32nd Parliament, 2nd Session

STATEMENT BY THE MINISTRY

ONTARIO HUMAN RIGHTS CODE

MEMBERS' EXPENDITURES

ORAL QUESTIONS

ABSENCE OF TREASURER

HIGHWAY TRAFFIC AMENDMENT BILL

GO TRANSIT SERVICES

MCKELLAR GENERAL HOSPITAL

RETAIL SALES TAX

BUDGETARY PROCESS

APPLICATION OF TAX

MCKELLAR GENERAL HOSPITAL

PETITIONS

TAX ON CLOTHING REPAIRS

TAX ON MEALS

UNIVERSAL MEDICAL CARE

INTRODUCTION OF BILLS

BRANTFORD-BRANT ANNEXATION AMENDMENT ACT

CITY OF THUNDER BAY AMENDMENT ACT

AGE OF RETIREMENT ACT

INSURED HEALTH SERVICES ACT

ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS ON NOTICE PAPER AND RESPONSE TO PETITION

MOTION TO SET ASIDE ORDINARY BUSINESS

ORDERS OF THE DAY

CITY OF LONDON ACT

UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN ONTARIO ACT

JAPANESE CANADIAN CULTURAL CENTRE OF TORONTO ACT

CITY OF HAMILTON ACT

CITY OF OTTAWA ACT

TOWNSHIP OF MOONBEAM ACT

THIRD READINGS

MOTION TO SUSPEND ORDINARY BUSINESS (CONTINUED)

EMPLOYMENT IN SUDBURY


The House met at 2 p.m.

Prayers

STATEMENT BY THE MINISTRY

ONTARIO HUMAN RIGHTS CODE

Hon. Mr. Welch: Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the Premier (Mr. Davis), I would like to draw to the attention of honourable members that 20 years ago today, the Ontario Human Rights Code became law. Ontario was the first Canadian jurisdiction to enact a comprehensive code of human rights and this became the model for similar statutory protection across the country.

As we mark this anniversary, I think it is appropriate to pay tribute to those who were responsible for the initial development of the code and for its subsequent progressive implementation. Their commitment has ensured that we remain in the forefront in the fight against discrimination. I think particularly of the contribution of the Honourable John Robarts, who took such a strong personal interest in this initiative in 1962.

But we have more to celebrate today than this auspicious anniversary. As members know, this is also the day on which our new Human Rights Code comes into effect. Its significantly expanded mandate, along with important new procedural and remedial provisions, underlines our continued commitment to be in the vanguard in protecting individuals against discrimination.

All of us can take pride today in this statute which will enable us to preserve and protect the kind of society we in Ontario wish to have. The openness of the process by which we arrived at the new code is in itself a reflection of this objective.

As a result of public hearings conducted by the Ontario Human Rights Commission in 1975 and 1976, and of the extensive legislative and public debate of the government's proposals, we have, I believe, achieved a code which addresses the major human rights concerns of the people of Ontario in 1982.

All participants in the process, and particularly the members of this House, can be justifiably proud of the contribution each has made. I would like to single out the efforts of the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations (Mr. Elgie), whose vision and personal commitment to human rights are so clearly manifested in our new code.

As we mark this important milestone in the evolution of human rights in Ontario, I know that the House joins me in expressing our best wishes, and our keen and continuing interest, to the new chairman, Canon Borden Purcell, and his fellow commissioners and the staff, as they move to meet the challenge of their new mandate.

Hon. Mr. Gregory: Mr. Speaker, I wonder if I might ask the House to give me a minute to get the minister.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Mr. Peterson: A brief hiatus.

Ms. Copps: They do not even show up for question period now.

Mr. Peterson: Mr. Speaker, since there is a brief hiatus in the proceedings of the House as the government whip goes to get some minister or other, would you kindly search out the Treasurer (Mr. F. S. Miller) who has missed something like eight out of the last 18 question periods since his budget and has not been here to account? We will sit here and wait for him too.

MEMBERS' EXPENDITURES

Mr. Speaker: Just while we are waiting, I would like to inform the House that I have today laid upon the table the individual members' expenditures for the fiscal year 1981-82. I would advise all honourable members that these documents will be deposited in the individual post office boxes and may be picked up at their convenience.

Hon. Mr. Gregory: Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Government Services (Mr. Wiseman) is not here to give his statement. He will give it tomorrow.

ORAL QUESTIONS

ABSENCE OF TREASURER

Mr. Peterson: Where is the minister?

Would you be so kind, Mr. Speaker, to tell me if the Treasurer is coming or, perhaps, the acting government House leader would know the answer to that question? The Treasurer has been conspicuously absent since his budget. Perhaps I could just wait until he comes.

Mr. Speaker: I do not have any way of knowing that, of course. Having called oral questions, I would suggest that we get on.

Mr. Foulds: Mr. Speaker, I move the adjournment of the House until the responsible ministers are here.

Mr. Speaker: I am afraid that motion is out of order because we have not reached the orders of the day at this point.

Mr. Foulds: We could have a recess.

Mr. Speaker: The standing orders are quite clear, the House proceeds at 2 p.m. and routine proceedings carry on. I have called oral questions; we will proceed.

Mr. Peterson: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker: Since you have just established a precedent, sir, at the request of the government House leader --

Mr. Speaker: Order. I have not established any precedent at the request of anybody. The standing orders are very clear and, frankly, I object strongly to that insinuation.

Mr. Peterson: Kindly hear me out; just to recall the chronology --

Mr. Speaker: I would ask you to withdraw that statement, please.

Mr. Peterson: Hear me out, Mr. Speaker. Withdraw what?

Mr. Speaker: I would ask you to withdraw that insinuation: acting under the instructions of somebody else.

Mr. Peterson: At the request of.

Mr. Speaker: No, sir.

Mr. Peterson: If you would be good enough to hear me out, Mr. Speaker --

Mr. Speaker: I would ask you, please, to withdraw that remark.

Mr. Peterson: I will withdraw whatever is offensive to you, Mr. Speaker. I am not sure I understand it but then I would like to proceed with my point.

Mr. Speaker: Yes, you may.

Mr. Peterson: The point as I understand it, sir, is that about five minutes ago the acting government House leader stood up and said, "We cannot find the minister, who is supposed to give a statement" -- who has now shown up. He asked you for a moment or two while he went to search out that minister; he then left the chamber to find the minister.

2:10 p.m.

In the meantime you decided, in your judgement, to occupy the time of the House telling us that you had just tabled the members' expenses for the year instead of proceeding with either ministerial statements or oral questions from the opposition. When the government whip came back he said to you that he could not find the minister, and then you proceeded with oral questions.

I would suggest to you that somehow or other you agreed to follow his request to you, at least in some measure. Therefore, I would suggest that there is some precedent, that you have the power you have just established to hold up the proceedings of the House or do something else; or perhaps you would like to make another statement of some type or other as we await the presence of the Treasurer (Mr. F. S. Miller), who has vacated not only his responsibilities but also this House.

I am extremely upset about the lack of respect on the part of the government, particularly the Treasurer, who has presented us with a most controversial budget, who is not prepared to discuss it in committee, is not prepared to bring forward the budget bills and now is not prepared to sit in the House and answer for his budget.

You ruled, in your wisdom, Mr. Speaker, that my colleague the deputy leader of the New Democratic Party was out of order when he moved for adjournment. I would ask you, sir, to exercise the great powers you do have in presiding over this chamber to make sure that opposition members are treated fairly and that the Treasurer will in fact come to answer for his budget.

If you are not prepared to do that, sir, I would ask to stand down until the Treasurer does come into this chamber today. Or perhaps the acting House leader can shed some light on this mysterious chap.

Mr. Speaker: I would suggest that what I have done in the proceedings to date is quite clearly written under the standing orders; I have not departed in any way, shape or form. The House leader did inform the House that the minister who was going to make a statement was apparently not prepared to make that statement. I moved on to the next order of business, which is clearly established under standing orders.

It is not my responsibility -- I want to say this again very clearly to all honourable members -- to assure the attendance of anyone in this House, whether he be on the government side or on the opposition side.

Mr. Nixon: On the point of order, Mr. Speaker: I think perhaps you might recall that the leader of my party did bring to your attention that during the hiatus, to use his very word, you did proceed with some other business of the House. It seems to me that under those circumstances the government ought to either produce the Treasurer or give some reasonable explanation for his continued absence day after day.

Mr. McClellan: If I may speak briefly to the same point, Mr. Speaker: It would surely be a matter of common courtesy for the government to advise the opposition whether or not the Treasurer intends to be present today. If he is going to be delayed, I would suggest that you put it to the House, for unanimous consent, that we recess until the Treasurer deigns to appear among us.

Mr. Speaker: The acting government House leader has that information, quite obviously, and is going to share it with us now.

Hon. Mr. Gregory: Mr. Speaker, going back to the remarks of the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Peterson), I specifically asked if the House would give me a few moments, not the Speaker. I would like to point out that at the present time, the Treasurer -- and, as members know, he has many responsibilities -- is meeting with the Ontario Caterers Association. Yesterday, the member chastised him for not meeting with that very association.

Interjections.

Mr. Sweeney: Why at two o'clock in the afternoon? Why not in the morning?

Mr. Speaker: Order. The acting government House leader had the floor. Were you finished with your statement'?

Hon. Mr. Gregory: I wanted to add only that he expects to be here shortly.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Mr. Foulds: Mr. Speaker, I think the question before us is a fundamental one. Traditionally in parliament the opposition members of the Legislature have had the authority, the privilege and the responsibility of examining tax measures and budgetary matters.

When the government has taken the action it has now taken of withdrawing those specific bills from discussion in the Legislature, and when the Treasurer has absented himself from the House so the opposition is unable to put questions to him on the single, most important issue in the public domain in Ontario at the present time, the tax measures, surely it is within the Speaker's responsibility, privileges and rights to protect our rights by calling for a recess of the House until the Treasurer has finished meeting with the caterers and we can question him in this Legislature.

Mr. Peterson: Mr. Speaker, I think the deputy leader of the New Democratic Party put the point very well given the extraordinary nature of the circumstances here. I would share his request to you to ask for the unanimous consent of this House either to recess until the Treasurer shows up today, to stand down, or else we and the members of the New Democratic Party can sit here in silence and wait for the Treasurer to come.

Hon. Mr. Gregory: Mr. Speaker, as I mentioned earlier, the Treasurer is expected shortly. He has an important engagement. Rather than waste the question period and the time of the leaders of the opposition parties, may I ask for unanimous agreement of the House to revert to statements?

Mr. Martel: Mr. Speaker, shortly after the budget came in several weeks ago, the Treasurer decided to go to Sault Ste. Marie and the following week he decided to go to Japan. Almost daily, the Premier (Mr. Davis) has asked us to ask him the questions and he would get the answers. I am still waiting to hear some of those answers that were long since promised.

I do not see how we can discuss anything pertaining to the budget when the Treasurer refuses to come to the Legislature. He was not here yesterday and he is not here today. When does he come around to answer for his budget, particularly in view of the fact he is not here to answer and the government will not send any of the bills to committee where people from the outside could make presentations?

We are in a bind. The Treasurer will not answer, he will not show up and the government will not send the bills to committee so there is no way of dealing with budgetary matters. What are we supposed to do? Are we supposed to just stand around and ask the Premier who might get us an answer or do we adjourn the House and wait for them to come back? We should recess for a while.

Mr. Speaker: May I point out to the member for Sudbury East (Mr. Martel) there is nothing in the standing orders that provides for the questioning of the Speaker.

Mr. Martel: Well, Mr. Speaker, that is so.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I am on my feet.

Mr. Martel: All right, don't panic.

Mr. Speaker: I am not, so the member should not. As I said before, I have no prior knowledge of who is going to be here and who is not going to be here. It is not my responsibility to ensure the attendance of anyone in this chamber. We all know the time this chamber convenes. We all know what the order of proceedings is and I have called oral questions. I would suggest we get on with oral questions by questioning other ministers.

Hon. Mr. Gregory: Mr. Speaker, I had asked for unanimous agreement of the House to revert to statements. Perhaps that might give us the time we need.

Mr. Speaker: Do we have the unanimous consent of the House to revert to ministerial statements?

Mr. Di Santo: No, no.

Mr. Speaker: Okay. I have no alternative but to go on with oral questions.

2:20 p.m.

Mr. Peterson: Mr. Speaker, in view of the circumstances and these unfulfilled promises, I have no questions until the Treasurer shows up to answer. It is about time he showed up in this House. We will leave the House until he returns.

Mr. Foulds: Mr. Speaker, on a point of order: Can you inform me if, when the opposition absents itself, you will run the clock for question period?

Mr. Speaker: Yes, the clock is running. That was the very point I was trying to make. I have called oral questions and the clock is running. That is the order of business that has been called.

Mr. Foulds: Could we have unanimous consent of the House to revert to questions when the ministers appear?

Mr. Speaker: I do not understand your request because we do not have to revert; we are now in the oral question period.

Mr. Foulds: In those circumstances, we do not feel that we can proceed with question period. However, we will sit in our places and remain silent in protest.

HIGHWAY TRAFFIC AMENDMENT BILL

Mr. Robinson: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Transportation and Communications. In light of the swift and speedy passage through second reading last night of a number of amendments to the Highway Traffic Act, including one which will provide for mandatory child restraints in vehicles in Ontario, can he tell this House when he anticipates that third reading may be called and at what point thereafter implementation of the program will begin?

Hon. Mr. Snow: Mr. Speaker, the amendments to the Highway Traffic Act were referred to the committee of the whole House. We had intended to proceed with that last evening but we ran out of time. I will now have to wait until the House leader schedules time for the committee discussion, which I believe will be brief.

I have two minor amendments to introduce, after which time the bill will receive third reading and, I hope, royal assent. I expect that the implementation date will be some time in late summer or early fall.

Mr. Robinson: In the light of the minister's answer, will the minister be encouraging an educational program designed to have parents make use of child restraint devices even now, in the period before the passage of the legislation in the House and its formal implementation?

Hon. Mr. Grossman: These are the best questions we have had in a long time.

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Hon. Mr. Snow: If the Minister of Health would refrain: Yes, we will be proceeding with an educational program within the limits of the money we will have available. As I mentioned last night during the debate, we do not have a budget that is sufficient to carry on an intensified public relations or educational program.

However, I will be asking members of this House to do everything possible, through their newsletters to constituents and other means they have within their ridings -- press releases, speeches and what not -- to advise the public of these new regulations which will be forthcoming and to encourage people to start using child restraint devices as soon as possible, even before the regulations are in force, for their own personal safety and that of their children.

Mr. Speaker: New Democratic Party? That was the final supplementary.

Mr. Cooke: They want to treat this place like it's a one-party system. A one-party state is exactly how you treat it. You've got no respect for democracy. You don't even know what it means.

Mr. Speaker: Order, order. I have recognized the member for Durham East.

GO TRANSIT SERVICES

Mr. Cureatz: Mr. Speaker, a question to the Minister of Transportation and Communications. I know the member for Oshawa (Mr. Breaugh) would also like to ask this question but at the moment he is unavailable.

Could the minister inform the House whether he has made any progress in determining whether the GO train will be expanded to Oshawa? Has the 90-day report been tabled as yet? Has the report on the expansion of the GO train to Oshawa been tabled?

Hon. Mr. Snow: No, Mr. Speaker. As I announced in the House a few weeks ago, I anticipated that it would be 90 days before my staff could fully review all the options which we wished to look at. That is in progress now. At a meeting I had with GO Transit officials as recently as this morning, I was told that the work is on schedule and I hope to have the report on my desk by July 30.

Mr. Cureatz: Can the minister foresee any extension of his 90-day format which he indicated to the House about a month ago?

Hon. Mr. Snow: I cannot add any more to what I have said. My staff tell me they will have their work completed and will have their report to me by July 30, which I believe will be within the 90 days I asked for.

Mr. R. F. Johnston: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker: Standing order 27(a) says, "The oral question period shall be limited to 60 minutes, including supplementary questions..."

Inasmuch as you have not had any real questions as yet, Mr. Speaker, it is within your power to call an end to question period, if you would like to.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I have called oral questions. I have given everybody in the House the opportunity to ask those questions. The people who stand up are being recognized during this period.

I would like to point out to honourable members, going a little further into standing order 27(a), "The oral question period shall be limited to 60 minutes, including supplementary questions and points of order."

It is my understanding that if questions are depleted before 60 minutes are used up, then we move on to the next order of business.

Mr. Hennessy: Mr. Speaker, I wish this would happen more often. I never get a chance to speak with the opposition talking all the time.

Mr. Speaker: Now for the question.

MCKELLAR GENERAL HOSPITAL

Mr. Hennessy: Mr. Speaker, my question is to the Minister of Health. Yesterday, at a news conference, the McKellar General Hospital nurses urged immediate action. The news release says:

"Evidence continues to mount that the nursing care at McKellar General Hospital is not proper or even safe, but the nurses are unable to get any concrete commitment from either the hospital's administration, the board of governors or the provincial Health ministry for immediate action to remedy the critical situation.

"The hospital administration says they do not have the budget and the board of governors and Health minister Larry Grossman have declined to meet with the nurses."

I would like to ask the minister about that request.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Mr. Speaker, that is an excellent question and I am delighted the member for Fort William raised the concerns on behalf of the people in all of Thunder Bay, including the people in the riding of Port Arthur who are so often forgotten, particularly today when their member has chosen not to speak on this very important and pressing matter in the Thunder Bay area.

Mr. Speaker: Now to answer the question, please.

2:30 p.m.

Mr. R. F. Johnston: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker: The minister is imputing motives to the member for Port Arthur (Mr. Foulds). He knows very well that we are protesting the absence of the Treasurer in this House. It has nothing to do with a lack of interest by the member in this particular issue and the minister knows that. Now that the Treasurer is here, maybe we can get back to dealing with this House in a proper fashion, not as a one-party state.

Mr. Speaker: The minister will answer the question, please.

Interjections.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: The Liberals are trooping back from the Science Council of Canada.

Interjections.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: You will get your turn. David has only a few years to go.

Mr. Speaker: On to the question, please.

Interjection.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Yes. Look how well you did when Stuart was here.

Mr. Speaker: Never mind the interjections.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: In any case, I want to address this --

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: The Minister of Health has the floor, answering a question of the member for Fort William.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: For those members who are interested in the situation at McKellar General Hospital in Thunder Bay, I would like to indicate that we have reviewed the situation at the hospital. The nursing staff should be aware that just last week the hospital was in, on Thursday or Friday, forwarding a request to the ministry for some more funding and we will be looking at that as time goes on. We are dealing with that at the present time and hope to have some further answers for the hospital shortly.

I think it is important to remember that there was an independent nursing assessment committee established one year ago. Since that time, there has been extensive action taken by the McKellar hospital. The intensive care unit staff has been increased to approximately 35 full-time employees from the previous 23. There has been a total restructuring of the in-house education programs for nurses in recent months in accordance with the assessment committee recommendations. They have upgraded their in-house orientation program for nurses in recent months, also as recommended by the assessment committee.

Finally, the executive director of McKellar indicates that hospital complement has been increased by 30 additional full-time positions within the nursing department since the assessment committee review occurred in the spring of 1981.

Just to round the picture out entirely, Dr. Peter Neelands, the president of the Thunder Bay Medical Association, confirms our view of the hospital as a safe and proper facility. Dr. Neelands thinks McKellar is "a very good hospital and very safe. If you want to get respiratory care, if you have a head injury in this area, McKellar is still the place to go and you get damned fine care."

In response to the suggestion that I have not agreed to meet with the nursing staff at the hospital, may I say very simply that at the appropriate time when hospitals draw these kinds of situations to our attention, obviously we will be willing to meet with the hospital and anyone else who has interest in the hospital day-to-day management. At the present time, when it comes to questions of the day-to-day operation of the hospital, which is what this is all about, it remains quite properly in the hands of the hospital administration. We are satisfied that McKellar remains a safe and reasonable hospital.

Mr. Hennessy: Can the minister assure me that the nurses from McKellar hospital will receive consideration, not just that the hospital will come down here and meet and the nurses will be forgotten? I think the main problem is maybe the lack of nurses. I would like the minister and his staff to give them every consideration.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: I can assure the honourable member that we are reviewing the situation very carefully, as he can tell from the detail of this answer. We will be monitoring the situation with regard to McKellar's response to the various issues raised. If it appears appropriate to have the hospital or the nursing group or both in to see me, then with his assistance we can arrange that.

Mr. Speaker: We will revert to the regular order of oral questions as provided for in standing order 27(b). The Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Peterson).

Order, order. The Solicitor General.

Hon. G. W. Taylor: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker: I believe you did start the question period. The rule calls for the normal procedure to start where the two leaders can put their questions. They were not here. At other times we have done it on consent when they have wanted to rotate the order. You started with the order for question period, Mr. Speaker; this side started, and they refused to participate in question period. Now you should go to that side with the rotation, but there should be no leaders' questions unless you obtain the consent of the House.

Mr. Laughren: Is this government policy?

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Order. The standing orders are quite clear as to the rotation; they are quite clear as to the provision for questions by the leaders of the two opposition parties.

Mr. Laughren: We can now debate your rulings; is that it?

Mr. Speaker: I beg your pardon?

Mr. Laughren: Can we debate your rulings from now on?

Mr. Speaker: No, you cannot. I am not debating; I am giving an explanation, if you would open your ears.

We will revert to oral questions as provided by standing order 27(b). The Leader of the Opposition will put his first question.

RETAIL SALES TAX

Mr. Peterson: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to welcome the Treasurer back to the House, and I want to say this --

Mr. Watson: Welcome back, David.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Mr. Elston: He's just being nice about it. He welcomed him.

Mr. Speaker: Order. Having regard for the mood of the House, I request the co-operation of all honourable members by not prefacing their questions with any provocative statements or remarks.

Mr. Peterson: I was being as generous in spirit as I possibly could be in welcoming our lost brother back to the House.

In view of the fact that the Treasurer has missed eight out of the last 18 question periods; in view of the fact that he meets only reluctantly with people and frequently as a result of pressure from the opposition, witness his meeting at 1:30 today with the Ontario Caterers Association; and in view of the fact that he is not prepared to introduce his budget bills so we can have a discussion in this House, surely it is not unreasonable to ask the Treasurer to use his influence to send the Retail Sales Tax Act to committee so we can have an open hearing where we can hear witnesses expressing their point of view on this most controversial tax measure which he has introduced.

Mr. J. M. Johnson: Is that the same question you asked last week?

Interjections.

Mr. Peterson: Is that not true?

Hon. F. S. Miller: Mr. Speaker, it is nice to see that the Leader of the Opposition recognized he did not have a question until that point.

If he checks the last 10 question periods, I think he will find I have been here for nine of them. During one of them, I was consulting with the municipalities of this province about some of their problems, as the Leader of the Opposition quickly tells me I should do. I was a little late today because I spent almost an hour with the mobile caterers, as he suggested I should do.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Hon. F. S. Miller: I know the Leader of the Opposition works very hard, but I spend as many hours per day seeing as many groups as I can whilst balancing that with my obligations to be here and to be other places. Once in a while, like the Leader of the Opposition, who also has been away the odd day, I have other pressing problems that take me away from the House.

I had a very good discussion with the mobile caterers. Members may question me about it later if they wish.

To get back to the question that was asked: Under standing order 56(c), the Leader of the Opposition and his party have the right to direct that bill to any committee they wish. Why do they not let it pass and do that?

Mr. Peterson: Why does the Treasurer not bring it up for second reading? That is the whole point.

Hon. F. S. Miller: Mr. Speaker, is that a question?

Mr. Peterson: No. Let me --

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I did not recognize the Treasurer. I would again ask the co-operation of people asking questions to be very careful in the wording they choose in prefacing the question.

2:40 p.m.

Mr. Peterson: Since the Treasurer has now decided to consult me with respect to his schedule, would he not agree it was rather unfair to leave this House the day after the budget to go to Sault Ste. Marie? Was it not rather unfair to the other members of this House and the people of this province to leave for Japan for a week in the week after his budget and then to miss other question periods because he was travelling about?

Would he not agree it was particularly unfair for him not to be here yesterday, Black Monday as it is called by so many people across this province, to answer for his tax increases? If the Treasurer wants to hear a discussion on this, why does he not instruct his House leader to bring in the Retail Sales Tax Act so we can have a discussion on the budget bills here in this House?

Hon. F. S. Miller: First, let us get our facts straight. He said I was not here for question period after the budget and that I was in Sault Ste. Marie. That is false. I was here the day after the budget. I was also here the Monday after the budget when he left the bells ringing for four days, wasting the time of this House.

Mr. Bradley: One question period.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Hon. F. S. Miller: I was here on the Tuesday --

Mr. Wrye: One. Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Mr. Wrye: We were not sitting on Saturday.

Hon. Mr. Ashe: Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday -- four days.

Ms. Copps: You can't count either.

Hon. Mr. Ashe: The bells rang four days.

Mr. Breithaupt: One question period.

Hon. F. S. Miller: I have also been here through 7½ hours of the reading of public accounts when Bill 111 could have been discussed. Does the member call that anything but a filibuster? I would just ask him to request an unvarnished, unbiased opinion of anyone in the gallery as to whether we stuck to the facts and progressed through the business of this House in an orderly, expeditious way. The answer is no. He could have done it if he had wanted to.

Mr. Cooke: Mr. Speaker, the Treasurer can try to fudge the issue, but when the sales tax bill is referred out to committee, which this party has indicated it will do by 20 members standing, will his party block or will it not block public hearings? Secondly, what does he have against public hearings on the sales tax bill? I understand from earlier today in question period that he does believe in a one-party system, but what is wrong with bringing the other 55 members who represent the majority of the voters in this province into debate and testimony in front of the committee so we too can have proper input in making a decision on this bill?

Hon. F. S. Miller: Standing 20 members in their places is somewhat difficult for his party these days.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I asked the co-operation of those people who were asking questions not to be provocative. I am asking the co-operation of all those answering questions not to be provocative.

Hon. F. S. Miller: As Treasurer, I am charged with adding --

Mr. Cooke: Why don't you take this place seriously for once?

Mr. Speaker: Order. The member for Windsor-Riverside has asked a supplementary.

Mr. Cooke: Tell that joker over there to take this place seriously.

Mr. Speaker: Let the Treasurer respond.

Hon. F. S. Miller: Mr. Speaker, what happens in any committee of this House is a function of the opinion of my Premier, the House leader and the committee. I have great confidence in the democratic process, which has lived well for many years with most governments having a majority in most parts of the world. If the third party has suddenly lost confidence in a system of government that is, finally, responsible to the people, then it should not be here.

Interjections.

Mr. Peterson: What possible reason can the Treasurer have for not letting this bill go to committee, for not instructing his supporters to allow outside witnesses so that we can hear people affected by this bill? If that undertaking is given by him and his House leader, we can easily arrange for speedy passage of the Retail Sales Tax Act through second reading of this House and get into a full discussion, this summer, of some of the details that we think are wrong. Surely it is not an unfair request on our part that the Treasurer ask his supporters to bring in outside witnesses'? He has that power and should not deny it. Why do we not all work along those lines?

Hon. F. S. Miller: The Leader of the Opposition has lots of power too, and he is showing it, which is only fair. That is the democratic process. The opposition takes certain risks and we take certain risks. They are using up a lot of time in what they may or may not call a filibuster, but the risk is that the public will either see us as being wrong, or the opposition as wasting their time. Each of us has to assess the situation.

Mr. Riddell: Go to the people.

Hon. F. S. Miller: My friend, elections are every four years. We will stand on our record when we go to the people and you will still be on that side of the House.

Interjections.

BUDGETARY PROCESS

Mr. Peterson: Mr. Speaker, does the Treasurer not think his attitude as just expressed speaks very poorly about the budgetary process in this province -- and, indeed, at the national level -- when his political ego is on the line, when he can not admit he has made a mistake, especially since he has backed off in three instances already? We believe that if he understood all the effects of what he is doing he would back off in other areas. It is not going to cost him his political career. Other Treasurers have backed off.

Surely it should be part of our commitment to make the budgetary process more open, so that we understand fully how it affects people and thus avoid running into the kinds of problems experienced by the federal government with its budget. Even now the Treasurer is experiencing problems personally because of the many mistakes he has made in his budget.

Why do we in this House not show our commitment to a new budgetary process by working on the budget together this summer to do our best to make it more fair? Is that not a fair request?

Hon. F. S. Miller: Mr. Speaker, it sounds very reasonable. The fact is the job of the Leader of the Opposition is to tell us we are wrong all the time. It is not his job to co-operate with us in running the province. He has stuck very much to that principle. He holds us accountable -- and so do the people -- for the final policies of this province. We have very carefully assessed the needs of this country. I had easy --

Mr. Bradley: Let the people speak.

Interjections.

Hon. F. S. Miller: Please be quiet.

I had very easy ways to take money-raising steps which would not have given the Leader of the Opposition as much chance to sound like a hero. I suggest they were not in the interests of the economy.

We took a much more politically difficult step, including the refund of a quarter billion dollars to Ontario's small businessmen, starting as soon as the opposition allows us to. I understand the Minister of Revenue (Mr. Ashe) is all ready to send the cheques, but they are being held up by the opposition party, through their obstructive --

Ms. Copps: You are collecting the tax already.

Mr. Speaker: Order. Ignore the interjection and answer the question, please.

Hon. F. S. Miller: We should let that member go to work for us in Hamilton. The more she is in that riding, the more chance we have of winning.

Interjections.

Mr. Peterson: Let me remind the Treasurer that some of the finest work done by this Legislature is through the committee process. Committees frequently assume a nonpartisan attitude. I would also remind him that he would have a majority on a committee and ultimately would be able to get his way.

Let me remind him, too, that a number of his back-benchers are as unhappy as we are about what has been done. Would it not be fair to ask the Treasurer to subject his budget to that sort of process? Ultimately he will still have control, but I and a lot of our members believe we could have a much better budget if he subjected himself to that kind of process. Why can he not give instructions to start that now?

2:50 p.m.

Hon. F. S. Miller: I then recommend to the Leader of the Opposition that he pass as expeditiously as possible Bill 111, the tax bills and interim supply -- and trust the system.

Mr. Foulds: Mr. Speaker, could I get a clarification from the Treasurer? Did he say he cannot give the small businessmen a rebate because the legislation is not passed, and yet he can collect the sales tax even though that legislation is not passed? How does he explain that inconsistency?

Hon. F. S. Miller: Mr. Speaker, since it sounds inconsistent, I will find out.

Mr. Roy: Mr. Speaker --

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Mr. Roy: Mr. Speaker, the minister believes in the democratic process and he talks about the introduction of certain steps. Can the minister advise us whether, in the process of collecting a tax for which he has passed no legislation, he has asked for a legal opinion from the Attorney General (Mr. McMurtry) -- and I could see some reluctance in view of his record before the Supreme Court of Canada -- or from the Provincial Secretary for Justice (Mr. Sterling) to determine whether his taxation, retroactive as it is, is constitutional in view of the new Charter of Rights in existence since April of this year?

Has he sought a legal opinion, and can he undertake to tell this House that if this law is challenged, and there is a strong chance that it will be, he will not collect the tax while the bill is pending before the courts?

Hon. F. S. Miller: Mr. Speaker, it is funny he should ask. Yes.

APPLICATION OF TAX

Mr. Foulds: Mr. Speaker, I have a new question for seven per cent Miller. It is a shopping-bag question once again. Can the Treasurer tell me why this set of goods bought at a Dominion store, which includes milk, an apple, orange, yoghurt and a muffin, should be tax free while this set of goods, which is exactly parallel, milk, yoghurt, an orange -- I think the oranges are the same size -- an apple and a muffin, should be taxed because they were purchased from one of the truck vending machines on the streets of Metropolitan Toronto?

Hon. F. S. Miller: Mr. Speaker, I do not think those are the same articles just presented to me in my office by the Ontario Caterers Association because they did not have an orange or an apple, but they had most of those things and a couple of others besides.

The idea that one can go and purchase at normal retail any products that may also be sold through a commercial outlet and that they should therefore be treated exactly the same way is rather naive.

Mr. Wrye: It certainly has been since May 14.

Hon. F. S. Miller: Just a second. The price of that apple, the price of that orange, the price of that milk, of the muffin and of the yoghurt are quite different in the store where the member goes to get it and in the convenience location where it is retailed as a food.

I want to go one step further. If the member goes to a normal restaurant -- let us assume our downstairs restaurant -- and orders a lunch that is $6.50 à la carte and orders one pint of milk for 50 cents, he would have paid, until Sunday, June 13, 10 per cent tax on that milk. There is no change. If one purchases a commodity through a restaurant, through a vending location, it has been subject to the taxes applying to that type of location. That is still the same principle.

Mr. Foulds: I will not give the Treasurer the Coke or the Pepsi challenge because they are taxed wherever one buys them, but I would like to send to the Treasurer these two muffins, ask him to taste them and tell me why one should be taxable and the other not. I assure the Treasurer that they have not been buttered, tampered with or poisoned in any way.

Hon. F. S. Miller: Mr. Speaker, I got so carried away with the gift -- by the way, does the member mind having the first bite? -- that I did not hear his question.

Mr. Speaker: I should not wonder. Briefly, will the member state his question again.

Mr. Martel: I want to know which one was taxed.

Mr. Speaker: Ask your leader to ask the question.

Mr. Martel: He asked that; he was never answered.

Mr. Foulds: Is this my final supplementary, Mr. Speaker, or am I just repeating the other one?

Mr. Speaker: You are just repeating the former one.

Mr. Foulds: I want the Treasurer to taste them and tell me why one of those muffins should be taxed and not the other.

Hon. F. S. Miller: A person with my taste should not be given such a challenge.

Mr. Peterson: Mr. Speaker, speaking of contradictions in the Treasurer's budget -- that is what we are talking about; how he is punishing one and giving to the other and it all nets out -- I want to draw to his attention a letter from L. G. Bell Recycling in Welland. It is a small plant which recycles paper, metal and so on with a waste removal process. They are now saying his two-year tax holiday to small business will be totally offset by the expansion of retail sales tax applied to their particular process.

They are also saying they will lose business as a result of that, as a lot of other businesses are, because consumers will not pay the extra, making those businesses far less competitive. Any tax holiday they may have had under the Treasurer's tax forgiveness program will not be necessary anyway because they are not going to be making any money because of decreased volume. How does the Treasurer explain that contradiction?

Hon. F. S. Miller: Mr. Speaker, I would have to see the details of that company's tax problems. I think the member is just choosing two taxes that are unrelated and saying one contradicts the other. When I add a sales tax, an income tax, whatever I add, it generally applies to a great range of people in society. Whether it applies to municipalities on the one hand or companies on the other hand, we recognize that in mid-year one very often makes changes that were not predicted by that company at the beginning of its fiscal period, be it a municipality or be it a private money-making company.

I would that there were some way to say on a given day of the year we will all present our fiscal plans and we can therefore start ours the morning after, but the world is not ordered that way. Companies have rotating fiscal year-ends. Municipalities have one and the province has another. So it is not so simple as to say some master planner can do everything so that no one has any disruption of his plans. I have disruption of my plans; they have disruption of their plans. The fact is that we get along reasonably well in this province.

Mr. Breaugh: Mr. Speaker, the Treasurer is aware that around Ontario at this time of year there are a number of cultural events happening. In Windsor it is Carousel, in Oshawa it is Fiesta Week, in Toronto it is Caravan. I am trying to get some clear line as to who will collect and pay tax and who will not.

Will he tell us now how he justifies, in the case of large cultural organizations and celebrations like that, where it is now obvious his regulations will make some of those pavilions collect the retail sales tax and others will not? How is that fair or rational? Can he at least give us a consistent line as to whether they will be collecting his retail sales tax?

3 p.m.

Hon. F. S. Miller: Mr. Speaker, we have been dealing with that problem at length and trying to review the old regulations, which gave a $50,000 limit, and the new regulations, which give a $75,000 limit. I would be on somewhat thin ice if I said I knew whether Carousel, which I understand took place last weekend and will be on next weekend, was in a nontaxable state for both. My belief is that Carousel will be nontaxable this coming weekend. I will ask the minister for the definition.

In the case of Caravan, it is my understanding that none of the booths of Caravan will attract tax. I believe that has been cleared by the ministry at this point. The minister responsible is out of the House at present; he was here a few moments ago. He is in a better position to say whether they do or not, but it is my understanding they are clear. We have looked at the event, its purpose, the type of organization running it, the frequency with which it is run and whether it is in the commercial field. We accept the fact that the cultural activities of, say, the Caravan group are just that and should be tax-exempt. That is my understanding.

MCKELLAR GENERAL HOSPITAL

Mr. Foulds: Mr. Speaker, I would like, if I might, to return to the Minister of Health with a question about McKellar General Hospital.

Can the Minister of Health reconcile the statement he made in response to the question asked earlier by the member for Fort William (Mr. Hennessy) and the statement made so clearly and unequivocally by the Ontario Nurses' Association yesterday, that "evidence continues to mount that the nursing care in McKellar Hospital is not proper or even safe"?

After the documented reports in November 1980 about the situation in the intensive care unit, the nursing assessment committee report in May 1981, I believe it was, and the minister's own inspectors' report of December 1981, can the minister tell us why the nurses still felt that neither the ministry nor the hospital had responded specifically to the concerns they raised? Can he also tell us why he waited until today to respond in the House after they went public yesterday?

Mr. Grossman: Mr. Speaker, the honourable member will have to ask the nurses that question. He is asking me to explain why the nurses are still saying these kinds of things and how I reconcile the difference in views. The fact is that the nurses are taking one position. The president of the Thunder Bay medical society appears to give a vote of confidence to the hospital. The people who are responsible for the hospital are satisfied with the state of the hospital. And the ministry, through its area team, is relatively satisfied with the status of the hospital at present.

Some specific steps, which I have indicated, have been taken by the hospital since the initial report, which the member has indicated came to the attention of the public. Therefore, there have been a variety of responses in the Thunder Bay area now. Nothing I can do will ensure that the nurses, any more than the doctors in other situations, will find themselves in agreement with that situation.

If we had to line up the people involved, the member would have to note that the president of the medical society, the administration of the hospital, the board of the hospital and the ministry, all those groups as opposed to the nurses, seem to be satisfied that the hospital is in pretty good shape. We will continue to monitor that and make sure the concerns of the nurses are reviewed by us. We looked at the steps that have been taken and are reasonably satisfied at present.

Mr. Foulds: Can the minister tell us what he means by certain bodies being satisfied that the hospital is relatively safe? Why, in his letter of April 8, 1982, did he make no specific mention of the things he is now mentioning, and why did he say he declined their request for a meeting? In their letter, they outlined quite specifically what their concerns were, and the minister failed to respond to those in any detail in his letter.

What is it that makes a professional group that has an enormous sense of responsibility and an enormous commitment to that hospital but that has had a burnout rate in the past year of one third of their staff, go public and say, "We are not getting an adequate response from either the minister or the hospital"? In fact, there is a bureaucratic shuffle and a pointing of the finger of responsibility between the board of governors and the Ministry of Health.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: First, if the Minister of Health were to meet with all the professional health groups that have some disagreement from time to time with regard to what is happening in various units in the 230 hospitals in Ontario, then quite literally the Minister of Health would have absolutely no time to do any other part of his job.

Obviously it requires a difficult judgement call on behalf of the minister and the ministry to decide which groups should see the minister because the status of their complaints and the status of the local problems appear to be such that they are irreconcilable outside of the minister's office.

It was our judgement in this case, having consulted with all the people whom we contact in the area, that it had not reached that stage. While we were at a point at which the hospital and Ontario Nurses' Association were having a disagreement or a difference of opinion, none the less there were certain steps taken, and they are fairly important steps, which left us satisfied the situation was not one that warranted ministerial intervention at that time.

There are 230 hospitals throughout this province that would like to see the percentage increase in nursing staff that McKellar has seen over the past year. Those are fairly substantial figures; I am sure the member acknowledges that those are fairly substantial figures. A lot of my colleagues and the member's colleagues have been in to see me asking for increases in ministry budgets to allow that sort of increase in staffing complement and they have not succeeded; McKellar has.

Taking that kind of scenario together, I think our decision was right that at that particular time the situation remained one for the hospital to manage and that it was handling it relatively well. If that situation should deteriorate, or because of new facts we become convinced that ministerial intervention is warranted, we will consider it at that time.

Mr. Foulds: Is the minister aware of the verdict of a coroner's jury into the death of Miles Sanders, which occurred at McKellar General Hospital on March 15, 1981? The jury's report, which was published in May 1982, reiterated as its recommendations a number of the recommendations that had been made both by the ministry's inspector and by the nursing assistant committee. May I read the following recommendations to the minister and ask him why the jury felt in May 1982 that it could still make these recommendations, which presumably had not yet been implemented?

"1. Make it standard procedure to have two registered nurses on duty whenever there are infants in intensive care unit.

"2. Proper training program be established for all nurses, registered nursing assistants and doctors who use the overhead warmer in the use of and dangers involved with this unit; testing to be followed up.

"3. Limit use to one baby in the unit at one time."

In other words, a lot of the very important new technical equipment that is available in the various wards, including the intensive care unit, cannot be properly used simply because the nurses, who are registered nurses and competent, have not yet been trained in the specific use of that specialized equipment. If they had been, perhaps the death of Miles Sanders could have been avoided.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: One of the important functions of coroners' inquests is to arm the administration of hospitals, boards of hospitals and professional staff of the hospitals with the kind of advice the member is reading into the record today. I do not think the member would anticipate that the Ministry of Health should be the ones going in and trying to run 230 hospitals, including ones in Thunder Bay, from the Hepburn Block or Overlea Boulevard here in Toronto.

In point of fact, those recommendations are in the hands of the administration, the board and the staff of the hospital. We look to those people to meet their responsibilities under the Public Hospitals Act to run their hospitals.

3:10 p.m.

If the member is perhaps expressing a vote of no confidence in the board of governors of the hospital or its administration, then he ought to make that quite clear. At present, my area team reports that it is satisfied, as is the chief of the medical association in the area, that the McKellar General Hospital remains a good and safe operation. However, in the light of the questions my colleague the member for Fort William (Mr. Hennessy) and the member opposite have raised, we will certainly have a further look at the situation.

Mr. Speaker: The time for oral questions has expired.

Mr. Wrye: I rise on a point of privilege, Mr. Speaker: Before the Treasurer escapes again, I want to seek some clarification to an answer he gave in question period, because it is very important to the people of Carousel --

Mr. Speaker: Order. I suggest that the honourable member speak to the Treasurer privately or wait until the next question period.

Ms. Copps: Mr. Speaker, earlier in this question period the Treasurer made some reference to the fact that I was perhaps a liability in the riding of Hamilton West. I wonder whether the Treasurer is aware of the fact that his candidate has said the Treasurer's budget is one of the biggest liabilities --

Mr. Speaker: Order. That is neither a point of order nor a point of privilege.

PETITIONS

TAX ON CLOTHING REPAIRS

Mr. McClellan: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to submit the following petition signed by 252 citizens:

"We, the undersigned customers, support the protest of the June 14 expansion of the Ontario provincial sales tax that imposes this tax on charges for repairs and alterations to clothing by dry cleaners and launderers. We urge the Honourable Frank S. Miller, Treasurer of Ontario, to withdraw this application of his May 13, 1982, budget since it is unfair, inequitable, inflationary and an added hardship, especially on the elderly, the unemployed and the working poor."

TAX ON MEALS

Mr. Elston: Mr. Speaker, I have a petition addressed to His Honour the Lieutenant Governor in the Legislative Assembly and signed by 73 residents of Ontario. It reads:

"May 27, 1982, Port Elgin, Ontario.

"We, the undersigned, strongly protest against the clause in the new Ontario budget pertaining to the charging of seven per cent provincial tax on baking and meals provided by churches, and the United Church Women of the Port Elgin charge in particular.

"We feel that the raising of funds by means of baking and meals to help support this church, its work in the community, in Canada and overseas falls into the category of charitable donations and should continue to be so designated.

"We respectfully request that you reconsider your decision in this matter."

UNIVERSAL MEDICAL CARE

Ms. Copps: Mr. Speaker, I have a petition from the people of the riding of Simcoe, the people of Orillia, containing 1,100 names, addressed to the Minister of Health (Mr. Grossman). Unfortunately, the petition is addressed to Allan Grossman, but I trust that was simply a slip. I will read it into the record:

"In support of the principle of universal medical care, we wish to submit to you a petition signed by 1,100 residents of Orillia and district.

"Circulation of the petition was prompted by the fact that during recent fee negotiations between the government of Ontario and the Ontario Medical Association, a group of 16 Orillia doctors announced publicly that they were withdrawing from the Ontario health insurance plan.

"This brings to 35 the number of Orillia physicians who have opted out of OHIP. There remain only about six opted-in doctors in this small city. As a result" -- and this is something that the Minister of Health has requested in the past" -- universal medical care regardless of income is no longer a reality for most Orillia residents."

Hon. Miss Stephenson: That's not true.

Ms. Copps: How would the minister know? She is not opted in.

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Hon. Miss Stephenson: How would the member know? She has never practised medicine or anything else --

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Ms. Copps: To continue: "We consider this to be a shocking and disgraceful state of affairs and would request that you and your government act soon before Orillia's predicament becomes the norm across the province. We look forward to your reply."

That is signed by 1,100 residents of a city that is represented by the Solicitor General (Mr. G. W. Taylor). I will pass this over to the Minister of Health.

Hon. Miss Stephenson: The Solicitor General does not represent Orillia.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Mr. Speaker, on a point of privilege: We should draw to the attention of the House that this petition or a similar one was presented to me earlier this week by the excellent member for Simcoe East (Mr. McLean), who has drawn that situation to my attention. He delivered the same signatures, the same letter, to me several days ago.

Mr. Nixon: He didn't want anybody to know.

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Mr. Martel: Mr. Speaker, on a point of order: When are you going to call them to order? The minister had no point of order. That was a petition that was presented. He did not have the right to get up and make a statement. What are you doing with the rules? What is he getting up on? If he wants to answer, he has two weeks. You asked for a petition in the appropriate manner --

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Mr. Martel: If he wants to make a ministerial statement, he can do so.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I draw to all honourable members' attention that I seem to be criticized for not hearing points of privilege or points of order.

Mr. Martel: He didn't have a point of privilege.

Mr. Speaker: I cannot determine that until I have heard it. I suggest, with all respect --

Ms. Copps: I will correct the record --

Mr. Speaker: Order. I suggest that indeed the member for Sudbury East himself was out of order.

Mr. Martel: No. Mr. Speaker, on a point of order --

Mr. Speaker: Order. I am not going to debate it and neither are you.

Ms. Copps: To correct the record, Mr. Speaker: I extend my sincere apologies to George Taylor. The member for Simcoe East is Allan McLean.

Mr. Speaker: Once again, I draw to all honourable members' attention that it is out of order for them to refer to any other honourable member by name.

INTRODUCTION OF BILLS

BRANTFORD-BRANT ANNEXATION AMENDMENT ACT

Hon. Mr. Bennett moved, seconded by Hon. Mr. Gregory, first reading of Bill 145, An Act to amend the Brantford-Brant Annexation Act.

Motion agreed to.

CITY OF THUNDER BAY AMENDMENT ACT

Hon. Mr. Bennett moved, seconded by Hon. Mr. Gregory, first reading of Bill 146, An Act to amend the City of Thunder Bay Act.

Motion agreed to.

3:20 p.m.

AGE OF RETIREMENT ACT

Mr. Kolyn moved, seconded by Mr. MacQuarrie, first reading of Bill 147, An Act respecting the Age of Mandatory Retirement.

Motion agreed to.

Mr. Kolyn: Mr. Speaker, the bill raises the age of mandatory retirement to 70 years but provides that an employee who is not able to perform his duties adequately may be required to retire after attaining the age of 65.

Mr. Martel: Oh, Nick Leluk the Second. Do you think that's going to get to cabinet?

Mr. Laughren: Are you flogging that?

Mr. Martel: Nick used that to get to cabinet. Maybe you'll vote against old age pensions as the Tories did originally.

Mr. Speaker: Is the member for Sudbury East quite through?

Mr. Di Santo: May I speak on the bill, Mr. Speaker?

Mr. Speaker: No.

INSURED HEALTH SERVICES ACT

Mr. Philip moved, seconded by Mr. McClellan, first reading of Bill 148, An Act respecting Insured Services under the Ontario Health Insurance Plan.

Motion agreed to.

Mr. Philip: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to see that, unlike the last time I introduced this bill, the government has not voted against it on first reading.

This bill provides that prostheses may be prescribed as insured services.

ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS ON NOTICE PAPER AND RESPONSE TO PETITION

Hon. Mr. Gregory: Mr. Speaker, before the orders of the day, I wish to table the answers to questions 147, 186, 187, 193, 196, 197, 199, 201, 202 and 210, and the interim answers to questions 183, 192 and 198 standing on the Notice Paper, and a response to the petition presented to the House as sessional paper 122 [see Hansard for Friday, June 18].

MOTION TO SET ASIDE ORDINARY BUSINESS

Mr. Laughren moved, seconded by Mr. Martel, pursuant to standing order 34(a), that the ordinary business of the House be set aside to discuss a matter of urgent public importance, namely, the massive unemployment that will be created by the corporate irresponsibility of Inco and Falconbridge in the Sudbury area which not only will have a devastating effect on Sudbury families and local businesses but also will have a devastating impact on the economy of the entire province.

Mr. Speaker: I would like to advise all honourable members that the motion was received in time. I will be pleased to listen for up to five minutes as to why the honourable member thinks the business of the House should be set aside.

Mr. Laughren: Mr. Speaker, this debate is necessary. It is an emergency because of the devastating effects of the actions of both Falconbridge and Inco in the Sudbury area. Falconbridge has announced a major layoff of 25 per cent of its work force; that means about 1,000 jobs. Inco had already announced and implemented a job reduction of 850. That represents a total of 1,850 job losses in the Sudbury community in just one year. The spinoffs of that reduction will be serious.

I am pleased the Minister of Industry and Trade (Mr. Walker) is here today, because last Friday, June 11, when that minister was announcing a new Sanyo Machine Works plant in Elmira, he indicated, "My ministry estimates that each job in a new plant subcontracting in this manner supports 15 other people in the community." I question the minister's ratio of 15 to one. Nevertheless, those are his figures and his government must live with them.

The job loss in Sudbury represented by the Inco and Falconbridge job reduction of 1,850, even if we use a more traditional ratio of two to one, indicates a job loss of 5,500. That is very serious. If we were to use the minister's 15-to-one ratio, it would be a job loss of 29,600, which is a staggering number. I hasten to add that I do not subscribe to those numbers, but they are the ones the minister used.

As a province, we must begin to cope with the economic problems we are facing. It is not good enough to blame the federal government, which in turn blames the United States. We need to debate in this chamber how we should deal with the problems of layoffs, unemployment, shutdowns, one-industry towns and indeed the whole nonrenewable mineral resource sector. This situation is an emergency, and this government cannot continue to ad hoc its way from one emergency to another.

We have some specific suggestions to make if this debate continues this afternoon. We believe the nickel industry should be put under public trusteeship while we sort out the problems of collective bargaining and while we do an independent geological assessment to see what nickel resources we have in Sudbury and elsewhere in the province. The long-run goal is to bring that industry into the public sector.

We believe a committee of the Legislature should be established to look at a proper diversification of the Sudbury community and to establish a mechanism so that, if the layoffs are necessary, the workers are properly relocated.

I stress that this is simply the tip of the iceberg. The long-range plans of the mining companies in Sudbury are to reduce the work force to about half the present level. Both Inco and Falconbridge have been extremely well served by the community and the province, and we think their actions should be debated.

I remind the members that Inco has responded to all the largess we have given it by investing its profits elsewhere with a magnificent and ostentatious incompetence. The first four letters of incompetence spell Inco, and Inco spells bad medicine for the future of the Sudbury community. It is time the community debated that matter.

Falconbridge is no better. Despite the concessions it has been given on refining and pollution abatement, it has announced a major layoff in the middle of collective bargaining with its own workers. Given those facts, I hope the members will agree that this is an appropriate debate that should take place this afternoon.

Mr. Sweeney: Mr. Speaker, I want to go on record as saying that our party supports the need to debate this afternoon the issue that has been raised by the member for Nickel Belt. I am sure the honourable member would not be surprised if I were to point out that we do not necessarily agree with all his party's solutions to this problem. However, there is no doubt whatsoever in the minds of the members of this party that we have a serious human and economic situation in the Sudbury basin.

I have had an opportunity to be in Sudbury on two occasions in the past couple of weeks and will be there again this weekend. I have talked to people who are unemployed, to business people and to many of the social agencies in the Sudbury basin area about the impact of unemployment there. Compared to many other parts of the province, it is in most serious difficulty.

One of the reasons my party and I stand in support of this is that we participated a few years ago in an all-party committee of this Legislature looking into the Inco layoffs at that time. There are a number of members in this House who participated in those investigations.

At that time we drew to the attention of this government, and of the Sudbury community and of the companies of both Inco and Falconbridge, that some fundamental changes had to be made. Here we are, several years later, facing almost the same problem.

3:30 p.m.

I hope to have the opportunity to refer back to some of the recommendations that were made a few years ago by that subcommittee, to show that the same situation still exists and that the government has not taken the kinds of action we believe it should take. The impact of unemployment on any community in this province is serious. The impact of unemployment in Sudbury is doubly serious because, as has been pointed out by so many members of this House, under other circumstances and other issues, it can be called in many ways a one-industry town.

In my last few visits to Sudbury, I was very delighted to notice there is an attempt in that community to begin its diversification program, but that is not going to happen quickly enough to offset the very negative impact of the layoffs of Inco and Falconbridge. Therefore, we, as members of this Legislature, responsible not just to the constituents in our own ridings but to constituents and Ontarians all across this province, have to be concerned about those kinds of impacts. For these reasons, we support the need to debate this measure this afternoon and we will most certainly participate in that debate.

Hon. Mr. Gregory: Mr. Speaker, I have discussed this motion with the Minister of Labour (Mr. Ramsay) and it is his opinion and, of course, mine that the lives of the citizens of Sudbury cannot be ignored in this emergency. While we do not necessarily agree with the wording or the substance of the motion, we are in agreement with the intent. If, Mr. Speaker, in your wisdom, you decide that the matter warrants an emergency debate, we will certainly abide by your ruling.

I have already discussed this with the two House leaders, and I would ask that consideration be given to the arrangements for the Lieutenant Governor to be here for royal assent in this chamber. He has flown in from some distance away to be here. So I would ask the House if we can have unanimous agreement to deal with the third readings and the second and third readings on some private bills.

Agreed to.

ORDERS OF THE DAY

CITY OF LONDON ACT

Mr. Van Horne moved second reading of Bill Pr1, An Act respecting the City of London.

Motion agreed to.

Third reading also agreed to on motion.

UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN ONTARIO ACT

Mr. Van Horne moved second reading of Bill Pr14, An Act respecting the University of Western Ontario.

Motion agreed to.

Third reading also agreed to on motion.

JAPANESE CANADIAN CULTURAL CENTRE OF TORONTO ACT

Mr. Runciman, on behalf of Mr. Cousens, moved second reading of Bill Pr 18, An Act respecting the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre of Toronto.

Motion agreed to.

Third reading also agreed to on motion.

CITY OF HAMILTON ACT

Mr. R. F. Johnston, on behalf of Mr. Charlton, moved second reading of Bill Pr22, An Act respecting the City of Hamilton.

Motion agreed to.

Third reading also agreed to on motion.

CITY OF OTTAWA ACT

Mr. Roy moved second reading of Bill Pr24, An Act respecting the City of Ottawa.

Motion agreed to.

Third reading also agreed to on motion.

TOWNSHIP OF MOONBEAM ACT

Mr. Piché moved second reading of Bill Pr32, An Act to continue the Corporation of the township of Fauquier under the name of the Corporation of the township of Moonbeam.

Motion agreed to.

Third reading also agreed to on motion.

THIRD READINGS

The following bills were given third reading on motion:

Bill 1, An Act to revise the Reciprocal Enforcement of Maintenance Orders Act;

Bill 2, An Act to amend the Surrogate Courts Act;

Bill 3, An Act to amend the Charities Accounting Act;

Bill 4, An Act to repeal the Mortmain and Charitable Uses Act;

Bill 27, An Act to amend the Motorized Snow Vehicles Act.

Hon. Mr. Gregory: Mr. Speaker, we will not be moving ahead with the sixth order at this point.

MOTION TO SUSPEND ORDINARY BUSINESS (CONTINUED)

Mr. Speaker: Pursuant to standing order 34, I have listened to the honourable members of the three parties with a great deal of interest and quite obviously the three parties are in accord that the emergency debate is in order. I find it in order, pursuant to standing order 34. I do rule in favour of the motion.

Therefore, the question before the House is: Shall the debate proceed?

Motion agreed to.

3:40 p.m.

EMPLOYMENT IN SUDBURY

Mr. Speaker: Just before the member for Nickel Belt starts, I would like to point out that he has up to 10 minutes.

Mr. Laughren: Mr. Speaker, I rise for the second time in three years to engage in an emergency debate on the problems of the Sudbury community, which should say something to the government members here.

I view the emergency debate as swirling about the problems of Sudbury as a community. That community has provided services in the form of sewer and water, health services, education services and social services, all at public expense. That has been of enormous assistance to Falconbridge Nickel Mines, in view of the fact they have been able to have a very stable work force, a work force living in a community where those amenities were available. Consequently, the community has a real stake in what is going on given the Inco and Falconbridge actions within the last couple of months.

Commitments have always been made in the Sudbury community based on the assumption that we were a community and the components in that community had common goals. Obviously, that has been a mistake because the goals of some of the leading components in the community, namely the private sector, have seldom coincided with the goals of the people in that community or the goals of the municipal leaders in the regional municipality of Sudbury.

Over the years, both Inco and Falconbridge have had profitable operations in the Sudbury community. Both Inco and Falconbridge have taken their profits elsewhere, particularly Inco, which has invested in Guatemala. They have now closed that operation completely. They are in Indonesia where they are operating at one-third capacity. They had a disastrous investment in ESB, the battery company in the United States. They are now attempting to divest themselves of that corporation.

When arguing for this debate, I said that the Inco management has been incompetent and I said that the first four letters of the word "incompetent" spell Inco. The incompetence of Inco is being paid for by the community of Sudbury. It is not the ore body in Sudbury, it is not the work force in Sudbury, it is not even the management in Sudbury that has led to the problems we are facing. It is the senior management based in Toronto, previously in New York, that has caused what have become community problems.

Falconbridge is part of a huge empire, including McIntyre Mines and Superior Oil of Houston, Texas. They have no refinery in Sudbury despite having been there for almost 50 years.

The public sector has been very good to Inco and Falconbridge. We have given them pollution abatement postponements. We have given them exemptions to the processing requirements under section 113 of the Mining Act. We allow Falconbridge -- and Inco for that matter, but primarily Falconbridge -- to ship its ores to Norway and to write off those processing costs against the profits they would normally pay in Ontario. Tell me how that makes any sense.

The provincial government has responded to the needs to diversify the economy in the Sudbury area with its resources machinery development centre. That is going to be located in 10,000 square feet, probably in a building next to the science centre, a tourist attraction. It is not going to be what we had dreamed it would be, namely a major centre for the production and distribution of mining machinery, not just for northern Ontario but for Canada, and for export markets as well.

The public sector is moving, as is the private sector, in very faltering steps to diversify the Sudbury community. It is time that we put an end to that. We, in Sudbury, are not doormats for the private sector. The workers are no longer pack-sack miners, as the former member for Sudbury, Mr. Germa, said in the debate three or four years ago. The community leaders are simply not pawns to provide services for the work force and for Inco and Falconbridge. We are an important community in this province. We work hard. We pay plenty of taxes. Quite frankly, we deserve much better than we have been getting from the private sector and from this government.

The problem has never ever been in Sudbury. The profit figures of Inco's earnings over the last 10 years were: $112 million in 1972; $225 million in 1973; $296,700,000 in 1974; $179 million in 1975; $178 million in 1976; $87 million in 1977; $61 million in 1978; $135 million in 1979; $249 million in 1980; and $20 million in 1981. That is profit on their operations, not on their sale of assets or the writing down of assets which were bad investments.

Whenever the companies get into trouble they want us to look at their problem in a time frame of one year. I look at that 10-year period and I see $1,547,900,000 in net earnings by Inco alone. Now they tell us they have financial problems this year and have to take these drastic actions. We are saying to members of the government, that is not good enough; that is not the way one builds a community and makes it a decent place in which to live.

The last time we had these debates was in a select committee which made recommendations to the government. I think the government ignored every one of those recommendations. My colleague the member for Sudbury East (Mr. Martel) will have more to say about that later.

We are not dealing with a community that is way up in the Arctic Circle. We are dealing with what is truly the resource capital of Ontario, if not Canada. It is known around the world for its riches. Yet, here we are going on this resource development roller-coaster ride once again.

The ramifications of what is going on will be felt elsewhere in Ontario as well. This Legislature can do a number of things. It can establish a legislative committee. The committee could put the nickel industry under what I would call provincial trusteeship while it looks after the problems of the bargaining and makes a geological assessment of the minerals in the Sudbury area.

Our view, of course, has always been that the nonrenewable resources belong to the public sector. For the $650 million that the government spent on Suncor and for which it got no control, we could buy Inco. As a matter of fact, majority control of Inco would cost $470 million.

I suggest that a legislative committee could do those things. It could look into the diversification problem, speed up the diversification process and look into the whole impact on the community of these announced layoffs; and if nothing can be done about the layoffs, then at least it could arrange that aid be given to the municipality and to the workers in this transition period of reduced work force.

It is the consensus around Sudbury, and as a matter of fact, a federal regional economist said it recently, that the work force in Sudbury is going to be down to around 7,000 before the end of the decade. When I moved to Sudbury in 1969, the work force in the mining industry was pushing 25,000. That is a massive reduction which has been brought about by technological changes. Workers have been pushed aside while machines, purchased elsewhere, do the work of the miners. If those machines were produced here we could applaud the reduction in the work force, because producing the machinery to do the work they used to do would probably be a better kind of work for the workers. But that is not what has happened.

We know that the nickel market is depressed. We know that at least 90 per cent of the nickel is exported and we know the importance of the auto sector to nickel sales. We also know that not all the economic problems of Canada are the fault of this government or of Inco and Falconbridge, but we do know there are things that can be done by this government.

We believe the first step is to establish a committee of this Legislature to look into those problems and take some action before the impact of those layoffs is felt in the Sudbury community.

Mr. Sweeney: Mr. Speaker, I recall a comment made by a member of the New Democratic Party when we were debating this subject in 1978. If I remember correctly, it had to do with the sense of déjà vu. I cannot remember who said it, but it was one of the Sudbury members. Now, here we are again four years later.

I believe it was January 1978 when we formed an all-party committee of this Legislature and held hearings in this building and in Sudbury.

3:50 p.m.

I can remember the Sudbury hearings vividly because one of the worst snowstorms Ontario had had in a number of years occurred during that time. I remember that after spending about three days there we finally had to get some trucks from Ontario Hydro to get us out of our motel and down to the railway station where we picked up the transcontinental. That experience remains firm in my mind.

I suspect many of the things we are going to discuss this afternoon will be repeats of what we did four years ago. That is the part which makes it so sad in one sense and so frustrating in another. I agree with the member for Nickel Belt that this Legislature simply has to do something for the nickel industry in the Sudbury basin in particular. However, I must admit I am less enthusiastic than he, and perhaps some of his colleagues, to constitute another select committee or whatever kind of committee of this Legislature he would recommend, in the hope that three or four years down the road we would not be in the same boat. I do not have much confidence it would make much difference.

Let me refer to a point in that select committee report. It indicated a report that was filed with the cabinet of this province from the mineral research branch of the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources in February 1977. That report was filed with cabinet about one year prior to the setting up of the all-party committee. I want to read one little section. The title of the report was The Ontario Metal Mining Industry, Present and Future.

It says: "The Ontario nickel industry is the world's largest nickel production complex and Ontario's largest mineral producer. It is suffering from a massive accumulation of inventory of finished metal as a result of the recent recession and of lower than anticipated rates of growth and consumption in major markets." This is the key sentence, "Unless the markets improve rapidly in the near future, it is difficult to see how cuts in Sudbury mine output can be avoided."

Those last three or four words were italicized in this report. The document was released to the public by the Ontario cabinet but apparently little or no weight was attached to this forecast by anyone. That was February 1977.

In February 1978, only a year later, we were holding hearings in this Legislature and in Sudbury. We came up with a series of recommendations and I will touch on some of them briefly in a few minutes.

Quite frankly, nothing really has changed all that much. We were told clearly during that period of time that Inco, for example, had invested something like $1 billion in the Sudbury basin during the 1960s and 1970s and that was a clear indication it intended to stay there, mine the ore there, smelt the ore there and keep on generating jobs. I have no doubt that was its intent.

There are other figures for Falconbridge. We were told, for example, Falconbridge had spent $62 million upgrading the Lockerby mine. We were told Falconbridge had spent something like $85 million cleaning up its smelter environmental problems. Once again, the Falconbridge officials indicated to us this was clear evidence they intended to stay, that this was the centre of their operations and that we should have nothing to worry about.

Here we are, four years later in 1982, once again seeing rather massive layoffs of people in the Sudbury basin. I mentioned earlier that in the last couple of weeks I had been to Sudbury on two occasions to speak to people who were unemployed in that community and to talk to them about the devastation taking place because of that unemployment. Primarily, our task force was concerned with young people who were unemployed, young people between the ages of 16 and 24 who have not even been able to get a start in their economic lives and on being able to stand on their own two feet.

It became quickly apparent the unemployment problem had spread to all age groups in the Sudbury area and it was not just those who work for Falconbridge, or who work directly for Inco. It was throughout the entire community; all the small machine shops, some of the smaller retail outlets in that area and all the various service industries that depend so much on Inco and Falconbridge.

It was clearly pointed out to us, and it is something we have to recognize, that the people and community of Sudbury have begun to make a valiant effort to diversify. The federal government, for example, has set up a rather impressive tax office there, which I understand is going to employ somewhere between 1,000 and 3,000 people. Sure, that is going to help and other industries like that are going to help, but we have to keep in mind that the major employers in that area today are Inco and Falconbridge and the various related industries, and they will continue to be so for quite a number of years.

When we talked about this issue four years ago, we made the observation at that time, just as the 1977 report had made, that the governments of Ontario and Canada were going to have to move into that community and begin to set up different kinds of training programs for the people who were then laid off and who were not likely to be going back into those industries. It was clear at that time that the dominance in the world markets of the nickel producers in the Sudbury basin was no longer there.

If I remember correctly the figures quoted to us, Inco alone had had control of something like 60 or 70 per cent of the entire world market for nickel, but at that time that was down to about 30 or 35 per cent. We were told of the operations all over the world in Australia, Indonesia, Guatemala and South Africa, some operated by Inco and Falconbridge and some operated by those countries themselves. In other words, we have a much more competitive world with respect to the production and marketing of nickel.

Therefore, we made it clear that Sudbury could not continue over the long haul to depend for its employment, both direct and indirect, on those two companies, and some changes had to be made, there had to be some input by both the federal and provincial governments into retraining. That is one of the points we clearly made. To the best of my knowledge, little has been done with that.

The second point we clearly made was that the two levels of government were going to have to assist in the marketing of nickel throughout the world, that we were going to have to sit down with these companies and look at the Japanese market, for example, because a contract had been lost in that area back in the 1977-78 era. We had to look at what could be done in those areas. We had to look at how we were going to compete with South Africa and Australia. All those things had to be taken into consideration. Once again, to the best of my understanding, none of those things has been seriously looked at.

We were also asked at that time to re-examine the relationship of Falconbridge to its operation in Norway. We had some experts come before us. It was drawn to our attention -- I think pretty clearly -- that there was no good reason why there could not be some sort of co-operative effort arranged between Falconbridge and Inco for Falconbridge to transport its hot matte over to Inco and have it processed there.

When it first came to our attention, one of the things said was: "Oh well, they have different processes. They use different temperatures." But the experts who came before us made it clear that with some minor changes that could be done and we would not have to continue to send that hot matte over to Norway. To the best of my knowledge, nothing has been done in the investigation of that matter either.

Whether it would have been feasible, I honestly do not know. I do not pretend to be an expert in this technological area. But we did have experts come before us to show that something could be done, and that those two companies would have to sit down and in some cases co-ordinate their efforts. This was one case that seemed to me to make a lot of sense.

All I am trying to suggest is there were a number of recommendations that made a lot of sense. They have not been acted on and we are right back to square one.

Hon. Mr. Ramsay: Mr. Speaker, I want to say as clearly as possible at the outset that I regard the existing and anticipated unemployment in the Sudbury area as a matter of grave concern. I welcome this debate today as a most worthwhile exercise.

The Sudbury basin is world renowned for its rich natural and human resources. It has in a real sense been the focus of economic activity of northern Ontario over the years.

4 p.m.

There is no doubt that current prospects for the nickel market and, indeed, for copper and precious metals produced in the Sudbury basin are grim. I had the opportunity last Friday to be present during a three-hour information exchange involving senior officials of Inco and the United Steelworkers in relation to the current contract dispute at Sudbury and Port Colborne. During that session the company placed before the meeting facts that I think had a sobering effect on everyone present.

I will not repeat the details other than to say that we are clearly talking about a worldwide phenomenon reflecting a recession of major proportions in the western world. Various figures were reviewed for the period 1979 through the first quarter of 1982. On the basis of all of the usual economic indicators -- prices, deliveries, costs, expenses, demand and capacity utilization -- the outlook is bleak.

Comparisons were made with other jurisdictions and, so far as I can determine, the situation in northern Ontario is no different in any material aspect from that in other ore-producing and refining jurisdictions. I saw no indication that these difficulties were self-induced by the enterprise affected. It was conceded by all around the table that the ore bodies in the Sudbury basin are of a high quality. It was also conceded that there is a work force second to none in skill and ability.

These positive facts make the current situation even more regrettable. We have the ore, we have the human resources, we have the technical knowhow, we have the managerial skills, we have the capacity for redevelopment and improvement; and yet, to put it bluntly, the market is in a tailspin.

These companies, Inco and Falconbridge, have been around for a long time. They have a proven capacity to make their way in the world markets; they have, to my knowledge, no suicidal instincts. Yet they and their employees are the victims of economic forces beyond their control.

Therefore, I want everyone in this House to know that I am as worried and anxious about the prospects of our northern mining communities as anyone in this House. I happen to represent a riding that is in close physical proximity to Sudbury and has many of the same characteristics with regard to its dependence on a major industry.

Mr. Laughren: That's no excuse.

Hon. Mr. Ramsay: I know the devastating effect that unemployment can have, and within my powers I intend to continue to do everything possible to minimize its effect.

Mr. Laughren: It's all the more shameful, as a matter of fact.

Hon. Mr. Ramsay: However, I think no one should be --

Mr. Laughren: Boy! Crocodile tears.

Hon. Mr. Ramsay: Mr. Speaker, I sat quietly, and I always sit quietly when the member opposite is speaking.

Mr. Laughren: Well, they are. You never do anything about it. You stand up, you say you are concerned and you do nothing.

The Deputy Speaker: Order. The minister has the floor.

Mr. Laughren: They are crocodile tears.

The Deputy Speaker: Let him continue.

Mr. Laughren: I am sure the Speaker would agree with me in a different setting.

Hon. Mr. Ramsay: We are going through difficult times, and it would be overly optimistic, on the basis of any material I have seen or conversations I have had, to say that there is light at the end of the tunnel in the short or medium term.

With regard to price alone, the nickel selling price for the first quarter of this year was lower than at any time since the beginning of 1980. Early indications are that the second quarter will be even worse, and some analysts are saying the copper price may be the lowest in many years. I am told copper is being sold at a price below production cost.

The member for Nickel Belt (Mr. Laughren) -- and I want to say that he made an excellent presentation earlier today, and I listened with interest and respect -- refers to corporate irresponsibility; and I heard him in the House the other day when he suggested that this corporate irresponsibility, in his view, is manifested when collective agreements come up for negotiation. He argues, or at least implies, that there is more than coincidence in the fact that these companies are faced with maximum economic pressure in the year their collective agreements expire.

The member is a product of the Sudbury basin and he knows the mining industry much better than I do. I ask him in all fairness whether he is in possession of facts that support the assertion that the pressures now facing these industries are artificial or artificially induced. Although I am sure he has seen it, I am quite prepared to share with him the recent analysis of Walwyn Stodgell Cochrane Murray, which shows that the plight of the industry is indeed genuine.

Let me deal with the Inco situation. I am naturally depressed when I see masses of employees out of work as a result of a labour dispute at a time when so many workers across the province are involuntarily out of work as a result of the reduction in business activity brought about by recession. That is why I have become personally involved in an effort to see what can be done to bring about an end to this labour dispute. I do not wish to prejudice any efforts now under way or contemplated by talking about the particular matters in dispute, however, I think it is germane to this debate to say I honestly believe that, against a dismal economic background, honest efforts are being made to resolve the dispute; I personally have seen no sign of corporate irresponsibility.

That is not to say we are on the brink of a breakthrough, far from it, but I do not think it assists the delicate process of mediation to accuse either side of irresponsibility unless there is very clear and unequivocal evidence to support that charge. I ask my friend, if he has such evidence, to bring it forward. He should not inflame an already difficult situation by making unsubstantiated, generalized accusations. It makes my task and that of my officials all the more difficult. If he honestly believes there has been a failure to bargain in good faith on the part of either company, he knows as well as I do there is a very adequate procedure in this province for having that matter adjudicated. The Ontario Labour Relations Board has been alert, as I think he will agree, to identify bad-faith bargaining situations and to provide effective remedies for these situations.

Before I leave the Inco situation, I will simply refer briefly to the way in which that company handled the layoff situation earlier this year. My friend is aware of that program, and I do not think it would be fair to characterize it as the program of an employer who is insensitive to his employees or otherwise irresponsible. Without going into all the details, the fact of the matter is that by virtue of an attractive early retirement offer, the offering of transfer rights and the implementation of special employment programs, financed in part by funds under section 38 of the Employment Insurance Act and funds authorized by the Board of Industrial Leadership and Development committee of cabinet, an anticipated layoff of 850 was reduced to under 200. I have the latest figure here. Of the original 850 Inco workers to be laid off, as of May 11, the number is now 156.

Mr. Laughren: It is still a loss of jobs.

Hon. Mr. Ramsay: I agree.

As I said the other day in the Legislature, I share the distress of all members about the Falconbridge announcement. The extension of the period of layoff to 13 weeks will mean all employees of the company will be without jobs this summer, although some will qualify for their vacation pay. I very much hope the notice of indefinite layoff to be given to 1,000 Falconbridge employees in September turns out to be overly pessimistic and that at least some of these employees will be recalled as market conditions improve. We must, however, make our plans in accordance with the company's projections.

I have already had discussions with my officials, including Bob Joyce, my special adviser in matters of this sort, and will be making every effort to offer, in collaboration with the federal government, whatever employee adjustment programs can be made available. The Inco experience shows that by collaborative endeavours one can cushion the impact of large layoffs. As I have said, my officials and I intend to extend every effort to minimize the effect of the Falconbridge layoff; which in size, incidentally, is roughly equivalent to the numbers contained in the Inco layoff announcement last winter. As members know, Falconbridge, like Inco, has an early retirement plan and it is hoped that a substantial number of employees will take advantage of this opportunity.

In difficult times such as these, we can expend our efforts more productively by collaboration -- labour and management, federal, provincial and municipal governments, members of this Legislature and all interested citizens -- in devising practical solutions to carry us over these difficult times. I do not wish to use this occasion to engage in fed-bashing or to argue, as one is tempted to do, that with more enlightened economic policies from Ottawa we might have avoided some of these difficult problems. I happen to believe that to be true, but I do not engage in this debate in that spirit.

The theme with which I would like to close is simply this: in the months ahead we must do everything within our power to assist the casualties of this regrettable downturn in our economic fortunes and to advance programs and policies that will assist our mining industry to become, once again, the envy of the free world. I believe we have that capability and the future will again belong to the Sudbury basin. However, it will take patience and fortitude and a co-operative spirit to reach that goal.

4:10 p.m.

Mr. R. F. Johnston: Mr. Speaker, after the last speech, I seem to have lost track of just what this motion is. I thought I would read it, if I might. It was moved by the member for Nickel Belt and seconded by the member for Sudbury East (Mr. Martel) that our ordinary business be set aside because of the urgent need to discuss the massive unemployment which will be created by the corporate irresponsibility of Inco and Falconbridge in the Sudbury area which will have a devastating effect not only on Sudbury families and local businesses but on the economy of the entire province.

That is what we are debating and there was general accord from the three parties that it is worthy of debate. The corporate irresponsibility of Inco and Falconbridge has brought about this calamitous situation in Sudbury. There seemed to be tacit agreement about that in the House, but then all of a sudden we get the Minister of Labour (Mr. Ramsay) jumping up and becoming the corporate apologist again, saying there is no bargaining in bad faith going on at the moment, and that section, which is the key section of this resolution, is not applicable and these are good corporate citizens who have been corporately responsible over the last 10 years.

What the minister did not address was that if these are corporately responsible citizens of Sudbury and Canada, how is it after they made $1.5 billion in profits, as the member for Nickel Belt showed, when times get tough in one year they take it out on the workers and on the community? As the member said, this is not the first time this has occurred. He has been up in the House before during an emergency debate talking about the situation in the Sudbury basin.

We talked earlier about the early retirement plans that were brought in when Inco had the initial layoffs. I would remind members of the incredible public pressure put on Inco to respond in a generous fashion. I would also note that in his speech he showed that the major costs for picking that up are not coming out of Inco's coffers at all, they are out of public coffers. He listed the areas where the expense is being picked up and it is primarily the public purse that is paying for that. It is not the great corporate citizen of Inco that is doing it.

I would just juxtapose the early retirement solution for the Falconbridge workers with the bill the member for Lakeshore (Mr. Kolyn) introduced today, which suggested we should arbitrarily raise the retirement age to 70. These two things do not seem to fit very closely together. On the one hand, we are looking for early retirement solutions to assist the unemployment difficulties that a place like Sudbury is going to face and on the other hand we have the member for Lakeshore suggesting we should raise the retirement age to 70. That is a wonderful juxtaposition.

Mr. Kolyn: We are all getting older, Richard.

Mr. R. F. Johnston: If the member wants to argue on a logical basis for getting rid of the retirement age, that is one thing, but changing it to 70 is a totally arbitrary and stupid thing to suggest to this House.

The situation I want to discuss is what specified in the motion you have just raised in your hand, Mr. Speaker, the matter of the layoffs and the impact of them on this community of Sudbury. If we take the two-to-one ratio for the impact of layoffs, as the member for Nickel Belt has said, that is 5,500 workers and their families who are affected. The Minister of Industry and Trade (Mr. Walker) comes up with the most phenomenal statistics from time to time. An expansion of nine --

Mr. Mackenzie: To support his position.

Mr. R. F. Johnston: His statistics say a major expansion of nine employees in Elmira will create 15 extra jobs each. If one took that and extrapolated it, that would mean 29,000 families in Sudbury are going to be affected by the layoffs.

I want to speak to the effect of layoffs on families in the Sudbury basin and why it is crucial that we do not just debate this in the House today, because this kind of problem is going to reoccur, but that we do strike a select committee again and look towards a diversification of the economy of the Sudbury basin. If we do not, this is going to be a continuing drama that occurs here every couple of years. It is not going to be resolved, as the member for Kitchener-Wilmot (Mr. Sweeney) has said. I believe we really have to look for solutions.

There have not been many studies done on the impact of major layoffs on families. In the Sudbury area, there are a couple of reports that were done on families affected by the strike during 1978-79 and a follow-up was done by Mr. Henry Radecki. That situation is slightly different from the combination of layoff and strike which we are facing at the moment.

The study of SKF -- the company that left my riding -- is now in the early stages of following up on the impact of layoffs on families; and there is also Windsor's experience, the mayor's task force there is looking at the impact on families. We really do not understand how devastating it is to families to have major layoffs in their community and to have their economy totally disrupted, as is the case in the Sudbury basin. While we do not know the extent of the severity, we do know it is severe. There are many indicators.

The Radecki study on the 1978-79 problems in Sudbury showed that 35 per cent of the people living in that community were worried about never getting a job there again -- and no doubt the people recently laid off by Falconbridge and Inco feel the same way -- and considered pulling up their roots and moving from the area. That decision was made by a very large percentage of the laid-off employees.

However, they found they could not leave for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is where does a miner go today to find work? The reality is that if the rich ore body of Sudbury is not functioning, they are not going to find other jobs in northern Ontario or even in other parts of the country. So the situation is very severe.

Only now are we gaining some idea about the whole question of stress on families. The studies in 1978-79 of the families and their reaction to what they were experiencing during the troubles in those years showed there was a 70 per cent increase in stress symptoms.

I am more familiar with the study on the SKF situation in my riding. Those who were laid off from SKF may have more options, perhaps not for equivalent jobs but at least for other jobs within the Metropolitan Toronto area. Nevertheless, the study indicates that 41 per cent of them responded in a questionnaire that they considered the stress they were suffering from the layoff to be the equivalent of the stress they would experience if a loved one, a spouse or a child in the family, died, which is severe stress indeed. About 23 per cent of them said they had lost their desire to live because they had no hope for the future. Of course, these are workers in their late forties and fifties, which could be a factor. None the less, the stress on those families is enormous. We are only just learning how hard it is on families.

Sudbury is hit in a cyclical way with this kind of stress and pressure on families and on the community as a whole. The effects include such things as alcoholism, poor mental health and marriage breakup; and probably vandalism as result of unemployment among young people. I am not saying that off the top of my head. The mayor's committee on services for the unemployed in Windsor discovered that is exactly what happened there as the downturn hit its nadir in that area. That is on page 8 of their report.

Mr. Mackenzie: That is a fancy word.

Mr. R. F. Johnston: One fancy word every speech is not bad.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Cousens): One minute.

Mr. R. F. Johnston: The reports talk about mental health and family problems in the community. Agency representatives say there is an increase in family related problems such as poor mental health and alcoholism being brought to the social service agencies, and we found the same thing in Sault Ste. Marie yesterday when we talked to the social services people.

In Sault Ste. Marie they are just starting to feel the impact of the recession but they are already seeing a major change in the kind of people who are coming to them, people who have never been on welfare before and are ashamed to be obliged to apply for it. They are beginning to suffer all sorts of family pressures. Last month they had the largest number of people on welfare in that city's history. The impact on the family is now being felt.

The city then has increased costs -- increased welfare costs, additional kinds of auxiliary social services costs -- and it is going to have less revenue because of less income in the community to deal with those things. It strikes me --

The Acting Speaker: The member has exhausted the time allotted to him.

4:20 p.m.

Mr. R. F. Johnston: If I can just finish --

The Acting Speaker: I thank the honourable member. It depends on how long that sentence is.

Mr. R. F. Johnston: It is a very short sentence. We need to strike a committee, we need to look at solutions for major one-industry towns like Sudbury and to start looking at those solutions because we cannot have families punished like this on a continuing basis in northern Ontario.

Mr. Haggerty: Mr. Speaker, I want to address myself to the resolution. I may find some difficulty with the wording of it but it concerns "the massive unemployment which will be created by the corporate irresponsibility of Inco and Falconbridge in the Sudbury area" and due to the layoff and the strike at Inco operations in Sudbury and Port Colborne. I, like the member for Nickel Belt, know of some of the difficulties that many of the communities and employees of Inco have faced over the years.

Inco has not had the best of labour relations with its employees and maybe that is where much of the difficulty lies. Perhaps there should be some changes in the Labour Relations Act or in the bargaining process to improve that.

I suggested to the minister the other day in a supplementary question that maybe he should be moving to having a 60-day cooling-off period that would allow unions and management time to reassess their positions and look for new directions for a settlement.

I say honestly to the minister that if he had taken my suggestion a week or so ago perhaps he would never have had the strike in Port Colborne and maybe not in the Sudbury basin. I think many of the employees in this particular area did not clearly understand what they were voting for. I have been informed there was a large vote in favour of turning down the agreement, but not necessarily a strike vote. I suggest that when there is a strike vote taken in any labour dispute or impasse that may occur, it should be the responsibility of this minister to carry out the balloting of that vote to make sure that everyone understands the issues involved.

I suggest that to the minister because Canada has not a good record in employment as it relates to strikes and man-days lost. We are suffering in this area now through the man-days lost and the nonproductivity that occurs during a strike period. In some cases, particularly in the nickel industry during the last couple of years, it has been a benefit to the industry itself because they have been able to lower the huge inventory.

I was a member of that select committee back in 1977 and 1978 when we reviewed the mass layoffs in Port Colborne and the Sudbury basin. At that time there were about 1,800 or 2,000 in the Sudbury area and about 300 at the refinery in Port Colborne. It is the only refinery in Canada. In Port Colborne, there was a program applied with regard to retirement for those who met the criterion of 35 years' service plus age. It was an exceptionally good package and it encouraged a number of them to take early retirement. Some of them were happy and some of them received a $27,000 or $35,000 payment followed by their long-term pension. I think if the same program had been applied in the Sudbury area in 1977 we would not have had the repercussions that took place at that time.

I think Inco has led in this particular area; although we can be critical of them, they have led in this area. Inco had one of the best pension plans in Canada. I am not here to defend them but I think we have to give credit where credit is due and they tried to give their employees a better package deal in the last layoff. Inco set the precedent and I understand Falconbridge is moving to follow that good bargaining process.

I suggest in that particular area much of the fault lies with this government, as my colleague from Kitchener-Wilmot suggested. The study report in 1977 from the Ministry of Natural Resources -- and I think it is worth while repeating because it is a good message for the Minister of Natural Resources (Mr. Pope) to understand clearly -- a paper entitled The Ontario Metal Mining Industry, warned:

"Unless the markets improve rapidly in the near future it is difficult to see how cuts in the Sudbury mine output can be avoided. Despite this warning the government did nothing to prepare for the disastrous events which have hit the Sudbury area." That report was right on.

I think again of the huge inventory that is now sitting in Inco's stockpile in Ajax and other places. Inco is out on strike now, but with the huge inventory this will be money in the company's pockets. There should be a profit this year for Inco, even though they are in financial difficulty, like many other industries here in Canada and Ontario that got caught in the huge expansion program back in the 1960s and 1970s through poor forecasting and, like Hydro, overexpanded.

Regardless, they went into Indonesia, they went into Guatemala and so on. That is a thing of the past. I think we should be looking to the future. We can be critical of them; I think they criticized them in that report for having gone into that particular area, and I suggest this has caused them some financial difficulties.

Falconbridge is not operating now in the Dominican Republic; it closed that operation. Inco is hard hit. They are even laying off heavily in England and in all their operations throughout the world. They are in financial difficulty. They are selling some of their assets to pay their liabilities. They are covering up so they can salvage the industry, and it is a tough period for them.

I am really concerned that the government must be more involved in the mining sector to keep tabs on the industry; to ascertain what they are doing and where the profit is going. Are they putting it back into mining operations here in Canada or offshore? I am sure the minister is well aware of the boom that has taken place in the past 10 or 15 years. Some of the huge profits from mining industries here in Ontario have been taken out of Canada and have gone into oil and gas exploration in the southern United States. I think they have an obligation to look after long-term employment here in Ontario and in Canada. It is a responsibility and an obligation of the industry and of government to guarantee that there is going to be long-term employment in Ontario.

Government, management and employees are going to have to take a harder look at what they can do in a co-operative effort to sit down and make this program work through a tripartite group of people in the industry, labour and so on to come up with a sound program for continued long-term employment in Ontario.

The boom days are over, and all of us in this House have to give that consideration. We are not going to see the peaks or the valleys any more. It is a levelling-off period, a transition period now, and it is going to be most difficult. We are facing it now. Experts in the area are predicting it will take six or seven years before this works through the system, and it is going to be a trying time for industry, for employees and for employment in Ontario.

Sometimes I look upon the unemployment insurance program as an evil.

Mr. Wildman: An evil?

Mr. Haggerty: An evil, that's right. It gives industry the right to lay off employees without any obligation at all. They are saying: "I have no moral responsibility. We will let unemployment insurance look after you." I know very well that years ago in Port Colborne Inco would never lay anybody off -- many industries would not -- because they felt they had a community obligation to continue employment.

Mr. Wildman: Even in the 1930s?

Mr. Haggerty: Not in the 1930s, either, that was back in your heyday, I guess.

4:30 p.m.

The Acting Speaker: One minute.

Mr. Haggerty: I think the minister and the government are going to have to take a good look and come forward with new policies and programs to encourage management and labour to work together for long-term employment.

It is a difficult period, and we should have another committee appointed to review it. We have had one on foreign investment, foreign companies and foreign control. That is another problem we are running into. As soon as we shake foreign control in Canada and set our own guidelines for employment and the economic climate, perhaps we will do a lot better.

If the members can recall, back in the 1900s we complained about British money in Canada. Now we are complaining about the Americans. This government is going over now to Japan, asking them to come and invest here. The government is going around in a circle.

Mr. Wildman: Mr. Speaker, it is with a feeling of déjà vu that I rise to speak in this debate. A few years ago --

The Acting Speaker: Will the member for Algoma allow me to correct my oversight and recognize the fact that we were going around this way? I did not even look to the right.

Mr. Wildman: We do not often look to the right either.

The Acting Speaker: I accept that, however, the Minister of Natural Resources is next.

Hon. Mr. Pope: Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to participate in the debate. My friend the member for Erie (Mr. Haggerty) expressed some concern about investment by the resource sector offshore. Since he was quite concerned about it, he probably would be happy with a recent update contained in Northern Ontario Business for April 1982 with respect to the capital reinvestment going on in the resource sector in northern Ontario, because it totalled between $5 billion and $6 billion in the private sector. Some of the projects have had the support of the federal and provincial governments; some are direct expenditures of the companies themselves.

One can through the whole list: Abitibi-Price, $107 million; Algoma Central Railway, $77 million; Algoma Steel, $300 million; American Can, $53.5 million; Bell Canada, $82.8 million; Boise Cascade, $290 million; CP Rail, $45 million; the Canadian government, through the Canadian Forces base in North Bay, $80 million; Denison Mines Ltd., $300 million; Detour Lake, $143 million; Dome Mines, $91.7 million; Domtar Inc., $48 million; E. B. Eddy Forest Products Ltd., $200 million; Eldorado Nuclear Ltd., $150 million; Falcon bridge, $60 million; Noranda's Geco mine, $1.35 million; Great Lakes Forest Products Ltd., $430 million; Great Lakes Power Corp., $105 million; Inco, $70 million to $80 million; Kidd Creek Mines, $10 million; Kimberly-Clark of Canada Ltd., $10 million; Mattabi Mines, $42.9 million; Long Lac Minerals, $25 million; MacMillan Bloedel, $3 million; Northern and Central Gas, $32 million; Northern Telephone, $8.5 million; Spruce Falls Power and Paper Co. Ltd., $100 million; Pamour Porcupine Mines, $14.7 million; Rio Algom Mines, $300 million; and on and on.

The projects that are going on are reinvestments by these resource companies in northern Ontario. This is an indication that there is some feeling the resource sector in northern Ontario provides a good avenue for private sector investment and a good, fertile sector of the economy in which the government and the private sector can participate together. I just wanted to correct the misapprehension of the member for Erie.

As I said in Sudbury when I was there approximately six weeks ago, and it was stated by Dr. Anders of our ministry at the 84th annual general meeting of the Canadian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy when we were discussing the structure, interpretation and implications of Ontario's mineral market forecasting model, the situation with respect to nickel is not hopeful in the long term; and by the long term I mean five to six years. This was based on simulator models that have now been recognized as being among the most accurate in the world with respect to metal prices.

The Ministry of Natural Resources report that was quoted in 1977 was used in the legislative committee on layoffs in the Sudbury basin in 1978, a committee I was part of. It indicated there were some long-term problems with respect to the nickel market.

I would like to quote from the update that was given by Dr. Anders of our ministry in Quebec City in late April:

"In nickel we would expect for the first half of the coming decade consumption growth rates in the 0.5 per cent to 1.5 per cent per year range at best. This may, in the second half of the decade, increase to slightly better, two to three per cent in real terms, but only if solid noninflationary growth is resumed over most of the industrialized western world. This implies the need for a total level of reduction in worldwide installed capacity from current levels in the range of 20 to 30 per cent, and possibly more, if allowances had to be made for capacity additions.

"Differently put, worldwide nickel consumption growth rates would have to be plus five per cent per year, compounded from the 1982 base, to bring total consumption up against nominal 1980 capacity limits by the year 1990. To reach that limit by the year 2000, a compound growth rate of 2.5 per cent would be required. Such rates over the next one or two decades respectively are considered unlikely. Overall, we all look forward by 1990 to a total world level of nickel consumption in the 700,000 to 780,000 metric ton range and prices in 1981 US terms in a $2.50 to $3 per pound range."

Again, there is no long-term relief in sight with respect to the nickel markets. This is what the Ministry of Natural Resources pricing people have been saying consistently since 1977 and is indicative of the long-term problems of that industry.

The problems exist not only in the Sudbury basin but throughout the world as well. It is for that reason that I always had trouble accepting the fact that we should be involved in the acquisition of inventory or in paying for the costs of that inventory accumulation, not only with respect to whether we would ever be able to market it but also, even if we did market it, as to whether at the time that decision was made that this would not in itself have a dramatic impact on the employment picture in the nickel industry.

It is true, though, that calls have been made consistently for the government to get involved in the acquisition of nickel inventory as some sort of support for the price of nickel. Indeed, the gold communities of northern Ontario have made a similar request to the federal government with respect to a floor price for gold. Unless one is going to get into a long-term accumulation of this inventory and use it for some other purposes, I do not see how it can help the employment picture in these communities.

We have been in contact with the federal government. We have been trying to come up with some ideas, as we did with respect to the Inco layoffs, in close co-operation with my friend the Minister of Labour, to try to address some of the immediate problems of the workers of the Sudbury basin. We hope in the longer term to provide some alternative opportunities. We have been trying generally in northern Ontario, using a great variety of government programs, to diversify the local economic base of the smaller communities as well as of the larger communities.

That is the reason for some of the decisions, such as the privatization of some of the nursery programs and expansion of the Ontario mineral exploration program, the custom gold mill program. the Ontario geological survey program and a number of other Board of Industrial Leadership and Development initiatives that we hope are starting to have the effect of leading to economic diversification in different parts of the province.

By the way, it is accepted in different parts of Ontario that these initiatives have that effect. The member can talk to the people of Beardmore about that. They feel that way. We believe we must continue with these efforts. We must accelerate them, and we are working with the federal government. We are giving some positive alternatives as opposed to saying nothing, which is what the Liberal Party suggested, and as opposed to engaging in a rhetorical debate as to who is to blame.

We have been trying to propose some positive ideas to the federal government. We have been proposing to amend some of the existing provincial government programs to provide some stimulus to exploration and development in the mineral sector to lead to some additional resource growth in the area.

4:40 p.m.

We believe that by using these tools at our disposal, with the assistance of the Ministry of Labour and the federal government under section 38 and under some other employment programs, we can try to address the needs of --

Mr. Laughren: The public sector again. The public sector will pickup the pieces. You always want the public sector to pick up the pieces.

Hon. Mr. Pope: I understand the honourable member's position on the public sector. The leader of the New Democratic Party said quite clearly, and Maclean's magazine reported it, at the last leadership convention: "We want to nationalize the resource sector. But we will not touch the manufacturing sector, because we are worried about job security for the manufacturing workers." That is exactly what he said, because he does not care about job security for the resource sector workers.

Mr. Wildman: Mr. Speaker, I yielded the floor last time. I am sorry I did, after listening to that last speech.

As I said when I began to speak earlier, I have a sense of déjà vu on having now to participate in this debate requesting a committee to study the situation in the Sudbury basin as it relates to the nickel companies' moves that have had an effect on the whole economy of that area.

I participated in the committee that studied the Inco layoffs in this Legislature in the past, as did the present Minister of Natural Resources, and we heard many of the same arguments at that time that we are hearing today.

I must say I am a little bit alarmed by the comments made by my colleague the member for Sault Ste. Marie (Mr. Ramsay), who seems to be basically giving an apology for the companies in Sudbury, Inco and Falconbridge.

He stated that there was no evidence the situation at Inco or at Falconbridge was self- induced. He said that those companies were victims of economic forces beyond their control. He also said that this was just a matter of market downturn and that there was nothing the companies could be faulted for because they were simply responding to the economic contingencies they faced.

In my view, we are facing a serious problem, and will continue to face a serious problem, because there has been no commitment by either of those companies to the Sudbury basin or to northern Ontario in general over the long term.

Certainly, Inco has considerable investments in the Sudbury basin and is not likely to walk away from them. In the past we have had comments from members of this government that we could not push Inco or Falconbridge to carry out their responsibilities to the people of the area and to the communities in that area, because we were always open to the blackmail that the company might leave and there would no jobs.

Many times we have heard from the present Minister of Northern Affairs (Mr. Bernier) that if we were to press the companies to live up to their responsibilities there would be no jobs, and that we are only talking gloom and doom.

Every time we have raised questions about problems in one-industry towns across northern Ontario, members on the government side have accused us of gloom and doom. It is really something to hear the Minister of Northern Affairs going around northern Ontario with his Pollyanna approach, saying everything is wonderful: "There is nothing wrong in northern Ontario. It is just that the Socialists are always raising the gloom and never talking about the real spirit of northern Ontario."

He talks about the spirit of the north. In our view, we are talking about realities. Throughout history the realities of northern Ontario have been that the private sector exploits the resources until they are used up and then moves on, leaving ghost towns and people without any hope of a continuing existence in communities that have developed during the exploitation of those resources. We have seen that repeated over and over again. In my view, the companies are anything but blameless for the situation we face in the Sudbury basin today.

We talk in this debate about the serious debt that Inco faces. The decisions made early in the 1970s by Inco with regard to investments are probably the main reason for the financial situation the company finds itself in today. Inco invested in new developments in Indonesia and Guatemala. It also invested a significant amount of money in a battery plant in Pennsylvania, which produced no jobs there much less any jobs in Ontario.

The company used the profits it had made in Ontario to reinvest elsewhere, and those investments were poorly conceived, to say the least. We now see the situation where that company's operations are closed up in Guatemala and Indonesia, and the company now is trying to sell off its battery plant at a loss.

In my view, we should remember that the company has never lost money in its Ontario operations. Even in economic downturns, even in market fluctuations, it has not lost money here. The incompetence of Inco is shown in its inability to use the funds it has made in this province to reinvest in such a way that there is an ongoing hope of development of a long-term future for the community of Sudbury.

We have seen Falconbridge refusing year after year to carry out most of the processing of its product in this country. It has had exemptions extended again and again by this government so that it can continue to process the matte elsewhere.

I do not believe either of these companies has shown any more commitment to northern Ontario than the old pack-sack mining operations we have had in northern Ontario over the years. In my view, we do not have that kind of commitment from this government either. This government has given Falconbridge ongoing exemptions from its requirements to process here.

Also, the last time we had this situation in Sudbury we had an announcement by the Premier (Mr. Davis) that he was setting up a cabinet committee to study the future of one-industry towns in northern Ontario. He appointed the Treasurer (Mr. F. S. Miller), who was then Minister of Natural Resources, to chair that committee. We never heard anything, and neither did the ministers on the committee, about that committee after that announcement.

My colleague the member for Sudbury East got up in this House on a number of occasions and asked the Premier and Treasurer, "What is happening about this cabinet committee on one-industry towns?" At one point the Treasurer did not even know he had been appointed chairman and had to ask the Minister of Natural Resources and the Minister of Northern Affairs whether, indeed, he was on the committee.

That is an example of the lack of commitment by this government in analysing the problems of one-industry towns in Ontario and dealing with real diversifications of the economy so that we have ongoing jobs and do not just continue to be mining camps.

Recently I was at a meeting in Timmins. The Minister of Natural Resources will be interested in this. We met with a number of miners in that community. There was one older fellow who was in retirement and had been a miner all his life. He could not bring himself to refer to Timmins as a city. He kept calling it a mining camp. That is how cities and towns in northern Ontario have been treated by the companies and by this government over the years: as camps. The companies come in, dig the holes, bring out the ore, and when the ore is gone so is everybody else; it is just a camp.

Frankly, no matter how big the community, whether it is a small town or whether it is a large city like Sudbury, it is still a mining camp. Without Inco and Falconbridge, without nickel mining in Sudbury, that community has no reason to exist. The suggestion that has been made by my friends to my right, that having the federal government set up some kind of office buildings is going to deal with the problem, is ridiculous.

4:50 p.m.

We have to have a commitment from this government to ensure that the private sector lives up to its responsibilities. If the private sector is going to take profits out of northern Ontario, it must reinvest those profits in such a way that we have an ongoing future for our communities and for young people in northern Ontario.

We cannot allow a government to continue to ignore the fact that the wealth of this province is built on the wealth of northern Ontario. It is about time the north started to benefit from that wealth rather than allowing the companies to operate as they wish, lay off workers and forget about the human needs of the communities of the north.

If ever there really was a need for a committee to study layoffs and the future of the economy of northern Ontario, it is now; and if there ever was a need for a commitment on the part of this government for a committee to study the future of one-industry towns such as Sudbury and the specific situation in Sudbury, it is now. For that reason I urge all members of this House to support the resolution brought before it by my colleague the member for Nickel Belt.

Mr. Wrye: Mr. Speaker, I want to join in this very unhappy debate, unhappy because the subject matter is one that must please no member of this assembly from any party. I want to make it clear at the outset that while we all have different approaches and different solutions, I am sure none of us in this House is pleased to see what is happening to Sudbury.

Although I am not from the north, I am one of those who is probably as sensitive as any to the problems of the Sudbury basin, because they are the problems of one-industry towns. The previous speaker spoke a little bit about the problems of one-industry towns in the north. I certainly agree that they have some very special problems, but I say to him that there are a lot of similarities between the Sudbury situation and that being experienced by one-industry towns in the south.

I want to start out by repeating some of the things the Minister of Labour said at the close of his remarks. I also want to remind the minister of something that happened almost four and a half years ago, and which he should have had in mind when he said:

"The theme with which I would like to close is simply this: In the months ahead we must do everything within our power to assist the casualties of this regrettable downturn" -- the downturn in the Sudbury area -- "in our economic fortunes and to advance programs and policies which will assist our mining industry to become once again the envy of the free world.

"I believe we have that capability and that the future will again belong to the Sudbury basin. However, it will take patience and fortitude and a co-operative spirit to reach that goal."

Some four and a half years ago, in November 1977, the terms of reference of a select committee were struck. I believe that while the present minister was not a member of the select committee, some of the present ministers were, including the Minister of Natural Resources. The select committee's terms of reference were:

"That a select committee of this House be appointed to inquire of senior officials of Inco Ltd. and its employees or their representatives, into the factors and considerations leading to the decision to announce layoffs at the Sudbury and Port Colborne Inco operations;

"And, further, to examine the future plans of the company in relationship to the effect on the Canadian operations."

Those terms of reference were later expanded to include Falconbridge. But some four and a half years later we are hit with a second layoff, and yet the government is no more prepared to deal with the situation in which we find ourselves today than it was some four and a half years ago, despite the work of an 18-man select committee, which toured the area, talked to officials on all sides and came up with a series of recommendations, which I will not get into in any detail because my friend the member for London North (Mr. Van Horne) intends to discuss them during his speech. But it seems to me we have in a sense buried our heads for far too long about the problem of one-industry towns.

The member for Algoma (Mr. Wildman) made some criticism of the comments by my friend the member for Kitchener-Wilmot that we can no longer ignore the fact that we are simply not going to have the employment base in those two companies that we once had; that the days were gone by when Inco and Falconbridge had a vast majority of the nickel market, and those days will never return. I fear, much as we would wish it, that we are simply never going to have the totality of jobs in that one industry which we had in the past.

I am reminded about the same problem we face in the automobile industry where, while we all hope the market will come back, and sooner rather than later, we will not have the total number of jobs we had in the past. It seems to me it is about time we started to admit that, however reluctantly, and got on with the job of getting new industries and a new employment base for the Sudbury area.

My friend the member for Algoma dismisses the new federal tax office, dismisses very quickly out of hand -- I do not have the exact number of jobs; it is anywhere between 1,000 and 3,000.

Mr. Martel: It is 750.

Mr. Wrye: My friend the member for Sudbury East says it is 750.

Mr. Martel: The public sector.

Mr. Laughren: The public sector picking up the pieces again.

Mr. Wrye: But it is an improvement over the nine jobs the minister announced. I agree with my friends the members for Nickel Belt and Sudbury East that it should not be only the public sector. Where the public sector needs to play a role and where this government has played no role is in beginning to lead -- and not just Inco and Falconbridge so they can diversify their operations and add to employment.

For example, my friend the member for Kitchener-Wilmot has suggested that if the two companies were to work together there could be significant new employment in the smelting area, rather than farming out that work and those jobs, as I understand it, to Norway. That is an area in which the government should be giving those companies direction and, since it has offered assistance to the companies in the past, indicating it expects something for the generosity of the taxpayers. That is, after all, who is really giving them the assistance.

It seems to me more than that is required. It is time we began to look at the problem of one-industry towns and the solution to those problems. The solution lies in diversification of the private sector. In addition, there are public sector jobs that can be placed in those towns; there are significant jobs in activities which the public sector is decentralizing and which could be placed in those communities. I have made this argument in favour of my own community, and I would make it in favour of Sudbury and other one-industry towns, such as Oshawa and Brantford. It is not a total answer but it is a beginning.

It is about time this government and all members of the Legislature began to address the problem of diversification. If we need to strike another select committee, then we should do so. But I would not want to see us strike a select committee, nor would I want to serve on it, if the recommendations of this new committee were to be ignored by the government as were those of the last committee.

Mr. Laughren: By both levels of government.

Mr. Martel: By both levels.

Mr. Wrye: My friends to the left suggest that both levels of government have ignored it. I am not sure they have. I am here in the Ontario Legislature, and let me confine my remarks to the provincial scene. I am sure my friend the member for Sudbury East could talk to one of his party members from the north in the federal House, but there are not any.

One of the things this government should have done, and has not done, is to take some short-term action. We have had a large number of layoffs. There is the one just announced at Falconbridge and the one that occurred at Inco, and now we have a labour dispute under way at Inco. I do not wish to get into that at this point, because the labour dispute is ongoing and I do not wish in any way to prejudice what we all hope will be an early end to that.

5 p.m.

Given the problems we had in that area, one would have thought that the government would have targeted the Sudbury basin for its summer job creation program, especially since it was clear that Inco and Falconbridge would not be hiring. But what has the government done? It has reduced funding for the summer Experience '82. It has reduced the amount of money it is spending. At the very time it should have been adding employment, it has reduced employment even further and added to the crisis which now afflicts that community.

In closing I want to say that I have toured the area and will be visiting Laurentian University. I have very great concern about the problems that all the young people of the north, particularly those in the Sudbury basin, are going to face this fall. Many of them may not be able to attend university because of what must be considered negligence on the part of this government in not providing the jobs which are needed in the area this summer.

Mr. Brandt: Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to participate in this debate although, along with other members, I do not particularly appreciate the subject matter we have to deal with in a resolution as serious and as critical as the one we have before us.

Mr. Martel: Why not? It is the real world.

Mr. Brandt: I realize it is the real world. I wish the resolution were not necessary. That is why I am saying I would prefer that we did not have to deal with this problem at this time. I am sure the member would share those sentiments with me.

I am concerned about some of the comments that have been made and hope that some of the speakers who follow me may be able to answer some of my questions and enlighten me on the situation. I do not live in the Sudbury area, nor am I informed on the details of the Falconbridge and Inco operations. I am quite prepared to admit that.

As an example of the questions I have, members from the north have referred to the profitability of the companies over the past decade and have used the figure of $1.5 billion. I do not know if that is a net profit and if it is before taxes. I think we should also ask whether any of those profits have been reinvested in capital improvements over the years, or whether it is money that has been distributed to the shareholders. I raise those as questions for clarification.

As the member for Windsor-Sandwich pointed out, the situation in Sudbury is particularly desperate because we are dealing with a one- industry town. I would suggest to the members from the north, who make a point of talking about the uniqueness of one-industry towns in the northern part of our province, that the situation is not unique to their particular communities. I could cite an example in my own riding, Sarnia is a one-industry town, to all intents and purposes. Although the petrochemical industry has been relatively strong over the years, it is based fundamentally on a relatively narrow segment of the market.

The problems of distance, climate and limited population, coupled with the difficulty of diversifying the industries, make the situation in the north more difficult than it is in Sarnia or in the county of Lambton. But I assure members that similar difficulties and problems face ridings such as mine. For years my area has invested considerable amounts of money to promote diversification of the industrial base by means of advertising and by contacts with other companies.

We happen to be in an area that is relatively attractive because of its proximity to population, its climate and the relatively short distance to other markets. But we too have had a problem not dissimilar to the one being faced by some of the northern members. To suggest through some rhetoric or good wishes on someone's part that there will be an expansion of the industry in the north simply because we wish it to be so, is unrealistic. It will not happen that easily.

When I look at the relative investment of various levels of government in the activities of the north, I do not think this government, represented by members on this side of the House, needs to take a back seat or to be embarrassed in any way, shape or form by what it has done relative to its investment in the north.

Look, Mr. Speaker, at the millions of dollars in the Board of Industrial Leadership and Development program and at government buildings, specifically in the Sudbury area, which help to alleviate the problem.

Mr. Martel: Bullroar. There are 19 jobs and there is not even a scientist in the building.

Mr. Brandt: I am quite prepared to admit that everything the government has done to this point is not going to offset the number of jobs that will be lost by the recent announcements, but it will go a long way towards alleviating at least some of the difficulties and the burden on the Sudbury area.

I listened to the Liberal member who spoke about the need for co-operation between industry and labour in that area. There is a real need for that kind of co-operation to start taking place.

Mr. Laughren: What we need is some action from the government.

Mr. Brandt: I suggest we will not get action by continuous and unrelenting corporate bashing such as some members have been doing. That is not the way to get action up there.

Let me ask this question: If a corporation were looking for a place to locate, would it want to be subjected to the kind of criticism coming from that side of the House on a daily basis? Would it go into that area?

Mr. Foulds: No, they'll go to Elmira.

Mr. Brandt: No. They would go where industry is welcome, where people know how to work and co-operate and get along with industry. That is what they are going to do.

Mr. Martel: I'll go to Elmira with the other eight employees.

Mr. Brandt: That is where industry locates, whether the member for Sudbury East likes it or not.

Mr. Wildman: That's why they've got nine jobs in Elmira.

Mr. Martel: You did it single-handedly.

Mr. Brandt: That is why I have $1 billion worth of industry under construction right now in Sarnia, thank you, and I will have another $1 billion before too long. The members opposite need not tell me about how to attract industry; I know all about it. One does not do it with continuous corporate bashing. That is not the way to bring industry into an area.

I am not attempting to be provocative, but apparently I am because I am telling the truth. Perhaps that is something members do not want to hear.

I have to agree with one of the Liberal speakers; he talked about the need for a cooperative atmosphere between industry and labour. The only way we are going to solve the very real problems of the north is to get away from this adversary system, this constant harangue about how bad corporations are, and sit down and try to work with them.

I fully appreciate that there are no easy or pat solutions and no quick fixes for the problems faced by the north generally or by the Sudbury area specifically. The only way to solve the problem is through people of reason, who know how to talk to industry and labour leaders, coming to a compromise and a consensus as to what has to be done to get the area back on the move again.

Mr. Martel: Mr. Speaker, I raised this matter in the House yesterday and I am delighted to take part in this debate.

If I could get the attention of the Minister of Labour (Mr. Ramsay), I want to tell him that I think what Falconbridge is doing is perverse. Let me put it in its proper context.

Six or seven weeks ago, Falconbridge said there would be a 10-week shutdown. Several weeks later, Falconbridge then said, "We have to close down Onaping mine but we are going to offer an early retirement plan and we are going to relocate everyone." Last week it got 157 people to take it and there is the headline. It says, "Layoff Avoided at Falco," because 157 people took the early retirement.

5:10 p.m.

I want to ask the Minister of Labour what happened from last Monday to last Thursday, a period of four days. What changed so dramatically in the world that on Monday the company said "No layoffs," and on Friday it said, "We will extend by a further three weeks, and seven months down the road we are going to have 1,000 people laid off."

Those members who sat on the last select committee will recall that Falconbridge could not forecast its way out of a wet paper bag, and admitted it when it came to markets. Yet in four days, the whole of the economic situation changed such that Falconbridge could predict seven months down the road it was going to have to lay off 1,000 workers. That is a lot of bull. It saw Inco could not get a contract through which offered very little.

I suggest to the Minister of Labour that Falconbridge's game at this time is to get a no-offer on the table and see if it can get away with it. I defy him to check Falconbridge's record on forecasting what the markets were going to be; he will find it is a disaster. Yet it is predicting that seven months from now it knows it is going to lay off 1,000 workers.

It is bad faith bargaining from the word go and I suggest to the minister he cannot let them get away with it, contrary to what his parliamentary assistant says.

Let me deal with Inco only for a moment because I do not want to deal with the strike situation. Inco misread the situation rather badly. After 8½ months Inco said to itself, "We can offer a nothing contract." It would not even come up to Algoma and would not even come up to Stelco in the pension scheme. It would not even roll in the cost of living allowance; and they wonder why they got a nothing contract.

I was talking to a bus driver today who, in this strike situation, came down with some kids and was driving a bus. He works at Inco. He said: "If they had not tried to rub our noses in it so bad, but they thought they had us where we would have accepted anything. The insult was too great."

Three years ago Inco said to itself, after 8½ months, "Those beggars will accept anything." I say to the minister all it had to do was offer a one-year contract, one I suspect with hardly a wage increase, and it would have got away with it. It thought it would rub their noses in it and that community did not matter to either one of those companies.

That is why I say to my friend the member for Sarnia he should not be up blunderbussing. He does not know the work records of those two companies and their attitudes to those communities and the people in those communities.

I hope my friend the member for Sudbury (Mr. Gordon) gets up and supports my bill next week because, before he came down here as a Progressive Conservative, he used to move with me to take over part of the control of Inco, I hope he is still with me as we buy it out.

I want to turn to a couple of things that bother me. I remind the Minister of Labour there are now five people in the cabinet who were on this select committee. They are now in cabinet and what have they done with all the recommendations? Nothing. There are a number of things the Minister of Labour could do.

First, he could get the rope testing program at Laurentian University where it belongs because most of the mining, two thirds of it, is done in the Sudbury basin. God only knows where that is going. It has been moving out of Toronto for a long time. Second, he should announce immediately the occupational health program that has been long in the works and that my friend Gordon has at last supported.

The Deputy Speaker: The member for Sudbury.

Mr. Martel: Pardon me; the member for Sudbury. He did not previously but he is now with us. We are delighted to have him with us. He never attended a meeting for three years. I am glad he is with us now. He writes all kinds of nice articles on how he is supporting that.

It is too bad the minister of mines did not stay around. I have been pursuing with him the gold problem because we have a mill north of my town that has closed down. It is slowly being torn apart while a company wants to mill gold in the Sudbury region: 50 jobs a year for the next two or three years. He has done nothing; I hope he will do those things, I say to my friend the minister.

Before I turn to the last select committee, let me just quote what the Sudbury and District Chamber of Commerce said a number of years ago. I hear all the platitudes about what the government has done. A couple of years ago the chamber of commerce put out a report called A Profile in Failure. It is in response to a government document.

Interjection.

Mr. Martel: Not my friends, yours.

"NORS" -- the northeastern Ontario regional strategy -- "is devoid of any strategy of development: physical, economic or social. It represents the pinnacle of intellectual bankruptcy of the southern establishment in even analysing the problems of the north, let alone dealing with them effectively. The only way to deal with NORS is to let it terminate as an expensive receptacle of dust until it glides gracefully or otherwise into oblivion."

And that is the 10 or 15 plans with respect to northeastern Ontario that this Tory government has introduced. We have got nothing.

Before I turn to the last select committee I say to the Minister of Labour, if I can get his attention again, that he and I sat on a select committee just a year ago. One of the major recommendations in the 1978 select committee report was:

"The government of Ontario and the government of Canada each should jointly create a team of government personnel who could readily delve into, weigh and recommend rational programs for the alleviation of large industrial layoffs where the situation so requires, and also that we should find out the financial data as to the costs of shutdowns and layoffs."

In fact, I think the Minister of Labour, to his credit, when he was on the select committee on plant shutdowns just a year ago -- I think he was with us; I will not say we were moving him to it -- agreed that we should know the social costs of those types of massive layoffs. I suspect they would far outweigh the cost of keeping any company going. The cost to communities, the cost to the province and the cost to the federal government far outweigh, in many instances, the cost of not allowing those companies to shut the door and walk away.

Interjection.

Mr. Martel: I suggest to the minister that he cannot speak from that place. If he wants to come down here and speak, I will let him.

I say that the costs of closures far outweigh the costs of keeping companies going, and we should at least look at that.

With respect to the other matters before the select committee last time, we recommended mining equipment. I hope the Minister of Labour has enough power in cabinet that when it comes time to finance mining equipment, if the federal government is not prepared to put its $2 billion in, this government will go it alone.

My friend the member for Nipissing (Mr. Harris) is a bit worried, but there was a trade deficit in mining equipment of $167 million in Ontario alone last year, and we should be able, by import replacement, not to affect the one in North Bay. In fact, with good common-sense planning we could have the one in North Bay and the one in Sudbury and we would still be short on import replacement if we used our noodles.

But you see, Mr. Speaker, we never get involved in economic planning. We live from one crisis to another as we stumble along, bumbling our way through, because Tories seem to think economic planning means government interference.

It is time to work with industry, not to give them the store as the Tories are wont to do, but to get involved in economic planning. We certainly have not done so up to this time, and there is nothing worse -- and the Minister of Labour knows it -- than the one-industry towns in northern Ontario, which are subjected to every fluctuation that goes on.

His government, despite study after study after study -- and I have been on three select committees dealing with the economy -- has never introduced a bloody thing -- never, whether it was Inco, whether it was the four-year select committee on economic and cultural nationalism or the select committee that did not finish reporting, which the minister was a member of. Despite all of that we have never introduced one recommendation from those various reports. We continue to stumble along with one-industry towns, and we do nothing.

Finally, the minister might just look at Burwash, because again he is in cabinet, and ask the government when we wiped out --

The Acting Speaker: We thank the honourable member, who has exhausted his time.

Mr. Van Home: Mr. Speaker, the motion we have heard in this last couple of hours, particularly highlighted through the comments of the member for Sudbury East, I think reflects the deep concern that all members of this House have for the northern community. What we feel in discussing this motion is not a concern singularly for Sudbury but a concern which is felt by all of us for all those communities of northern Ontario which are single-industry communities. By and large, that is most of the northern communities.

5:20 p.m.

The intent of the motion is to draw this concern before the House, to make the members from Sudbury and from the other mining communities and all the other communities of the north aware of our deep concern and also to make it abundantly clear to management that we have a concern. Beyond that, it is to underline to the government the need for some industrial plan for the north. This can only be achieved if we have this debate in all sincerity and with open minds.

I do not think there is any question about the devastating impact this particular event is having on Sudbury or, for that matter, the province. When we reflect on the happening in Sudbury of only a couple of years ago, many of us felt that it would never happen again and we would not feel the same urgency of debate, and perhaps we would not feel the same rush of emotion, because it would not happen. We felt it might come up to the 11th hour, but there would be some kind of agreement and we would not be facing it. Well, that moment has come and gone.

From experience within my family, some of whom are living in Sudbury, and beyond that from some friends who are in Sudbury, I learned that the day after this strike began there was a very noticeable downswing in the various stores and businesses in the community, and there was a noticeable upswing in people who were fast looking around for another job or who were fast regrouping to accommodate what they felt might be a long-time draw on their limited resources.

Let me give members only one example of a change in business up there: A small second-hand store realized considerably more business on the day after the strike began and many of the first-line, firsthand merchandisers realized a real drop in the business they were doing. This is a reflection on the effect this can have on the community.

Beyond that, I have to go the point the member for Sudbury East made in the last few moments he was speaking. He indicated he felt a strong need for some design or some plan. I would point out that we have here with us the Minister of Labour who, in this instance, is the lead minister, but we have this conundrum and we have had it for some time in this Legislature and in this province of another minister who may well be the lead minister. I am speaking of the Minister of Northern Affairs (Mr. Bernier). At what point does his influence or his ministry come into play?

When we discussed the estimates of the Ministry of Northern Affairs only a few weeks ago, that minister said something of which we were all very appreciative. I would like to quote a part of his opening comment:

"The north is blessed with abundant natural resources. These resources will always be the bedrock on which its economic strength rests. Our job is to make maximum and wisest use of these resources and to help distribute the benefits they create by increasing the north's share of the value added in terms of supplying services and products."

A little later in his opening comments, he said, "I think far more can be achieved by continuing to pursue a range of pragmatic, smaller strategies tailored to strengths and opportunities of specific regions and communities in the north as they really exist."

When one takes a look at statements such as that and when one takes a look at the recommendations that came out of the select committee that studied Inco and Falconbridge in 1978, I would submit to members that the time has come for this government, aided and abetted by all three parties -- because I do believe sincerely there is expertise within this chamber -- to work for the betterment of the north through designing a blueprint or plan of some long range that would assist it, particularly in its industrial development concerns.

Mr. Martel: Is that the five-year plan?

Mr. Van Horne: Mr. Speaker, the members on the left enjoy on occasion taking a shot or two at either me and my colleagues or the Liberals in Ottawa. But let me say that as long as we have an adversary attitude, we are not really going to get down to brass tacks. I submit we should put our differences aside and work co-operatively to do this.

The very first recommendation of that select committee was that the committee urged all levels of government to investigate and develop a program of industrial diversification in the Sudbury area. I submit that should be expanded, keeping in mind again that the report was dealing with Inco and Falconbridge, to concern itself with and to address itself to northern Ontario in all its regions.

Beyond that, I submit we can bash the feds all day long from this chamber, and chambers right across this country can do it, or we can try to come to their defence. Quite frankly, I do not think they give a continental which way we go at them -- to pat them on the back or stab them in the back -- until we come up with the determination collectively to say to those people, "Let's get serious about addressing ourselves to the needs of the north." I think we can do that.

I ask members, when was the last time this House collectively made such an approach to the feds? I have been here five years and I cannot remember. So we can sit and knock them all day long, but maybe it is time we showed ourselves to be sincere about what we would like to see done with the north.

The north is tired of being studied. The north has been studied to death. I think enough recommendations have come from studies, such as were done on Inco and Falconbridge through our select committee a few years ago, and through various other studies, that we could sift through them and come up with a plan that would be workable for the north. That is in the long range.

In the short range, I hope to see a solution to the immediate problems of Sudbury and the region there. I wonder what kind of answer the government had, in considering some form of action -- again addressing perhaps the longer range -- to the suggestion made through the Kirkland Lake Economic Development Commission, which recommended a separate ministry of mines. In accommodating the mining community, would that particular theme be a recommendation that could help in the long run?

With those words I will close off and again commend the member for Nickel Belt for bringing this debate to the chamber, and suggest to the minister that, if he is the lead person, he use his office as quickly as possible to try to bring a resolution to the situation in Sudbury.

5:30 p.m.

Mr. Gordon: Mr. Speaker, I was interested in the remarks made by the member for London North and I appreciate the concern he expressed for the Sudbury region and for northerners in general. At the same time I must inform him that some years ago a delegation went to Ottawa to meet with a very large contingent of the federal cabinet. They listened to our woes and our problems but in actual fact nothing positive happened.

Mr. Roy: They are like the provincial Tories.

Mr. Laughren: Is that why you quit the Liberal Party?

Mr. Gordon: As a matter of fact it has been the provincial government here in Toronto that has been most responsive to the needs of the north and to the needs of the people of Sudbury.

The member for Sudbury East delights in bringing up the matter of occupational health and safety. I assure him that I intend to make sure there is an occupational health and safety centre in Sudbury. I think it is long overdue and is just one of many things I am working to bring to that riding. I want us to do as much for that part of northern Ontario as we can possibly achieve.

As for my advocating a share in the ownership of Inco, any time a government puts money into a corporation as large as Inco it is time we took some kind of preferred interest in that company. That is something that springs from my social consciousness, which is something the New Democrats find hard to swallow. They seem to feel they are the only people who have any real feeling for people and social ideas, despite our party's efforts in that regard. We have brought in many social measures which have improved the quality of life of the people living in this province and will continue to do so.

I also found it interesting to hear one of the members talk about A Profile in Failure, which was the document put out by the Sudbury and District Chamber of Commerce some years back. There is no doubt that they pointed out some problems, but I find it amusing that the member says, "These are your friends, not mine" when just a few months ago at their party's annual convention they talked about being the friends of small business people. I think the problem with those people on the other side is that they are so choked with their own rhetoric they can not see the light that is at the end of the tunnel.

I would like to go on to talk a bit about Sudbury and its present situation. When 1,000 men are to be laid off as of January 3, 1983, in Sudbury region it will be a tremendous blow to our community. I am sure members on all side of this House will make every effort to try to cushion that blow.

A lot of people in this Legislature do not understand what has gone on in Sudbury over the past 50 or 60 years in which we have had these multinationals in our midst. Of course, the people who are here today, particularly the people in the NDP caucus, have done very little. More jobs have disappeared under their stewardship in the past 10 or 12 years than during any other period of time.

They were never able to bring anything to Sudbury. They were not the ones who established the resource machinery centre which will make such a difference to the north because it will concentrate on mining and forestry machinery, equipment and research and development. It will mean that over the next decade the north is finally going to receive the kind of --

lnterjections.

The Acting Speaker: Order. The member for Sudbury has the floor. Carry on.

Mr. Gordon: With the resource centre, the north is finally going to receive some of the diversification that we have called for over such a period of time. It is not due to these people sitting on the other side, because all they do is spread doom and gloom.

Nevertheless, I would also point out to the members that there are a lot of misconceptions about Sudbury and exactly what the Inco workers turned down. For the information of members in the Legislature late this afternoon, I would like to point out exactly what was offered to those Inco workers. One has to have some empathy for those people. One has to realize they have mortgages the same as everyone else, and they have bills to pay. I would like to read what they were offered.

The company has offered nothing in the following areas: wages -- first year, nothing; second year, nothing; third year, nothing; vacations, zero; vacation pay, zero; vision care, zero; COLA roll in, zero; shift premiums, zero; Sunday premiums, zero; benefits -- dental rate increase, zero; life insurance, zero; disability pension supplement, zero. One has to understand that when workers are offered something like that, given the kind of cost of living these people face today, they could not accept it; there is no way they could accept it.

If members want to understand the true feeling of both of those companies towards the people of Sudbury, I ask them to consider this one thing. In 1983 it is Sudbury's centennial. This morning I met with the Sudbury centennial committee in Sudbury. Do members know the grand total that was offered the people of Sudbury by Inco? Five thousand dollars for the 1983 Sudbury centennial. Members have to ask themselves if the bad blood that is there in the north has not been created by unfeeling corporate interests. We have to ask ourselves that question. It is a very serious question and one I would like members to ponder.

Interjections.

Mr. Gordon: Mr. Speaker, if I might continue.

The Acting Speaker: Certainly, carry on.

Mr. Gordon: I think it is quite evident that at present we have a very serious situation in Sudbury. I would like to ask all members, including this government, to do everything they can in order first, to, bring both sides in the strike, both Inco and the union, together. Second, in regard to the Falconbridge layoffs, I would like the Minister of Labour, Minister of Industry and Trade (Mr. Walker) and, of course, the Minister of Natural Resources to make every effort to try to cushion that blow as much as possible. Third, it is very important that we accelerate those job creation projects that will help the people of Sudbury to have a greater belief that the future is going to be strong and that we will prevail.

We are going to prevail, because there is one big difference between the people sitting on this side of the House and the people sitting in that corner over there. That is, we are not negative, we are very positive; we are interested in doing things, we are not interested in poor mouthing and tearing things down.

Mr. Foulds: Mr. Speaker, let me tell you, I rise in this debate with a sense of anger and rage as a northerner that we could have in both the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party such apologists for the corporate sector and such patronizing of people in northern Ontario. We do not need their bloody sympathy. We do not need their concern. We do not need their piddling, two-bit sympathy and concern. What we need is action for northern Ontario. What we need is jobs in northern Ontario.

5:40 p.m.

I am frankly fed up to the gills when we have wall-to-wall federal Liberals in northern Ontario who do damn all for our economy. I am fed up when we have apologists like the member for Sudbury, like the member for Sarnia and like the member for Kenora (Mr. Bernier) representing this government from northern Ontario, because what we have is people in this Legislature who are spokesmen for Queen's Park in northern Ontario, instead of having those people representing northern Ontario here at Queen's Park.

My colleague the member for Sudbury East quoted the chamber of commerce. It said the report of the northeastern Ontario regional strategy was the pinnacle of intellectual bankruptcy of the southern establishment. The kowtowing that we see from northern members in the other parties is the bankruptcy of the northern establishment and, frankly, that ain't good enough any more.

This government has been in power for 40 years. It has had the duty and the obligation to develop a mature economy for the Sudbury basin and for all of northern Ontario. It has failed in that duty and that obligation. This government has no goals, no aims, no strategy and, frankly, no guts when it comes to standing up to the corporate sector as expressed by Inco, Falconbridge and Caland.

In 1977 we had massive layoffs in the Sudbury basin and at least we had the Premier (Mr. Davis) and the Treasurer (Mr. F. S. Miller) in their places looking concerned and worried. They announced a cabinet committee that would investigate immediately.

Mr. Laughren: A select committee.

Mr. Foulds: No, it was a cabinet committee first and then a select committee. The cabinet committee met three times and then sunsetted it. They made the big announcement and then did nothing. If I were not in the Legislature, I would use stronger language than that. That ended in "blank" all. One can fill in the blank with whatever obscenity one wishes. They did nothing. The select committee met, worked hard and made recommendations in a report and this government and this Premier did nothing.

We do not need the government's sympathy any more. The government's job, whether at the federal level or at the provincial level, is to protect our heritage, to protect our economy, to use the resources of the north to reinvest in the north and to reinvest in this province. We have seen a total failure by the government in that regard.

Sudbury is a city of 95,000 people with a region of 150,000. That makes it about the 10th largest city in this country. I want to say that is the biggest one-industry city in Canada. Why in this day and age, after the companies have been mining in that city for over 80 years, is that city still so vulnerable? Why is it still a one-industry town? Why have this provincial government and the federal government not forced a diversification of industry there? Why have they not created a mining machinery industry that would create 10,000 jobs in the north? Why have they not stopped this silly business of allowing mining exemptions time after time that exported jobs every time one of those exemptions was allowed?

Why have not the Minister of Northern Affairs, the Minister of Natural Resources, the Treasurer or the Minister of Industry and Trade, whom I call nine-job Walker, done something concrete to create a mature economy, one which would have a manufacturing sector in the north so we could live lives of dignity in northern Ontario.

Why can we not have ministers in this government who are not simply patsies for the Premier? Why can we not have ministers from northern Ontario who speak for the north instead of apologizing for the government in the north? Why can we not have ministers of the crown who do something to create jobs instead of, if the minister will forgive me, delivering fire trucks to little unorganized communities? I do not mind those fire engines but I would surely like to see them creating some jobs, and they do not solve the problem.

We have had a little claptrap here about our working co-operatively together. The government has a responsibility to show leadership and it fails. For years, Inco was allowed to get away without even paying property tax in the Sudbury area. Even now when they pay property tax, after the last decade or so, they pay it only on the A-frame and the property and not on the real development which is under the ground.

Atikokan closed down and this government stood idly by. Moose Mountain closed down. This government closed down Burwash and stood idly by. Last Friday, after Falconbridge announced one quarter of its work force, 1,000 people, would be laid off, the Minister of Industry and Trade had the nerve to get up in the House and make a major government announcement of nine jobs in Elmira. Frankly, I was ashamed for him because that is the sum and substance of the government response.

All the people of northern Ontario want is a fair break, our share of the economic pie we work for, that our miners go under the ground for, and what does the government give us? They give us excuses in this bloody debate. They do not give us any action. They do not give us any concrete steps, and they have not got the guts to get those companies to the bargaining table and to bargain in good faith.

This government will buy into Suncor, so presumably it has no ideological hangups about public ownership. Why does it not get into public ownership? I make it as a concrete suggestion. Why does this government not get into public ownership in the resource sector, in nickel, in uranium? Why does it not get into public ownership in the mining machinery manufacturing industry in northern Ontario?

That is the kind of action that northerners need. That is the kind of action we would want, and that is the kind of action we would respect. At the present time, I must say as a northern member, I have absolutely no respect for the government of this province in terms of its inaction over the economy of the Sudbury basin in northern Ontario and I have absolutely no respect and no faith in the federal Liberal government inaction which is creating unemployment. In fact, the high interest rate policy of the federal Liberals, aided and abetted by this government, creates the unemployment in the north and the rest of the province.

5:50 p.m.

Mr. J. A. Reed: Mr. Speaker, my words will be brief and to the point in this debate on the problem in northern Ontario which has been persistent over many years, the problem of one-industry towns. When the economy is in decline, some of those towns die or are injured to the point where they never really recover when the cycles turn up.

Hon. Mr. Gregory: You are going to have to speak a little louder. We can't hear you.

Mr. J. A. Reed: I am sorry I am not really in tune today to speak at the level the previous speaker spoke at, but I trust the sound system will carry these words of whatever wisdom they may hold.

The problem of one-industry towns in northern Ontario has been with us for many years. I was interested today in one of the remarks the Treasurer of Ontario made when he was addressing the opposition. He said: "You people are there. Your job is to be critical." In the same breath, other members of the cabinet have said many times, "Why don't you have anything constructive to offer?" When it suits the government's purposes, it wants to have its cake and eat it too.

However, in the past five or six years this party has offered ideas, suggestions and concepts to the government through various ministries that could go a long way in strengthening the economy of northern Ontario in a permanent way. I would suggest to the Minister of Labour, who is here in the House actively participating in this debate, that resource development in northern Ontario on a specific and broad-based basis holds the key, not only to the economic recovery and health of northern Ontario but to the economic recovery of all of Ontario.

It is interesting that when we present ideas to the government it considers them to be either pie in the sky or unworkable. Yet within a few years the ideas are proven in practice. My colleague the member for London North made a good suggestion. He said, "Is it not time we pool the ideas, talents and suggestions of all the political parties and persuasions and begin to weed out the political rhetoric that is supposed to make us shine in one area as opposed to the other parties' stance, posture and so on?" It seems to me in the case of this economic decline in northern Ontario, the political posturing aspect is a serious waste of time when one understands the tremendous impact this downturn is having at the present time.

Through the years, we suggested that resource development in new areas had to take place. I would like to refer to some specifics I have raised in the House many times. I hope the new Minister of Labour will listen to them and to the ideas and opportunities they present for northern Ontario.

We have suggested to this Legislature that $11 billion is leaving the province annually for the purchase of energy -- money that is never returned to the province. One of the main thrusts in resource development in northern Ontario can be the conversion of resources to energy resources.

When this concept was first presented to the government, I remember the various ministers saying: "You are talking about things that are economically unsound. They are unreasonable. They do not work." As the years have gone by, one by one they are being proven to be workable, sound and in the best interests of whatever jurisdiction they are being developed in.

I will cite some specifics. Ontario has the largest inventory of peat in Canada and the third largest in the world. Yet where is peat utilization and development taking place in Canada? It is taking place very actively in New Brunswick and Quebec. Hydro-Québec is involved in the utilization of peat. We know the technology is in place around the world. I believe there are 86 electric power plants operating on peat in the Soviet Union at present, and a number in Finland and in Ireland. Our approach to peat utilization has been that it is not really workable. We import the resources from outside the province to run coal-fired or oil-fired generating plants.

Let me give members just one example. In the town of Hearst, among all those industries that are faltering and closed down, there is one that is operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week with its full complement of employees. That industry is the Bioshell wood pelletizing plant. This plant can produce an energy resource in competition with the price of natural gas for use either industrially or domestically. The plant is so successful that a commitment has been made by that company to build 10 plants in Quebec and Ontario by 1985, and it is hoped another 10 by 1990.

Yet we have done virtually nothing to assist in the development and exploitation of that great energy resource. I visited Hearst last November and saw that very successful technology in operation. It is not a difficult technology. It is very straightforward. It takes what is now a totally wasted material, one that is given a negative value by the forest industry, and turns it into something of very positive value, a value that replaces dollars that now leave the province and go out of our jurisdiction.

I know the Minister of Labour is aware that the economic spinoff effect of doing business in one's own bailiwick means that if we spend $1 here instead of out there, we get from $3 to $5 return in increased demand for goods and services. Yet that $11 billion is allowed to leave our province year after year without a serious effort being made to recover at least some of it.

I am going to bring up another old saw I have spent years trying to persuade this government to get involved in. It is the development of methanol from forest waste. It was with some concern last February that I noticed the government of Quebec signed an agreement with the federal government to develop that technology there. The front end of that technology has already been developed in Ontario, but it is leaving us.

So many of those technologies are applicable and necessary if we are going to experience the kind of economic recovery we need, not only in the north, but in the whole province. Imagine, Mr. Speaker, if we were able to turn over 50 per cent of the money that is now leaving the province inside Ontario. There would be no demand for deficit budgeting any longer. That would be finished and unemployment would be very low in this province. There is a tremendous future for Ontario. It lies with imagination and creativity and the courage and political will of ministers of this government to stand where nobody has stood before and to move into these new areas so we can once again take our rightful place as economic leaders in this country.

The Deputy Speaker: Thank you. Time for this order of business has expired.

The House recessed at 6 p.m.