THRONE SPEECH DEBATE (CONTINUED)
The House resumed at 8 p.m.
THRONE SPEECH DEBATE (CONTINUED)
Resuming the debate on the amendment to the amendment to the motion for an address in reply to the speech of the Honourable the Lieutenant Governor at the opening of the session.
Mr. Swart: Mr. Speaker, in one sense I am happy to participate in this debate on the speech from the throne. I suppose it does give a person the opportunity to bring the problems, as we see them, before the government and to implore it to take some action on those problems.
In another sense, I frequently feel it is something of a waste of time. Very few people, if any, apart from those who are in the House, and those numbers are not usually great in an evening sitting, will know what I or, for that matter, any other member of this House says when taking part in the debate.
Most of all, I suppose one feels it is very futile to attempt to move the government from its position. We know it is hopeless. It does not matter what we say or what points we make, the government is going to stay on its course.
There is not much point in debating the speech from the throne per se, to deal with items in that speech, because there is very little there. There is tinkering but not really any new programs of substance. Most of it is window-dressing.
Mr. Stokes: Reruns.
Mr. Swart: Yes, reruns and pious statements that will never reach fruition.
To me, there is only one fundamental issue in our society in this province, and for that matter in most of the other provinces in this country in varying degrees, and that is the state of the economy.
I do not think there is much question that most of the other problems in our society stem from the state of the economy and the fact that we have quite massive unemployment. The economy is running at only 75 per cent of capacity and therefore the funds are not there to do the things that perhaps even some of the members on that side of the House would like to do.
We can talk about community and social services. We know the desperate plight many people are suffering, particularly the single-parent families, because of the inadequacy of the social programs at this time, whether that be family benefits or welfare. For instance, in this coming year the welfare budget in Niagara region is being increased by 25 per cent. That in itself is an indication of the seriousness of the problem, but because they are increasing it by that amount to deal with the emergency and the desperate situations, they have to and do cut corners wherever they can. The result is a lower standard of living for those who are on public assistance.
We also know this state of the economy has a tremendous effect on housing. I doubt whether there is a member in this House, whether or not he has a constituency office, who has not been approached by numbers of people in his constituency who are losing their homes because they are out of jobs and can no longer keep up the mortgage payments. The state of the economy means that municipalities, because of the calls on their limited revenues, are not going to proceed with the public housing they otherwise would proceed with. All our housing suffers quite substantially because of the state of the economy.
That is also true of health services. I hear the Minister of Health (Mr. Norton) and, for that matter, other members of the government, including the Premier (Mr. Davis), stating over and over again that we have the best health service in the world. I want to tell the members, that is a sham. If we have the best health service in the world, I do not like to think what the situation is in many other jurisdictions.
In the Welland area, apart from unemployment, there is no single problem that creates as much public interest and condemnation as the health situation, and particularly the shortage of hospital beds in that area.
I raised this in the House the other day with the Minister of Health. I pointed out to him that it is common practice at Welland County General Hospital to have people in beds in the halls. That is normal. Most of the time there is somebody in a bed in the hall in the Welland hospital. On weekends, particularly when they bring in patients on a Sunday evening to be ready for operations on Monday or Tuesday, there are several patients in beds and some on stretchers. Even after they have their operations, there are no beds for them and frequently they go back on stretchers for one, two or three days.
A recent editorial in the Evening Tribune puts the situation in perspective fairly well. I want to quote a few paragraphs from this editorial, which appeared in the Evening Tribune in Welland, dated Thursday, March 22, 1984. There has not been as much space given to any other issue in the Welland area in the last three months as has been given to the rather critical situation in our hospital with regard to the shortage of beds and the shortage of staff to service the beds we have. Let me quote from this editorial.
"People who are admitted to a hospital usually expect three things -- fast emergency help, stability as soon as possible, and comfort in the hospital when the emergency is over. None of these things can be taken for granted in Welland today...
"Last Thursday, nine people waited all night for hospital beds after being treated in emergency. They waited on beds in the emergency department's observation room and on stretchers in the hallway. Two of the people whose relatives had to wait a long time to get beds were so upset about it they contacted the Tribune.
"One woman who waited in emergency was shuffled from bed to bed in those days that followed because of the shortage. Another man was injured while lying on a stretcher in a hallway for hours waiting for a bed. Hardly comfort, or stability...
"The hospital's executive director, Frank Barton, said he didn't think the hospital could have handled a traffic accident last week, if six or eight people had been injured...
"It would be wrong to blame the hospital. Hospital staff work hard to make sure patients are inconvenienced as little as possible. Hospital administrators have long complained about the shortage of beds, and feel they are not being supported by the health council, which makes recommendations to the Ministry of Health about the needs of the region."
The editorial concludes with this paragraph:
"Something must be done about this situation. If the hospital cannot get the attention of the Ministry of Health by itself, maybe the citizens of Welland should help by telling their representatives and the provincial government they think hospital services should be a priority."
That comes from a paper that is a long way from being considered radical. The hospital bed situation in that area is desperate. The irony of it all is that they have 60 beds closed down. They made some of that floor into administrative offices, but there are still 30 beds that could be opened up, as the administrator says, within weeks to provide that very necessary hospital service.
8:10 p.m.
I am glad to see the member for Carleton (Mr. Mitchell) here, because he was apprised of this situation when he was down in Welland not long ago.
Many of the active treatment beds are occupied by people who should be in long-term care, but there is no place to put them. Although the health council in the region now has recommended an additional 75 or so beds to be located in Fort Erie and Niagara Falls, the construction has not even been approved yet and so has not started. It will be at least two years before we get those beds. Here we have 30 beds in Welland that could be opened up immediately to relieve this situation, but the government simply refuses to act.
It got so bad that the Conservative association in my riding asked for a meeting with the hospital board. The member for Carleton, as parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Health, was down there. I am not sure exactly what he told them, but the report in the paper next day said there was little hope given that there would be any additional beds opened up soon in the area.
Mr. Stokes: Why did he go down there?
Mr. Swart: He was down on another legitimate purpose. The Conservative association in the Welland-Thorold riding took the opportunity to meet with him.
I must also point out, although the paper may have backed off a little bit, that this meeting was in camera; the press were not allowed in to this meeting. When there is a public concern, it is public business. Those kinds of meetings should be open to the public, who are suffering because of the lack of beds.
I hope the parliamentary assistant will give some very real further consideration to recommending to the minister that those 30 beds be opened up immediately. They are desperately needed. There is no question about that.
Mr. Renwick: Does the member for Carleton want to give that commitment now?
Mr. Mitchell: I went down and met with the people and listened to their concerns so I could report to the minister.
Mr. Speaker: Order.
Mr. Swart: In any event, this matter has been taking the most space in the paper of any issue over the last several months, and well it should.
There was one man who drowned in a bathtub at the Welland hospital last summer. I am sure the parliamentary assistant will have heard about this. At the time the doctor said it was suicide. He was a 55-year-old man who was in the psychiatric wing. There was a coroner's inquest on him, and the St. Catharines Standard reported correctly as follows:
"The psychiatric ward of the Welland County General Hospital needs more nurses, a five-man jury recommended unanimously at the end of a three-day inquest into the bathtub drowning of a 50-year-old Sherkston man. After deliberating for 90 minutes, the jury rejected a ruling by Welland coroner Dr. Jacques Dubois that Gordon Jinks committed suicide on September 19, 1983."
Here is another significant little item in that news account: "The jury also said that a patient alarm system that has not worked since 1976 must be repaired." It had not been repaired because it would have cost $60,000. The hospital administrator also says this alarm system, although it is of some benefit, is not foolproof. Since 1976, they have not been able to find the $60,000 to repair the alarm system that might have saved this man's life. Now, both the hospital and the doctors are being sued by that family for negligence and wrongly declaring it to be a suicide.
In the situation with regard to the Welland County General Hospital, it should be pointed out that of all the class B hospitals in this province, the Welland hospital has the lowest operating cost. The cost at Welland last year was $187 per day. The average for Ontario was $246 per day.
The Welland hospital was operated much more cheaply than the average for Ontario hospitals, but it gets only the same five per cent increases, or whatever the case may be, as the other hospitals. Here is a hospital that has been the most efficient of any hospital in this province, and it is denied the right to open 30 more beds even though all of the evidence found by anybody who has examined it said these beds should be opened.
I am not going to dwell any more on that hospital situation in Welland, but I hope the parliamentary assistant will have some discussion with the minister and perhaps something can be resolved to get at least those 30 beds opened.
Mr. Mitchell: We never promised miracles.
Mr. Speaker: Order.
Mr. Swart: It is going to be a miracle if no one else dies because of the inadequate number of hospital beds and the service that can be given in that hospital now. I think the minister should move on it.
I want to point out that once again this situation is largely a result of the state of our economy. I am not at all sure but that this government likes the opportunity to cut back on the expenditures of hospital and health services. It never did like the public health system, and I am sure it is glad to get the opportunity to cut back on it, but to a very large extent this is a result of the economic state we are in. It is the unfortunate and the poor who are carrying the burden in this.
There was an article in the Globe and Mail on March 22, 1984, headlined "Poor Bearing Main Burden of Job Lack." It stated:
"The poor are bearing more than their share of unemployment, a Statistics Canada survey indicates.
"The special study, titled The Link Between Economic Hardship and Labour Market Problems in Canada, shows that 25 per cent of the people living below the poverty line were out of work some time during 1981. That compares with 16 per cent for those living above the poverty line.
"These findings appear to contradict government denials that using high interest rates to fight inflation, even though it increases unemployment, is putting the burden of the battle on the backs of the poor."
That shows it is the poor who are carrying the main burden created by the unemployment situation we have in this province.
In Niagara, we know the effects of unemployment almost better than anyone else in the province. During the last couple of years our average unemployment rate has hovered around 17 per cent; sometimes it has been as low as 13 per cent and at other times it has been as high as 21 percent.
8:20 p.m.
As though that was not bad enough, less than two weeks ago an announcement was made that the Hart and Cooley Manufacturing Co. Ltd. plant in Fort Erie was closing down. The plant had been there for 80 years. Significantly, it was bought last summer by a large US corporation and now is being shut down. Just 18 months ago the plant had 105 people working there. A few jobs are going to be opened up in another branch of the plant in Oakville, but most of those people will be out of work.
Everybody across the province knows that just a few days ago Inco announced it is eliminating the jobs of 490 people in that area.
In the Niagara region in particular, but as a province and as a nation we are in the midst of a very serious depression and it does not matter how it is dressed up. An awful lot of people are hurting and the level of unemployment and underemployment is intolerable in this nation and in this province. When 12.3 per cent of the people are out of work in Canada and something like 9.9 per cent are out of work here -- those are the latest figures for this year -- we should be ashamed that this is the situation in a place like Canada.
Although we say we have 12.3 per cent out of work, or 9.9 per cent in this province, the fact is, of course, that many people are working now. They have been laid off at plants, have taken much less remunerative jobs and have moved down below the poverty level because of that.
It is true that neither the Conservatives here nor the Liberals in Ottawa -- and the other way around, neither the Conservatives in Ottawa nor the Liberals in Ontario -- are really going to do anything about it. None of them believes in real economic reform; none of them believes in the degree of economic reform that is needed; both parties support the status quo, and the status quo simply is not working.
Mr. Nixon: Democratic socialism does not seem to be the thing that is selling.
Mr. Swart: We will come to that in a minute.
Last fall Pierre Berton spoke to the graduating students up at McMaster University and he said something I think is worth repeating here.
"'Imagination and hard work will be needed to pull the country out of the economic woes it is now suffering,' warned Berton. 'I hope you will remember,' Berton told the more than 560 graduating students, 'if we are going to prosper, we are going to have to change the system.' He warned, 'The thing I am frightened of is if you do not change the system, the system will change you.'"
There are an awful lot of people in our society, whether they are young people unable to get jobs, whether they are people who have lost their homes or whether they are the farmers who have gone bankrupt, who have had their system changed because we did not change the system of this country long ago to a democratic socialist society.
Canada and the United States are really the bastions of the old private enterprise system and we are paying a pretty tremendous price for it. Canada and the United States, unlike almost all other democracies in the western world, have never had democratic socialist governments, federally at least.
It is worth pointing out that for at least four decades the United States and Canada were first and second in average standard of living in the world. Rightly so; they should be with the natural resources they have had and still do have to a very large extent. The World Bank reports now that Canada is 11th in average standard of living and the United States is ninth.
Let me quote from an Associated Press article:
"'Canada ranked 11th among industrialized countries in terms of per capita income,' the World Bank says. 'Ranked seventh a year ago, the United States has been overtaken by France and the Netherlands,' the international lending organization said Sunday in its annual world development report. The rankings are based on a country's gross national product divided by its population and expressed in terms of United States dollars."
It goes on to list the per capita incomes. Canada is $10,130; the United States, $11,360; the United Kingdom, $7,920; the Netherlands moved to eighth place, $11,470, and France was at $11,730. Switzerland remained first with a per capita gross national product of $16,440, followed by West Germany with $13,590, Sweden with $13,520, Denmark with $12,950, Norway with $12,650 and Belgium with $12,180.
All those countries have passed Canada and the United States in the average standard of living. If we went to the minimum standard of living --
Mr. Nixon: They have limits on debate.
Mr. Swart: If we were over there we would not have so much to debate. It would not take nearly as long to point out all the things that are wrong in our economy.
Mr. Martel: Great Britain?
Mr. Swart: I did not hold Great Britain up as an example; the member can be sure of that.
Those countries have not moved in front of us because they have more natural resources per capita, especially oil. Those countries do not have any oil. They do not have anything like the natural resources we have here. They have not moved in front of us because they were spared the ravages of war and we were subject to them. Most of those countries were decimated in the war years. They do not have more land per capita than we have here. They are densely populated countries. I suspect those people are not any more ambitious than we are in this nation.
The reason they have moved ahead is because they have a substantially different economic system from what we have in this nation. They have had democratic socialist governments. Therefore, they have a large measure of economic planning. Once all these reforms are put in by democratic socialist governments, such as the public auto insurance in Saskatchewan, the health plan or whatever the case may be, when right-wing governments get back in power they do not dare to throw them out.
The same thing has happened over there and their standard of living has increased quite dramatically, surpassing this continent where we have everything we need to give us a high level of prosperity.
I became a democratic socialist during the Great Depression, 45 to 50 years ago. My father lost his farm during the Depression in 1934. He could not sell his produce and we were feeding our milk to the pigs. I went out and got a job as a hired man on a farm for a number of years after that. I was one of the lucky ones. I got a job peddling milk.
I kept asking myself a number of questions. I had been raised on the farm and I saw my father feeding the milk to the pigs. When I was in the milk wagon I was driving past factories that were closed down or were working only two or three days a week. I was going to a doorstep and a housewife with two, three, four or six children would often say to me, "Mr. Swart, leave only a pint of milk today," or "Leave a quart of milk today; the welfare cheque has not come in," or "My husband is working only two days this week." I asked myself --
Mr. Nixon: Bob Welch was on the bread wagon in the very same community.
Mr. Swart: If one compares the size of the member for Brock (Mr. Welch) with me, he is better off to drive a milk wagon than a bread wagon.
I asked myself some basic questions. What was wrong with our society? We had farmers who could produce everything we needed in our society, all the food we could possibly want. We had factories that could produce the services and commodities the public wanted and we had people wanting to work in those factories. We had all the ingredients but they were not being put together.
8:30 p.m.
In my home there were generally only two subjects discussed at the dinner or supper table; one was the state of our society and the other was religion. One of my earliest political recollections is of when Tommy Douglas was in the federal House. It was a Depression year, and he was demanding that the Minister of Finance take certain actions to help the unemployed, to help the farmers who were destitute.
After he had made his speech as only Tommy Douglas can, the minister got up and said: "You know, that young man from Weyburn really does not know much about economics. There isn't any money to do those kinds of things. If you think there is that kind of money, you go out and find the money tree."
Tommy Douglas got up and said, "I know one thing for sure: if a war is declared tomorrow, you will find that money tree."
Only a few years later, war was declared. Within six months -- I remember this very well -- everybody was working. We had built new houses, we had built new factories and everybody was employed. Not only that, but even though we were destroying half our production, everybody had a higher standard of living. That, of course, raised many more questions about why we could not do this to meet human needs in peacetime.
The government did not find a $10-billion money bush with which to do all of this. There was no wholesale nationalization of industry. That part of the economy was not really changed, basically; private enterprise still functioned. In fact, most of the companies were a lot more profitable than they had been during the Depression years. Do members know something else, too? Unions thrived.
I remember those Depression years very well and the right-wingers in those days said exactly the same thing as the right-wingers are saying today: "One of the reasons we have this Depression is that unions are getting too strong and are demanding wages that are too high. That is what is driving the price up so people cannot buy what we are producing."
They said: "We have mechanization now that we never had before. My goodness, now we have these power shovels and all of these things; people used to have to do the work. We can never expect there will be full employment again." Of course, we heard the same old line: "People really do not want to work. There is work there if people really want to go out and work."
As I say, our standard of living increased dramatically even though half our production was being used for war. All of this was possible and was achieved because one fundamental change was made: no longer was profit the sole deciding factor in the economic decisions that were being made. There was economic planning by government; there were national goals; there were priorities and needs to be met. The major economic decisions were made on the basis of meeting those needs and achieving those goals, and really all that was changed was the decision-making process.
While Liberal and Tory governments participated in those war years, involved themselves, exercised control of the economy in the public interest, they totally reject it at any other time. That is really the fundamental difference between the Progressive Conservative Party, the Liberal Party and the New Democratic Party in this House.
The government party and the Liberal Party believe that the major economic decisions should be left to the private sector -- for example, the amount and direction of public investment, the processing of our own natural resources and whether we have our natural resource machinery industry; leave all of those to the private sector to make the decisions on the basis of how much is in it for them.
By contrast, we in the NDP would ensure that those basic decisions were made on the basis of what is good for Canada, what is good for employment, what is good for productivity and what is good for fairer sharing; the private sector can then fit into that framework.
If we wanted to pick out one example of this, we could certainly use the example of high interest rates. Private decisions made and supported by the federal government, to a very large extent, have brought us to our present situation where we are running at only 75 per cent of capacity. There is massive unemployment and farmers are going bankrupt and being forced out of business by the financial squeeze.
Everyone knows high interest rates clobbered the economy. I do not think there is a person in this House who would not admit that. That was the major cause of unemployment. People could no longer build and buy houses. The construction industry went flat. Farmers could no longer buy farm machinery. Farmers in this nation cut their purchases of new farm machinery by more than half between 1978 and 1982. There were 35,000 bankruptcies last year, all because the government in Ottawa, supported by this government, would not intervene to keep interest rates at a reasonable level.
They said we had to have high interest rates to fight inflation. In a very real sense we did not have inflation. What we had in our society was price escalation, because the real definition of inflation is too much money chasing too few jobs. We had that in wartime and we put on price controls. But at no time in the last two, three, four, five, six, seven or eight years have we had too much money chasing too few goods. If one had the money, one could go out and buy anything. There was no shortage of goods. What we had in our society was price escalation.
The federal government said -- backed by the Tories in Ottawa and by the Tories here -- we must fight this inflation by shrinking the money supply and raising the interest rates. Never has there been such a phoney excuse for bringing so many people to poverty in this nation. The net result of that and the other private sector multinational corporate decisions is, according to the latest figures, an economy running at 76.1 per cent of capacity. That is inflationary in itself. The unit costs are a lot higher for any business that runs at only 76 per cent of capacity. That is inflationary when the price of goods is compared to what people are earning. That spread widens because we have the economy running at only 75 per cent of capacity.
Having 1.5 million people, including 17 per cent of our young people, unemployed is many times worse than the so-called inflation we have. To a very large extent, that is the direct cause of the real inflation, of the price of goods going up related to the average income.
I want to say categorically that massive unemployment is unnecessary. It is devastating to the people involved and no humane society ought to tolerate it. There is nothing so destructive to a person's wellbeing.
As proof of this, I would like to refer to a number of items that have been in the papers recently. On November 22, 1983, the Toronto Star headline read, "Unemployment Destroys Families." It stated, "Unemployment has become the greatest threat to family stability in Canada and the United States in the past two years, according to a survey of family service agencies in both countries."
8:40 p.m.
We all remember when the SKF Canada Ltd. factory here in Toronto closed down and laid off its workers. There was a report in the St. Catharines Standard on April 10, 1982, of a study done by York University sociologists which said, "Laid-off workers not only have a difficult time finding new employment, but some face stress levels equal to divorce or the death of a spouse, a study of the social effects of a shutdown of a factory shows, sociologists at York University found."
They go on to say: "Half of those unemployed believe no one cares about them. Nearly one fourth of them admit wondering whether life is worth living. More than 41 per cent said unemployment was equal in stress to divorce or death of a spouse."
Finally, I have a newspaper item here from January 11, 1983, on a study that was done in the United States on the effect of unemployment. It was done by Mr. Morton Owen Schapiro, who teaches in the economics department at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, and Dennis Ahlberg, who teaches in the industrial relations centre in the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.
They say this in the report: "The obvious costs we pay for current economic policies are lost jobs, lower income and declining production. However, there is a lesser-known darker side to unemployment. Rising unemployment has been found to be associated with increases in homicide, admissions to mental institutions, alcoholism, cardiovascular disease arising from greater stress and, the ultimate cost, an increase in suicide.
"In fact, the most recent estimate from the United States National Centre for Health Statistics shows a 13 per cent increase in the suicide rate in the United States."
These two professors did the most comprehensive study that has ever been done on the effects of unemployment on people. I want to read one final paragraph.
"An annual unemployment rate of 10 per cent would currently lead to 1,280 more suicides in the United States during the year than would have occurred with an annual unemployment rate of six per cent."
What price life, by permitting the levels of unemployment we have in our society? The same desperation we see with the unemployed -- I see it in my constituency office week after week -- applies to the farm community.
Statistics show that in Ontario there are something like 19,000 loans to Ontario farmers by the Farm Credit Corp. Of those farmers, 3,500 are in trouble. In January 1982, 17 per cent, approximately 3,500 of all of those farmers who had FCC loans, were behind in their payments by a total of $20 million. By 1983 that had risen to 18 per cent, and they were behind in their payments by $30 million. On January 1 of this year it was 18.6 per cent, and they were behind in their payments to the tune of $40 million. It had doubled in two years.
Of course, we are well aware of increasing bankruptcies among farmers. It is way higher last year than it was the year before, higher the year before than it was the year before that, and in Canada as a whole in the first two months of this year it was 50 per cent higher than in the first two months of last year.
Talk to Concerned Farm Women, an organization that was formed because of the desperate situation, or talk to Women for Survival of Agriculture -- I believe they now call it Support of Agriculture. Talk to the Farm Survival people. All of these groups have come into being because of the desperate situation and because of governments that will not help them out in their desperation. Talk to the farmers' union or the Ontario Federation of Agriculture, which I presume is considered the most moderate of any of the farm organizations. We met with them just a week ago.
We could not talk to those people, especially the women on that executive, without the pathos coming through about what is happening to their farm communities, their homes and their way of life.
We know there are two main problems facing farmers now, which have been facing them for the last two or three years. One is the high interest rates I have talked about. There is a shortage of credit. The shortage of Farm Credit Corp. credit is even greater at present. The other problem they have been faced with is the inadequacy of the return on their produce and the need for income stabilization.
To resolve these problems means interfering in the marketplace on behalf of the farmers and others. We have a 40-year-old government in this province that has simply refused to do that. The government simply will not interfere in interest rates, nor will it implement an income stabilization program for farmers.
Everybody in the House knows the other major agricultural provinces have done it. There are income stabilization programs in Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Alberta and Quebec. It is not unfair to point out the first was started in the New Democratic Party province of Saskatchewan, where there is a very adequate stabilization program. They did not mind interfering in the marketplace if the need was there for the farmers, and they put in the income stabilization program.
When the NDP was defeated in Saskatchewan and a Conservative government came In, it kept the program. The deputy minister from there moved over to the NDP government in Manitoba, and it put in the same kind of program there. Quebec followed suit with a different type of program. It has a general program of its own, and Alberta has put in something of a partial program. The farmers in this province desperately need that sort of thing. Instead of getting that, they get a stone from the government. More and more of them are finding themselves in very desperate situations.
Mr. Nixon: That sounds like Tommy Douglas. You ask for bread and get a stone.
Mr. Swart: You ask for bread and get a stone. It is true, though. Even the member would agree it is true. The hog producers and the red meat producers have been asking for a stabilization program and they have not got one cent of that stabilization program.
A few weeks ago I called Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Alberta to find out what the price of hogs was stabilized at. I found out, while the market here is $62.50, in Saskatchewan the price is stabilized at $74, in Alberta at $76 and in Manitoba at $77.
Mr. Nixon: That is the answer to the question, "Whatever happened to Dennis Timbrell?"
Mr. Swart: He is not in here tonight. I think it will happen to the Minister of Agriculture and Food (Mr. Timbrell), because across this province -- we found this out when we went on our tour -- not only has the shine worn off, but there is real anger towards the Minister of Agriculture and Food for letting down the farm community.
The Ontario Agricultural College at Guelph, the section of the university that deals with agriculture, reported just at that time -- I believe it was the same day -- the cost of producing hogs in this province was $79 per hundredweight, and they are selling at $62.50. How long can a farmer stay in business? Some of the farmers who have their properties paid for may be able to get by, but the great majority of farmers who have short-term, long-term, small or large loans simply cannot exist. As a result, they are folding.
8:50 p.m.
When the Ontario Federation of Agriculture executive were in to see us about a week ago, they did not think either the Minister of Agriculture and Food or Mr. Whelan were their friends. They thought they were being shafted by both of them.
Mr. McClellan: This seems logical to me. It seems a very good point.
Mr. Swart: Yes.
Mr. Nixon: Anybody who does not like Eugene Whelan has to be a misanthrope.
Mr. Chariton: They even say Bob Nixon has lost touch with the land.
Mr. Swart: The farmers in this province are paying a pretty terrible price for having a Conservative government here for the last 40 years, particularly during the last few years when the situation has become quite desperate with regard to both unemployment and agriculture.
I think the farm situation in Ontario can best be put in perspective by a report of the specialist for central Ontario. I am not sure I am going to be able to find it at this time and I am not sure all members are terribly concerned if I am not able to find it.
Apart from the unwillingness of the government here to make those rather substantial changes -- such things as stabilization, interfering in the marketplace and interfering with interest rates -- they even give agriculture a much lower priority than the other provinces do.
I had our research department dig out these figures just a few weeks ago. In Ontario 1.16 per cent of the provincial budget last year went to agriculture. In New Brunswick it was 1.28 per cent; in British Columbia, 1.34 per cent; in Nova Scotia, 1.49 per cent; in Manitoba, 1.62 per cent; in Quebec, 1.74 per cent; in Alberta, 2.02 per cent; in Saskatchewan, 2.62 per cent; and in Prince Edward Island, 3.42 per cent.
Ontario devotes the lowest share of its budget to agriculture of any province in Canada except Newfoundland, but Newfoundland has only 600 farmers. The prime agricultural province in this nation has the lowest share of its budget going to assist farmers.
As chairman of our agricultural task force, I went around the province last fall and this winter with other members of our caucus and met a large number of farm groups. In fact, we met more than 60 organizations and 200 or 300 individual farmers. We saw and heard at first hand the plight they find themselves in. We developed a report with a list of recommendations we think are the minimum needed for the farm community. We think that nothing less than these will provide the assistance that farmers need. I am going to refer briefly to these 12 recommendations.
First of all, we feel it is absolutely essential that the staff and funding to the county offices of the Ministry of Agriculture and Food must not only be immediately restored but should be substantially increased. There are new programs such as the beginning farmer assistance program that have to be administered by these county offices, and they desperately need more staff. They are the front line of the service to agriculture and they should be adequately staffed.
We believe it is tremendously important that the land base of this province be preserved and upgraded. We think the food land guidelines must be revised to give priority to the retention of prime land for food production; we heard this all across the province. The Planning Act must be amended to provide that this is the case. Of course, just last week I tabled a bill in this Legislature to amend the Planning Act to do just that.
We believe legislation is required to limit the nonresident foreign ownership of Ontario farm land. I will be tabling a private member's bill on that in the not-too-distant future. The government says there are not a great many sales to foreigners now. The fact is that if our money, compared to that of the European countries, once again becomes cheaper, I am sure there will be a surge. We should be prepared for it, as other provinces have done in this nation.
We believe the government must significantly increase what it spends on assistance to prevent soil erosion. We believe the Drainage Act must be amended to provide an alternative to the lengthy and costly petition method and to replace the current provincially appointed Ontario Drainage Tribunal with municipally appointed local tribunals responsible to their local areas.
We believe the Grain Elevator Storage Act must be amended to ensure farmers retain title to all grain they sell to an elevator until they receive payment. We believe this government must go much further in ensuring that farmers are going to be paid for their produce, whether it is through forms of guarantees, insurance bonding or whatever the case may be.
Mr. Nixon: Is that eight or nine?
Mr. Swart: That is just three.
Mr. Nixon: You have a lot of subclauses there.
Mr. Swart: Actually that is about eight.
We believe the government should immediately appoint a joint committee composed of representatives from farmer and consumer associations and also from the Ministry of Agriculture and Food and the Ministry of Consumer and Commercial Relations to examine the growing spread between farm gate and consumer prices and to investigate the effects of corporate concentration within the processing, distribution and retail sectors of the food industry.
When the farmer's share of the consumer's food dollar has dropped in the last four or five years from something like 59 per cent to 49 per cent, and when there has been a tremendous increase in the concentrations of the food processing industry, it is time once again that an in-depth investigation was made into that and steps taken to ensure that the farmer is going to get his fair share of the consumer's dollar.
We believe there is need for the Province of Ontario Savings Office to expand its operations to provide long-term, low interest credit to farmers. Such expansion should occur in coordination with local credit unions and preferably in co-operation with the Farm Credit Corp. Every province in this nation, with the exception of Ontario, provides long-term credit to its farmers. I have the figures here for Alberta. The latest figure I have is for the 1981-82 season when Alberta provided $388.5 million. Quebec provided $347.3 million. Yet Ontario has refused even to try to provide one cent of long-term credit to the farmers in this province.
We think the Ontario farm adjustment assistance program should be revised to provide qualifying farmers with subsidies on interest rates above the eight per cent level instead of the current 12 per cent so OFAAP money goes to the farmers instead of to the banks, as is the case at the present time.
We believe it is absolutely essential that a per-head subsidy payment be made available on all beef cattle, hogs and sheep produced and marketed in the province. The number of livestock on which the subsidy is paid should have a ceiling based on the reasonable production of the family farm. The subsidy program must begin immediately and continue until a tripartite stabilization program is operative. The level of subsidy payments should be based on the average payment by other provinces with a special upward adjustment for northern Ontario.
No longer can our basic producers in this province live on promises by the Minister of Agriculture and Food when he said last September, "The tripartite program will be in place before the end of the year." Then in November he said, "The details will be in place within a few weeks." Now we know that it will not be here before the end of the year. If we have a federal election within the next few months, the whole thing could die and we may never get the tripartite program.
9 p.m.
Those farmers need assistance now. There is a moral obligation on the part of the government of this province to do what the other provinces have done for their farmers and put in a provincial stabilization plan, particularly for red meat producers.
Finally, we propose that the provincial budget for agriculture be increased this year from $290 million to $450 million. That is an increase of $160 million. This figure was not just picked out of the air. Even if the Ontario government increases its budget, the percentage going to agriculture will still be slightly below the average for this nation. A great part of that is needed just to put in the red meat stabilization program for the farmers.
The policies of this government and the philosophy of this government are not geared to meet the serious economic situation we are in at present. In fact, its whole restraint program is counterproductive.
The first objective of the economy's operation must be full employment and viable farm operation. Because neither the Liberals nor the Conservatives will make the necessary fundamental changes, this party is important to the provincial and national scene. It is the only alternative to the present system.
Liberals and Conservatives may predict our demise, as they have done many times before. But because what we believe, promote and legislate is humane and just, and because our democratic socialist policies work and those of their governments do not, this movement will be around long after the philosophies and the policies of their parties are only a bad dream by the people of this province and of this nation.
Mr. J. M. Johnson: Mr. Speaker, as this is the first opportunity I have had to speak in this fourth session of the 32nd Parliament, I would like to take a moment to congratulate the Speaker, the Deputy Speaker and the Chairman of committees of the whole House on the fair and impartial way in which they have conducted the business of this House in the last session and to offer them my best wishes and support for this new session.
The Sergeant at Arms asked me to put in a good word for him as well, and I have no hesitation in doing so. In fact, I have the highest regard for all the officers of this House.
I rise to support the initiatives presented to this assembly in the recent speech from the throne, which was so ably delivered by our Lieutenant Governor, the Honourable John B. Aird. He added a new and touching dimension to this traditional speech by talking to the deaf. On many similar occasions, I have witnessed acts of kindness and compassion by His Honour to the disadvantaged, the handicapped and, above all, to the children. We, in Ontario, are fortunate to have such a dedicated Canadian as our Lieutenant Governor. He serves as an example and an inspiration to all of us.
Having the honour to represent the riding of Wellington-Dufferin-Peel, which has a very strong agriculture base, I was pleased with the proposal in the throne speech to create an advisory council on agriculture. Such a council will be able to look at all the issues related to agriculture and should be able to provide an independent and informed evaluation of the different ideas and concerns in this area.
Ontario is fortunate in having an abundant resource of information and informed people in the area of agriculture. There are the county federations of agriculture, producer boards and individual producers. There is also a rich depository of knowledge available in our colleges of agricultural technology. On the more academic side, there is the well-known and internationally respected University of Guelph, well suited to contributing to discussions on longer-term agriculture issues.
Closely linked to the producers is the entire food processing industry, which also plays a vital role in the food chain. There is also the Ministry of Agriculture and Food, with staff expertise ranging from the broader policy issues to the detailed knowledge of the ag reps out in the field. In my opinion, the ag reps are second to none.
Mr. Wildman: Why do you not give them more support?
Mr. J. M. Johnson: We should give them more money.
Mr. Wildman: I mean the government, not you. I know you do, but I mean the government.
Mr. J. M. Johnson: Right.
The new agricultural council of Ontario will have the opportunity to draw input from all these sources as well as from other related areas. The council will be able to undertake research analysis of the issues and provide comments and policy alternatives to the Minister of Agriculture and Food. The council will have the scope to examine and report on both the problems and the opportunities facing agriculture in Ontario. It will not be there to provide any popular, quick-fix solutions.
While details have yet to be announced, it is expected the Ontario agricultural council will fill a role similar to the Ontario Economic Council or the Ontario Council of Health. Both these existing organizations have excellent reputations and perform a valuable function. A similar forum for agriculture has the potential to be of considerable help, not only to farmers but also to the people of the province as a whole.
It is understandable that some may want to reserve judgement until the nature of the organization is made known in greater detail or until the appointments to the council have been named. Both these steps are important but the first step, the creation of the council, has been the most important and the one that deserves praise now.
Members of the council will be chosen on the basis of their contribution to agriculture in their own fields. They will be chosen from the various groups that contribute to agriculture, and each will be able to apply his or her individual expertise and experience to the many issues that constantly confront our agricultural community.
The speech from the throne emphasized the government's commitment to intensify efforts to create more agricultural export markets and to support the modernization of small food processors. Both initiatives should have some beneficial results in helping Ontario farmers with their overproduction.
On this point, I must express my personal dismay and frustration about this problem which contributes to the declining economic life of rural Ontario, the ability to produce too much food. While we have too much, others have too little. Every night about two billion human beings in the world go to bed hungry and wake up in the morning not knowing where they will find food.
It is a sad day for our planet as a whole when one fifth of its population is suffocating in food and the remainder of its people are either underfed or dying of starvation. Surely we have the intellectual capacity in this enlightened age to devise a workable plan that would allow our rich farm lands and our tremendous productivity to share in the task of feeding the starving children of this world. We have a moral responsibility to do no less.
9:10 p.m.
I would be remiss if I did not compliment the Minister of Agriculture and Food on his new red meat plan and for his courage to do something positive in this area. I would like to quote from an editorial in Farm and Country, Tuesday, January 17. It is headed "Timbrell's Boldness" and reads:
"It had to come.
"Ontario's beef and sheep industries have been ailing for many years, so agriculture minister Dennis Timbrell's bold move to reshape production and marketing should be welcomed by all thoughtful producers.
"And his approach shows great imagination. His three-man beef commission comprises some of the top talent in Ontario agriculture. There is Henry Davis, a respected cattleman and vice-chairman of the Farm Products Appeal Tribunal; Ralph Barrie, until last week the Ontario Federation of Agriculture (OFA) president: and Murray Gaunt, farm commentator for CKNXTV, former Liberal MPP for Huron-Bruce and turkey producer" -- and a good friend of most of the members in this assembly on both sides of the House.
To continue with the quotation: "Mr. Barrie resigned his OFA presidency to take on this crucial assignment, and he faces the toughest challenge of his great career. Should he and his two colleagues succeed in bringing order to beef farming, rural Ontario will owe him an even greater debt of gratitude."
Since then the Ontario Sheep Marketing Agency Commission has been named: chairman, Jack James, RR 3, Russell; Walter Renwick, RR 1, Clifford; and Garth Noecker, RR 3, Listowel.
I offer my most sincere congratulations to the members of both commissions and wish them well in the difficult days ahead. They face a formidable task in resolving the many issues affecting the red meat industry. In my riding alone, many farmers have had some very difficult times these last few years. The high interest rates are among the most serious problems. I sincerely hope the federal government will not lose control of interest rates again, but the signs are not good in Ottawa at present.
One of the most critical issues facing our government today is unemployment, especially the unemployment of our young people. The Premier emphasized his concern about this issue in an address to the Empire Club in Toronto on February 23, 1984. It has been extensively referred to in the throne speech and will be enunciated in the budget of our Treasurer (Mr. Grossman).
I look forward to the consolidation of all youth employment programs under one ministry. This positive step, along with increased funding and new incentives that have been promised in the throne speech, should address some of the problems related to youth employment.
Skills training for all age groups, and other programs, must be put in place to help create meaningful jobs for all our unemployed. The commitment to create a province-wide network of training and business development consultants to help industry upgrade resources is a very positive step in the right direction.
Many small industries do not have the expertise, the knowhow or the capital to become involved in many of the new products that are coming on stream. I hope this consultative process can be expanded to provide advice and guidance to our many retail and wholesale entrepreneurs. These small businesses have the potential to create many of the jobs we so desperately need, especially in small-town Ontario.
As a matter of fact, a good example of this occurred in my riding just a few years ago. Representatives of the Ministry of Industry and Trade in Kitchener, and Peter McGough in particular, worked with a small industry in the village of Arthur, All Treat Products, owned by Laverne and George White, and convinced them to expand into a new business venture, the processing of tree bark, a waste product, into bark chips, which are used in flower beds to control weeds.
Ten million dollars' worth of this bark was imported into Canada every year because no Canadian manufacturer existed. The Whites hope to be able to replace most of this import market with their Canadian product, providing jobs and retaining Canadian dollars by less importation. It is hoped this new program will increase these success stories. Import replacement is just as important as increased exports to ensure that our trade balance remains healthy.
A simple example would be the replacement of citrus fruit and juices with Ontario fruit and juices. If we could encourage our citizens to drink apple juice, grape juice and tomato juice instead of orange juice, at least a few times a week, and eat apples instead of oranges, it would mean millions of dollars for our Ontario agriculture and millions of dollars less spent on costly imports, plus a saving to the consumer in less expensive food.
While I am on the subject of imports and exports, I must comment on a story in the business section of the Toronto Star of Friday, March 30. In the story both opposition parties expressed criticism of the Minister of Industry and Trade (Mr. F. S. Miller) for assisting businesses to participate in trade missions.
The minister has embarked on an ambitious new program to increase private sector sales abroad. The opposition is critical of the incentives to private industry offered in these trade missions. They also make the very valid point that the Canadian government should be doing many of the things Ontario is now doing. I concur with the last point, but unfortunately the federal government is not doing enough to sell Ontario exports, and therefore we must engage in these international areas.
I very strongly support the minister's involvement in this field and his support of the private sector, and I concur with his remarks that the money spent on trade promotion by the province is an investment in Ontario's future and that increased export sales translate into new jobs at home.
In the field of health, I was pleased with the statement that the ministry would provide additional chronic and nursing home beds. I see too many people in hospitals taking up beds at more than $200 a day who would be happier and better off in nursing homes and chronic care facilities, which cost much less than half that figure but which unfortunately are not always available, especially in rural Ontario.
In the speech from the throne relating to community improvements, the initiatives to help small communities upgrade police and fire stations are of interest to me, as I have several small towns and villages that could take advantage of some assistance in this area. I anticipate these initiatives will be clarified in the budget presentation.
Items relating to the funding of local water protection projects and the extension of GO Transit are also of interest to my constituents. GO Transit or some similar system is required in the Caledon-Dufferin area, and better bus service is needed in Wellington.
There has been speculation recently that the Gray Coach bus service will be discontinued between Owen Sound and Guelph. I have requested official confirmation or denial of this speculation, and I serve notice of my complete opposition to any change in this route which would lessen the service that is now being provided. My riding has many senior citizens, students and others who rely on some form of public transportation, and there is little enough of it available at the present time. I have been striving to improve this system and I will not accept less.
While I am discussing transportation, I would like to express my concern about the amount of money that is being transferred into the social policy field at the expense of the resource sector. We cannot neglect our roads, sewers, water and natural resources for long without paying a very heavy price in the future. Some of our highways are suffering now. I have requests for numerous projects, some very important, such as the widening of Highway 10 north of Caledon for safety reasons.
Many of the municipalities require financial assistance from the Ministry of the Environment to provide necessary services, water and sanitary, to their residents. Acid rain is a serious global problem, especially serious for Ontario, and dollars will be needed by the Ministry of the Environment to work towards solving this problem.
If we sacrifice the larger part of our provincial budget for health, education and social services, very little will be left for our resource policy sector. The consequences will be serious. I think we must all set our expectations on realistic goals that our Treasury can reach in a reasonable fiscal budget.
Justice and quality of life are two topics I would like to discuss tonight, and especially the statement dealing with the strengthening of law enforcement. I happen to believe we have excellent police forces in Ontario. The Ontario Provincial Police and our municipal and regional police forces are on the whole beyond reproach, but we have a problem in society with our judicial system.
9:20 p.m.
Perhaps it is our laws, our judges or our court system, but something is amiss. Many of my constituents are expressing dismay over the light sentences being handed down by our courts for very serious and often brutal crimes. For years, we have been envied by most of the nations of the world for our safe cities. Tourists felt free to walk our streets at any time, but this is changing.
Reacting to the recent slaying of milk store clerk Nizam Ali, Mississauga council passed a bylaw prohibiting convenience stores from remaining open between midnight and 5 am.
North York Mayor Mel Lastman's opinion is that closing convenience stores at night is not the answer to violent robberies. Mayor Lastman is quoted as saying: "We can't let a group of thugs tell us how to run our cities. Start forcing everything to close and suddenly we'll be rolling up the sidewalks at night like some American cities. Everyone becomes afraid to walk after dark -- the streets become empty."
I agree with Mayor Lastman. We cannot even consider allowing our law and order to be undermined by this thought. I have no intention of getting into controversy over convenience stores and their hours. I use this tragic incident only to emphasize my concern over violent crime.
It is my contention that until the judicial system is changed to reflect the concern of the public for their safety, we will have more of these tragic murders. I have always believed that a crime of violence is much worse than a simple robbery. Anyone convicted of a crime that involves physical injury to the victim should receive a sentence that is proportionate to the injuries inflicted on the victim.
Mayor Lastman is quoted as saying in the Toronto Star of March 27, 1984: "Our judicial system is nuts. A guy commits armed robbery and gets three years, but he knows he'll be out of jail after one. The judges are going to have to understand these are dangerous people."
In the Toronto Star of March 31, 1984, Mayor Hazel McCallion of Mississauga is quoted as saying that law and order will be made a major issue in the next federal election. "We have to bring this into the limelight at election time because the federal government and the judges can't seem to be persuaded to hand out stiffer penalties to violent criminals."
In May 1982, Ontario Provincial Police Constable Rick Hopkins of Mount Forest, my home town, was shot to death by a young man who had just robbed a store in the village of Arthur. Constable Hopkins was shot in the throat at close range with a shotgun. He had absolutely no chance to defend himself. The young man was convicted of first-degree murder and given a 25-year sentence. His sentence is now being appealed on the grounds that this young man was too drunk to know what he was doing. What about Constable Hopkins? What about his wife? What about his young children?
If our laws state that someone convicted of a crime and carrying a dangerous weapon would receive a much more severe sentence because of the weapon, such as two years for robbery and 10 years if he carried a gun, would that type of sentence not act as a deterrent and prevent some of our violent crimes? Let the punishment fit the crime.
I also support the proposition that it is this assembly's obligation to uphold our community values and provide reasonable and clear-cut protection against exploitive film and video productions.
I hesitate to interfere in the lives of others, with their right to make their own decisions, but I fear that if we do nothing, we the so-called leaders in our society are condoning something that may prove very detrimental to our young people. In this I feel a strong personal obligation, being a grandfather of four small girls.
Adults can make their own decisions, but our children look to their elders, parents, teachers, priests, ministers and even politicians to give them guidance in their formative years. It is the responsibility of this assembly to uphold community values. To quote Edmund Burke, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." If legislative changes are necessary, then the sooner the better.
The last point in the speech from the throne that I wish to address is the one dealing with resources and environment. There were proposals to initiate experimental mediation procedures as a possible alternative to administrative and judicial procedures now mandated by Ontario's environmental laws. I am not sure I understand exactly what that means, but if the government is suggesting that we can look at some other mechanism that might help us arrive at a more sensible and reasonable way of resolving disputes with our citizens, then I would strongly support this position.
I would like to use Ontario Hydro as an example. A year ago in a speech delivered in this chamber, I expressed my personal concern about the public's perception of Ontario Hydro. In many parts of the province, especially rural Ontario, Hydro is perceived to be the foe, the enemy. The main reason for this is Hydro's inability to convince the public of its needs and then to allow them some input into arriving at mutually agreeable alternatives.
I had hoped to convince the members of this Legislature that we all have a responsibility to our constituents, the taxpayers of this province, to work with Ontario Hydro to resolve costly disputes with the public. Disputes inevitably cost each and every one of us dearly. However, it was not to be. Since that time, Hydro has become involved in another public controversy -- one, I might add, that is not of Hydro's making -- on the proposed transmission corridor out of Bruce to London.
Hydro proposed six routes. They chose M-1, a direct route to London and the least expensive. In my opinion, it was the logical choice. However, it was decided that the decision would be made by a joint board under the Consolidated Hearings Act. This joint board, in a split decision, decided on route M-3 after some -- and I emphasize some -- public hearings. Today, thousands of citizens and numerous municipalities, county councils and regions are expressing displeasure at the decision reached by the joint board.
I do not want to dwell on the merits of the decision or to rehash the reason for reaching that decision. However, I strongly suggest that something is wrong. Somewhere the system failed. Too many people are not satisfied with the process. Perhaps another more sensible means of resolving disputes must be used. Hopefully, this was the intent in the throne speech.
Having spent several years dealing with the controversy surrounding Hydro corridors, I have a personal observation I would like to place on the record. It is my contention that land owners facing expropriation are entitled to compensation that not only reflects a fair appraised market value but also extra compensation for the inconvenience and personal loss they always incur as a result of that expropriation. If the state needs my home, for whatever reason, it can have it but I should receive fair market value plus a 20 per cent to 50 per cent bonus to help me relocate and to compensate me for my personal loss.
Mr. McClellan: Twenty per cent to 50 per cent?
Mr. J. M. Johnson: Extra. If one has a willing buyer and a willing seller, there is no problem. Failing that, one should be paid better than reasonable compensation. Everyone would benefit except the legal profession, which thrives on this type of controversy.
Many of Hydro's problems in building transmission lines would be lessened -- not eliminated -- if they had more leeway in their expropriation processes and if a fairer hearing process could be put into place.
9:30 p.m.
I did not have an opportunity to participate in the debate on the Pickering issue a few days ago, but I would like to make a few observations at this time. I will start by saying that I support Ontario Hydro's nuclear generation program and I am pleased to know that the deputy leader of the Liberal Party also supports this position. If we had the choice of hydroelectric power, then I would opt for that system; but we have only a very limited amount of water power that could be developed and even that source would create problems.
Try building a dam today, taking out of production thousands of acres of agricultural land or raising the level of lakes that encroach on cottage owners' property rights, such as the West Montrose dam and the proposed power development in Muskoka.
Surely no one would advocate going to oil- or coal-fired stations. Both fuels have to be brought into Ontario. Oil is a limited resource. Coal is becoming extremely costly and creates other environmental problems such as acid rain, which can be partially controlled but which also add to the costs. Nuclear power is not only cheaper but also is in plentiful supply in Ontario.
It is my personal opinion that Ontario should be leading the world in the hydrogen field. We have the two main components -- an abundant supply of fresh water and nuclear power -- and I hope we move into this field in the very near future.
The questions of Hydro's accountability to this Legislature and of government's control of Hydro have always been issues that have raised concerns with many members of this assembly, and rightly so. On a recent trip to Quebec City I met with several members of the Quebec National Assembly and posed these very questions to both government and opposition members. The response I received was quite clear: Hydro-Québec should be accountable to the Legislature, but the government should not control the corporation.
The members I talked to felt that Hydro-Québec was doing a good job and that it would be a mistake to have politicians interfere in the decision-making process. The thought was expressed that politicians tend to think in the short term -- two to three years, their term of office; Hydro officials have to think in the long term, 20 to 30 years. That very well sums up the position for Ontario Hydro: accountable, yes; controlled, no.
In closing, may I on behalf of David Craig, president of the Wellington ploughing match committee, extend an invitation to all members and their constituents to attend the international ploughing match and farm machinery show that will be held this year in Wellington county from September 25 to 29.
I am extending this invitation at an early date since I realize how far in advance most members have to make commitments, and also to remind them that there will be a challenge match at ploughing for the members. This advance notice will give everyone a chance to practise up on the science of ploughing.
At last year's international ploughing match, held in Ottawa-Carleton, I finished 11th in a very large field.
Mr. R. F. Johnston: About 30 acres.
Mr. J. M. Johnson: A large field. So I serve notice that I will be practising and I hope I will be able to improve my showing in this very important event.
I can assure this assembly that no one will be disappointed in making an effort to be in Wellington county this September. The international ploughing match will be held in Teviotdale, Highways 9 and 23 near Harriston, Palmerston, Arthur and Mount Forest. As Mount Forest is my hometown, the match will be in my own backyard.
The members' ploughing match will be held on September 25. That date also happens to be my wedding anniversary, and my wife Marnie is absolutely thrilled at the prospect that I might win the silver cup for ploughing on this auspicious day.
I do hope the members will accept my invitation to come to Wellington county this fall. It is a beautiful part of the province, with rich rolling farm land, sparkling clear streams, beautiful maple bushes, small interesting towns and villages, and the friendliest people one will ever meet.
Mr. R. F. Johnston: Why do you ever come to town, leaving all that?
Mr. J. M. Johnson: With great difficulty.
Mark the last week of September on the calendar. I will remind the members again about this international event.
Mr. Speaker, I thank you for the opportunity I have had to make these comments to this assembly.
Mr. Wrye: Mr. Speaker, first, I want to say to my friend the member for Wellington-Dufferin-Peel (Mr. J. M. Johnson) that I would like to be able to take him up on his invitation in the latter part of September, being the great supporter of the farm community that I am. I am not certain we will be able to because at that point we may be involved in the re-election campaign of my Liberal colleagues in Ottawa, a re-election campaign I am sure will be successful.
Mr. R. F. Johnston: Displace the Pope? You would not do a thing like that.
Mr. Wrye: No, he said September 25. The Pope will be leaving a few days before then.
I am pleased to have the opportunity to make a few remarks in this throne speech debate. Since he has thought enough to be here, I want to compliment my friend the new Minister of Revenue (Mr. Gregory). I told him at dinner I would say some nice things about him.
He said not to say any bad things about his predecessor, but I do want to tell him that we in our riding are very pleased at the greatly improved distribution of the senior citizens' tax grants, finally and at long last. The disaster that visited us in the fall of 1981 and to a slightly lesser extent, but very slightly, in the fall of 1982, was much improved last year. On behalf of the senior citizens in my riding, I am very pleased about that. I might also add I am saying that for my constituency assistant, who after two years has had enough of trying to sort out the mess of the ministry.
I want to say to my friend the Chairman of Management Board (Mr. McCague) that some of my remarks tonight were written for me, prepared for me, and I want to admit as I start out that the contracts for these remarks were not tendered. However, I have checked the Manual of Administration and I think I fall under the guideline.
It is hard for me to reply to the actual speech from the throne, because in my judgement it is a speech which, as my leader pointed out in the House a week ago, gives the illusion of substance but is really a grab-bag of platitudes, recycled promises, hollow phrases and piecemeal gestures. Nowhere is there in that throne speech the significant and far-reaching legislative initiatives to cover almost any area of concern in this House, certainly not in my two areas of critic responsibility -- community and social services and women's issues.
Aside from completely ignoring the problems of welfare recipients and unemployment insurance exhaustees, the speech in general lacks any concrete focus on matters concerning the disadvantaged sections of our society, the mentally and physically disabled and the children of families who live at or, in many cases, beneath the poverty line.
As far as women's issues go, the speech follows the consistent pattern adopted by my friend the Deputy Premier and Minister responsible for Women's Issues (Mr. Welch). It is full of platitudes, and of tentative, equivocal and generally piecemeal measures. By and large, it proposes changes that go far too slowly and far too inadequately help that segment of the population which is female.
9:40 p.m.
Before I get into some of the details of my remarks, I want to speak briefly about the alleged event that is happening in this province in this year of 1984. Of course, I am referring to the bicentennial. I want to say to my friends opposite that while some of my friends on this side in both parties may be willing to say nice things about the bicentennial because some of them perhaps believe in it -- I would not want to impute motives -- and some of them also believe one has to say nice things about it, as somebody who is a bit of a student of history, I say anyone who is seriously interested in the heritage of this province, as opposed to some Tory strategist somewhere on the other side who is keen on whipping up campaign slogans and electoral fever, knows if there is one thing 1984 is not, it is not our bicentennial.
The real year of the bicentennial is 1991, seven years from now, since it was in 1791 that Ontario became a distinct political and geographical entity.
Mr. Harris: We will do it again.
Mr. Wrye: I am sure, as my friend the member for Nipissing (Mr. Harris) suggests, if those people are still over there, and they will not be, in 1991 they will try it all over again.
It bothers me that this whole farce is akin to another manufactured illusion of Tory government. We all remember the 1981 Board of Industrial Leadership and Development program, which was literally much ado about nothing. It has taken us three years, the fullness of time, to see how little that had to do with reality.
It is disgraceful, in my judgement, and I will get into this as I get into the meat of my remarks, in a province faced with chronic youth unemployment and with thousands of community groups crying out for help, that this government has squandered, as it admits it has, $10 million on this almost fraudulent celebration.
It has also squandered and hidden in the ministries of this government millions more. I think of the announcement that was made recently by the Provincial Secretary for Social Development (Mr. Dean).
Mr. McClellan: Which one?
Mr. Wrye: The gentleman who quotes poetry, and we try to figure out what it means. The new provincial secretary recently announced that we are going to have 9,200 jobs under summer Experience '84. We are going to help our students rewrite the history books. That is one of the ways we can hide the real cost of this bicentennial, the real cost of this government celebrating whatever it is going to celebrate. Rather than putting those young people to work in jobs that would help the communities all over Ontario that so desperately need help, these young people are going to work celebrating and selling the bicentennial the Tories have foisted upon us.
When the present Premier was Minister of Education, people used to comment that they were victims of the Bill Davis era of education. Now we are going to have a new group of victims. I am sure a lot of those poor young people will think 1984 was the bicentennial of something, when it is only the bicentennial in the pipe-dream of some Queen's Park strategist for the Tories, perhaps Hugh Segal or Ed Stewart.
Mr. McClellan: Sam Cureatz.
Mr. Wrye: He is not in his seat to heckle; so we should not say it is the hatching of the member for Durham West, is it?
Mr. Cureatz: Durham East.
Mr. Wrye: I knew it was one of the two.
I want to turn to what the government has and has not said and has and has not done about the issues that affect the women of this province. I want to start by suggesting that in the midst of all the vague phrases that must have been written by the Deputy Premier about women, the throne speech had one particularly nonsensical phrase about efforts to improve women's rights.
I do not believe, nor do my colleagues, one can improve human rights. Rights exist for all individuals whether we recognize them as such. I know this may be too philosophical a point for some members of the government party to understand, but governments can only address the needs that flow from individuals having natural rights. They cannot increase or decrease rights that are by definition inalienable. Because rights cannot be surrendered, they cannot be improved.
The question before us as members of this House is how best to address the manifold needs that flow from the equality rights women naturally have. Here I part company quite firmly from the government and support the bold and imaginative initiatives my colleagues and I have put forward as part of the Liberal strategy for bringing about the full implementation of the equality of women within Ontario society.
Let me give just one example. My party, particularly my colleague the member for Hamilton Centre (Ms. Copps), has been in the forefront in the fight for equal pay for work of equal value. I must remind government members, who must be embarrassed every time they are reminded, that even they felt obliged to support the resolution introduced by her last fall. That resolution read that the principle of equal pay for work of equal value not be just supported but be enshrined in the Employment Standards Act.
It must have been a great time in the Tory caucus. Can members see it? They looked at the issue and said: "We are just talking about a principle. We can vote for a principle." Then somebody in the Tory caucus who is perhaps a little brighter than the norm said: "But she has trapped us. She has said 'be enshrined.' What can we do?" Eventually of course what came down was, "We will vote for it and then we will wait a couple of weeks and the minister will bring in some minor, minuscule amendments." That is exactly what happened.
This government obviously does not care, but I remind the government and the member for Nipissing, if he did not see the Gallup poll yesterday, that among the women of this province this government has fallen to second place. That only proves once again just how much intelligence and insight the women of this province have. As they have led in so many other things, so they are already taking the lead in signalling an end to 41 years of Tory government.
We are a little more concerned on our side than they are on the Tory side about this. We see the injustice of a seamstress in a factory who is making 25 cents an hour less than a man who sweeps the factory floor. We think that is unjust and we want to see that injustice rectified.
For its part, the government simply believes it can tinker with existing legislation and just require something called a composite test, which is just equal pay with a little bit of a frill around it. All we have is a little bit of frill. I wish my friend and parliamentary colleague from the other side of the House, the Minister of Labour (Mr. Ramsay), for whom I have great regard, would stand in his place and indicate just how many thousands of women in this province will be affected by the tinkering and tampering the government has done with section 33 of the Employment Standards Act.
The concept of equal pay for work of equal value, one in an arsenal of weapons, is a decisive way to address the whole issue of the job ghetto. It happens right here at Queen's Park. Women are segregated into the lowest-paying jobs throughout the province.
9:50 p.m.
Let me cite a couple of examples. The implementation of equal pay for work of equal value would adjust the economic imbalance of a receptionist being paid substantially less than a junior accountant. It would end the discrimination that exists right here on our own doorstep at Queen's Park where a male parking lot attendant earns $4,500 more a year than a female switchboard operator.
As legislators, we should look at that one very simple example with a distinct lack of pride in what we have done to bring about economic justice in this province. Surely these examples point out how much Ontario women need an equal value system in which dissimilar jobs are compared to assess their relative values.
I recognize that implementation of equal value is not the only step that needs to be taken. It will affect a small percentage of the working population and it will narrow the substantial 63 per cent wage gap perhaps by less than 10 per cent. The minister suggests by much more than that. I suggest it would be much closer to 10 per cent.
I think the government's failure to act on this has served as a signal to the women of Ontario that this government is not really prepared to get on with the job. It is prepared only to tinker politely with the present system and to jump to attention when members of the business community, who are somewhat less than progressive in their outlook, suggest that to do anything other than that would bring economic ruin and havoc to our province.
Quite frankly, I do not know how those members of the business community or even how those members of the government can suggest what a horrible system this would be in the one breath and then suggest in the next breath that it is just fine for the women of Ontario, for the single women, for divorced women and for mother-led families. "Stay in your ghetto and make $4,000 or $5,000 a year less than your male counterparts for substantially the same kind of quality of job. We will run this economy substantially on the backs of the women of Ontario."
When we speak about the arsenal of weapons, one of the great pieces in the arsenal is the implementation of affirmative action. For the last eight years the government has gone cap in hand not just to private business -- I have no wish to accuse it of footdragging -- but also to the public sector, the municipalities and school boards. For eight years this government has gone cap in hand to those public sector employers whose very existence depends upon the largess at tax time from not only the men but the women of this province.
This government is now under the inspired leadership of the Deputy Premier on this issue. I hope there will be some applause for him. If only he had some clout in cabinet and in his caucus, he would do it tomorrow, he would get tough, but there are 69 others who do not want to. They are led -- I am sure and I am afraid -- by the Premier. For eight years we have asked, "Please, will you not implement an affirmative action strategy?" The result has been close to zero and it remains close to zero today.
Perhaps we should understand why private businesses and other public sector employers are not too willing to move. I would just like to go back to the 1982-83 status of women crown employees' report and talk for a few minutes about what great progress we are making right here in these precincts, as the member for Renfrew North (Mr. Conway) says.
That report indicates that female government staff still make only 75.8 per cent of what their male counterparts earn. In some individual ministries the record is even worse. I am very sorry my friend the Minister of Energy (Mr. Andrewes) has departed for a moment because he is right at the top of the list. In the Ministry of Energy a woman makes on average 56.4 per cent of the average male salary; in the Ministry of Industry and Trade, 57.9 per cent, and in the Ministry of Northern Affairs, 61 per cent. The Ministry of the Attorney General is not at the bottom, but it is close to it at 63.7 per cent.
In the enlightened area of the Ministries of Colleges and Universities and Education, that great light of equality led by our esteemed minister, the average is a grand 64.2 per cent. My friend the Minister of Labour, who until recently had control of most of the matters that pertain to women -- the women's bureau and the affirmative action organization were under his ministry -- is still under 70 per cent in his ministry and well behind even the inexcusably low average this government has.
Let me be quite specific about the failure of affirmative action in this government. I want to narrow it down to one very specific instance, and that is the school boards of this province. As I recall the figures, there are 186 school boards in Ontario, and 62 school boards, exactly one third, have 500 employees or more. I would have thought a long time ago we would have reached a position where we would have full implementation of affirmative action programs in the 62 large school boards and that we could start moving on, as we in our party believe, down to the school boards with as few as 100 employees. That is where we ought to be today, but we are not even close.
Out of the 62 very large school boards in this province, after eight years of government action, of the ministry literally pleading on hands and knees, a grand total of 18 have implemented any kind of affirmative action program. Given what the minister has been saying in his place in the last few days, we are not sure that even the announcement of an affirmative action program at a school board means very much.
This government stands condemned by its own documents. I want to refer you, Mr. Speaker, to the updated 1982 Ministry of Education report called A Comparative Analysis of Male/Female Staff in the Ontario Education System. I hope my friends on the government side will want to get a copy of it and look at it, because when the women of Ontario face them at election time with the utmost hostility, they will at least begin to understand why women are not too pleased with their great level of progress.
That report indicates that in 1972 the number of male elementary school principals as compared with female on a percentage basis was six to one, which is a pretty disgraceful statistic. The government, through its pleas for affirmative action, has set about overcoming that terrible ratio. After 10 years of struggling mightily and after 10 years of the kind of ad nauseam comments we have heard from the Minister of Education (Miss Stephenson) and the Minister responsible for Women's Issues about how much this government is doing, they had made progress. They had made progress if one considers going in the other direction to be progress. After 10 years the ratio was no longer six male principals for every one female; it was seven males for every one female.
10 p.m.
We had the pathetic example of the Minister responsible for Women's Issues trotting off to an educational conference last Thursday night to tell the educators things cannot continue as they are, they must change. He was followed by his colleague the Minister of Education on Friday. She went down to the Harbour Castle Hilton and said, "Those of you who have implemented affirmative action" -- she should be sending them Ontario medals. They should all get bicentennial medals. We could give them out because so few boards are involved. She said the school boards that had implemented affirmative action were a miserable minority. That is what she called them, and indeed it is a miserable minority. We should all be grateful for that minority which, in spite of the government doing nothing, has seen fit to move on its own.
Clearly, the government stands condemned by its own statistics. It seems to me the time has come for the Minister of Education and her colleague the Minister responsible for Women's Issues to stop ducking the issue and say to the school boards, "You will implement, and you will implement now."
We have waited eight years. The time for waiting has come and gone long ago. It seems to me there would not be much of an ability on the part of those school boards to cry, "You have changed the rules for us in the middle of the game," unless all this talk about implementing affirmative action has really been the government talking publicly out of one side of its mouth and then snickering quietly in private, "You really do not have to do it, because we are not going to press you on it."
Mr. Nixon: I suspect that is the case in spite of the leadership we have been giving on this issue.
Mr. Wrye: My friend the House leader, who is much wiser than I and who has been here much longer -- I notice he agreed with that as well; he is a very agreeable chap -- suspects this government talks a different game in private than it does in public, and I suspect he is right.
Before I leave the matter of the reforms we need to aid the women of this province, I want to draw the attention of the House briefly to the proposal I have made under Bill 7, An Act to amend the Family Law Reform Act. I am pleased to hear the Attorney General (Mr. McMurtry) has changed his mind. Now all he has to do is change the mind of the cabinet and perhaps we will have some decent legislation that will protect the female spouses of this province, not entirely but mainly in the case of marriage breakdown.
I modestly commend my legislation to the members and my friend the Attorney General. It is intended to do just that. It ensures that all property owned by one or both spouses is considered a family asset, and it goes much further than our present legislation in dividing those assets equally upon divorce.
It greatly narrows the range of exceptions, the main one being the domestic contract, which remains a possibility to supersede legislation under the act. It also maintains two other fairly minor discretionary powers for the court, the first being the duration of the marriage and the second being the extent to which one spouse or another acquired property after separation.
We in this party believe the mere fact that thousands of women in this province live in poverty -- particularly single women and particularly single women who are divorced and who have responsibility for children and who did not get anywhere near their fair share of the assets at the time of marriage breakdown, with society in general being asked to do what we could have done as legislators -- makes this a very important initiative that should be proceeded with at the earliest possible opportunity.
There are a number of other issues that concern me, but I want to move along quickly to an issue that has been of crucial importance to my party. I will deal with it fairly briefly, not because I do not care deeply about it but because I know a number of other speakers on this side have dealt with it, and I want to highlight it. I refer to the issue of youth unemployment.
I must say in all candour that as I began to assess in a speculative way what goodies would be in the speech from the throne as this government began to move into a period of an election runup as well as having listened to the Premier pontificate down at the Empire Club in February of this year and then having listened to the Treasurer do his own imitation of a Premier a little while later, I expected that this government, given that it had had months to study the issue with all of its experts, all of its bureaucrats and all of its political hangers-on, would come out with a bold strategy or a bold initiative to solve the problem of youth unemployment.
Mr. Speaker, as you know, in February of this year 163,000 of our young people were out of work; that is a 16 per cent unemployment rate. In my own community the rate is even worse; it is nearly 20 per cent. We are simply throwing away on to the scrap heap, in my judgement, a whole generation of our young people. We are showing them that we in this place have no vision of the future, that we have no ideas to present to aid them as they attempt to enter the work force and that we can offer them nothing but an early life of unemployment insurance and, even worse, of welfare.
I want to indicate what I think of this government's stated initiatives. If I were this government I would have given His Honour a pretty specific litany to spell out to the breathlessly waiting youth of Ontario in the speech from the throne.
Of course, the government does not do any polling over there, but I am sure it is well aware that Mr. Gallup did a little bit, and the government is now 2.5 per cent behind in the 18-to-29 age group. That is another small factor that should not surprise the government; given what the government has given them, they are now giving it back and they are going to give it back even more in the months to come.
However, I would have thought we could have got something more than some comment that "we are going to strengthen the Ontario career action program." Quite frankly, the Treasurer could have stood in his place when we gave him six opportunities in October, November and December and said, "We are going to strengthen OCAP."
I do not think it is enough to say we are going to strengthen our youth counselling. The Treasurer could have stood in his place any time last fall and said, "We are going to beef up youth counselling." What we need from this government, what we needed on the day this House opened, what we need today and what we will need when the Treasurer finally screws up his courage to come to the House and present a budget, is some real meat.
I do not want to use the expression, "Where's the beef?" I see that my friend the member for Humber (Mr. Kells) laughs. But, quite frankly. tossing a couple more dollars at OCAP and a few more dollars at youth counselling would be funny if it were not so pathetic.
I know my friend the member for Humber has great influence in the caucus of his party, and I am sure he would want to remind the Treasurer and his fellow caucus members once more of the Ontario Liberal alternative. If it is okay for Maureen McTeer to suggest that Iona come into the race, it is okay for the member for Humber to support some Liberal stuff as well. Maybe it will move him forward in his political career.
10:10 p.m.
The program we proposed -- we proposed it some six months ago, and we are still waiting for a government response -- would guarantee up to one year's work for every young person from the age of 18 to 24 who has been unemployed for at least 20 weeks.
The work would be tough. It would be at minimum wage. It would include mandatory education. It would include mandatory counselling. But, most important, it would give a very important opportunity to a group of youths who desperately need the help of government at this time.
There is nothing in this speech from the throne to address that need. The government can throw all the dollars it wants at the Ontario career action program, but OCAP will not solve the problems these young people have.
The Liberal alternative, the Liberal policy, is to reach out to these young people and say: "We know your working life is not off to a very good start. You have been unemployed for more than 20 weeks. Or you may never have had a job. That has got to stop. You have to get the dignity of having a good and meaningful employment experience. We are willing to give you that."
To the dismay of all of us, this government utterly, totally and completely failed to address that issue. We can only hope that the message of recent days in the polling conducted by Mr. Gallup begins to get through to the Treasurer and that finally we will see some help for our young people in the budget.
I want to deal with three or four issues of local concern, starting with an issue that has become very important to me over the last few months. It is one that is of extreme importance to my community and to the workers in my community. I speak of the plight of probationary workers --
Mr. Grande: Give us the details of your youth employment program.
Mr. Wrye: The member for Oakwood is so fascinated by it that he wants the details of the Liberals' youth employment alternative. As my friend knows, time does not permit me to --
Mr. Grande: I am trying to understand.
Mr. Wrye: It is an extensive program. This program is so important and so extensive that I simply want to send my friend the member for Oakwood all the details of the program and the case studies that we have done in three communities -- Hamilton, Peterborough and, I believe, Sault Ste. Marie.
Hon. Mr. Pope: Timmins.
Mr. Wrye: Timmins? I thank the Minister of Natural Resources (Mr. Pope). The case study, I am sure my friend opposite will understand, is an excellent one.
Mr. McClellan: I will bet it is not as good as Jimmy Coutts's program.
Mr. Wrye: Jimmy who?
Mr. McClellan: Coutts; your new leader.
Mr. Wrye: The member for Bellwoods (Mr. McClellan) is announcing his support for the former principal secretary to the Prime Minister. I am sure Mr. Coutts will be delighted to hear that.
If I could get the attention of my friends to the left as they sink out of sight in the public opinion polls, I have an issue for the workers of my riding. I know my friends in the New Democratic Party still wish to support the workers; they could take notes and maybe we could work together in resolving this problem.
One problem that has begun to emerge, particularly with the high unemployment that we have, is the problem of the probationary workers in our society and what is happening with those workers.
What is beginning to emerge is that while there is a vast number of good employers in this province, there is more than a handful of employers, certainly in my community and throughout the other parts of the province, I am sure, who are prepared to take advantage of this tragic unemployment situation we have.
Recently, one company in my community hired 160 workers during approximately a three-month period. I think all of my friends on all sides of the House would imagine that when one hires 160 workers, over the probationary period a few of those workers would fail to survive probation. They would not have the aptitude for the job, they would not have the right attitude or for a variety of reasons they would not survive probation. They might find that while they certainly had the aptitude and the attitude, they did not like the job.
At this one company, out of 160 workers hired, all but 25 failed to survive the probationary period. That means 135 out of 160 workers failed to survive the probationary period. It came to me as just an astounding statistic which tells me that only one of two things has happened, either that company has a personnel department which ought to be almost dismissed en masse because it has hired the worst potential employees possible or there is some game playing going on.
I do not believe the personnel department of that company is not up to the same quality and standards as other personnel departments, so I have to look at the second option.
We do not have to look very far. All of us who represent working-class communities know that in these situations where these workers are members of a collective bargaining unit, in the first 60 or 90 days they collect their pay, often slightly less than the workers who are on full-time staff. Post-probationary, they do not collect anything other than the statutory benefits given under the Employment Standards Act.
Consequently, the employer in this case simply ran workers through the plant. They would survive 56 or 57 days and they would be walking to the exits on the 57th day and they would go to punch out and there would be the pink slip, "Unsuitable," "Lack of work," etc. That is the reality of what they were facing.
I have great respect for my friend the Minister of Labour but on this issue he and I must dramatically part company. I have asked him repeatedly -- and I repeat it here in the House tonight -- to investigate what is happening in Central Stampings Ltd. It is a situation I find really quite disgraceful, disgusting and abhorrent to everything I believe in terms of treating people, human beings, fairly in our society. I am really quite amazed the minister has taken the kind of action that he has and stated, "No, I am not going to look into this matter."
I raised a number of other questions in a letter I sent to the minister in March and I want to put them on the record since the minister in earlier correspondence had asked me for my comments and for some of the matters we should be looking at in this whole issue of probationary employees. I asked the minister five questions which I think are not unreasonable questions that we as a Legislature should be looking at, perhaps through the standing committee on resources development. I see my friend the government House leader (Mr. Wells) is here and I want to say to him that if the standing committee has a free week or two this summer this is something it might look at.
The first question I asked was, should there not be a statutory right of a worker to receive notification in writing of any matter which may negatively affect his probation before being simply terminated without warning? These are not very radical proposals, as members can see. I think they are eminently reasonable.
Second, should there not be some protection for probationary workers who are unfortunate enough to become ill or injured during the probationary period? One of the other matters that has come to our attention is the number of workers who are injured on the job and file for workers' compensation, as is their right, who then find in the middle of their receipt of workers' compensation or at the conclusion they are simply handed the pink slip.
Third, should there not be some protection for probationary workers who do not wish to submit themselves to excessive hours of work at the whim of an employer during a probationary period?
10:20 p.m.
It is fine to say we have a 48-hour maximum work week in this province but I challenge any member of this Legislature to find me any worker who is a probationary worker who would say no when he is told they would like that individual to work on a seventh day. The probies know that if they say no, they get the pink slip on Monday.
Fourth, should a trade union not be given some right to be notified of the disposition of all probationary employees? I raise this for two reasons. First, it would certainly give some indication to probationary employees that there is some way their union is monitoring them during the probationary period; and second, it would alleviate the kinds of problems that happened at Central Stampings Ltd. and would warn the union very quickly if there were that kind of attitude.
Finally, should there not be some right of policy grievance or of automatic ministry notification where an obvious pattern of probation dismissals develops over a reasonable period of time, say six months or one year?
Surely those are not unreasonable suggestions; they are matters we should be looking into. If we are to be relevant in this place -- and sometimes I suspect we are not; in fact, a great deal of the time we are not -- then it seems to me it would be appropriate to address issues that are important to a very large number of individuals in our society.
I want to address two other issues very briefly, because I am sure the ministers or their assistants read through all of these responses to the speech from the throne just to find out if something was said that is important to their ministries.
I want to make a suggestion to the Minister of Health in his absence. I see the former acting Minister of Health, the member for Armourdale (Mr. McCaffrey), here and perhaps, since he is well aware of the issue, he will want to bring it to the minister's attention.
We have a commitment from the member's seatmate, the Treasurer, also a former Minister of Health, that we are going to get a chronic care hospital in Windsor; my friend the member for Essex North (Mr. Ruston) will remember that. The minister stood up almost a year ago and said: "I want a plan by October 31, 1983. Then we are going to start construction in May or June of the following year if everything is okay." We are getting awfully close to May or June and we have not started a thing yet.
Frankly, all of those people who were lying in the hospital corridors in the Metropolitan General Hospital, the Salvation Army Grace Hospital, the Hotel Dieu of St. Joseph Hospital and the lODE unit at Windsor Western Hospital Centre would really like the government, after about 15 years of talking, to keep the promise. It is really a little much to ask these people to lie in the corridors because the chronic care patients are taking active treatment beds. The time for that kind of action is long since past.
One other thing I would ask the former acting minister to pass on is that his seatmate the former minister suggested we were going to get 48 new chronic care beds; again, my friend the member for Essex North will remember that. The minister came into Windsor last year with great fanfare and announced we were going to get 48 new chronic care beds. Where are they? The clock is ticking. We need the beds and we need them now.
Very briefly, on a matter to the Minister of Transportation and Communications (Mr. Snow), it is all very nice that we have a timetable for the development of an interchange in my riding at the corner of E. C. Row and Dominion; but, as someone who drives along Dominion, which is an arterial road, and who has to cross this high-speed expressway -- there are traffic lights -- I would just say for the minister's edification that twice within the last three weeks the members of this Legislature were almost sent to the hustings for a by-election as trucks went whizzing by through red lights at the corner of E. C. Row and Dominion. This member and other motorists jumped on their brakes so they would not be run down.
The minister has indicated that he has this in his 1986 budget. I would want to urge him most humbly but as forcefully as I can, because it really is a safety hazard, to get on with the job and do it next year.
Finally, I want to deal very briefly with the promise in the speech from the throne. It was one of the very few specifics this government made and I want to say that I appreciate the commitment the government has made to the retooling of our Canadian auto parts firms. I appreciate and support the promised initiative. I will wait, as I always do, in great anticipation for this to be brought forward in the fullness of time.
Quite frankly, that was one part of my private member's resolution last fall. In bringing forward the resolution, I hoped the government would see its way. The member for Durham West (Mr. Ashe) and the member for Chatham-Kent (Mr. Watson) both spoke in support.
I am sure they have been attempting to move this government in cabinet. I am pleased that all of us working together are going to finally adopt a positive new strategy on the part of this government; that is, not just blaming the feds for everything but once in a while putting its money where its mouth is.
I want to be able to wrap this up tonight. I wanted to speak about the disabled, but I will simply suggest that I hope the comments from the Provincial Secretary for Social Development on the disgraceful situation of our disabled receiving $382 per month, as opposed to single elderly who get $578 per month, will be addressed in the budget. It really surprises me that we could not have addressed that beforehand.
I am pleased the Provincial Secretary for Resources Development (Mr. Sterling) is here. I know he is personally very interested in this matter. I hope the government will take a look at this. I mean this very sincerely in a nonpartisan way. I always like to end my speech on something of a nonpartisan note. I want to commend to the government -- particularly to the minister who has been concerned -- my four-part resolution to help victims of Alzheimer's disease.
The Alzheimer Society says, "Let us not forget those who forget." Degenerative brain disease is an awful-enough occurrence without the additional financial and legal hardship currently being imposed today by the judicial system. Surely it is fair to give the public trustee the flexibility to delay the seizure of assets of a victim who lacks the power of attorney if the family is seeking alternative financial arrangements through the judicial process.
The entire procedure of applying for an order of conimitteeship must be streamlined to reduce the expense and needless red tape involved. I want to share with the minister and with the government some comments made by Ken Cohen, legal counsel for the Alzheimer Society. He has three concrete ideas on how the committeeship application costs might be reduced. I know the member for Bellwoods has been very interested in this.
He suggests that unless an appearance is filed at least two business days before the hearing date, or unless the judge specifically asks for the attendance of counsel, the application should be considered by the judge without the need for counsel to attend.
Second, he suggests the need to obtain and file affidavits from two physicians would be eliminated if the physician's certificate under the Mental Health Act were considered prima facie evidence of the patient's mental incompetency.
Third, he suggests the elimination of the confirming order by the justice of the Supreme Court of Ontario after one has been obtained by the county court judge, as is recommended by the proposed Courts of Justice Act.
I am just wrapping up, if members can bear with me for a second. The third part of my resolution calls on the public trustee to increase his accountability to the families whose assets he has seized by giving them an accounting statement annually, rather than solely on the victim's death. That is a moderate middle ground between some demands for a monthly accounting and the current system we have.
Finally, as a show of goodwill, the final part of my resolution calls on the government -- I really hope it will do this because I think it would send out all the right signals in this terrible, tragic disease -- to end its practice of channelling any profit made by the public trustee into the consolidated revenue fund and instead specifically earmark those profits as grants to Ontario medical institutions for research into degenerative brain diseases. This is only one suggestion. Government members may have others we could look at.
That would send out all the right signals, some very important signals to those who suffer from or who have family or friends who suffer from this awful disease, that we are serious about and understand the immense tragedy they are going through.
I see the clock. I have so many other things I wish to say about this very poor throne speech, but I will leave with those remarks.
10:30 p.m.
On motion by Mr. McClellan, the debate was adjourned.
COMMERCIAL FISHING
Mr. Speaker: Pursuant to standing order 28(a), the member for Essex South (Mr. Mancini) has indicated his displeasure with an answer given to him by the Minister of Natural Resources (Mr. Pope). He will now have five minutes to make his presentation.
Mr. Mancini: Mr. Speaker, you will recall on Thursday last I questioned the Minister of Natural Resources concerning the new issuance of quotas in the Lake Erie commercial fishing industry. I brought this matter up in the Legislature because of the tremendous outrage and concern this has caused along the shoreline of Lake Erie, where large commercial fishing industries are located at many of the small towns and villages such as Kingsville, Leamington, Wheatley and others.
After the issuance of these commercial fishing quotas, which were received in the mail by the industry last Wednesday and Thursday, and after representations from these people, I found it necessary to question the minister.
During my questioning of the minister, I brought to the attention of the House that the fish processors and fish packing industry, which represents 16 companies, had passed a resolution that asked the minister to withhold the enforcement of the quotas until October 31 of this year. They made this request because the minister had imposed these quotas on the industry at the commencement of the fishing season. Therefore, people in the industry have not had time to make arrangements with their financiers, their crews and their captains, and with the fish processors themselves, as to how they are going to be able to maintain their businesses.
The industry asked for this delay in the implementation of the quotas so it could continue to negotiate with the minister on a co-operative basis, hoping to come to an agreeable conclusion.
I know there is absolutely no plan the minister could put forward whereby he would satisfy the entire industry, but I believe some arrangements can be made whereby he should be able to satisfy 75 per cent of the industry instead of having 75 per cent of the industry upset with his plan.
The minister brought to the attention of the House that the quotas he was allocating to the industry were double what the industry was able to catch last year. I want to remind the House that last year was a very poor year for fishing. We had a warm winter. In the lake there were what we refer to as junk fish that caused all kinds of problems for the industry. That, plus market conditions, was the reason the total catch in the lake was somewhat depressed. If the minister would go back and quote figures from 1982 and 1981, he would see the number of fish caught was substantially higher.
I also want to bring to the attention of the minister that a great many new people came into the industry in 1981, 1982 and 1983. Because of the way the minister has set up his quota plans, those people are not eligible to have taken into consideration the fish they caught in those years.
If a fisherman bought a dormant licence and went out and did a successful job, it meant absolutely nothing because the figures used to come up with his quota are figures that have been on the record from 1981, 1980 and, I believe, previously. Therefore, some people who caught 200,000 pounds of perch, for example, in 1981, 1982 and 1983, did not have this catch taken into consideration because the minister took into consideration the catch before 1980 and if the licence was dormant, there were no pounds to tabulate in the quota system.
The industry wants to co-operate with the ministry. The industry has a self-policing program it wants to maintain to show its good faith to the minister and to the general population of Ontario, to prove it does not want to rape the lake and does not want to ruin the resource we have. It appears there is a lot of pressure being put on the minister, probably from sports fishermen from Ohio and/or his bureaucrats in the ministry, who have been wanting quotas for a long time. In conclusion, I say to the minister his first obligation is not to his bureaucrats nor to the sportsmen of Ohio, but to the commercial fishermen of Ontario.
Hon. Mr. Pope: Mr. Speaker, if the honourable member would refer to the speech I made to the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters at Windsor about four weeks ago, he would see on that occasion and on many occasions prior and subsequent to that event in conversations with sports fishermen, sports-fishing organizations and writers on the outdoors in this province I have defended the necessity of protecting and stabilizing the commercial fishing industry as a vital user of the fish resource of the province. I took that message to the Ontario federation's annual meeting at Windsor because I do believe it.
This process began many years ago before I was a minister. A joint ministry and industry committee spent some considerable time in arriving at a unanimous report on the modernization of commercial fisheries. Mr. Auld, my predecessor, wrote letters to every licence holder when he was minister advising them they should not assume they could gear up subsequent to the date of his letter and have that gear-up recognized in future allocations. At that time it was well known we were moving towards individual species allocation for each and every operator in the province.
We have not tried to adopt a system that will penalize commercial fishermen. On the contrary, as I indicated in my London, Ontario, speech in early January this year, we have made some significant changes in the modernization program as a result of more than a year of discussions with the commercial fishermen and other users of the fish resource. Those changes were for the benefit of the commercial fishing industry.
We proceeded through extensive consultation, including meetings in communities along the shore of Lake Erie and up through Lake Huron and Georgian Bay. We met with some commercial fishermen in Lake Nipigon a year and a half ago. We met with commercial fishermen on Lake Superior, from Lake of the Woods in Kenora and Shoal Lake, to discuss their points of view on the modernization program before we moved ahead.
The initial offer made last summer, which caused some controversy and concern, was modified substantially in the light of discussions with the Ontario Council of Commercial Fisheries and with individual fishermen. I indicated, for instance, that the initial yellow perch quota for Lake Erie was 8.7 million. That was adjusted upwards by 1.1 million on the basis of the best three of seven years system we put in place at a very late date to try to accommodate the commercial fishermen. We think we have been successful in alleviating a lot of their concerns with most of the species in most of the lakes.
We indicated to the commercial fishermen we would allow them to keep their licences and their quotas and fish those quotas while the appeal process was going on. We also indicated we would have an expeditious appeal process in place involving the commercial fishermen and the ministry in reaching decisions that would take into account two distinct and equal principles that are at the heart of our commercial fishing policy.
The first is conservation of our fish species in Ontario and their harvesting on a sustained yield basis in every lake in the province. The second, and equally important, is the continued economic viability of the industry and individual operators in it. We are trying to address those two equally important principles in the numbers we have laid out to individual commercial fishermen.
I want to reiterate very briefly that the net effect of most of these allocations is significantly more than the actual fishing levels in the last three years. It is somewhat less than the fishing levels in 1979-80, but in rounded terms significantly more than their average catch in the last seven years.
Therefore, we have attempted to solve their economic problems in the context of the allocation and will continue to work with them to try to make sure that happens for each and every individual operator and each and every lake in the province.
The House adjourned at 10:41 p.m.