.18, and the company’s cash flow at $6.50 a barrel was $2.26. So that the jump in price meant an increase for the companies of eight cents in total; which for the Premier worked out to something like a three per cent increase to the companies.

All right. We have looked very carefully at the figures. If you take into account the royalties as calculated by Alberta on Dec. 21, 1974, the industry-average federal tax revenues on the $6.50 oil barrel as outlined in John Turner’s June, 1974, speech, the Alberta income tax using the same Dec. 21 figures, and the Canadian Petroleum Association brief to the Minister of Finance, this is what you will find; and I simply want to put it on the record as carefully as I can.

For large companies, in March of 1974, the crude oil price was $3.80 a barrel; in December of 1974 it was $6.50 a barrel. You then subtract the operating costs. In each case they are 60 cents.

Then there is the federal royalty and tax. In March of 1974 it was 28 cents; in December of 1974 it was 89 cents.

There is the Alberta royalty and tax. In March of 1974 it was 91 cents, in December of 1974 it was $2.41.

This means that the company cash flow in March of 1974 in the large companies was $2.01, and after the increase was $2.60. This means 59 cents more for the companies, or an increase of 22 per cent; not eight cents more and an increase of only three per cent. That’s for the large companies.

Now for the small companies, here are the comparisons. The crude oil price was $3.80 in March of 1974 and $6.50 in December of 1974. The operating costs remained the same in each time, 60 cents. The federal royalty and tax remains the same for the small companies, 28 cents and 89 cents. The Alberta royalty and tax remains the same, 91 cents in March and $2.41 in December. But there is the Alberta offset of the federal tax on the new price of $6.50 a barrel, which is 33 cents. So that the company cash flow jumps from $2.01 to $2.93, an increase of 92 cents or 34 per cent more.

Now what are we saying? The Premier went to Ottawa and said: “The oil companies are getting only eight cents a barrel more, representing a three per cent increase on the $2.70 amount.” In fact, it ranges from 59 cents to 92 cents more; it ranges from 22 per cent to 34 per cent more. In fact, Mr. Speaker, the Premier went to Ottawa not to protect the interests of the consumers, but to lobby for the privilege of the companies. That’s what happened in Ottawa earlier this month, and a shabbier display cannot be imagined.

At least about Premier Lougheed there is a certain transparent, band-maiden attitude. I mean about Peter Lougheed, you know he’s a lobby for the oil companies. There’s something almost refreshing about it. He stands, and his remarks are prefaced, without actually being articulated: “I, Peter Lougheed, am here on behalf of Imperial Oil, to get as much for the company as I possibly can by gouging the consumers to whatever extent manageable. Therefore, I ask for the following.”

Our Premier is not given to such candour. Lacking leadership and straight talk, the government engages in duplicity. The fact of the matter is that the oil companies in Ontario are doing fabulously under the new arrangements. They have enough for exploration and development, and the only thing the Premier was asking in Ottawa was for more money for the oil companies by asking that they receive an even larger share of the take.

Well, that is, in its own way, quite breathtaking. He’s offered no protection to the consumers in the future, it should be pointed out. I mean, that’s absolutely clear. No one knows what’s going to happen to the consumers of Ontario when, in July or August, Pierre Elliott Trudeau raises the price of oil and natural gas. No indication here of the Ontario Energy Board to review it. No indication here of lowering the gasoline tax to cushion it. No indication here of any response.

But the Premier did go to Ottawa and argue for the oil companies, and he did it so brazenly that it was not possible to divine at the time. But the fact is that his figures were wrong and his argument was wrong, and his rhetoric was wrong.

The place that it all emerges most vividly, of course, and in a sense most ironically, Mr. Speaker, is in the sudden decision on the part of Ontario Hydro to ask for a 29.9 per cent rate increase. Ah, how the oil runs afield, eh? Suddenly Ontario Hydro undercuts the Ontario government’s intention to stand firm on one area of energy, while it therefore must capitulate on the other.

If ever there was an apologist it’s the hon. Minister of Energy (Mr. Timbrell), who made the neatest little explanation on behalf of Ontario Hydro that’s ever been offered to this House, without one jot of credibility to it. As a matter of fact, you know, Mr. Speaker, the seven per cent plus which the minister talks about is energy consumption, but the actual rate of increase over the last four years has been 6.4 per cent, which is the increase to meet the peak demands. Because Ontario Hydro plans its capitalization on the basis of peak demand, then obviously, Mr. Speaker, that’s the figure which has to be discussed.

If I can just remind the House that if -- as the Ontario Energy Board requested in August, 1974, but Hydro refused -- we lower the reserve capacity to 23 per cent and if we return Hydro just to a seven per cent growth rate, not even a 7.4 per cent growth rate based on the minister’s calculations, then we reduce the system by 1,676 megawatts or 12 per cent by 1982, and the savings, in millions, are $2,737 million.

Let me give the House one other figure. If we assume the rate of growth to be 6.4 per cent, as we have experienced in the last three or four years, and hold our reserve to 23 per cent, then the expansion would be reduced by 3,195 megawatts or 22.7 per cent, for a saving, in millions, of $5,221 million by 1982.

If the government wants to know about priorities in terms of establishing budgets, why can’t it take that $5.221 billion, and apply it to housing? Why does it have to apply it to Hydro? Why can’t it hold the line in Hydro at a 6.4 per cent increase and use the money which it has saved, $5.221 billion, to build houses in Ontario from 1975 to 1982? That doesn’t make sense to members of the Conservative Party? Why is it that the government will go to the market, whether it’s New York or the Middle East, for Hydro but won’t go to the market for housing?

An hon. member: They don’t give a damn.

Mr. Lewis: What is it about the priorities? They don’t give a damn? That may be so.

How do those people sit over there with sanguinity and contemplate $23 billion stacked up by 1982, $5 billion of which is easily savable and not consider an alternative priority like housing for it?

Can I put it this way, Mr. Speaker, and it speaks to the sense of the budget, do the Tories see what they are doing in Ontario? Do they understand how they are destroying social and economic priorities on every front? Do they see by this budget what they have wrought?

They have $6.1 million for magnetic levitation in the next five years, and it means nothing to them. They’ve got $32,000 for a public relations man for the Minister of Housing (Mr. Irvine) and it means nothing to them. They’ve got $250 a day for Judy LaMarsh and they couldn’t care a tinker’s dam about it. They’ve got $5.2 billion for nuclear reactors and it bothers them not at all.

Magnetic levitation, PR people, irrelevant royal commissions, nuclear reactors; how is it that in every way they opt for material benefits at the expense of human realities? What is it about the government that makes it so perverse? How is it that this budget has managed to enshrine in one frail, simple document, offered a few months in advance of an election, all that is most detestable about Ontario’s economic system; the inequality within the tax system, the way in which the government asserts its priorities to matters material rather than human and the way in which it has failed to see all of the alternatives which are available to it. The government may run off and run some silly campaign at its heart’s content about austerity, of which it knows naught; about cutting the civil service of which it knows naught; and about figures in the budget, each one of which is driven full of holes by an adolescent let alone a member of the Legislature. The government can pretend to some economic expertise, but when it looks at it, it lies in tatters.

It can speak if it will of violence, the newest clarion call of the Tories -- the Premier uttering about royal commissions and about baby blue movies; the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations (Mr. Handleman) running off to the Ontario censors and being offended by what everybody is offended about; and the Attorney General (Mr. Clement) making speech after speech about violence, saying it is not as bad as in the United States, mark you, but still pretty bad in terms of crime increase over 15 years ago. Of course that’s true!

Then there is the talk about the effects of liquor on the community uttered by the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations, at God knows how much length; and the Attorney General as well, not to mention the latest repetition of the refrain by his perfect honour about the Yonge St. strip.

Well who doesn’t worry about it? Who isn’t concerned about depravity on Yonge St. or liquor as it relates to crime or crime in general, or violence in the movies or the media? Who can’t discuss those kinds of things? What hypocrisy contains all of the ministers that they discuss them in the abstract and they do nothing in the particular?

I listened to David Crombie on the radio this morning. If the government wants to clean up Yonge St., if that’s its wish -- and I don’t like my kids being molested by pamphleteers for body-rub houses any more than people in this Legislature -- then why doesn’t it pass the legislation which gives the city of Toronto the right to do it? How much hypocrisy can it contain in one moment?

If it wants to do something about the effects of liquor and the relationship to violence, then how come it hasn’t done anything about advertising on television or other areas of the media? If it wants to do something about matters of crime and violence, then how is it that police forces in certain areas of the province beg for support to fulfil what many would think are simple elements of law and order?

Does the government want to do something about violence in the media? Then let the Premier single out those areas which he finds personally distasteful, or let him appropriate some of his money to provide alternative programming possibilities for children and adults.

What measure of integrity can be given to all the speeches when they sit on a report for four years which deals with that and related subjects. If they want to fight the campaign on that, by all means. The reality is that there’s very little left of substance to the Tory party. The reality is that from their Throne Speech to their budget to their current themes, they can’t establish matters of credibility -- and there are many who see it.

When I spoke in the Throne Speech I asked of the government: “Where is leadership in all of the major social policy areas?” It was nowhere to be found. We asked for straight talk, and they go to Ottawa with contrived figures. They play hocus-pocus with housing starts; they fiddle with debts. Where is straight talk in this government?

And above all, where is the human priority? Where among the cabinet is the human priority? How is it that social and human conditions are relegated to the bottom of the ash can in every instance, while they slough away their money on machinery tax rebates and other such matters?

There’s a very peculiar kind of distortion in Tory priorities now. It’s the distortion of the frantic last fling; it’s the distortion that creeps into reasonable men and women when they’re trying desperately to recapture lost political favour. And so they are doing stupid things rather than rational things. And they are doing things which feed every material instinct and denigrate every human instinct.

It is for that reason that I make this motion, seconded by the member for Wentworth (Mr. Deans).

Mr. Lewis moves that the budget as presented is wanting in the areas of tax redistribution, housing supply, employment incentives, municipal financial support and in every conceivable area of human concern, and that the failure of political leadership thereby revealed forfeits the support of this House.

Mr. J. A. Taylor: Hypocrisy; resign; hypocrisy!

Mr. J. A. Renwick (Riverdale): My God, the Speaker nearly choked on those words.

Mr. Lewis: The Speaker must be changing his seat.

Mr. Speaker: Is there another speaker, or is it orders of the day?

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

Motion agreed to.

MINISTRY OF CULTURE AND RECREATION AMENDMENT ACT

Mr. Leluk, on behalf of Hon. Mr. Welch, moves second reading of Bill 38, An Act to amend the Ministry of Culture and Recreation Act, 1974.

Mr. P. D. Lawlor (Lakeshore): They should amend it.

Mr. N. G. Leluk (Humber): Since the ministry was established on Jan. 14 of this year, we have been pulling together the various components from the other ministries. This bill gives legal effect to the transfers and vests authority for a number of other Acts with the Minister of Culture and Recreation. To this extent, most of the sections of the bill are of an administrative nature to carry forward the principles set forth when the establishment of the ministry was approved. However, I would be happy to answer any questions which the members have about the ministry on this bill.

Since January, when the ministry was established, we have managed to pull together a very diverse group of activities from four existing ministries in the cabinet office and fit them into a structure which, I believe, will let us carry out the very special task that we have been given by the Legislature. I want to take a minute to go over the specific terms of this assignment with members.

First, we are to preserve and maintain the cultural heritage of residents in Ontario with full recognition of their diverse traditions and backgrounds.

Second, we are to promote access to the benefits of citizenship and active involvement in the cultural and recreational life of the province.

Third, we are to stimulate the development of new forms of cultural expression and promote the concept of individual and community excellence.

For the moment we have the various activities for which we are responsible grouped into five specific areas: heritage conservation; libraries and community information; arts support; sports and fitness, and citizenship and multiculturalism.

Some of these, like arts support and sport and fitness, are well known and require little explanation. Through these programmes we are able to assist local sports and cultural programmes and community centres. In this area we also support such provincial agencies as the Ontario Science Centre, the McMichael collection of Canadian art at Kleinburg, the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, and the educational television network.

Through the libraries and community information programme we hope to co-ordinate and strengthen local programmes for the dissemination of information so that we get the best use of public funds spent in this area.

Mr. Lawlor: Mr. Speaker, on a point of order. Why is the member speaking from that geographical location?

Mr. Leluk: Mr. Speaker, I did not ask permission of the House. I’d ask it now. I understand that a precedent has been established and I thought it might be better for me to speak from this position. I would ask the permission of the House to do so.

Some hon. members: Agreed.

Mr. Leluk: The member for Lakeshore is really too much.

Mr. Speaker: When the member’s seat is on the opposite side, it has been usual in the past to give the member the privilege of moving over to this side of the House where he is facing the opposition and able to answer questions. Is permission granted for this?

Agreed.

Mr. Lawlor: I can’t get at him quite as easily, you know.

Mr. Leluk: We are pretty tough on this side.

Through these programmes we are able to assist local sports and cultural programmes and community centres. In this area we also support such provincial agencies as the Ontario Science Centre, the McMichael collection of Canadian art at Kleinburg, the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, and the educational television network.

Mr. Roy: The member has already said that.

Mr. Leluk: Through the libraries and community information programme we hope to co-ordinate and strengthen local programmes for the dissemination of information so that we get the best use of public funds spent in this area.

The membership of the Ontario Heritage Foundation has been expanded and it has been given increased responsibilities in a number of areas including the preservation of archaeological sites. We will work with individuals in communities on the preservation of properties of historic and architectural significance and we will be responsible for the continued development of historic restorations like Old Fort William and St. Marie-among-the-Hurons.

In the area of citizenship and multicultural support we are developing programmes to assist newcomers to settle into Ontario society and aid our native peoples to benefit more fully from provincial services.

At the same time we have a special responsibility to support the government’s multicultural policies by assisting various ethnic and multicultural groups. In this way we can all share in the richness of Ontario’s cultural mosaic.

We are now in the process of reviewing these programmes to assess their appropriateness in the light of the ministry’s new mandate. I expect to be inviting improvements to them in the future for consideration by this Legislature. I will be meeting all the employees of the ministry again this month to review our progress and plans with them because their understanding, co-operation and support are essential to the success of the ministry.

Mr. Speaker, I will have another opportunity to review the ministry programmes with the House when our estimates are considered and I look forward to this.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Windsor-Walkerville.

Mr. B. Newman (Windsor-Walkerville): Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The parliamentary assistant outlined the purpose of the bill which is essentially the transfer of certain programmes from various ministries of government to the Ministry of Culture and Recreation so it is now MOCAR. I hope the ministry is able to progress substantially so that at least in one field I’m particularly interested in we will see substantial changes in the not too distant future. That is physical fitness, Mr. Speaker. I’ll make a few comments concerning it a little later in the discussion of the bill.

I support the principle of the bill, Mr. Speaker. I think it is nice that now we have come along and taken the various aspects from various ministries and put them in one ministry. However, I’m quite concerned as to whether the purpose of the bill is as signified or whether this is really a new propaganda arm of the government under the name of culture and recreation.

Mr. Roy: Sure. Exactly.

Mr. B. Newman: Really, Mr. Speaker, I think that is the purpose of the bill. Were there not an election coming up this year, that bill would not have been introduced into the House in January.

Mr. Roy: That’s right.

Mr. B. Newman: There were a lot of other things that should have had by far greater priority in government. Just as the previous speaker from the New Democratic Party made mention of housing and other concerns, I think that possibly we should have spent a little more concern in those areas, rather than in the setting up of the Ministry of Culture and Recreation. Everything that is in there, Mr. Speaker, was in various ministries. The parliamentary assistant and the minister are attempting to rationalize by concentrating the various programmes into one area or one ministry.

Mr. Roy: Creating a pork barrel.

Mr. B. Newman: When I see that being done, Mr. Speaker, I wonder if we are now not fragmenting a lot of the programmes that we had in other ministries. I see now that education is going to be in Colleges and Universities and this ministry. The Ministry of Education is going to be in various other branches of the government. Even the Ministry of Treasury is involved. I would like the parliamentary assistant, when he does reply, to point out to us where Treasury is being involved. It may be the transfer of funds from racehorses into some more fitness programmes -- and I hope that is the case. I think we should be paying a little more attention to the fitness of our citizenry and non-residents of Ontario, than we do to the fitness of the various breeds of horses.

Mr. Speaker, I am concerned that there is the fragmentation of the various educational programmes. Likewise, I am concerned with the development of municipal recreation certification. I hope the parliamentary assistant in his reply makes mention that the community colleges and/or the universities are going to be given that responsibility for the certification of recreation directors or para-recreation directors throughout the Province of Ontario.

Mr. Speaker, there is also another concern. In the setting up of the various recreation committees I hope that the ministry does look into the report of the select committee on the use of schools and some of the recommendations that they have made where we want community involvement in the development of these recreation commissions. We don’t want them imposed on the community.

We want the grassroots to decide who should be on the committee, the type of programme that that community wants, and the funds really provided to the community so that they can run the programmes in the fashion and the types of programmes that are better for them in their estimation. We don’t want big daddy imposing all of this on the various recreation committees throughout the communities and throughout the province.

In one community, Mr. Speaker, you could have a variety of programmes, because the recreation committee for the one given area, like the community school, may want something that is completely different from that of another area in the same community.

In another section of the bill, there is made mention of prescribing a definition of approved maintenance and operating costs. I hope that under that, Mr. Speaker, the minister is going to take away from the boards of education the cost of operating afterschool programmes that are not directly related to education within the schools.

These extraordinary or additional expenditures, rather than being a charge on the property taxes of a local municipality through the board of education, should be a direct responsibility of this ministry, funded by the ministry, and not paid for by the local property taxpayer. The local property taxpayer has enough to pay now in his municipal property taxes. This burden could be taken away from him if funds were provided to cover the complete operating costs of the programmes that are going to be developed as a result of the recommendations of this ministry. Mr. Speaker, I hope those funds are sufficient to operate the programmes properly.

There is also mention that one of the responsibilities is going to be the development of leadership training camps. I hope the minister looks at the report of the select committee on youth, which recommended the regionalizing of leadership training camps. As it is today, we do have several good training camps, and I’m pleased to see that they are operative. However, one of the training camps accommodates both boys and girls at different periods.

I think there is a need for a substantial increase in the number of leadership training camps -- and they should be developed on a regional basis. There is no reason why residents of the Toronto area, say, couldn’t have a camp associated directly with one of the universities in the area or even given an opportunity to go to a leadership camp farther away from home if that is their wish. As I say, I hope the development of the leadership training camps will be on a regional basis.

I wonder what co-operation there is going to be between this ministry and the federal government in terms of the development of facilities that could be used for provincial programmes and/or federal programmes. I can specifically mention the Essex county agricultural and exhibition complex that is in the planning stages in the county of Essex, in which I understand the federal government involvement will be approximately $8 million.

We hope that, whenever possible, the provincial government will work in co-operation with the federal government, because in a lot of instances what we are doing here is being done by the federal government. Let’s maximize the use of federal and provincial funds so that we can develop the best programmes possible as a result of co-operation between two levels of government.

I’m kind of concerned, Mr. Speaker, when it comes to the development of programmes involving physical education or physical fitness. I wonder if the ministry is now going to have the legal authority to attempt to implement or to convince industry that it also has a responsibility as far as physical fitness is concerned. It is all right to develop programmes in the schools, but when an individual leaves school and gets involved in industry, quite often his approach toward fitness is limited to viewing a hockey game on television or occasionally taking one of his young offsprings to a Little League type of recreation or competition. We hope that the ministry will use some of the approaches that are used by other countries in the development of physical fitness programmes in industry.

Regarding the development of physical fitness programmes in industry, I notice that a study has been prepared by a Donald Bailey of Regina, dealing directly with physical fitness. In it, he mentions that 40 per cent of Canadian men and 47 per cent of Canadian women have fitness levels rated as no better than fair or low. If we are going to substantially reduce our health service costs, we are going to have to pay particular attention to the fitness of our communities. I hope we can find that type of concern on the part of the ministry so that at least we will be a far fitter province than we have been.

I don’t think we have to be as concerned about the fitness aspect in developing the best teams in the world. I think we can strive for that. We can hope that we can eventually be among the best, but at least if we have a higher level of fitness among our people then we have performed a very substantial portion of the goal that should be the responsibility of the Ministry of Culture and Recreation.

I hope that there is provision in the Act, Mr. Speaker, so that the ministry can take care of the violence that is involved in sport. It is not only involved in hockey, it goes into other fields of physical endeavour. I hope the ministry can develop, either through rules or regulations in co-operation with the various athletic groups throughout the province and on the national level, a greater concern for sports, for the sake of playing the game and for the sake of the health benefit of the activity rather than solely for the sake of winning, winning at all costs.

We have got to get rid of this idea of the lust for blood in our sports at all levels, both amateur and professional. I know this has probably developed as a result of the old-time wrestlers. Where they wanted to draw a big crowd at the next wrestling competition they involved themselves in as much physical mayhem as one could possibly imagine and then that became appealing and the crowds increased at ensuing wrestling and/or boxing matches.

I hope, Mr. Speaker, the minister also has authority to look into the contracts that deal with the junior A hockey players. I understand that that is illegal, but I think that should be one of the priorities in there. Let’s unchain these junior hockey players so that no longer are they tied down and no longer are they slaves of the professional hockey organizations which are really just entertainment and big business.

Likewise, I hope the ministry reviews the various programmes of merit throughout all parts of the province of Ontario and gives financial assistance to those on a regional basis and in a fair manner, so that there can be no criticism that we are not playing the game but providing to those areas in which the government happens to have a representative a greater share of the public purse than we do to those areas which are not represented in the House by members on the side of government.

Mr. Speaker, we support the bill. We hope that the member piloting the bill through can make some replies to some of the comments that I have made, and we certainly hope that the Ministry of Culture and Recreation is able to function in the manner in which we think it should function for the betterment of both the physical and cultural well-being of our residents, both of Canadian birth and those who chose the Province of Ontario and Canada as their place for the future. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Wentworth.

Mr. Deans: Mr. Speaker, I have only two or three remarks to make with regard to the bill. It is nice at last to be able to see the sort of fleshing out of the ministry and to see just what sorts of responsibilities it might be going to undertake.

I want to talk about two things. I want to suggest, first of all, that within the ambit of responsibility of the minister there rests the Ontario lottery.

Today I raised in a question what I consider to be one of the inequities of the lottery system. My interest in it was twigged by the member for Nipissing (Mr. R. S. Smith) who started it off a week ago by talking about the amount of money that seems to be flowing back to the coffers of those people who have been charged with the responsibility of distributing and selling the tickets. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that this was wrong and that we had an opportunity, if we used the lottery sensibly, to provide even more money for the very groups that are supposed to be benefiting from it if we chose another way of distributing and selling the tickets on the lottery.

I want to suggest to the parliamentary assistant that he move immediately to do away with the present private system of distribution and sale of lottery tickets and that he seek out in every municipality the groups most likely to seek benefit from the revenue derived from the sale of the lottery tickets and he make available to them the option, first of all, to distribute and, secondly, to sell those tickets directly to the public. By so doing, all of the commissions from the sales will go directly to the groups which are expected to benefit and intended to benefit --

Mr. Speaker: Will the member for Wentworth come to order for a minute?

Mr. Deans: Yes.

Mr. Speaker: I don’t think there is anywhere in this bill where I can see that lotteries are mentioned.

Mr. Deans: It’s funny you should raise that because I couldn’t find it anywhere either, but I thought it was worth raising. I am quite honest with you and I am not going to quarrel with you about it. When I read the bill I thought, where could I raise it. I thought I could raise it under section 1, subsection 8b(j) “authorizing the payment with the approval of the minister of special grants for programmes of recreation and fixing the amounts thereof.” Just listen for a moment. I thought I could point out that we might be able to save the province money and not require as much money out of that particular section, if the minister adopted my suggestion.

Mr. Speaker: I think you got your point across. Now maybe you could move on to the principle of the bill.

Mr. Deans: Thank you very much. I just wanted to make the point in a way that I think that that would be a very suitable way of handling the money and much more suitable than the present method. There might not be the same degree of kickback but there certainly would be a great deal better use of the money. I would like you to consider it -- not to consider it -- but to do it.

I want to raise one other thing with you, Mr. Speaker, and if you want me to find out where this is in the bill, I will find it for you. There is at the moment a matter that concerns me almost more than any other single thing related to recreation. My colleague here from Windsor-Walkerville was speaking about violence in minor hockey and all of the problems that flow from it. I agree with him. I think there has to be a much closer watch kept on the violence that erupts from time to time in the arenas of the Province of Ontario.

I want to raise another point that I think is as important. At the moment the Ontario Minor Hockey Association is drafting regulations which will effectively place in bondage any child who is carded under the OMHA who plays hockey in the Province of Ontario from ages nine to 16. This is vital to the future of these youngsters. Mr. Speaker, if a child in the Province of Ontario wants to play carded hockey in this province, starting next year, if the OMHA has its way, the parent of that child will have to sign a contract, guaranteeing that that child will play for that team or in that organization until they are aged 16.

Mr. Haggerty: When they reach the age of 14, they become --

Mr. Deans: I was just going to say that when they get to age 14 or 15, they become the property of some other team higher up, in the World Hockey Association or in the National Hockey League or in some other organization. There is something terribly wrong with that system.

Mr. D. M. Deacon (York Centre): It sounds like a slave market.

Mr. Deans: There is something terribly wrong when a kid wants to play organized hockey, and wants to be able to play not only in his own community and has the ability to play against teams from other communities, but some group calling itself the Ontario Minor Hockey Association has the right to require of the parent of the child that that child be signed to a contract, tying it for six to eight years to that league and the teams within that league.

I’m saying that if the minister is going to fund, under recreation, any aspect of that organization or groups associated with it, that only be done on the understanding that no such contract is required to be signed. There’s no place in this province for tying a nine-year-old to one particular league until he’s 16. There’s no place in this province for requiring the parents of a child to sign a contract which requires that child to play in a league if they don’t want to.

There’s something wrong with the Ontario Minor Hockey Association and I’m going to ask the member to do something else. I would like to know from him who these people are; how they get these positions. Who elects them? How do they get into these jobs? I can’t find out. I have read the list of directors but I can’t find out if there’s any annual meeting held to which coaches or conveners are invited to elect the executive of the Ontario Minor Hockey Association. My child plays in the OMHA. He did, I should say; maybe after this speech he won’t but he did. I’m going to tell the members I don’t like what they’re doing, not one little bit.

For example, if a team wants to go and play in Nova Scotia I don’t like it having to send a letter plus $5 to the OMHA to get a letter of permission to play in an exhibition game there.

An hon. member: Yes, that’s in all amateur sport.

Mr. Deans: I ask the members why should --

Mr. G. A. Kerr (Halton West): They need a passport as well.

Mr. Deans: They need a passport as well, do they? I mean, what is it? Why should they have to pay $5 to get a letter from the Ontario Minor Hockey Association to take a trip to Nova Scotia?

Mr. B. Newman: That’s a travel permit.

Mr. Deans: A travel permit? I’m going to tell the members that’s a lot of unadulterated nonsense.

Mr. F. A. Burr (Sandwich-Riverside): It is totalitarian.

Mr. Deans: When I look around and I see all these kids who want to play hockey, who have the ability to play at one level or another, and I think of this sort of super-body which sits and makes these kinds of decisions both about the future and the freedom of these children, I’ve got to question it seriously. Also, by the way, I don’t know how that group got there and I’ve got to question seriously how the best interests of the children of this province are to be served.

I don’t agree with what’s going on at the moment. I don’t think there’s nearly sufficient overseeing of the operations. I want to know who in the province makes sure that the contracts drafted are fair, that the civil liberties of these children are protected and that the legal requirements placed on their parents are not so onerous as to require them to sign these kinds of contracts.

What parent who has a child with any ability at all would deny the child the opportunity to play in that kind of competitive hockey? Yet in order to allow the child to play he’s got to sign a six-year contract for a nine-year-old. There’s something wrong, something terribly wrong with it. I’m asking the member if he will take a serious look at it because it needs looking into. I think it’s about time we came to grips with it. Maybe then hockey could be played in the arena rather than in the back rooms. Maybe then people would be able to make their choices reasonably and sensibly.

I understand, of course, that if children sign for a team, if we’re going to have any kind of a team sport, we can’t have them switching back and forth every five or 10 minutes. That goes without saying. But signing them year in and year out or on and on for all of these years certainly doesn’t make any sense to me.

I know an awful lot of parents in the Province of Ontario who are very worried about this. They are very concerned about the legal implications of having to sign such a document and whether or not there would be any requirement on them to fulfil the obligation they’ve signed. I know a lot of parents in the Province of Ontario who are really concerned about the fact that many children in the province will not have an opportunity to play, simply because their parents won’t bind them to that kind of usury. Now I want to suggest to the minister that that should be looked into and looked into quick under his ministry. As far as the rest is concerned, good luck.

Mr. Speaker: Does any other member wish to speak for a minute? The hon. member for Nipissing.

Mr. R. S. Smith (Nipissing): Yes, I just have a few comments to make.

Most of the things that are contained in this bill are things that are being moved from the Ministry of Community and Social Services over into this new ministry. Of course, they involve the setting up of recreation committees, etc., across the province and I presume, from my reading of the Act that the main principle of the Act to move that responsibility into this ministry.

I never thought it should be in Community and Social Services, where we are dealing with an altogether different type of programme, and for that reason I certainly am glad to see it moved out of there. Whether we need a Ministry of Culture and Recreation to put it into or not is another question and I suppose we dealt with that on second reading of the bill to set up the ministry.

I want to make reference to some of the things that the previous speaker made reference to. There is no question that the programmes that we are talking about within this bill are going to be financed by the Ontario lottery. Although the Ontario lottery is not mentioned in this bill, this bill is not workable without the money the government is going to get from the Ontario lottery.

All of the programmes in this bill are going to be developed to a great extent because of a $40 million or $60 million projection in profit from the Ontario lottery. That could easily be upped by another 10 per cent if a new method of distribution of the tickets were undertaken because, as I understand it, the costs of administration of the Ontario lottery is going to run to at least 20 per cent and perhaps 25 per cent. Beyond that the winner’s share of the lottery will bring it up to somewhere around 40 per cent, and then the province will keep 60 -- am I correct in that, or is it the other way around? It’s 60-40 one way or the other.

But, really, I would just like to advise the people of Ontario if they are going to bet -- if that’s the reason they are buying a lottery ticket, to bet -- that they are better off at the racetrack because there they get 83 cents on the dollar back and here they don’t get nearly that much.

Mr. Burr: The races may be fixed, though.

Mr. R. S. Smith: Well the lottery may be fixed too. And there is one other thing that bothers me --

Mr. Speaker: Will the member curtail his remarks to the principle of the bill as --

Mr. R. S. Smith: Well, I am.

Mr. Speaker: -- there is no place to discuss lotteries in this particular bill?

Mr. R. S. Smith: I am talking about the funding of the programmes that are in this bill, and the funding of the programmes that are in this bill is going to come from the lotteries. Now, if there is anything more direct than that, I don’t know what it could be.

Mr. Speaker: Go ahead and proceed, but just don’t discuss the lottery that’s all.

Mr. R. S. Smith: The lottery represents a considerable amount of the income, you know, and we can see how directly that applies to what we are talking about.

Mr. Speaker: Proceed.

Mr. R. S. Smith: Anyway -- now you have got me off the point. I can’t remember what I was going to say.

Mr. Speaker: I am sorry.

Mr. R. S. Smith: I think the point I would really make is the fact that the costs of administration of the Ontario Lottery Corp. are far too high. They are far higher than those that are being experienced in the Manitoba lotteries where it’s around 12 or 13 per cent. Obviously political patronage is being used in the lotteries insofar as the distribution of the tickets is concerned, through the appointed people.

Mr. Lawlor: It very easily could be a scandal. We will investigate it.

Mr. R. S. Smith: It really could be. It almost is.

Mr. L. Maeck (Parry Sound): I am glad the member worries about that.

Mr. R. S. Smith: I think the member for Parry Sound should not comment too freely on this because his area was one of the areas that I had to go to bat for, because they weren’t getting their share of the tickets.

Mr. Maeck: The member doesn’t have to go to bat for my area. It is looked after a lot better than Nipissing any day of the week.

Mr. R. S. Smith: There was bad distribution in that area; very bad distribution.

Mr. Maeck: It’s all looked after.

Mr. R. S. Smith: The member shakes his head and agrees with me, regardless of what he might say. The fact is that that’s the part of --

Mr. Lawlor: Ripoff.

Mr. R. S. Smith: Yes, that’s right. That’s the part of this ministry that has to be looked at very closely.

Interjection by an hon. member.

Mr. O. F. Villeneuve (Glengarry): There is a new organization to be formed.

Mr. R. S. Smith: The other matter that I would like to bring up, insofar as the development of programmes under this Act goes, are those programmes that will be developed through the recreation committees that now come under this ministry.

In northern Ontario we have the problem of unorganized municipalities. According to this Act, as it was in the previous Act, for a recreational council or a committee to be established, it must be established under the aegis of the local school board. In many cases the local school boards are regional boards and are very uninterested in what happens in the unorganized territories. First of all, because the amount of money they gather through taxation in those unorganized territories is very small. Secondly, they are usually administered and operated by representatives from the larger municipalities in the area, so that the unorganized municipalities have no say whatsoever in the operations of the school board. Therefore, generally speaking, the school boards do not have very much interest in whether the unorganized territories have recreational committees established or not.

I know some areas have made appeals to the school boards to set up recreational committees so that those areas could become eligible for provincial assistance in the provision of the services and the capital grants that are available to ordinary municipalities. They have been denied this right by the school boards. So I believe some other method should be evolved that is not included in this Act whereby those unorganized territories could form recreational committees and apply directly to the provincial government without having the aegis of the local district school board. In many instances the district school boards have no interest and do not feel that it is a part of their responsibility.

Obviously, since the areas are unorganized the responsibility in northern Ontario, lies directly with this government. It doesn’t lie with the other organized municipalities that may be close by, nor does it lie with the school board which may cover the area. All those things municipal in nature, including recreation committees, in unorganized territories of this province are the direct responsibility of this government. I believe this government should accept that direct responsibility.

It being 6 o’clock p.m., the House took recess.