CREDIT UNIONS AND CAISSES POPULAIRES AMENDMENT ACT (CONTINUED)
SUPPLEMENTARY ESTIMATES, OFFICE OF THE ASSEMBLY
SUPPLEMENTARY ESTIMATES, OFFICE OF THE OMBUDSMAN
CONCURRENCE IN SUPPLY, MINISTRY OF EDUCATION
CONCURRENCE IN SUPPLY, MINISTRY OF COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES
CONCURRENCE IN SUPPLY, MINISTRY OF COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES
CONCURRENCE IN SUPPLY, MINISTRY OF COMMUNITY AND SOCIAL SERVICES
The House resumed at 8:03 p.m.
House in committee of the whole.
CREDIT UNIONS AND CAISSES POPULAIRES AMENDMENT ACT (CONTINUED)
Resuming the adjourned consideration of Bill 151, An Act to amend the Credit Unions and Caisses Populaires Act.
Mr. Swart: Mr. Chairman, when we adjourned for dinner I was just expressing some concerns we have about this amendment, although I made it clear that we in this party will be supporting it. One of those is the mandatory requirement for all credit unions who are members of a league to deposit 10 per cent of their assets with the league.
We also have some concerns there appears to be a retroactivity feature in this bill. It is going to be retroactive to July 1981, unless another date when it will apply is named by the regulation. This means there could be some credit unions that are not now members of a league, that would have to deposit 10 per cent of their assets with the league. These matters, I guess, concern us a bit because of the haste with which this bill has come before this Legislature and is being dealt with by this Legislature.
Normally, a bill of this importance would probably go out to a committee where the individual credit unions would have the right to express their views. I realize, of course, this has been recommended unanimously by the task force of 11 members. I believe it is also being recommended by the board of directors of the Ontario Credit Union League which I understand has 18 or so members. That represents a pretty responsible sector of the credit union movement.
For this reason we will go along with this bill though normally in something of this nature, whether it is with credit unions, unions generally or any democratic organization, anything of this magnitude usually goes before a membership convention and is dealt with there. Recognizing the urgency of it and having to weigh that in balance we are going to support it.
One of the main provisions of the amendment is there must be a plan submitted to the director, who is a government director of credit unions, for his approval and that plan must be followed. That is appropriate. We would like to know what might be in that plan, how long the credit unions would have to make their 10 per cent deposits with the credit union league, what might be some of the terms upon which the pool would be made available to the local credit unions and some of those important items.
Perhaps the minister might give some commitment when he is replying that the plan would at least be tabled in the Legislature so all of us who have concerns with this would be able to see the terms and make some input if, for some reason, we thought they were inappropriate or were not carrying out the best interests of the credit unions.
I would say in some ways we have concerns about the bill, but I recognize we have to find the balance between meeting a very real need which exists at the present time and the perhaps fuller democratic process we would like to see in this Legislature in dealing with the bill and what has led up to this bill before us.
I recognize there could be the need for almost instant action. Therefore I would like to commend the officers of the credit union league and the task force for coming up within about five weeks with a fairly comprehensive and what appears to be a sensible plan, even though we may have some reservations about the speed with which it was enacted.
I conclude by saying that extraordinary circumstances sometimes require extraordinary measures. This perhaps is one of those times. I wanted to put those thoughts and concerns on record but, on balance, considering all factors concerned, this bill is desirable, will meet a need and you will have the support of this party on it.
Hon. Mr. Walker: Mr. Chairman, the section I moved earlier is substantial and members have had an opportunity to read it over. When the task force came forward to us and recommended that a mandatory liquidity pool be brought in we said to them it would be necessary to have support from within the movement itself in a demonstrated way. The members of the task force responded very well to that request and provided substantial support.
8:10 p.m.
It was only last Thursday when official word was given in writing by us to the task force, the matter having cleared cabinet earlier on Wednesday. The cabinet's views and directives were drafted into concrete form and submitted to the task force on Thursday, but in the period of time from Thursday on the task force were able to contact many of their members and obtain absolutely clear, unequivocal support.
I had made a requirement that 80 per cent be submitted to me before I would be prepared to proceed with the bill. Indeed, the task force exceeded the 80 per cent figure and submitted letters and telegrams to me, all of which have been dated in the last five days. Here is a part of them:
Of the some 840 members of the Credit Union Central of Ontario, the 100 largest ones were contacted. They have support from 89 of the largest ones who are saying yes. Even those who were not prepared to say yes did not give an unqualified no. There were only a few that gave a no.
I think it is fair to say we are treading a bit on the general autonomy of the organizations, but by the same token I think it is in the interests of the majority that the movement be preserved. It is very clear that in spite of these at times perhaps Draconian approaches the movement itself was prepared to say it supported that. It sent in letters and I will read just one. It is from the Niagara Credit Union Limited and is addressed to Mr. Buddle. It says:
"Dear sir: The board of directors of the Niagara Credit Union Limited is in favour of the legislative mandatory liquidity pool equal to 10 per cent of the credit union's shared capital and deposits," et cetera.
The Stelco Employees' Credit Union Limited writes, "To help meet immediate and long-term movement liquidity requirements this confirms that Stelco Employees' Primary Works Credit Union Limited supports universal liquidity pooling by Ontario credit unions on the basis that," and it sets out a variety of views.
Then there is the Hamilton Wentworth Credit Union Limited, the Auto Workers Oshawa Credit Union Limited, and so on. The list is replete with support. We are satisfied that on the urging of the special task force, and in light of the fact that was a grass roots movement set up to preserve the movement and to continue its direction in an autonomous yet at the same time profitable way, we were by ascribing ourselves to their wishes prepared to indicate our support as well for the credit union movement. That is in effect what we have done. This is the key section that transmits that support in a very direct and tangible way to the member unions.
The fact is that 87 or 89 per cent of the largest 100 which represent 80 per cent of the assets, plus a smattering of the small ones, support it. They could not have contacted 800 of the smaller ones, of course, but they contacted a random sampling of something like 31, and all 31 indicated total support for the move that was afoot. We felt we were on sound ground doing it.
We recognize we might be tampering or treading a bit with some of the autonomy of some of the groups. We feel that greater good is being served by the movement being preserved. That is what you are seeing exuded in tonight's bill and in the amendments I have just now put forward.
The Deputy Chairman: Is there any further participation in the debate on the amendments proposed by Mr. Walker to Bill 151?
Motion agreed to.
Hon. Mr. Walker: Mr. Chairman, that also included section 3 because there was a renumbering process in the last clause on the last page.
In addition to that I have a subsequent motion that fits into place here. These numbers will become sections 4 and 5 of the bill:
I move that the bill be amended by adding thereto the following sections:
"4. Section 101 of the said act is amended by adding thereto the following clause: (d) --
Mr. Swart: Mr. Chairman, on a point of order: Can we deal with the section 3 amendment first?
The Deputy Chairman: I was looking for that.
Hon. Mr. Walker: I am sorry. I know what the member for Welland-Thorold is saying. He wishes an amendment on his section 3. The section 3 you have in front of you that you are thinking of is not the section 3 that is being referred to by me at the moment. Because of the renumbering process found on page three of the amendment I submitted to you and read at length earlier tonight, you will find on page three the words, "And I further move that section 2 of the bill be renumbered as section 3." His amendment should come immediately after the one I am about to read.
The Deputy Chairman: That is agreed. Do you have a copy of the amendment? Has it been circulated?
Hon. Mr. Walker: Yes, this is a shorter amendment found on one page and it says sections 4 and 5 on it. Those amendments were distributed prior to the dinner hour, about 4:30, so members will have them.
The Deputy Chairman: Hon. Mr. Walker moves that Bill 151 be amended by adding thereto the following sections:
"4. Section 101 of the said act is amended by adding thereto the following clause: (d) to provide, in its discretion, financial assistance for the purpose of assisting any league in its continued operation or in the orderly liquidation of its operations.
"5. Section 102 of the said act is amended by adding thereto the following subsection: (2) For the purposes of subsection (1), 'credit union' includes a league."
Hon. Mr. Walker further moves that sections 3 to 5 of the bill be renumbered accordingly.
Mr. Swart: We in this party support this amendment to the bill as well. It does give a little broader power, which we think is desirable and therefore we will be supporting this.
Motion agreed to.
Hon. Mr. Walker: Now I believe it would be proper to proceed to what is numbered before you in Bill 151 as section 2 which because of our renumbering will revert to about section 5 or 4 or 6 or 7.
The Deputy Chairman: As we are looking at the printed word -- are you correct in saying that section 2 is section 5 by your amendment? I thought it was section 3.
Hon. Mr. Walker: It reads "section 3"; how, I do not know.
The Deputy Chairman: Any discussion on section 3?
Mr. Boudria: Just for clarification, Mr. Chairman. That is not section 3 as now printed, is it?
Hon. Mr. Walker: No, it is section 2.
Mr. Boudria: No amendment to that one, Mr. Chairman.
The Deputy Chairman: No amendments? Shall the motion carry?
Motion agreed to.
The Deputy Chairman: Now we move to section 3 as printed, which is now really section 4.
The Deputy Chairman: There is one here by the minister. If you would like to have his first, it might help make yours.
Mr. Boudria: Yes.
The Deputy Chairman: Hon. Mr. Walker moves that clause 118a(1)(b) of the act as set out in section 3 of Bill 151 as printed be amended by inserting after the word "union" in the first line the following words, "or league."
8:20 p.m.
Mr. Swart: I would like to put on record our support of this too. The purpose of this section is to guarantee the payment of any loans, or parts thereof, together with the interest to credit unions. This provides that the authority will also be granted to make these guarantees to the Ontario Credit Union League as well, and that has to be our purpose here tonight. This party will support a slight amendment.
The Deputy Chairman: Is there any comment on section 3 as printed? Section 4 is withdrawn.
Mr. Bradley: I will go through the formality of indicating, as I did not last time, the support of our party for that minor amendment.
Motion agreed to.
The Deputy Chairman: Mr. Boudria moves that section 3 118(b)(1) as printed be struck out and the following substituted therefor:
"(1) Where in the opinion of the Lieutenant Governor in Council the affairs of the league are not in satisfactory financial condition, or that the operations of the league are not being conducted in accordance with sound business and financial practices, the Lieutenant Governor in Council shall deliver to that league a notice of intention of the corporation to take possession of the property of that league.
"(2) Within three days of the receipt of the notice of intention under (1), the league may notify the Lieutenant Governor in Council that it wishes to make submissions on its behalf concerning the intention of the corporation to take possession of its property.
"(3) Submissions by or on behalf of the league may be written or oral and shall be made within 10 days of the date of receipt by it of the notice of intention in accordance with regulations.
"(4) Within three days of the hearing of the submissions of the league, the Lieutenant Governor in Council may, by order, direct (a) the league to take such remedial measures as in the circumstances are deemed appropriate and on such terms as in the circumstances are deemed appropriate or (b) the corporation or such other persons as may be named in the order to take possession of the property of the league and on such terms as in the circumstances are deemed appropriate."
Mr. Boudria further moves that subsection 118(b)(2) as printed be renumbered as 118(b)(5) and that the said subsection be amended by striking out subsection (1) in the first line and inserting in lieu thereof, clause (4)(b).
Mr. Boudria: Mr. Chairman, the purpose of this amendment is the following: I have had representation from the Fédération des Caisses Populaires de l'Ontario through its president, and the federation is quite concerned it would have no appeal mechanism if the decisions of this bill are initiated by the government. In fact, what the Fédération des Caisses Populaires de l'Ontario wants --
Mr. Piché: It sounds like a baby-sitting clause.
The Deputy Chairman: The member for Prescott-Russell has the floor.
Mr. Boudria: Thank you very much.
What the federation is after in this case is some sort of appeal mechanism. Granted this appeal mechanism will lengthen the number of days in which the government can take action. There is no magic to the number of days that I suggested in my amendment. If the minister thinks, for instance, the three days I have in there should be changed to two days, that is all right. The three days I have in there is just a convenient number I arrived at in consultation with the president of the Fédération des Caisses Populaires de l'Ontario. They are not really attached to any of those numbers of days. They would be willing to shorten it in case the minister is concerned swifter action may be necessary than what would be provided in this amendment. The minister will recognize this is a maximum number of days we are talking about here.
The member for Welland-Thorold was saying the other day this may slow the process by 16 days. That would be a maximum of 16 days under this amendment. We realize if within the first three days the league does not make any representation the whole situation is over at that point. Potentially it may only reduce the number of days by three and not 16. Sixteen would be the maximum if neither government nor credit unions co-operated. It is not necessarily that long.
If the government wants to shorten that number of days, I would have no objection. I do feel strongly, and the caisses populaires do as well, that they would like to have some mechanism by which they can ask why they are being taken over. They do not appear to have that under the present legislation.
Mr. Swart: Mr. Chairman, we took a look at this section when we were going over the bill in some detail and wondered if we should move an amendment to section 118b. It states, ". . .the Lieutenant Governor in Council, without holding a hearing, may, by order, direct the corporation or such other person as may be named in the order to take possession of the property of the league." This gives quite an autocratic authority to the government of this province.
We have not moved an amendment. As I already stated, there are other parts of the bill and other parts of the first amendment which we passed tonight about which we have some rather serious reservations in regard to the procedures, the timing and so on. But I said with regard to that amendment, and I say it now, it seems to me this is a package that is put before us to deal with something of an emergency.
That emergency could require action within a day or two as we know from the situation which took place in Quebec. The likelihood is that if any government, even a Conservative government, moved to take over the credit union league, the situation at that time would probably be extremely serious -- otherwise it would not be moving. Action would be required immediately. Whether it was 16 or eight days it might be long enough to prevent the quick action required.
Because we have subordinated quite a number of normal democratic procedures for emergency purposes we have to go along with the full package. Therefore we support 118b as it is written in the bill.
I commend the member for Prescott-Russell (Mr. Boudria) in introducing this. He obviously wants to soften this arbitrary procedure but the very fact it will be softened may mean it will not be effective. For that reason, this party will be voting against this amendment.
Hon. Mr. Walker: I thank the member for Prescott-Russell for providing me with advance information about his proposed amendment. This has given us an opportunity to reflect upon it. We did so seriously and concluded that to accept it would build into the system an impossible delay that could destroy a league or a whole credit union movement.
I appreciate he is flexible on the times built in and is prepared to back off eight days, seven days, five days or whatever, but even bringing it down to as few as 48 hours could spell disaster for some.
May I remind members, and I think the member for Welland-Thorold touched on this to some extent, in Quebec in a three-day period something like $151 million was depleted from the system. It practically put the movement flat on its back in a short period of time.
It is extremely important to avoid runs on credit unions, as it is with all the financial institutions such as the banking system. Credit unions operate like banking institutions in many of their functions. It is important to avoid a run on them.
I respect the member for the rather substantial amendment he has submitted, that within three days of the receipt of notice of intention under subsection 1 a league could notify the Lieutenant Governor in Council that it wished to make submissions.
The cabinet, being the Lieutenant Governor in Council, would make a decision to move in under only the most Draconian of situations. It is envisaged that if the guarantee mentioned in section 118a immediately above the one he has attempted to amend were called on, and if it were necessary to start doling out money to avert a crisis caused by a run of credit unions against a league or a run of people against credit unions, to have to go through a 16-day process where notification would have to be given could not possibly function.
We have to be able to move with lightning speed. Even the fact that cabinet is not always available is an impediment that is sometimes difficult to overcome. At least it would be easier to convene than have to wait for 16 days until the next gathering.
Mr. Bradley: Especially on Friday morning.
Hon. Mr. Walker: That is right. On Friday morning it might be difficult to get a corporal's guard. On the other hand, through the process of walk-around cabinet submissions, as we have done on occasion for emergency cases, one would see that we could move quickly to avert a crisis.
Cabinet is always open to a submission. Even if we were to pass a regulation, cabinet would be open to appeal. There likely would be little damage done if the appeal were successful. But the very fact that we might take a step, that through a regulation we might take over the direction of a league, would be a signal to the world that something was happening. To give out that signal without the effective closure that it would provide in terms of withdrawals and receipts provides us with a problem.
Section 118b(2)(a)(ii) says it would have "the power to suspend or restrict the withdrawal of amounts deposited with the league, where, in the opinion of the corporation or other person, the withdrawal would not be in the best interests of the league."
That power would effectively be emasculated by this submission. I appreciate the fact the member has submitted it and the interest with which caisses populaires have put forward their view. I recognize what they are saying, but in a case like this it calls for executorial action immediately. We simply cannot wait. We could not even wait for the mails to deliver a notice.
Mr. Boudria: I would like to say to the minister that we will be in favour of the legislation with or without that amendment. He has known that all along. The only purpose of this amendment was to satisfy the concern the caisses populaires have about having no appeal mechanism and no forewarning of any kind that the government would actually come in and take over. They are worried because it is unprecedented anywhere else that anyone would act so quickly.
I appreciate what the minister is saying, which is that once he has notified the league it is in trouble, that may in itself encourage a run. Within those three days there may be nothing left by the time he does take over. I appreciate that position, the notification of the board of directors of a caisse populaire or of the league is not necessarily public notification and generally what he states to one of those organizations does not make front page news.
I appreciate what has happened in Quebec, but I feel the passing of the legislation that we want now will restore confidence in credit unions and caisses populaires and therefore the mere passing of this legislation will decrease the chances of such runs ever happening again.
The amendment we are proposing as a party would be of some merit. It would certainly satisfy the concerns of those caisses populaires. But as I said, even without that amendment we will still be in favour of this legislation.
The Deputy Chairman: All those in favour of Mr. Boudria's amendment will please say "aye."
All those opposed will please say "nay."
In my opinion the nays have it.
Motion negatived.
The Deputy Chairman: We have another amendment. Mr. Swart moves that the bill be amended by adding thereto the following sections:
"3(a) On the first day of January 1985 section 100 of the said act as re-enacted by section 2 of this act is repealed and the following substituted therefore:
"The members of the board of directors shall hold office for a term of three years commencing on the date on which they are appointed and thereafter until their successors are appointed and any casual vacancy occurring shall be filled in accordance with section 97 for the balance of the term of the director whose office became vacant.
"3(b) On the first day of January 1985 sections 118(a) and 118(b) of the said act as enacted by section 3 of this act are repealed."
Mr. Swart: I think the intent of this amendment is obvious, Mr. Chairman. It provides a sunset clause so that the emergency provisions, the three of them that are incorporated in this act, will expire at the end of 1985. We are aware that those three emergency provisions in this bill, which is the whole purpose of the bill, are:
(1) to replace any members of the Ontario Share and Deposit Insurance Corporation at will by the government to take over the management of OSDIC; (2) the Ontario government under this emergency legislation is guaranteeing loans of the corporation and of the credit unions and will pay interest which they owe; and (3) provision is made for the takeover of the credit union league without any appeal.
I think we all recognize that this bill which we have before us is to deal with an emergency. The haste with which we are dealing with it here is because there is the possibility of an emergency now. The reason all sides of the House have supported this bill is because we recognize there is a possibility that emergency could be on us soon and we must have adequate legislation in place to deal with it; as arbitrary and as authoritive as it is, we need to have that in place.
The amendments which I move here really have nothing to do with any haste or any emergency. In fact, it is the reverse. It just means that these emergency measures can expire when there is no emergency confronting us or no likelihood of such an emergency.
8:40 p.m.
It is not unfair to say that in a democracy all of us abhor, at least to some extent, the power of government to take over democratic institution immediately, authoritatively and arbitrarily. No institutions are more democratic, more thoroughly and ably run by their membership or have such a broad base of membership as the credit unions in this province.
If we do not provide a sunset clause, the bill we are passing tonight will leave on the books indefinitely that the government has the power to intervene as it sees fit and to take over the operations of the credit union league and the Ontario Share and Deposit Insurance Corporation. That seems to me to be contrary to the principles of democracy we all hold dear. Therefore, this is a simple amendment. The government of this province has been talking for some time about sunset clauses in various bills.
Mr. Wildman: It was this minister's idea.
Mr. Swart: I was just going to say that. This minister has been a promoter of sunset clauses. This seems to be an appropriate application for a sunset clause. If conditions exist in 1985 that would indicate these emergency measures should still be on the books, I am sure the minister is aware that the people on this side of the House would be supporting him on a bill to extend these provisions for the sake of the credit union movement. But if they are not necessary, then I suggest we should not have them on the books. They can be re-enacted at any time.
It is probably true to say we have never had this kind of legislation in this province before to deal with the credit union-caisse populaire movement. For all these decades, almost a century of existence, they have been able to carry on without this -- I was going to use the word "threat" but that is not fair -- kind of authoritative and extreme measure being in legislation in this province.
We have gone along with the measures in this bill. I think the bill is necessary at this time. I commend all those concerned for bringing it before us and for the rapid changes that were made in the bill even as late as today. Some additional changes were made to try to improve it and it seems to be a good bill now. But we should not continue this type of legislation indefinitely in a free society.
Therefore, I would respectfully suggest to the minister that he support this sunset clause. If it is needed at some future time, he will get the support of the Legislature, or whatever party is in power, to enact another bill similar to this one. When there are the hundreds of thousands of members in this province, any government will bring in this kind of legislation again, if necessary. But let us not leave it on the books indefinitely as if we were saying to the credit union-caisse populaire movement in this province, "At no time are you able to totally handle your own affairs and, therefore, we are going to keep this kind of authoritative legislation on the books of this province."
I conclude by saying I hope the minister will look favourably on this provision. I have had some discussion with some senior people in the credit union league on this. Two of them felt this was a desirable measure to have in the bill.
Mr. MacDonald: Mr. Chairman, before the minister gets up, one comment we have heard so many times down through the years in this Legislature is a sort of -- and I choose my words carefully -- mindless inflexibility with regard to accepting amendments from the opposition. I hope the minister is going to respond in this instance; in responding and being flexible, he is only going to live up to what he has been championing and preaching, namely, to have sunset clauses.
If we really believe this is emergency legislation -- and we regret the authoritarian nature of it, the undemocratic nature of it, the precipitous way in which we have had to do it -- this is one way to protect ourselves and to indicate we really meant that when we said it. I will listen with great interest to what the minister's response is.
Hon. Mr. Walker: Mr. Chairman, normally I am a very great supporter of the sunset clause concept. However, one could argue here that it could present a number of problems. I think members are well aware of the kind of difficulties that could be created with the sunset clause. It could present real problems along the way and some difficulties. It may even require wholesale review along the way, and new legislation might have to be brought in, when, in fact, it might otherwise not have been.
In this particular case, the proposal would implement a sunset clause that would cover appointments to the Ontario Share and Deposit Insurance Corporation, a sunset to the guarantee provisions, and a sunset to the takeover concept.
It is interesting that the member would remember my own involvement in sunset. I rather think --
Mr. Bradley: How could we forget?
Hon. Mr. Walker: I try not to let people forget it. It goes back -- in fact, I ran on it in 1977.
Mr. MacDonald: You did not mean it. Was that another broken promise?
Hon. Mr. Walker: No. That was a campaign plank in 1977, and I brought in a private bill to create the sunset law long before it ever became a word in vogue. As we described the sunset bill at the time, we had to explain it because no one had ever heard of the definition. Today the word is used and no one even has to apply a definition to it. It is a word that --
Mr. Bradley: You stole it from the United States. It did not originate from you.
Hon. Mr. Walker: I am not suggesting I am the original creator here. I discovered it in use in the state of Colorado and imported it for use here. I thought it was a particularly good policy.
Mr. Kerrio: I always connected it with Stuart Smith's bill.
Hon. Mr. Walker: Actually the Leader of the Opposition jumped on a leading cause at that time, and I happened to be in the cause and he --
Mr. Chairman: Speaking of jumping, jumping on to Bill 151.
Hon. Mr. Walker: Now back to the Chairman's suggestion.
The people who have the biggest involvement with sunset are the MPPs themselves, because they have a sunset applied to them every four years whether they want it or not.
Mr. Kerrio: Every two years so far.
Mr. Bradley: And 1975 was a vintage year.
Hon. Mr. Walker: Yes, well sometimes it has been sooner than others. Does the member know where the sunset came from in Canada? The Boer War commission in 1960 was found to have more members on the commission than there were people who had served in the Boer War. They decided then and there that they had to have a sunset clause to stop some of these agencies, boards and commissions.
However, it is interesting that the member has made a very strong pitch for the concept of sun-set. However, I have had a chance to review the proposal he has submitted here. I read it over in some detail and, yes, we are prepared to accept it.
Mr. Chairman: That means the member for Welland-Thorold has moved an amendment to Bill 151 which, I believe, will be now an amendment to the new section 4.
Hon. Mr. Walker: Mr. Chairman, in accepting this, I do have one correction that has to be made. Technically speaking, the renumbering is all fouled up. May I suggest, to the extent that it has to be numbered through here, that that aspect of it only be delegated to the legislative counsel to figure out where the numbers jibe? There are some problems created by earlier amendments tonight, and by the existing bill.
Mr. Chairman: Is that agreed? We all have the understanding? Those in favour of Mr. Swart's amendment to section 4 will please say "aye."
Those opposed will please say "nay."
In my opinion the ayes have it.
Motion agreed to.
Mr. Chairman: It is my understanding that concludes this bill. Will the preamble carry? Carried.
Bill 151, as amended, reported.
On motion by Hon. Mr. Wells, the committee of the whole House reported one bill with amendments.
House in committee of supply.
SUPPLEMENTARY ESTIMATES, OFFICE OF THE ASSEMBLY
Vote 1001 agreed to.
SUPPLEMENTARY ESTIMATES, OFFICE OF THE OMBUDSMAN
Vote 1201 agreed to.
On motion by Hon. Mr. Wells, the committee of supply reported certain resolutions.
Clerk of the House: Mr. Cureatz from the committee of supply reports the following resolution:
That supply in the following supplementary amounts and to defray the expenses of the government ministries named be granted to Her Majesty for the fiscal year ending March 31, 1982.
Reading dispensed with. (See Votes and Proceedings).
Motion agreed to.
CONCURRENCE IN SUPPLY
Resolutions for supply for the following offices were concurred in by the House:
Office of the Assembly.
Office of the Ombudsman.
Office of the Provincial Auditor.
CONCURRENCE IN SUPPLY, MINISTRY OF EDUCATION
Mr. Grande: Mr. Speaker, I am going to be brief in the few minutes that I am going to be speaking with the Minister of Education here tonight, through you of course.
One of the things that has come up since the estimates of the Ministry of Education have been dealt with in committee is the final report of the secondary education review project. I said it before to the minister, and I feel it is incumbent upon me to repeat it, that when she takes a look at this report, if she has not done it already, when she will be coming down with what she considers will be acceptable in this report -- I believe some time in the new year, as the minister put it -- she will receive certain assurances from the universities.
By the way, it seems that in the new year, in January, at a time when this assembly will not be in session, the Minister of Education is going to be bringing in this report, she is going to be bringing in a report on the future role of universities. She is going to be bringing in recommendations on the polytechnic report and on continuing education, the third system. It appears to me that the month of January is going to be education month around the city of Toronto.
I am wondering why it is that that particular month is chosen above all the others. I am wondering why it is that the ministry or the minister does not want this Parliament to be in session, so she would then be responsible for the kind of decisions, supposedly, that particular ministry or the Ministry of Colleges and Universities will be making. However, be that as it may, I guess the critics will have to find other avenues to respond, because the ministry at that time is really not interested in any response from the critics through this Legislature.
I want to say to the minister, and I think she will concur with me, that if the recommendation to abolish grade 13 is accepted by the government we would want clear assurances that the universities would not move to four years in terms of the general bachelor of arts degree, which requires only three years at this time, because the students are going to be asked to pay tuition fees for an extra year at university.
I would want the minister, while she makes up her mind about what to accept in this report, to keep that in mind as well, with the full understanding that the universities are autonomous bodies and they can make their own decisions. None the less, I would hope the minister would ascertain from the universities that they are not going to have a four-year BA in Ontario after this report, if the minister accepts one of its recommendations.
The second thing in this is the compression of five years of secondary school into four. In effect, what will that do? I guess the teachers' federations and many other groups across this province have told both the author of this report, Dr. Green, and the Minister of Education that what this move will do is put a tremendous pressure upon the work load of students in the secondary school system.
The minister knows that the crème de la crème, the cream of the crop, will do well regardless of schooling, but the students who are in the general courses are the students right now of which approximately 66 per cent to 70 per cent drop out before they graduate.
9 p.m.
In other words, of those students who start grade nine in the secondary school system, by the end of grade 13, 70 per cent of them will have dropped out of the system. In effect, by compressing the five years into four, what the minister and the ministry would do is increase that percentage from 70 per cent to probably 85 or 90 per cent.
As far as the ministry is concerned, that could be well in terms of the fact that our postgraduate institutions have a lot of students. That is probably going to be the sieve by which a lot of students in this province will have their education interrupted before they have an opportunity to go into post-secondary education.
I want the Minister of Education to keep in mind those two aspects of this report and, when she makes her decision, to respond at least to those two concerns that I, the Ontario Teachers' Federation, the Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation and other teachers' bodies have in this province.
I also want to say briefly to the minister that the consultation process with teachers in this province has been lacking in the past couple of years. As a matter of fact, at the beginning of this session we heard from the member for Kitchener-Wilmot (Mr. Sweeney), who got up and asked the Premier (Mr. Davis) for her resignation, because in late August the teachers condemned the minister for her lack of consultation in educational matters.
What kind of consultation did she and the ministry not involve themselves in? Finally, I found one particular aspect. There is a regulation called 714, which sometimes in --
Hon. Miss Stephenson: It is 704. For heaven's sake, learn the right number.
Mr. Grande: Is it 704? I do not have it in front of me.
Mr. Wildman: My, you are touchy.
Hon. Miss Stephenson: If he is going to complain, he should complain about the right thing.
Mr. Grande: The Minister of Education is always touchy when anybody begins to criticize what happens in her portfolio.
Hon. Miss Stephenson: I just wanted you to get the right numbers.
Mr. Grande: That is correct. It is regulation 704, which by September had changed to regulation 603. Am I correct on that one?
Hon. Miss Stephenson: No; it's 612.
Mr. Grande: One thing in that regulation is that there has been a lengthening of the school day by about half an hour. That may or may not be of concern yet, because it will not come into effect until September 1982. As far as I know, the teachers and the federations at this time are not yet clear on that. Perhaps within the coming months the minister will hear from those bodies.
But one of the things that concerns me tremendously is that, in the change of that regulation, the minister has wiped out recess in all elementary schools of this province.
Hon. Miss Stephenson: You are so wrong.
Mr. Grande: Why does the minister not take that regulation and find out? In the previous regulation 704, as she puts it, one of the processes of that regulation was that "there shall be a morning and afternoon recess." In regulation 603, that clause disappears and the phrase is that "there shall be five hours of instructional time, excluding recess." Is that right?
Hon. Miss Stephenson: Yes.
Mr. Grande: If the minister excludes recess and does not put in the clause that "there shall be a recess," what is she in effect doing? The minister should not get upset when I say these things, because I understand that her ministry right now is attempting to change this regulation yet again to include recess. The fact is, within a month's time, that regulation will be adjusted so recess will be there. Perhaps one of the things she will do will be to say that "there shall be five instructional hours, including recess." That may very well be the change that is required.
However, I just gave that as a demonstration of the lack of consultation that has been going on by this minister and to show why the teachers' federations, from the Ontario Teachers' Federation to the local federations, are becoming increasingly upset with this minister.
Of course, the minister is sometimes willing to change her ways. Bill 164 was introduced into this House, as the minister put it, with housekeeping measures to change the Education Act. That bill was held over to the spring session, which means the teachers and the school boards wanted to have some time to take a look at those changes and the effects they would have.
The minister often accuses me of not being informed, but I suggest to her with respect right now that she is not informed. She does not know that the Association of Large School Boards of Ontario has said to her in a letter, "Do not consider this legislation before our member boards have responded to that particular --"
Hon. Miss Stephenson: We were not talking about that legislation.
Mr. Grande: I was talking about that legislation.
Hon. Miss Stephenson: Well, they were not.
Mr. Grande: Be that as it may, that legislation did not come into this Legislature for discussion on second reading.
I want to spend a few minutes on a couple of the programs that are very close to me. The minister, the other day, when I got up to ask a question in this Legislature regarding the heritage language program, as is her customary habit, got very upset and said there was no cutback.
I want the Minister of Education to respond to the Metropolitan Toronto School Board -- not to me, but to the Metropolitan Toronto School Board, to the six boards of education that comprise that body. I want to read what the board said in effect on November 12, 1981; it was a report that the trustees in February had asked the bureaucrats of that board to bring in, in terms of the funding the heritage language program is receiving from this ministry.
9:10 p.m.
I am going to quote the whole letter right now so that we will have it on record and so that the minister will take a look at it and do something about it. It is dated November 12, 1981, and it says:
"To the chairman and members of the Metropolitan Toronto School Board.
"Part 2, Heritage Language Programs: At its special meeting on April 14, 1981, the school board adopted a resolution that 'the actual costs incurred by those area boards providing heritage language programs' be documented and reported.
"At the meeting of the standing committee of the school board on November 10, 1981, staff was requested to report at the next meeting of the school board on the relative cost of the grants generated by heritage language programs.
"The following is a comparison of the sums generated in 1980 by the heritage language formula, the actual expenditures in 1980 as reported by the area boards, and the actual provincial grants generated in 1980 by the programs.
"The 1980 formula budget: East York $80,850, North York $369,600, Toronto $756,525, York $242,550, for a total of $1,449,525.
"1980 actual expenditure:" -- I will not read all those numbers about the area boards, but the grand total is $1,371,982.
"The 1980 actual grants from the Ministry of Education: $1,186,191."
Continuing: "Analysis of the above data indicates the heritage language formula budget of the school board generated $77,543 or 5.35 per cent more than the actual expenditures made by the area boards on these specific programs.
"Further," and this is important, "it can be seen that the provincial grants fell short of the formula allocation by some 18 per cent. However, when compared to the actual expenditures, the grants were worth 13.54 per cent below the total expenditures of the area boards."
This is not 100 per cent funding. The minister suggested back in 1979 that the area boards would not have to put any other funds in to provide the heritage language program, because her government was going to provide 100 per cent funding. It could not be 100 per cent funding if the Metro school board says it is 82 per cent funding and, at best, a drop of 13.54 per cent from the 100 per cent funding.
What the minister should understand and appreciate is that come this month of January or February, I do not know exactly when, the Metro board is going to be meeting and there is going to be pressure on that Metro board from North York, Scarborough, Etobicoke, and perhaps from East York, to reduce the heritage language classes by 13.54 per cent. In other words, they will want to provide as many heritage language classes as provincial funding comes to the Metro board.
The minister must move to rectify this situation. There are two ways to rectify it: One is to provide 13.5 per cent more funding to the Metro board and thereby protect the existing heritage language programs; or else the minister must explain her rationale to the Metro board as to why they should not cut back on heritage language classes in Metropolitan Toronto.
Whether the minister says my information is correct or incorrect is neither here nor there. I frankly do not care. What I do care about is that not one heritage language program should be cut off from these area boards. I will make this commitment to the minister: If that cut comes about, what she saw in 1979 in terms of the her attempted 50 per cent cutback will look like child's play.
Let me go to the other area. I have tackled enough with this minister to know that I will see either of two things happening. One is for me to say: "Why do I not forget it? Why do I not go on to something else and leave it?" This ministry and this board -- I am referring again to the Metro board -- do not understand what it means to have a child in a classroom who does not understand English. The child has to be taught English to be able to learn in that classroom atmosphere.
The minister knows that teachers of English as a second language in all the boards have been cut back by some 60 to 70 per cent in the past three to four years. It is a program that is on its way out. However, I can take her into any classroom in the city of Toronto or in the borough of York. She can sit there for 10 minutes with me and find out how many of those children cannot learn in that classroom because they do not have a facility or fluency in the English language.
The programs that could help those children learn English are being cut back because this ministry is an accomplice with Metro in not delivering that educational service to those children in those area boards. I have said on many occasions that the minister is an accomplice to Metro in the sense that she distributes the funds to Metro for the Metro board. It applies its antiquated formula, which has no meaning whatsoever to the problems in the classroom and thereby does not provide the teachers and services to the area boards.
The irony of it is those area boards generate the funds which are given to Metro for English as a second language and Metro does not pass on those funds to the area boards.
I would be happy if the minister would straighten out the situation with the heritage language program and say to Metro, in no uncertain terms, "Either pass on the dollars generated from this ministry or we are going to go directly to the area boards and make sure the needs of those children are being met in the area of English as a second language."
Mr. Ruston: Mr. Speaker, I would like to take a moment or two to speak on the subject of the Education estimates. It has to do with our education setup since we went to the county boards of education and so forth. We have now set up a system that I am not sure we can afford to keep going.
I realize that as wages go up at all levels, the levels have to go up for those in charge. I look at the directors of education and the superintendents of education throughout the different counties. The directors of education in most places are now making $64,000 a year. I do not know how many directors there are in Ontario, but I know a number of them are in that bracket. The superintendents, below the directors, run around $59,000 and assistant superintendents at $55,000 or $53,000 or whatever it is.
9:20 p.m.
This is getting difficult for me to swallow, seeing throughout Ontario this massive bureaucracy we have built up in the education system. We can only blame it on the present Premier who was Minister of Education at the time it started. It is of great concern to thousands of people in Ontario who have to pay the taxes and are wondering where it is going to stop.
I have no objection to the Minister of Education making what she is making as a cabinet minister. I am not questioning that at all. But I do not think every director of education should make as much as she is or more. After all, she is the top person, and she should take the top amount of money; I agree with that.
But I do not agree with the way things are now, where we have built in such a system of bureaucrats in these jobs. Some tell me that actually all we need is a secretary of the board and a treasurer and maybe a superintendent of education. I am not sure we really need much more to handle it.
I was under the impression, when the boards of education were formed as they are now, that it would decrease the number of people in the bureaucracy in Toronto. But when one looks at the public accounts and sees the number of top salaries there, I am afraid that has not decreased very much, although that was the intention of it.
I think the system we have built up now is getting out of hand. I was looking the other day at the salaries of the mayors in the United States. No mayor in the United States in that listing of all the big cities was even making as much as a director of education in the little county of Essex. We have got into this, and somebody is going to have to put a stop to it. It is ridiculous.
Mr. Nixon: You created the monster -- and you won't let women into it either.
Hon. Miss Stephenson: That is not true.
The Deputy Speaker: Wait a minute. I am back. Shall supply for the Ministry of Education be concurred in? Concurred.
Mr. Martel: Is the minister going to respond?
Hon. Miss Stephenson: I don't get a chance to, apparently.
Mr. Martel: Why not?
Hon. Miss Stephenson: Well, I just asked if I could --
Mr. Kerrio: It's passed now. It's too late.
Mr. Nixon: Do it on the next one.
The Deputy Speaker: Moving right along --
Mr. Martel: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker --
Hon. Miss Stephenson: Mr. Speaker, may I have permission to respond briefly? Much more briefly than the speakers?
Mr. Kerrio: If you keep your promise.
Hon. Miss Stephenson: I will keep my promise.
The Deputy Speaker: With the concurrence of the House.
Hon. Miss Stephenson: Vote 704 was a matter of consultation with the teachers' federation. I shall document the hundreds of hours that were spent in consultation with the teachers' federation and give that to the honourable member.
I remind the member in addition that the Education Act says students in the elementary system will have five hours of instruction a day. It had been determined that many boards were reducing the number of hours of instruction, because they were subtracting the recess periods from the hours of instruction; so the children were actually having four and a half hours a day.
We simply reminded them, with the new regulation, that the instruction was to be five hours a day. There was no intention of eliminating recess periods, for goodness' sake, but one does not usually instruct children during recess. If that has to be spelled out, I shall be delighted to spell it out for the honourable member.
As far as the heritage language program is concerned, the funding is provided on an averaging basis across the province. The average cost of providing the program is supplied to each of the school boards for the numbers of students they have, and the cost is 100 per cent of that averaging cost.
I do not know what the Metro board has done with its report. They have not sent it to me. If they do, I shall be pleased to look at it in our determinations of next year.
The member for Essex North (Mr. Ruston) suggested that the level of remuneration for directors of education was excessive. I remind him that the body entirely responsible for that wage is the school board.
Mr. Nixon: Yes, but you set it all up.
Mr. Ruston: You set the qualifications. That is a cop-out.
Hon. Miss Stephenson: It is not a cop-out. That is a fact. The board of education in each of those situations determines without public negotiation the salary of the senior staff of that board. There are times when one does become a little discouraged at the level. I have to tell members that we become extremely discouraged, because it is impossible to attract bright, intelligent people from the system out there into the Ministry of Education, except by secondment, because we cannot afford to pay them what boards pay.
Mr. Nixon: What is the deputy paid?
Hon. Miss Stephenson: The deputy gets paid about the same as a director of education. And, on average, directors of education make much more than the Minister of Education. That is an interesting situation. I do not complain about that but, with the levels rising so rapidly, I am concerned that the ministry cannot compete. I do have concern about it. I also remind the honourable member that those boards are autonomous, and they jealously guard that autonomy.
Mr. Ruston: The system was set up by your government.
Hon. Miss Stephenson: The system was set up a long time before this government, I say to the member for Essex North. As a matter of fact, it was fostered and sponsored by the then Liberal Premier and Minister of Education in 1871, who thought it was the best system ever. Do not blame it all on any one group. It is the system that has been developed and has provided for greater equality of educational opportunity right across this province than had ever been provided before.
Mr. Nixon: And it excludes women.
Hon. Miss Stephenson: The member for Brant-Oxford-Norfolk was complaining about the fact that there are so few women as directors of education.
Mr. Nixon: Hardly any. You can count them on the fingers of one hand.
Hon. Miss Stephenson: He is right. We have two; they are both extremely good. There are some very bright young women coming up in the ranks of superintendents. One of the things I think members should know is that we removed --
Mr. Kerrio: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker: The member for Sudbury East insisted that the minister respond. I imagine it was because he wanted to hear her response. Now he is over there talking to the other gentleman, and he is not listening at all.
Hon. Miss Stephenson: If I might just resume, I shall be very brief.
This year we removed the restrictions upon applicants for the principals' course. The old routine had been that each board had to nominate or select appropriate candidates. We removed all of that and left it wide open. It is interesting that for the first time, 33 per cent of all students in the principals' course this year are women. Interesting as well, the principals of the principals' courses and the staff this year said they were the best group of students they had ever had. So I am very much encouraged that women are going to be moving upwards in the educational system in a most appropriate fashion.
Motion agreed to.
CONCURRENCE IN SUPPLY, MINISTRY OF COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES
Mr. Wrye: Mr. Speaker, I want to speak fairly briefly during the concurrence debate on the Ministry of Colleges and Universities. That means a little more briefly than the last speaker but not as briefly as my friend the member for Essex North.
At the outset, I want to say that this has been a disappointing fall, indeed a disturbing fall, for the people who administer Ontario's 22 community colleges, 15 universities, Ryerson Polytechnical Institute and the Ontario College of Art, for those who teach at those institutions and for those who are attending them in hopes of receiving an education that will be of the highest possible quality.
I say disappointing, because I have heard nary an encouraging word from the government and this minister on the critical issue of the day, the question of the financial survival of these institutions. It is disturbing, because the minister has been at pains to state and restate that funding restraints have been absorbed -- and I love this quotation they keep throwing out -- "without serious damage to objectives." That the Minister of Colleges and Universities would really believe that rhetoric is profoundly disturbing. It shows an inability to understand just how close to the brink the system is.
Lest any person in this House not comprehend the present situation, let me simply recite the absolute deficit position of six of Ontario's universities as of April 30 of this year: Brock University, $432,000; Carleton University, $1,180,000; Laurentian University of Sudbury and its affiliated colleges, $1,416,000; Trent University, $1,112,000; York University, $1,837,000; Ryerson Polytechnical Institute, $1,152,000.
9:30 p.m.
The other institutions will soon be joining their confrères on this list of six. I would like to use one example in my riding, the University of Windsor. Last year it had a surplus of almost three quarters of a million dollars. Today it is in the process of wiping out that small surplus and next year, according to the chairman of the board of governors, Mr. McGivney, the deficit could be as high as $1 million. That deficit position will not be the result of high rolling or free spending.
Earlier in the session I sent the minister a list of 75 specific effects of underfunding of the university. I would like to read some of the comments of the editorial writer of the Windsor Star on the list. In his editorial of November 24 he said:
"The particularly frightening thing about the report on the university's plight presented in the Legislature is the government's pathetic response. The only answers that Education Minister Bette Stephenson could give were that the university should rearrange its priorities and should try to get more money from its alumni. Both are insults rather than answers.
"About the only priority rearrangement left to the University of Windsor in its cost-cutting efforts is to declare bankruptcy. And like all universities, U of W has long been going all out for alumni funds. Already U of W has cut spending to the breaking point. The report to the Legislature shows economies that cannot help but demoralize faculty and students, and reduce both the scope and quality of education.
If the province has no intention of taking up the slack, it owes the universities more than warnings that tough times will continue and pious advice to try harder."
That is the point, and it is a point that was made to the minister and to this government four months ago. It was made in a document entitled Report of the Committee on the Future Role of Universities in Ontario. All fall the universities have awaited a reaction from the government to the key recommendation of the report. The report recognizes that without a sharp infusion of money for operating costs, new equipment, building renovation and building replacement our great university system is headed for ruin.
And it is not just the universities. The community colleges have for years been the victims of the same underfunding that is now crippling the university system. They have been forced to use the meat-cleaver approach to budget cutbacks. Again I could use the example of the community college in my own city of Windsor. But let me talk about the desperate attempts now under way at Humber College of Applied Arts and Technology to cut $3.3 million from its budget. As the president, Gordon Wragg, looked about frantically for money to cut, he decided on a complete elimination of the theatre arts program at the end of this year -- not gradually, but at the end of this year all at once. The students in the first two years of that program will not be able to complete their studies at Humber.
What the president of Humber College and the president of the University of Windsor have been waiting for, and what every administrator, teacher and student has been waiting for all fall, is a commitment from the ministry. On this day in December they are still waiting for the answer this government owes to them and every citizen of Ontario. What bothers me is that this government appears to have closed its fiscal options with its ill-conceived decision to purchase Suncor.
I hope the post-secondary institutions will not have to listen to this government whine about how the federal government, the students, the alumni or someone else is responsible for its next budgetary proposals if they do not begin to solve the financial problems. The fault will lie on the other side of the House with a government that will have lost its will to support what was once a great system and that will be condemning it to the mediocrity Dr. Fisher and his committee warned about in the Report of the Committee on the Future Role of Universities in Ontario.
Finally, on a personal note, I would say a word about the priorities the Leader of the Opposition, the member for Hamilton West (Mr. Smith), would have set for this province, had he led the government after March 19. He would have responded to the crisis that besets the system. He would set as a key priority of a Liberal government the restoration of the former greatness of our university system and the rebirth of a community college system, which is increasingly unable to respond to the changes which would allow them to play their full role in the evolving Ontario of the 1980s.
Mr. Speaker, I suggest it is the outspoken criticism of the Liberal party and the dynamic leadership of the member for Hamilton West in the past few months which has forced this government to finally come to grips with the disgraceful underfunding of our whole post-secondary system. If the government finally, belatedly, at the 11th hour, reverses its field sometime next month or early in February and puts some dollars into a system that is starving for lack of money I believe history will record that while the Premier put the system into place, the Leader of the Opposition came to its rescue at its darkest hour.
The Acting Speaker: The member for St. George?
Ms. Fish: Oh no, sir, I was simply bowing as I left the chamber.
Mr. Grande: Mr. Speaker, I will once again be brief because I do not want to repeat what was said.
Hon. Miss Stephenson: "Once again brief." You weren't brief the last time.
The Acting Speaker: Order.
Mr. Grande: Fifty minutes is not such a great long time when we are dealing with education.
The Acting Speaker: Speak to the issue.
Mr. Grande: I just want to deal with a few of the matters that have come to light since the estimates were completed. I am not going to say since the estimates were dealt with in the latter part of October that there is no point in me going over the report on the future role of universities, the recommendation from the Ontario Council on University Affairs and what that council has said to this ministry continuously about the university system and the kind of straits our university system is in. I want to talk in particular about the community colleges. Whereas the universities are having their problems for sure, the community colleges in this province are experiencing course cutbacks. There is an important thing about these course cutbacks. The critic for the Liberal Party mentioned Humber, and we can mention Sheridan College, Mohawk, Niagara, Centennial and a number of other colleges that right now have either made decisions to cut courses or are in the midst of making decisions to cut back courses.
The Minister of Education surely knows of the course that was cut by Sheridan. By some kind of magic the board of governors of that college made the decision to cut the course in heavy equipment. Two weeks later that same board reversed its decision and reinstated the course once the students learned it was going to be cut. It will not be in effect the year after, so some students who were involved in that two-year course would only receive one year of education and that is it. They will not be able to graduate or receive their diplomas.
A similar thing happened at the Humber College with the students in theatre arts, metal arts and three other courses. The students in the theatre arts were involved in a three-year program. While the students were in the first year of the three-year program the board of governors of the college made the decision to cut those courses and, in effect, will leave those students out on a limb without receiving a diploma for their courses of studies.
9:40 p.m.
I checked the Humber College calendar. What I found was that buried somewhere in that calendar there is a waiver that says it is the right of the college to cut classes. It is the right of the college, without any prior notice, to do all these disastrous things in terms of the education of students at that college.
The minister must understand that two weeks after that fight at Humber College became public those courses were once again reinstated by a decision of the board of governors. What is happening is that the students in this province, and the publicity those colleges receive as a result of these cutbacks, are able to reverse decisions at the board of governors level.
Perhaps the Council of Regents descends upon the board of governors and says: "You must reverse yourselves. There is too much pressure. We cannot take it, you cannot take it and certainly the minister and the Ministry of Colleges and Universities cannot take it."
Maybe the reason these courses were reinstated is not because of pressure at all but because the students whose education is being terminated by those decisions could have legal recourse to the courts. The students, as I found from legal opinion, could take a board of governors to court for not fulfilling its contract to the student for the two-year or three-year course, and for not fulfilling its contract by breaking into their education leading to a diploma.
Perhaps that is the reason these boards of governors seem to reverse themselves. They find out that students could take them to court and, more than likely, win. There is ample precedent for that kind of court battle.
If the underfunding that has gone on with the community colleges and universities continues for another year, the minister is going to have in the community colleges and on campuses nothing short of chaos. The minister or the ministry must be feeling that. I hope when the grants come down some time in February or March of this coming year the ministry will decide to accept the recommendations of all the major reports made in these areas for the last four to five years and will finally begin to listen. What those reports have been saying is not academic discourse at all. It is reality in the sense that the funding is cutting badly into the educational program and the education of students in this province.
One of the things that really disturbed me in the last few weeks was the decision the Council of Regents made in not allowing a check-off by the students at the community colleges to the Ontario Federation of Students. That was a normal course. University students enjoy that right and the OFS represents those students in university. Up to October 13, OFS was representing the students in the community colleges who were affiliated with the Ontario Federation of Students and the checkoffs were taking place.
But on October 13, the Council of Regents made the decision that checkoffs should no longer take place. I ask the Minister of Education why? What is the purpose? What is the reason? Does she not want the students in the community colleges to act together in terms of the cutbacks and how those cutbacks are affecting their individual colleges? Does she want them to act separately in a little area so that then theoretically she could pick them out one by one and do what she wills with them?
I hope the minister will speak to the Council of Regents and to Norman Williams, its chairman, and say that if it can be done at the university level, students who attend the community colleges should also have the right to association. I guess it could even be compared to the right to organize, the right to unionize.
But the community college students do not have that right because the Council of Regents has taken it away from them. The answer Mr. Norman Williams, chairman of the Council of Regents, gave, and I quote from an article in the Toronto Star on November 17, 1981: "'Theoretically the Ku Klux Klan could get hold of a student council, and the college governors would be collecting fees for them,' said Williams." What kind of rubbish is this, comparing a student body at a college to the Ku Klux Klan? What kind of nonsense is this?
Does the minister not have more respect for the students who are in our community colleges and our universities than that? Does she think that 18, 19 and 20-year-old students can be led by their noses by any kooks who might be present or who might try to organize or whatever? If this is what she feels, why does she not do something about the Ku Klux Klan anyway? Why does she not act? Instead of painting the students of this province with the same brush and telling the students of this province they are not adult, they are not capable, they will be led by these people of questionable character -- who in fact are criminals, as far as I am concerned.
She ought to do something about it. But she should not paint the students in our colleges with that kind of brush. I certainly hope she will speak to Norman Williams and say as much.
Let me say one last thing. In a report I received, dated November 16, which made the Minister of Colleges and Universities a bit upset when I referred to it in a supplementary in the Legislature, the presidents of the colleges got together --
Mr. Kerrio: I do not think the minister is listening.
9:50 p.m.
Mr. Grande: I think her listening skills have deteriorated. It is a bit late for her, I guess. The presidents of the community colleges got together and issued a report. A carbon copy of the report was sent to the college president, the Minister of Colleges and Universities, Deputy Minister of Colleges and Universities, the Assistant Deputy Minister of Colleges and Universities, Assistant Deputy Minister skills development, director of college affairs, and president of colleges of applied arts and technology.
The minister said, "What are you talking about?" and the presidents said, in essence, that because of the underfunding in our college system, and I quote, "In the eight years between 1973 and 1981 these increases, in terms of constant dollars, the colleges today have $428 less per student than they did eight years ago." That is the kind of underfunding that hurts the minister to know; $428 less than the year 1973. In essence, what these college presidents have called for, and for all I know, the Ministry of Colleges and Universities is at present involving itself in bringing in, is what they call "controlled growth in our colleges."
This means, in essence, up to this particular time -- Mr. Speaker, I am talking through you to the minister. If the minister chooses not to listen, I am sure I have your ear.
The Deputy Speaker: I am listening.
Mr. Grande: Good. I am positive of that, Mr. Speaker. In a sense, what these presidents have said is, since this is the underfunding that we have to deal with, and since in our community colleges we have a policy called an "open-door policy," any student who is qualified has a place in our community colleges. That is why the community college system was set up to begin with. Now they are talking about a controlled growth. They say if we have fewer students in our schools, with the kind of funding we receive, perhaps we can manage so that the quality of education in our schools will not decline.
This is the position of college presidents. What is the position of the Minister of Colleges and Universities? She says, "I am not aware of this statement. I am not aware of this document." Well, for heaven's sakes, she should make herself aware, because we are talking about education in this province. We are talking about accessibility of education in this province. That is the kind of thing we have been proud of in the province for the last 10 or 15 years, and we are not going to allow the minister or the Ministry of Colleges and Universities or this government to destroy the accessibility to post-secondary education in this province.
One hears of all the cutbacks that take place in our community colleges and universities, then I receive a letter in the mail -- it is not anonymous, by the way, but I will not give the name of the person from whom I received this letter -- and with it an invitation that says: "The Board of Governors of Sheridan College of Applied Arts and Technology request the honour of your presence at a special convocation for the installation of the president, Donald Allen Shields, Thursday, November 12, 1981."
Do members know what I found out about this invitation? The staff was urged to let the students go to the convocation, to let the students off at three o'clock, and $6,000 was spent in order to install the new president of Sheridan College. Clearly, this letter states this is the first time in the history of this province where that particular installation of a president of a community college took place where the staff were told to let the students go and the staff to participate at the convocation of the installation. Clearly the first time.
Maybe Sheridan College could have put that $6,000 that it spent on this thing to print the invitation twice, because as I understand, the first invitation did not say "Donald Allan Shields," but said, "Donald A. Shields," and Mr. Shields said, "I want the invitations done all over again." What a waste of taxpayers' money. To think --
Interjections.
Mr. Grande: Again the minister does not understand what I am talking about. She should find out what I am talking about. Six thousand dollars, and this is the college where within the next year or so we are going to hear of a lot of programs being cut back. This happens to be the college where staff morale is probably at the lowest peak imaginable in any institution.
I want to say to the Minister of Colleges and Universities, when she brings down her budget for next year she should make sure the colleges and universities in this province will be and will continue to be healthy.
Mr. Cassidy: Mr. Speaker, I was listening on the blower and I want to say a few words. I do not know what on earth the minister is doing to the college system, but I know it is having enormously destructive effects. It is also having destructive effects on the universities. Excuse me if I am out of breath, but I did want to say a few words.
I was at Trent University last week and had a chance to talk with the faculty and with representatives of the students and the support staff. They were enormously concerned over what has been happening in that university as a result of the cutbacks which are basically being forced upon them by underfunding by the province.
Hon. Miss Stephenson: An additional $1.4 million.
Mr. Cassidy: In the first place, that $1.4 million is simply a replacement of a grant which was provided before because of the fact that Trent is a different kind of university, a smaller university and is serving a region which would otherwise not have a university. In the second place, it has been accompanied with a series of conditions which have now been bought hook, line and sinker by the president and by the board of governors. That appeared to be the situation when I talked to the people last week.
Not only had they bought that, but they also seemed to have acquired or to have bought hook, line and sinker having decisions rammed down their throats, which is so common to this government and is so offensive, in my opinion, in providing a decent and humane level of social services in Ontario.
One of the reasons the graduate students, students, faculty and support staff were so offended at what was happening at Trent was they had tried to talk to the board of governors and to look at the possibility of alternatives that could be brought in, but they were not being listened to.
Each member of the board of governors had been told quite explicitly to say: "I am sorry, I cannot talk to you. You must go and deal with the president." Since the president of the institution did not want to talk to them, effectively they were being shut out completely.
There is no question that Trent has some difficult decisions to make. This year, the university has been working on a deficit basis. When I had a look through the Hansen report, which I read with quite thorough interest and care, it seemed clear to me Trent had to take steps quickly to get itself back to a balanced operating budget.
The assumption was made by the governors, by the ministry and by the minister's board -- goodness knows who made it -- that the so-called accumulated deficit of $1.6 million at Trent had to be made the only priority in the future and that, therefore, the university had to decide to wipe out that accumulated deficit of $1.6 million within five years. The consequence of that was the college system on which Trent is based, and which it is physically difficult for it to get away from, would be basically obliterated almost immediately.
The concept of education, of mixing different types of faculty members within the various colleges, of having a college in the Canadian environment that would seek to do some of the things the Oxford colleges do in Britain, while doing it within a reasonable period and reasonable cost limits, was being thrown out the window.
The projections about enrolment, for example, which were used to justify the so-called balanced budget were highly questionable. If one changes the concept of the university and makes it into a university like any other except smaller and, because of the lack of graduate teaching, weaker, and nothing else to put in its place, the chances that Trent University would be able to attract students from Metropolitan Toronto and other parts of the province would be severely cut.
10 p.m.
Therefore, we get the situation where the service that was being offered by Trent would be less attractive, and therefore fewer students would come, and the cutbacks that were being imposed would fail to balance the budget and meet the accumulated deficit, and therefore more cutbacks would be imposed and the quality would go down, and fewer students would come. A dizzying spiral downward ensues, whose only ultimate result would be the destruction of a university which has provided a number of talented graduates for the province and for the country, and which has been making a contribution to that region of eastern Ontario.
I wrote a letter to the president. I distributed it in Peterborough. I spoke out publicly because I was offended by the process. I was also offended by this kind of bottom line assumption -- we keep on hearing that from people like the Minister of Health (Mr. Timbrell) and others -- that somehow all of the accumulated deficit had to be wiped out at once.
I could see in a very quick discussion with the students that it was very possible to implement some of the recommendations within the Hansen report for economies -- they did not like it but they could be implemented and tolerated -- to maintain the college system at Trent University. In other words, they could maintain the system which has made that university strong, and reduce the accumulated deficit to the point where Trent once again had reserves and had paid off all of its bank loans.
The bank loans amounted to about $300,000 out of a total of $1.6 million accumulated deficit. The rest has been drawn down from internal reserves, or was simply the normal trade credits which any institution or organization, including the government of Ontario, would have. Trent simply had a certain amount of credit from suppliers worth about $300,000 or $400,000 and that is quite normal.
I have just been paying some bills as I was listening to this particular debate, and I have been doing that for a number of years in my personal finances. Chargex and Visa do it for me; Air Canada, as well. It is not entirely desirable, but it certainly is tolerable, and it certainly is something that happens in the world of commerce as well, if the minister has not heard of it.
What is better, to save the quality of Trent, to save the idea of Trent, to ensure that university can continue to provide a service, or, in the name of the bottom line, to absolutely destroy that institution? I raise this question because I happened to be at Trent last week.
There are many examples from across the province of bizarre situations which are being imposed on universities and community colleges because of the funding policies which come from this ministry and from the government.
I raised in the Legislature some weeks ago the question of what was happening up at Confederation College in Thunder Bay. I went to talk to them. They told me -- I cannot recall the specific figures -- their budget was going up by one or two per cent -- some ridiculously small figure, because that was the way the formula was working -- at a time when their enrolment was rising by seven or eight per cent because of the tremendous hunger for technical and further education that exists both among part-time and full-time students in Thunder Bay, and which is paralleled across the province.
They told me there about the program, which I believe was aircraft maintenance or aircraft construction, which was in strong demand from the aircraft industry, despite the current weaknesses in the industry in other parts of the province. The college was responding to a demand. It was based on strengths that had been developed there at Confederation College over a number of years.
I wish the minister would stop reading her mail and would pay attention. It is only for two and half hours that the minister has to listen to this.
Hon. Miss Stephenson: I am listening.
Mr. Cassidy: The minister is listening?
Hon. Miss Stephenson: Yes, of course I am listening.
Mr. Cassidy: I see. To put it on the record, the minister gives the distinct impression of doing something else, which is a replica of the way she handles her ministry most of the time.
Hon. Miss Stephenson: Really, you are being snide and miserable. Could you please be pleasant for a change?
Mr. Cassidy: No, I am not, as a matter of fact. The minister is a snide and miserable minister.
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Cousens): Order.
Mr. Cassidy: She is a disaster as far as the educational system of this province is concerned. The member for York West (Mr. Leluk) just agreed with me. I am glad to have his support. I think he is lusting for her job. I hope he does not get it.
Mr. Speaker, in order to expand the facilities for this particular aircraft instructor program, Confederation College had been told the money would not be available from the ministry and the only way they could get it was to go to the banks. When I was there a month and a half or two months ago, the bank interest rate, the best rate Confederation could get, was a half over prime, whatever that happened to be. It was something like 22 per cent, according to the notes I have. The ministry was insisting that Confederation go and borrow its money at a rate somewhere above 20 per cent in order to get a needed program.
Up in Ottawa, back in September, I attended an anguished meeting of the governors of Algonquin College and made representations to them and listened to representations being made by other people. A whole series of programs was being cut out by Algonquin College, programs of enormous importance as far as the Ottawa area was concerned. The minister may recall my making representations on behalf of the visual arts program, a program that was providing support for a wide variety, in particular, of crafts people working in the Ottawa Valley. Crafts people do not have fancy incomes; they do not have expense accounts to hop around by jet the way government ministers do. But crafts people are an important part of the economy of eastern Ontario.
Hon. Miss Stephenson: We did not have a jet.
Mr. Cassidy: You do not have it yet.
They happen to be an important part of the economy. They are self-employed. Their incomes are not particularly great. They do not rely, however, on welfare or anything like that and they create employment. They need the support that was available through the program at Algonquin College. It has been chopped. Other programs at Algonquin have been chopped as well.
Every year now for the last three years there has been a financial crisis at that particular college as it has struggled, as the largest community college in the province, with the problem of how to provide the programs in demand in the community within the funding limits the ministry is pleased to impose upon it.
My colleague from Etobicoke (Mr. Philip) wrote to the minister some time ago pointing out that Humber College's enrolment in his riding has been growing at a rate of eight per cent a year, but the college's grant increase has been going up at a rate of only about eight per cent a year. The minister knows enough about economics to know that if grants are going up by eight per cent and enrolment is static, that means in real terms resources that are available are going down by about two per cent per year. If in fact enrolment is also going up, as it is at Humber, it means resources in real terms per student are going down by about 10 per cent per year. That is intolerable.
No institution can adapt to a drop like that and certainly no institution can maintain quality for any length of time. These are not cuts that just began in the last year. This is not a situation of a bloated, fat, educational system. If it were, of course, it would be the responsibility of this government. But this is a system that has been subjected to cutbacks, squeezes and freezes and that kind of thing for quite a number of years now.
I had the opportunity to talk at length with the people in the theatre arts program at Humber College. I happened to get on the line to them. I found when I talked to them that one of their professors who is an old friend of mine, Bill Davis, a former director of the National Theatre School of Canada, an eminent director with an international reputation, happens to be one of the teachers at Humber College in theatre arts.
The theatre arts program at Humber College does not have a parallel elsewhere in the city of Toronto or in the region of Toronto. It has about 65 students. The students get an all-round program in acting, stage work, production, what to do in the front office and that kind of thing. They are put out into the community, they work with a number of different arts organizations, they gain practical hands-on experience; and everyone of them who graduates, from that program gets a job.
It is a three-year program. The students were being told in their first and second year that they would be left without a program to continue. They were told to transfer to George Brown College, but when we checked with George Brown we found that (1) they did not have the resources, (2) its program was only a two-year program and (3) the George Brown program was one in musical comedy, which focused on singing and dancing. Obviously, the people who went to Humber did so because they did not want musical comedy and because they wanted to know what happened backstage as well as learning about performing.
10:10 p.m.
There were other equally valuable programs that were chopped at Humber. I raised that as a specific example, because a few weeks ago the Minister of Culture and Recreation (Mr. Baetz) proudly announced to the Legislature that Toronto was entering a new era in the field of theatre with the government's assistance for the purchase of the Winter Garden by Mr. Drabinsky or some other of the minister's friends in the private sector.
The Winter Garden would be turned into a transfer house, and one of its purposes would be to encourage Canadian theatre. Another purpose would be to provide a place to which successful productions from the Tarragon Theatre, the Bathurst Street Theatre, the Toronto Truck Theatre and other places in town would be able to transfer if they had a long run. That seemed to be at least a justifiable rationale.
There have just been a number of grants made from Wintario to theatre groups in Toronto and across the province. In various ways, the government has recognized that Toronto is now one of the top three theatre centres on the North American continent and can hold its own, as we saw with the Toronto Theatre Festival a few months ago, with any theatre centre in the world, even though cities like London and New York have more theatre than we have here.
Apart from the cultural value of that, theatre is an industry. Tourism is an industry for Metropolitan Toronto. People come here because our streets are safe, because they want to look at city hall and Osgoode Hall, because they want to engage or join in the cultural life of this community and because they want to see theatre.
Here we have an industry that is going to grow and that is being fed skilled people all of whom from Humber College get jobs. The ministry is aiding this industry to grow with just as much strategy as there is in the Board of Industrial Leadership and Development from the Treasurer (Mr. F. S. Miller) and the Minister of Industry and Tourism (Mr. Grossman).
Yet thanks to the cutbacks by the Ministry of Colleges and Universities, Humber College is chopping its program. I believe Humber has decided it will keep the program for the first-year students so they will be able to complete it. It is not being allowed to keep the program forever; it is just being allowed to keep it for students who are already there in order that the commitment made when they enrolled will be fulfilled. I have seen that happen with a film school in Ottawa at Algonquin, and I do not think that is good enough.
That is Humber in Toronto, Algonquin in Ottawa, Confederation in Thunder Bay. I talked to my sister the other day who teaches at Conestoga College in Kitchener. She said:
"The work load for teachers and the lack of assistance has gotten to the point where I have decided to take some of my own salary in order to pay a teaching assistant or a marker to help keep up with the work coming from the students. There is no other way I can do justice to those students because, if I did not do that, I would either collapse or the students would not get any of their work back in order to know how they were doing on a week-by-week basis."
That is Conestoga in Kitchener. It is happening in every community college in the province. What the devil is this government doing to our young people if this continues? Where do we have a commitment in terms of the future of the economy of this province? Why do we have a situation where the community colleges were so desperate they were using equipment that in certain cases was 25 years old. At Algonquin College they had some equipment in the physics laboratory that they could only repair by going to the Museum of Science and Industry in Ottawa to cannibalize a machine there, because they could not get anything more up to date. Why was that not kept up to date? Where are the laboratories and lavatories at the University of Toronto, and how long is this going to go on?
I have a final point to make to the minister. I say this to the minister in particular because of her sex. I raised this matter in the House today with her colleague who is also responsible for apprenticeships because yesterday she was absent. I am not sure; I believe she was here, but it was the Minister of Labour (Mr. Elgie) to whom I directed it.
Three or four years ago, I began raising the question about the total lack of provision of apprenticeships for women in the skilled trades in Ontario with the exception of the service trades. The latest figures, which came from the director of apprenticeship in August and which are as of March 31, are that 21 of the 12,000 people in the construction trade apprenticeships are women; 49 of the 12,000 in the motor car trades, mechanics and so on are women; only 13 of 3,000 in the industrial trades are women; and 91 of the 6,000 in the nonregulated trades are women.
This minister has been responsible for the colleges for the past four years. She had an opportunity to blaze trails on behalf of her sex to ensure that women would have a genuine chance at the high-paying jobs that come through getting skilled apprenticeships. She failed in that job as well and, by God, I am going to keep on with this after the new year as well.
I do not know where we are going to go in this province as long as we have a government that has throttled post-secondary education; it is throttling opportunities for young people and, as a consequence, it is throttling the future of our economy.
Hon. Miss Stephenson: Mr. Speaker, I am concerned that the member for Ottawa Centre is again repeating material which, I have been assured by the president of Confederation College, is entirely incorrect. I have a communication from him which I will be glad to demonstrate to the honourable member. It proves that what the leader of the third party was saying is misinformation, unfortunately --
Mr. Cassidy: I got it from him. If you are accusing him of misinformation, go ahead.
Hon. Miss Stephenson: I am sorry, but I have a communication from him suggesting strongly that this was total misinformation.
The college system is functioning very effectively at the present time because the boards of governors are taking their responsibilities seriously. The first purpose of the community college system is to provide for up-to-date training programs that are relevant to the needs of the students, the business community and the industrial community.
The colleges are carefully looking at all their programs and are attempting to eliminate or reduce programs which are no longer relevant. That is part and parcel of their mandate. They are beginning to do it very effectively, and I am proud that they are.
Humber College had a problem where I believe the administration acted inadvertently, without advice and without the authority of the board. The board has reversed that decision.
In addition, the universities are functioning extremely effectively at present. We have a good communication program now to look at the problems they are facing. We have provided additional funds this year specifically for the purpose of improving their equipment. The equipment at the universities is for the research programs.
The post-secondary system in this province was built primarily by a Conservative government. I should like to assure the honourable member for Windsor-Sandwich (Mr. Wrye) that it will be preserved by a Conservative government. Unfortunately, the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Smith) and his Gritty boys have nothing to do with it.
The Acting Speaker: Shall this resolution be concurred in?
All those in favour will please say "aye."
All those opposed will please say "nay."
In my opinion the ayes have it.
Motion agreed to.
CONCURRENCE IN SUPPLY, MINISTRY OF COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES
Mr. Cassidy: Mr. Speaker, the minister in her haste to say how good the system is failed to explain why it is that, after all these many years she has been the minister, there are only 174 women in nonservice-area apprenticeships out of 33,794 in the province. Why has she failed completely to make any change in that despite having been the minister for the past several years?
Hon. Miss Stephenson: Mr. Speaker, am I permitted to respond to that?
The Acting Speaker: This is a new concurrence. Is there anyone else who would like to participate in this debate?
10:20 p.m.
Mr. Cassidy: Mr. Speaker, on a point of order: The minister can certainly reply to this. That does not close off the debate.
The Acting Speaker: It would close the debate, and there are other --
Mr. Cassidy: It seems to me that it might be valuable if she would reply and, if we are not satisfied with the answer, we can ask again.
The Acting Speaker: We will follow the normal process, and there are other honourable members who wish to participate.
Mr. Riddell: Just very briefly, Mr. Speaker, I would assume that the Ontario Veterinary College comes under the minister's jurisdiction as well.
Hon. Miss Stephenson: Partly.
Mr. Riddell: I do not know whether she is aware of what is happening there.
Hon. Miss Stephenson: Yes.
Mr. Riddell: The minister has probably received letters that I have been receiving. She has probably been given to understand that the quality of education at that OVC leaves a lot to be desired, simply because they are working with outdated equipment, with inadequate facilities and with a very high teacher to pupil ratio. I understand that the federal minister is contemplating building a new veterinary college in Prince Edward Island.
Hon. Miss Stephenson: I hope he does.
Mr. Riddell: She hopes he does?
Hon. Miss Stephenson: Yes.
The Acting Speaker: Order. Carry on.
Mr. Riddell: That is interesting, because here in Ontario we are letting the OVC deteriorate, according to the information we are given. Yet we are thinking about building another veterinary college in Prince Edward Island. Are there going to be more funds made available to the Ontario Veterinary College so that they can continue with the high degree of education that they have been giving to the students?
As a matter of fact, it is my understanding that students now say when they graduate from that college that they feel they have been shortchanged as regards education and the quality of education they have been receiving. I went to the Ontario Agricultural College --
Mr. Watson: Great college.
Mr. Riddell: That is right. I graduated in 1957. I know at that time there was not a college in Canada that could compete with the Ontario Veterinary College from the standpoint of the quality of education and the kind of students --
Hon. Miss Stephenson: They still cannot.
Mr. Riddell: The minister says they still cannot. Obviously, she has not been getting the correspondence that I have been getting from graduates of that college and from students who are attending that college.
During a very lengthy debate we had in the estimates of the Ministry of Agriculture and Food, the member for York South (Mr. MacDonald) and I drew attention to the very concerns that people have about the deterioration in the education of that college. Yet the minister can sit there and say we are still turning out the best students that can be turned out of any college. Either the minister is getting different information from what I am getting or she is living in a dream world --
An hon. member: It is number two.
The Acting Speaker: Order.
Mr. Riddell: I do not want to prolong this, but I just want to ask the minister whether she is going to provide additional funding to the Ontario Veterinary College to update their facilities, to update their equipment and to give teachers an opportunity to give the kind of attention to students that they have received up until the last year or two. In other words, can we consider that the OVC is going to retain its licence and that it is still going to be considered the top veterinary college in Canada? I wonder if the minister will respond to that.
Hon. Miss Stephenson: Mr. Speaker, in response to the member for Ottawa Centre, I should like to state quite unequivocally that there is no bar or impediment whatever to the admission of potential female apprentices to apprenticeship programs, absolutely none.
There are, in fact, some difficulties in terms of attitude. We have been spending a great deal of time and effort in the elementary secondary system to make young women aware of the potential for a satisfying career in the nontraditional roles, particularly in skill training.
One really has to consider that at this stage we are bucking about 6,000 years of human history and a good deal of concern on the part of parents about admission into nontraditional roles, but young women are beginning to move in that direction. I do not think we can order them into apprenticeships in skill training programs, but I do think we can continue to encourage them. But there is absolutely no bar or impediment to their admission at this point in any of the programs I am aware of.
I am concerned that we do need more work place educational programs within the school system. This is a matter of increasing our co-operative education programs, which I think may induce more young people, both male and female, to consider that kind of career choice.
As far as the Ontario Veterinary College is concerned, we are very much aware of the conditions there. We are quite delighted with the idea that the federal government might build a veterinary college on Prince Edward Island. The Ontario Veterinary College is required, as a result of an agreement that has been made for some time, to reserve a very significant number of places in every single year for anglophone students from Quebec and for all students from the Maritimes. That is a considerable number of students. It is a very significant part of the student enrolment at OVC. Every year we receive a large number of letters, telegrams and telephone calls from potential students and parents of potential students who are citizens of Ontario who feel very aggrieved that their qualified offspring have not been able to get into OVC.
It would be a very reasonable thing, I think, to have one more veterinary college in Canada. There are only three at the present time: one in Quebec, one in Saskatchewan and one in Ontario. I believe it would be appropriate to have an additional college in the Maritimes; whether in Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia or New Brunswick matters little.
The concerns about the clinical education program are matters of which I have been aware and concerned about and have been discussing with the appropriate people for the past year. I believe we have a significant part of that problem dealt with at this point as a result of the activity of the administrative branch of the Ministry of Agriculture and Food and as a result of some further activity by the board of governors of the University of Guelph.
The Acting Speaker: Shall this resolution be concurred in?
All those in favour will please say "aye."
All those opposed will please say "nay."
In my opinion the ayes have it.
Motion agreed to.
CONCURRENCE IN SUPPLY
Resolution for supply for the following ministry was concurred in by the House:
Provincial Secretariat for Social Development.
CONCURRENCE IN SUPPLY, MINISTRY OF COMMUNITY AND SOCIAL SERVICES
The Acting Speaker: Shall this resolution be concurred in?
Mr. Cooke: Mr. Speaker, I have a number of remarks to make. I wonder if it would be in order to move the adjournment of the debate.
The Acting Speaker: We still have some time.
Mr. Cooke: Fine, Mr. Speaker. I raised a case last week in the Legislature dealing with a 14-year-old girl who had been inappropriately placed in an adult facility in the southwest region in the St. Thomas Psychiatric Hospital. The minister seemed to take the approach last week of not admitting that there was a serious problem, as his colleague the Minister of Health (Mr. Timbrell) did when the case was originally raised in the Legislature. Instead, he decided in his statement on Friday to go on the attack and indicate there was no problem, that the child was appropriately placed.
I do not know how anyone could defend the idea of a child being appropriately placed in an adult facility -- the minister nods his head up and down in an indication that this is an appropriate place for a 14-year-old girl. After talking to the people at the hospital, I learned its mandate was clearly that they are to do assessments there on occasion when there are no other facilities available for adolescents. I cannot understand it if the minister seriously believes that is adequate for a 14-year-old girl who had more assessments than need be over the last five years. She has been assessed time and time again; in fact, that is probably the only consistent attention she has received in our mental health system. There is a real question, and there always has been a question, about the ability of this minister to run his ministry and understand some of the problems children have in this province.
I want to take the opportunity on this specific case, and then I will get into the general tomorrow, to talk about what some of the professionals who dealt with this case said. Dr. Johnson stated in the articles in the Windsor Star that the only reason this child was placed at St. Thomas was that there were absolutely no other options available to him. He did not want her there.
Mr. MacNeil, the executive director of the children's services committee in Windsor, stated the committee is concerned about the number of placements this girl has received and is ready to seek alternatives on her request; and in quotes: "The more placements you have for a child, the more likely you are compounding the child's problems rather than dealing with them."
There were a number of articles last week in the papers that recited various statistics.
The Acting Speaker: This might be an appropriate time to break your remarks.
On motion by Mr. Cooke, the debate was adjourned.
The House adjourned at 10:32 p.m.