Hansard Transcript 1988-Apr-27 | Legislative Assembly of Ontario

Mr. Wiseman: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker: May I ask the Speaker when he is doing the Lord’s Prayer to say it a little slower? It is awfully hard for us to catch up.

Mr. Speaker: Thank you for your advice.

Mr. Swart: On that point of order, Mr. Speaker: Maybe because he does not know it well enough, he stumbles on it.

Mr. Speaker: We will now commence with routine proceedings.

MEMBERS’ STATEMENTS

COLLEGES OF APPLIED ARTS AND TECHNOLOGY

Mr. Swart: What the Minister of Colleges and Universities (Mrs. McLeod) said yesterday and the day before about funding of Ontario’s college system has an ominous ring. Three quarters of the colleges are facing deficits. It is clear from the minister’s statement that the only way they can halt them is by cutting programs, which will cut student seats and accessibility. Community colleges in the slow-growth areas-members can rename them depressed areas-are, more than the others, being forced to retrench because of her funding system.

As I pointed out in questions yesterday, Niagara College of Applied Arts and Technology is a classic example of this wrong-headed minister’s system. In an area of high unemployment, it worsens the situation. Niagara College immediately loses 28 staff jobs this year. With the same formula the total will be over 100 next year. But the overall job losses are much worse than that. The courses to be shut down are ones in which there are real demands for graduates: theatre arts technicians, hygienists and bilingual secretaries. Most of the others are grabbed up by the employment market as soon as they graduate, but there will not be any graduates any more if the minister has her way.

In addition, the cutbacks are counterproductive: cutbacks, then fewer students and fewer courses; fewer students and fewer courses, less funding and more cutbacks. It is a vicious cycle and a stupid policy from every point of view. I call on the minister to revise her funding formula and keep the colleges alive, viable and growing in the slow-growth areas.

The Speaker: The member’s time has expired.

Mr. Swart: Those are the areas which need it most.

SCHOOL FUNDING

Mr. Sterling: Today our staff asked the Ministry of Education for a complete list of capital allocations to school boards across this province, which the minister announced one at a time yesterday. We were told by the staff that they had to get permission from the minister’s office. When our staff phoned the minister’s office, one of the minister’s many assistants informed us that no such list existed and it would take the ministry staff two or three days to compile such a list.

I have never heard such a bunch of utter nonsense and bunk in my life. Does the minister seriously expect me or the public of Ontario to believe that his ministry would allocate $504 million worth of capital projects and not keep a list of them? I remind the minister that he is not throwing around his money; he is throwing around the money of the taxpayers of this province. That money belongs to them, and they have a right to know how this government is spending that money, right down to the last cent.

I suggest that the minister go over this basic fact of our democratic way of life. Today I am requesting that information under the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. That is the only way we can get information from this government. They are so closed, and it makes me so angry, that I am going to continue to raise this subject on a number of occasions.

MANITOBA ELECTION

Ms. Poole: Last night I had the pleasure of speaking by telephone to the newly elected member for the Winnipeg riding of Radisson, Manitoba. With the help of a small band of volunteers from my riding in Toronto, who went out to Winnipeg for the last week of the election, a supposedly unwinable riding was turned into a Liberal victory. When one adds a small band of valiant volunteers from Eglinton to a small band of volunteers from Radisson, there can be nothing else but victory.

As a result of that co-operation, the new MLA for the riding of Radisson in Manitoba, Al Patterson, has suggested the twinning of our two ridings of Radisson and Eglinton. Therefore, I am delighted to formally announce in the House today the linking of Radisson and Eglinton. It gives me the greatest pleasure to offer congratulations to Sharon Carstairs, Al Patterson and all Liberals in Manitoba on their magnificent showing in the election last night.

USE OF PRESCRIPTION DRUGS

Mr. Reville: I was browsing through the letters section of the Toronto Star the other day and a headline caught my eye. This is what it said: “Blame Users for the Mess in Health Care.” I settled down to read a letter from the Minister of Health (Mrs. Caplan), but no, it was a letter from a Dr. Howard Bargman in Scarborough, who wrote that a very significant number of prescription drugs are dispensed to patients because of their perception that they need medicine in order to get better.

The patient, clearly dominant in the doctor-patient relationship, refuses to take no for an answer. Consider the fix this poor doctor is in. He says patients will shop around until they find a doctor who will submit to their wishes. This is incredible. Here we have a doctor who says he prescribes drugs that patients do not need so that he will not make them angry and lose them to another doctor.

Almost as an afterthought the doctor notes that a certain number will end up with unnecessary drug reactions, thus further utilizing the medical system. The question is, how should we feel about giving the keys to the health care system to such timid souls as these?

SCHOOL FUNDING

Mr. Sterling: Yesterday I attempted to indicate to the Minister of Education (Mr. Ward) the seriousness of capital underfunding at the Carleton Board of Education in eastern Ontario. He fails to comprehend the crisis we are in. In this year’s budget, Metro Toronto and Ottawa-Carleton were again selected as high-growth areas requiring particular attention. Fine, but how does he translate this into actual dollars?

Yesterday the Carleton Board of Education was awarded $4.8 million in grant dollars. It requested $51 million. In comparison, the other three high-growth boards received as follows: Dufferin-Peel, $12 million; Durham, $11 million; and York, $40 million. That is $40 million compared to $4 million. What is the inequity here? It is self-obvious. There is a bunch of Liberals elected from Toronto and Toronto area and they do not care a damn about eastern Ontario.

The Carleton Board of Education received $3.1 million in actual grants. How is a growth area to deal with growth if we are consistently underfunded in our area? Our Carleton separate boards, while receiving more grant dollars, actually fared no better in comparison. They received $19 million in grant dollars compared to Dufferin-Peel, $60 million; Durham, $26 million; and York, $43 million.

1340

CARASSAUGA

Mr. Offer: I want to inform the members of the Legislature of an event taking place in Mississauga next month called Carassauga, which is a three-day event celebrating Mississauga’s multicultural makeup. Many pavilions will be located throughout the city, at schools, community centres, etc., where all will be able to sample the foods, customs and dances of the many countries represented by Mississauga citizens.

We are fortunate in the city of Mississauga to have a rich multicultural mosaic of people who have chosen Mississauga to live and work and at the same time maintain their particular heritage. It is fortunate, not only for Mississauga but also for the rest of the province. As a society where all people work, share, co-operate and understand each other, we all benefit and become much stronger for it.

Today, in the west public gallery, we have the chairman of Carassauga, Jack Almeida, and the public relations director, Nakul Jerath, as well as other officials representing the Carassauga event. The theme for Carassauga is “Come Meet the World.” I invite all members to share in this celebration throughout Mississauga on May 13, 14 and 15.

STATEMENT BY THE MINISTRY

POST-SECONDARY EDUCATION

Hon. Mrs. McLeod: I am pleased to rise today to discuss this government’s ongoing commitment to post-secondary education in Ontario. The budget statement released last week by the Treasurer (Mr. R. F. Nixon) continues improvements to funding for our colleges and universities.

The Treasurer has made available, through his budget, $88 million to allow more students to attend Ontario universities. This amount provides funding for the enrolment increases that took place last year, and it provides funding to recognize enrolment growth that is expected in 1988-89. This funding is more than double what was allocated to support accessibility to university programs in 1987-88.

It is significant as well that this budget recognizes that the increasing enrolment in universities is not likely a temporary phenomenon. A commitment has been made to provide measures to accommodate new levels of enrolment on a more permanent basis.

This government has also made an unprecedented commitment to provide $440 million in capital funding for colleges and universities over the next four years. This commitment will allow for the continuation of the ministry’s regular college and university capital programs. It also includes $40 million to assist universities to rent or buy temporary facilities to house classrooms, faculty offices, teaching laboratories and library and study space. As well, universities will be able to use the fund to alter or convert existing classrooms and labs and to equip the temporary or altered facilities.

The new capital allocation also includes $5 million for the first year of a program to encourage construction of more university student residences. This government has committed $65 million to provide an additional 5,000 beds across Ontario.

This is just the latest in a series of initiatives taken by this government in the area of post-secondary education since 1985. Operating grants for universities have increased by 25 per cent and college operating grants have gone up by 36 per cent since that time. Funding for the Ontario student awards program has increased by an unprecedented 34 per cent as we both improve the program of student assistance and maintain these programs for the increased number of students.

This government has made a commitment to Ontario students. We are working to ensure that post-secondary education is accessible to those who want to learn at any age and that our colleges and universities continue to offer excellence and relevance in education. The Treasurer’s budget helps us to meet that commitment.

RESPONSES

POST-SECONDARY EDUCATION

Mr. R. F. Johnston: I would like to respond to the minister’s statement and perhaps counter it with a few of the facts about what is happening to the university system.

Yesterday I showed, I think rather dramatically, what is happening in our library system. There is a lack of resources to protect that valuable resource at places like the University of Toronto. Other libraries around the province have cut back their acquisitions, as the minister well knows. The development of periodicals and literature, which are an important base to the whole academic life, is being eroded in this province because of the lack of funding from that minister.

The minister knows as well about the college deficits that the member for Windsor-Riverside (Mr. D. S. Cooke), the member for Welland-Thorold (Mr. Swart) and I have raised in this House and about the problems that are going to be there in terms of accessibility for students this fall unless this government acts. There is nothing in this statement today to say that the minister recognizes those problems and is going to act to make sure there is an expanded level of programs available in our community colleges, not a reduction.

The minister talks at length about the kind of money that is made available this year to the university sector, but I think it is wise to put this into perspective. I would like to quote from a circular from the Council of Ontario Universities put out by Professor Arthurs, president of York University in Ontario, in which he says: “In June of 1987, the government acknowledged that universities could not accept additional students unless they received full-cost funding. Now, a year later, the system is more crowded than ever. The need for full-cost funding is stronger than ever, but the government has apparently provided full funding for only about half of the increase in applications.”

What Professor Arthurs is saying is that this government is practically stepping back from its commitment to full accessibility to universities by not providing the money the universities require in order to guarantee full accessibility to all those students who are eligible for it.

I think there is a danger, and the government should know this, of a revolt among our universities through the accessibility proposal that it put forward, because it does not guarantee the full costs but only half the costs. People like Professor Connell, president of the University of Toronto, are basically saying that there is no way that university can be fully accessible this year unless the government makes a commitment to full funding.

I would like to quote from a letter he has sent to Paul Fox, chairman of the Ontario Council on University Affairs, in which he says: “The university should seek a commitment from the government that, as long as the OSIS policy remains in place, the base funding of the universities will rise each year by a factor which will enable them to maintain existing levels of service according to the standards of assessment established by the Ontario Council on University Affairs.”

Clearly, the government has not done that and the government has said that it does not care about the erosion of base funding of the universities by approximately $60 million this year alone. The need for new teachers, in the face of a probable growth in the university system of 20 per cent in the next number of years, the need for 1,500 new teachers at this point, and no money for that in this budget at all, is leaving them in a position where, like the 1960s, we are going to be importing, in a crisis situation in two or three years’ time, professors from California and other places in the United States because we will not have developed that base of teaching expertise here in Ontario as we should be doing.

The government knows that. The government has turned a blind eye to the request by the faculty associations across Ontario, which said we are in a very dangerous situation now, with many professors reaching retirement age, with no new entry programs in terms of new professors and an expanding need which this government has refused to recognize.

The people of Ontario should not be fooled by the kinds of pronouncements that are made today by the Minister of Colleges and Universities (Mrs. McLeod). This Liberal reform government has stepped back from its real commitment to the universities of this province and is, therefore, taking a step back from a commitment to the future of this province.

Mr. Jackson: I, too, wish to respond to the nonstatement by the Minister of Colleges and Universities in this House. There is absolutely nothing in this statement that was not already referred to in the statement of the Treasurer (Mr. R. F. Nixon) last week and we all know how well that went over. Without quoting all of the various groups in post-secondary education that have condemned the government’s approach to funding post-secondary education, I wish to highlight a couple of points.

In fact, her $400 million on base capital means she has flat-lined capital for the next four years. Each successive year, they will be receiving fewer and fewer dollars in terms of her commitment. Yet she stylized that and tried to manage the optics that, in fact, this constitutes a major commitment over four years.

Let us look at the $65 million for university residences It is actually going to be $5 million each year over the next 15 years. The $88 million on accessibility is not going to flow this year, as the minister implies. It is not going to flow until next year. Universities are not going to get that money, and yet the pressure on enrolments is occurring now for September of this year. In fact, what the minister’s statement does not say is that they are only going to get $38 million in this budget for that accessibility.

1350

The Council of Ontario Universities, the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations and the Ontario Federation of Students have all told the minister that this year one in 10 qualified applicants to post-secondary university education institutions in this province will be turned down. In response to questions we raised in the House, the minister indicated she still did not have the numbers. We have numbers from last year.

We asked the Premier (Mr. Peterson) this question last year. It was asked by the member for Parry Sound (Mr. Eves). We said we speculated that there would be 2,400 or 2,500 students denied post-secondary education. The Premier gave his solemn promise and guarantee in this House that every single student would be guaranteed a position. There was a minor event in Ontario politics, called an election, in the interim, but we have now found out that the government has an entirely different approach in these matters.

The Premier no longer talks about a guarantee. The minister is talking about maximum numbers that universities would be governed by. The Minister of Education (Mr. Ward) says if you cannot get into a university you can always go to a community college. The fact of the matter is that 5,500 students qualified to be in postsecondary institutions are probably not going to be able to get into them as a result of the budget of this Treasurer.

It is unusual, but in Ontario we have pretty strict standards in our universities. If students plagiarize an essay and plagiarize words, they put their year at risk; they could be removed. Why then can she, as a minister, inflate these numbers and stylize them in such a way that it is not an accurate reflection of the reality of funding in this province? Why should she not be subjected to the same standard as Ontario students are in terms of the significance of those numbers?

Hon. R. F. Nixon: What kind of ridiculous allegation is that?

Mr. Jackson: It is not as ridiculous as the Treasurer indicates. The Treasurer is ashamed of his budget. It is unfortunate that he has not seen fit to honour the commitment to post-secondary education. It was never mentioned in the accord document that brought this Premier to power, and it is a shame that three years later we still are not seeing evidence that the university students of this province are a sufficient priority for this government.

Mr. Harris: I am really shocked that the minister had enough nerve to want to remind us today what has really happened. She says there is 25 per cent more for universities. In the same period, government spending is up 42 per cent, so universities do not have the same priority as this government’s spending on itself. Thirty-six per cent for colleges. At the same time, overall government spending has gone up 42 per cent.

It promised fully accessible health care; now it is writing letters to the hospitals, saying, “You have to cut back to balance your budgets whether you’re operating efficiently or not.” The government promised accessible spaces in community colleges. Now it is saying, “We can’t deliver.” It has to be one or the other. Why does it not be honest --

lnterjections.

Mr. Speaker: Order.

ORAL QUESTIONS

SCHOOL FUNDING

Mr. B. Rae: I have some questions for the Premier about an issue that I think the Premier will agree is one of the most difficult that all of us in this House have had to face over the last few years. That, of course, is the question of the funding for public education, particularly in light of the decision that was made by this House by all three parties that we would proceed to fund the separate school system up until grade 13.

A very confusing series of announcements yesterday-press releases that were basically dumped by the Minister of Education (Mr. Ward) in the press gallery and sifted through by various people, never really announced systematically in this House with respect to how funds were to be allocated-told that, for example, the Ontario government has allocated funds which will generate capital projects valued at approximately $50 million in Durham, $14.7 million for the Durham Board of Education and $35.5 million for the separate board of education, which is far more than the government itself is in fact spending. In the announcements that were made, 68 per cent of the grants went to the separate school board and just a little over 32 per cent went to public boards.

Mr. Speaker: Question?

Mr. B. Rae: I am sure the Premier is aware of the sentiment which I think it is fair to say is widely felt among many public school supporters that there is a concern with respect to the funding for public schools even among those who are now recognizing the reality and supporting the concept of Bill 30.

I would like to ask the Premier: does he not feel there is at least concern among supporters of public education as to the adequacy of the support for many boards at a time when they have put in for considerable sums of money and in fact those requests have been rejected by the government?

Hon. Mr. Peterson: I do not think the member can say those requests have been rejected. The first tranche has been announced, a very major program involving school capital of $1.3 billion over the next three years, which is a long-term commitment, as my honourable friend knows, not the traditional approach of doing it year by year. My honourable friend will recognize that is about four or five times per year what was being spent two or three years ago. I think my honourable friend recognized that.

Our responsibility obviously is to respond on the basis of need, prioritized for the children of this province on the basis of need, irrespective of whether it is the Catholic or the public system. We believe in both, and I know my honourable friend, who supported Bill 30, as did virtually all members of this House, would recognize that our priority is quality education for every single kid.

The member can argue and others will argue, in this area as in other areas, that not enough money has been spent, and that is a fair charge, I guess, just as others will argue that taxes were raised too much to pay for the needs other people would like to identify, depending on their own priorities. This is a massive capital program, and we think it has been objectively organized on the basis of the real need of real children, regardless of which system they are in.

Mr. B. Rae: I say to the Premier with all respect that the dilemma he is placing a great many public boards in is that they have needs. They have needs for new students and for new spaces. They have needs in terms of renovations which are going to be put on hold. They have needs in terms of programs which are going to be cut.

If you take the Ottawa Board of Education, for example, $28 million in the Ottawa area went to the Catholic system; no dollars went to the public system. As a result of that announcement, with respect to what was said yesterday, one of the trustees said, “The Ottawa board is one of the best boards in the country, but with no funding to expand or maintain the present quality of its schools and programs, its educational integrity is seriously in jeopardy.”

The dilemma that we have, and I say this as one who has consistently supported Bill 30, at some cost from time to time, is that the message this government is sending out to the public school systems is that they have a lower priority now that Bill 30 is in place, and that is the wrong message to be sending out.

Mr. Speaker: Question?

Mr. B. Rae: I wonder if the Premier would not agree that in making the decisions the government has made in the way it has made them, in making the decisions it has made with respect to statements which I might say are so exaggerated in terms of what it appears to be promising school boards that in fact --

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Hon. Mr. Peterson: I appreciate the question from my honourable friend, and I recognize, as he says, that he has supported the principle of full funding and even feels it was at some price, or that there is some cost he has paid. I say to my honourable friend, there is never a cost or a price when you support a matter of principle, as we did, all of us, in this House. My honourable friend has supported that, and I would not want him, as I am sure he would not want to himself, unwittingly to create the impression there is some kind of bias or distortion in this system. It was a legitimate inventory of need based on where the most pressures are, and that is the decision that was made.

My honourable friend says to me we should spend more on education. I say I would like to spend more on education and in many other areas as well. The member and I both know the finite capacity of government to respond to every need, but I say to my honourable friend, if there is any suggestion of bias one way or the other based on this difficult debate that this province has had, then I am sure he would want to disabuse anybody of the view that he is tilting one way or the other in that regard.

Mr. B. Rae: I say to the Premier that he is in command of the decision-making process. No one on this side has any access to how those decisions are made. We have no idea how the decisions are made. As far as we are concerned, the decisions are made by his government, they are made by his ministry, and he is responsible for them. He should not try to share the blame with the rest of the House in terms of how he makes his decisions, how much money he decides to allocate, how much money the Treasurer (Mr. R. F. Nixon) decides to allocate or how it is done. That is his responsibility, and that is something he is going to have to live with. The question I have --

Hon. Mr. Scott: Are you trying to turn this into a religious issue?

Mr. B. Rae: Mr. Speaker, the Attorney General (Mr. Scott) has said to me that I am turning this into a religious issue, and I want to respond very directly to that because it is a heckle of such importance.

Mr. Speaker: Order. Question.

Mr. B. Rae: I want to respond to that heckle by saying it is precisely because I do not want to turn it into a religious issue that I am asking the government --

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. I did not hear a question. Was there one?’

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Order. Do you have a question, a supplementary?

Mr. B. Rae: I do have a question. Does the Premier not realize that precisely the emotions which the Attorney General has referred to-and I have known the Attorney General long enough to hope that he would realize that the stirring up of religious prejudice is something that I went into politics to prevent and not something I went into politics to start.

Mr. Speaker: Question.

Mr. B. Rae: Does the Premier not realize that, in making the decisions the way he has made them, in not facing up to the full cost of Bill 30 as it affects the public school system and as it affects the separate school system, in fact he is putting more pressure on local boards without giving them the assistance and, in fact, the money they need in order to assuage local feelings, which were very powerful, with respect to the proper funding for public education?

Hon. Mr. Peterson: I can only repeat. The honourable member feels we should spend more on education, and he is certainly entitled to make that point, in spite of the fact that, by any reasonable standard he would want to use, it is the greatest allocation in recent history responding to the real needs. I think the Attorney General-and I cannot speak for him-may have been disappointed that a member whom he has known for a long time, respected, and indeed as I understand it taught, would become part of a debate that I am sure he has assiduously avoided in the past.

I say to my honourable friend that he is welcome at any time to look at the allocations process and how those decisions were made about which school. It will be thoroughly discussed in estimates, I am sure. There are absolutely no secrets about that, why it went to one board as opposed to another, and I would invite the member and the critics to sit down with the Minister of Education and go through all those judgements in detail. If the member would like to challenge those judgements, to say they should have gone one place rather than to another, he is entitled to do that, but let us not turn the clock backwards.

Mr. R. F. Johnston: I would like to go back to the Premier on the same matter.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Mr. R. F. Johnston: My question is for the Premier on the same matter. We all here are dealing with perceptions as well as with realities. I think the concern we have is that the difficulty is that his government has decided it will not intervene to assist on the Bill 30 transfer questions, and yet it comes forward with its capital allocations in the way it has today.

In terms of perceptions, would the Premier not agree that the representatives of the Renfrew County Board of Education-which received no money at all, even though it had asked for $2.8 million-whom we talked to today are surprised that it got nothing when the Catholic board in Pembroke got $6 million? Does the Premier not understand that this kind of perspective, at a time when there is a major controversy in Pembroke around this issue, is problematic? All we are asking the Premier is why is he not taking some steps to indicate that he is looking at this in a way which gives the perception of equality as well as meeting the real needs he and others have talked about?

Mr. Speaker: Order. The question has been asked.

Hon. Mr. Peterson: I regret very much what I am hearing from my two friends opposite, I really do. But I say to them, as frankly as I can, I was not aware of the facts, but my colleague to the left, who represents that area, tells me that the public board got substantially more than the separate board last year. That is what my friend tells me, and he was then Minister of Education. I think what the member would want to do when he raises these provocative questions is put them completely in perspective in that regard.

I say one other thing to my honourable friend: yes, there are perceptions constantly about the member, myself, this process and the things we do. There is also a reality, and we are called upon to deal on the basis of reality, as is the member, and not pander to misguided perceptions.

Mr. R. F. Johnston: My argument about perceptions was just made by the Premier for me. Yes, there was a difference in allocation last year. The separate school board got $400,000 and the public board got $1.2 million. That is quite a difference from $6 million to zero this year, in terms of perceptions.

Can the Premier explain to me, with all the problems we have had in Hamilton, when we know there is growth in Hamilton-Wentworth, why it is there has been no money put into the Hamilton-Wentworth public board to help that board feel that it is not the total loser through Bill 30?

Hon. Mr. Peterson: I am not familiar with the particulars of the Pembroke board. My honourable friend is, and he informed me that it was there to address specific needs in that community. I think the point has been made by this government and I am frankly disappointed with the point I think the member is trying to make.

Mr. R. F. Johnston: I do not understand. I am trying to get the Premier to understand that there are parts of this province presently going through major problems around Bill 30 which need some assistance in overcoming those problems at a local level. Instead of dealing with that in this capital allocation, the government has given, it seems, a little more than two thirds of the money to one of the systems; and the public system, which is already feeling that it is in jeopardy in some of these communities-and I look at Metro Toronto or Hamilton or Pembroke-does not have anything to look at in these allocations which would make it feel better about things.

Is the Premier going to come forward with some money around the Bill 30 transfers in addition to this, or is this all that there is? And if that is the case, does he not feel again that the perceptions that are going to be made out there are incorrect?

Mr. Speaker: Order. The question has been asked.

Hon. Mr. Peterson: I say to my honourable friend that a lot of these expenditures were made around Bill 30 and the effects that had on enrollment and where young children chose to enjoy their schooling. Surely the member understands that. This is a massive allocation. Our job is to respond to those kids. Maybe what the member does not understand is that if there is a school built in a particular area, it obviously takes pressures off other discussions with respect to transfers. Surely my honourable friend understands that.

The bottom line in all of this is that kids are kids. Regardless of the system, it is our responsibility to respond to where they are, and I think we are doing that.

1987 CONSTITUTIONAL ACCORD

Mr. Brandt: My question as well is to the Premier; it is with respect to some meetings the Premier has held recently. At the end of last month, the Premier met with Premier Bourassa and had some discussions that were, in part, covered in this House. More recently, within the last week, he has met with Premier McKenna of New Brunswick in connection with interprovincial relations and some matters obviously of importance to both our provinces and the country as well.

I do not expect the Premier would disclose any confidential elements within those discussions that took place, but I think that since the cost of those meetings was borne at least in part by the taxpayers of our respective provinces, the matter is of some public interest as it relates to the Meech Lake accord. I would like to ask the Premier if those subjects were discussed-and I am asking only for a general response-with the two premiers in question.

1410

Hon. Mr. Peterson: The answer is yes, and among many other items, I should add to my honourable friend.

Mr. Brandt: I appreciate that response and I expected that that would be the case.

Given that Premier Bourassa has taken a very firm position relative to the Meech Lake accord, in that he is not prepared to entertain, as I understand it, any amendments; and given that Premier McKenna has indicated some concerns about the accord as it relates to the position of his province, can the Premier indicate whether or not there was any suggestion given to either of those premiers relative to Ontario’s position on any proposed amendments that may come forward as a result of the committee discussions that are under way here in Ontario?

Hon. Mr. Peterson: I did not quite understand the question-whether there are any special deals? Can the member just rephrase it? I am sorry.

Mr. Brandt: This is part of my first supplementary. Has the Premier made any agreement with other premiers relative to amendments that may come forward from Ontario as a result of the committee activities that are going on in this province now? In other words, since those other two premiers have taken different positions on the Meech Lake accord, what is Ontario saying to those two premiers with respect to our position? How flexible is the Premier relative to that accord?

Hon. Mr. Peterson: The positions of Quebec and New Brunswick, as my honourable friend is quite well aware, are quite different on this matter. Mr. Bourassa has publicly and privately taken the position that that is it. He would say, I think, that people have been asking for years what Quebec wanted, and that is what they wanted-this particular set of conditions debated through Maîtres de l’avenir, through a Quebec election, about the Quebec bottom-line position on constitutional reform. I am uncomfortable speaking for him, but I think that is his position.

Mr. McKenna, who was not a party to the Meech Lake discussion, has quite a different view of the situation. He has a number of amendments he would like to see instituted, and he says that is his position. I say to my honourable friend Ontario has not put forward any, shall we say, brokerage proposals. In a sense, there is a very serious difference of position.

I do not have the magic solution to break that particular deadlock, if that is the case. My honourable friend obviously will look with interest as well at what has happened in Manitoba yesterday and ask himself the question, how will that play on the great national issue as well, because some people have indicated they want to look at certain amendments. So I am not in a position to predict how that will turn out.

We do know we need unanimity on Meech Lake. If all 10 provinces are not on board, it is not going to happen. My position has been, and I say to my honourable friend, that we want full, frank hearings. In the not-too-distant future, presumably, we will get the advice of the committee in this regard, not only on Meech Lake but on further constitutional approaches which are institutionalized in that document. But I do not have any sort of magic breakthrough proposals. It is going to take the couple of years left as this thing, shall we say, is debated and mooted across our country. I cannot at the moment --

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Mr. Brandt: I share with the Premier the need for finding some degree of unanimity among the provinces on this matter, and we would like, as an opposition, to play a helpful role in it. But I recognize that the results of the Manitoba election have now left us with at least two of those three parties indicating they are going to put forward amendments to the Meech Lake accord. Mr. McKenna has indicated that he as well is in a position where he will offer some amendments to the accord.

I ask the Premier very directly and in the spirit of trying to come to grips with a very complicated problem, is he prepared to accept realistic, helpful, constructive amendments from the committee sitting here in this province that may be brought forward for his government’s consideration to offer as part of the solution that we feel is necessary to bind this agreement in such a way as hopefully to bring in the other provinces as well that have indicated some concerns about the wording of the present document?

Hon. Mr. Peterson: Let me say I appreciate my honourable friend’s question, and I think it is a constructive one. This is a difficult debate right across this country, and it is not, as my honourable friend will recognize, a partisan debate. All parties across this country have different points of view. Our party does.

Mr. Brandt: Ask John Turner.

Hon. Mr. Peterson: I think the member’s party has some of the same problems and, obviously, the NDP does as well. I respect this. This is as it should be and is, shall we say, a wholesome national debate.

My honourable friend is asking me about my own view and what kind of advice I would be prepared to accept. Obviously, I will look very seriously at any advice we get on this matter, but I say to my honourable friend that my assessment at this moment is that Quebec is not prepared to open up the agreement. I think one would have to ask oneself the question-albeit, it could be perfected; I do not deny that for a minute. I have never argued that it is a perfect document-would other provinces accept amendments? Would Quebec accept amendments? Would Alberta accept amendments?

Some have said out west that if certain things are opened up, that opens other things with respect to the future agenda on constitutional reform. I think one of the things we are going to have to decide in the Meech Lake discussion is not only to discuss the document, with all of its imperfections, but also to discuss the question, “What are the results of undoing that and is something else doable?” That argument is, I think, part of the general argument that we will all have to be engaged in when, ultimately, decisions will have to be made, and we have to try to have some understanding of the reaction of other provinces at the same time.

Some would like to kill the whole deal -- dead, functus. Others would like certain amendments. Others would like to add on to that agenda and have more things included in Meech Lake, as my honourable friend knows. All those things have to be taken into account when this most critical judgement is made. I am one of those who believes passionately it is in the interest of this country to have Quebec part of this land.

RAPE CRISIS CENTRES

Mr. Jackson: My question is to the Solicitor General. Yesterday the Solicitor General met with representatives from the Ontario Coalition of Rape Crisis Centres and she informed them that there were no extra provincial funds for rape crisis centres. The minister does not need additional money from the Treasurer (Mr. R. F. Nixon). As we said in the House yesterday, the minister needs to properly manage the dollars she already has. Out of her budget of $427 million, we illustrated to her five examples totalling almost $2 million of mismanagement of funds within her ministry.

The government is about to spend $600,000 on an advertising campaign for rape crisis centres, and yet two of these centres are at risk of closing before the campaign even begins by the end of May. Is not the Solicitor General’s reluctance to adequately fund rape crisis centres in Ontario an admission she is not able to properly manage her budget?

Hon. Mrs. Smith: The member for Burlington South is not able to manage his questions in so far as getting his information straight. The member for Burlington South managed, inadvertently, I am sure, to misinform the House on many matters yesterday, on which he left people badly misinformed. I would like to set some of them straight.

I am sure the members will be very happy to hear that the $31,000 shopping spree to which the member referred was for oil and gas for the Ontario Provincial Police in the north, for their snowmobiles, boats and so on.

The member will be happy to know that he has incorrectly accused the former minister of buying $100,000 worth of furniture, when he bought not one stick, as I have bought not one stick.

I invite the member for a tour of my office and my parliamentary assistant’s office. I am sure he will be delighted to look for any new furniture he can find and report appropriately to the House. He will meet, at the same time, my staff, who are under the amount allotted by 25 per cent. If he can find a second executive assistant, I would be delighted if he would introduce that person to me, because I have not met him yet.

1420

Mr. Jackson: Yesterday it was brought to the Solicitor General’s attention that the Oshawa and Kenora centres need $5,000 each in order for them to remain open during the course of the campaign. Let me then suggest one other example of this government’s mismanagement, which the minister may wish to respond to as well.

Last night there were two cabinet ministers’ chauffeur-driven limousines parked outside of Exhibition Stadium for the Blue Jay game. One was being used by a minister; the other was not. When we called their offices today, one confirmed that one minister had been in attendance. The other said the minister was not present but could not tell me if a member of his staff, a member of his family, a Liberal back-bencher or a member of the Liberal Party was there. They could not tell who was using the government limousine last night. We do not know who was using it.

Mr. Speaker: Is that your question?

Mr. Jackson: How does the Solicitor General rationalize the fact that her government is spending taxpayers’ money to drive people by chauffeur-driven limousine to Blue Jay games, but she cannot find $5,000 for the rape crisis centres?

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I think there was a question there somewhere.

Hon. Mrs. Smith: I must say I have difficulty finding a question there, so I will answer the question the member asked previously, which was also based on misinformation. I did meet with the people from the rape crisis coalition yesterday and told them we would find money for the two centres that were going under.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Order. If the member for Burlington South heard the response, I hope the question will come in regard to the response.

Mr. Jackson: Thank you, Mr. Speaker, if you were giving direction. I am not sure what you were doing there.

Mr. Speaker: I was just informing the honourable member that if there is a response to a question --

Mr. Jackson: No, I am asking the question.

Mr. Speaker: Order, perhaps you would just listen. If there is another supplementary to be asked, that supplementary should be in regard to the response to the previous question.

Mr. Jackson: The fact of the matter is that rape crisis centres are receiving as little as $10,000 from this government to remain open and provide badly needed services for women who are the subject of violence and abuse in this province. The Liberal coterminous government in Quebec is providing funding at the rate of $60,000 per centre to ensure that women who are the subject of abuse have that lifeline in place.

Within her budget, the Solicitor General has sufficient dollars to adequately address the staffing needs of Ontario crisis intervention centres. When will she make the necessary announcement within her budget that she will adequately fund these centres? Which is not what she told them yesterday, she indicated she would not provide the funding.

Mr. Speaker: The question has been asked.

Hon. Mrs. Smith: As I reported yesterday to the House, I had a very satisfactory meeting with the members from the coalition, and we intend to meet together again to properly plan the growth and expenditures around rape crisis services in this province. In the meantime, we will help them to more appropriately spend the money they are getting.

The majority of these crisis centres actually operate at this time strictly with volunteers, and they are using the money for the services through those volunteers. We will work with them towards more appropriate plans, but we certainly will not take $1 million of the taxpayers’ money without any planning at all and just simply hand it over because there is a good cause. We will recognize the cause; we will plan for its service; and we will present the plan at the appropriate time, in conjunction with those centres.

OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND SAFETY

Miss Martel: I have a question for the Minister of Labour. Members in the House will recognize that tomorrow, April 28, will be Worker Memorial Day in Ontario. Members will also be aware, from the resolution my leader put forward three weeks ago, that the date, April 2S, is significant because it is the date when the Workers’ Compensation Act passed third reading in this House in 1914. We are all also aware that ever since that date the act and the compensation system itself have been a source of controversy in this province.

But, more important, the recent statistics --

Mr. Speaker: Is the question --

Miss Martel: I am getting to them -- from the WCB concerning injuries and fatalities indicate that not only is the compensation system not working but also the health and safety policies of this government are not working either.

Given the fact that there has been an increase of some 27,000 claims from 1986 to 1987 and that the number of fatalities in the same period has increased from 220 --

Mr. Speaker: Do you have a question?

Miss Martel: -- can the minister tell us what exactly is his ministry doing to protect workers in the workplace in Ontario?

Hon. Mr. Sorbara: I am delighted that the member for Sudbury East has mentioned Worker Memorial Day in the preamble to her question. It gives me an opportunity to advise the House that tomorrow I am going to be asking for unanimous consent to observe a moment of silence as a result of the resolution brought by the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. B. Rae) some two and a half weeks ago.

Unfortunately, the member for Sudbury East suggested, I think regrettably, that the Workers’ Compensation Board and the system are not working. Certainly, there has been over the course of the past year, I think, some increase in the number of claims. Most, if not all, of the increase in the number of claims are based on the fact that the amount of work in this province has expanded dramatically. The number of new jobs and the extent to which people are working is a credit to the entire workforce in the province and to the economy of the province, so it would not be surprising under those circumstances to see some slight increase, regrettable as it is, in the number of claims the board is confronted with.

Miss Martel: In view of the fact of the increase, which is tremendous in my opinion, the day-tomorrow-should not be a memorial day as much as it should be a day of mourning for workers in Ontario. Quite frankly --

Mr. Speaker: The question?

Miss Martel: -every working day in this province a worker is killed on the job, and that does not include the over 6,000 people who die annually as a result of occupational diseases they contract in the workplace.

Based on those specifics and based on the fact that these statistics from the board do not include accidents or injuries that are not reported to the board-and there are hundreds of those-l want to ask the minister again, in the speech from the throne when he stated that the government promised to reintroduce legislation to strengthen workers’ right to a healthy and safe workplace and also to implement the worker and community right to know legislation --

Mr. Speaker: Question?

Miss Martel: -when can the workers in this province expect that legislation to come from his ministry so that we can start protecting the people in the workplace?

Hon. Mr. Sorbara: The member for Sudbury East suggests that what we plan tomorrow, including a lowering of the flags around the province on all provincial buildings, should be called a day of mourning. Certainly, I think it would be appropriate as we reflect tomorrow to remember all those workers who have died in the workplace or have suffered injury or industrial disease.

The substance, I think, of the supplementary question was as to the timing for introduction of bills relating to reforms to the workers’ compensation system and reforms in the Occupational Health and Safety Act. I can tell my friend from Sudbury East that I look forward to bringing forth those measures in the near future. We will be able to deal with those matters much more expeditiously if the experience over the next few months in this Legislature is dramatically different from the experience we have seen from her party over the last few days in this Legislature.

HOUSING SUPPLY

Mr. Cousens: I have a question for the Minister of Housing. The Liberals have plans for housing and they are going to pass the problem on to the municipalities. Right now, they are soft-selling major changes they are going to make to municipal bylaws and municipal zoning. Two nights ago, the Liberal member for Eglinton (Ms. Poole) indicated that the Minister of Housing is going to start stepping on toes. She also said that for the last six months the Minister of Housing has had bad publicity, but just wait and see what happens now.

1430

One way to get more publicity is to pass the ball over to the municipalities, and then they, rather than the minister, will have the provincial housing crisis. Will she confirm today that she is planning to force municipalities to change local bylaws to create higher density in communities?

Hon. Ms. Hošek: I am delighted to get another question from my critic from the Progressive Conservatives. It has been a long time. Welcome back.

It is very clear that the problems for the people in this province associated with finding housing they can afford are serious. It is also very clear that the kind of answers we are going to get are going to require a variety of groups of people working together. The provincial government has indicated our commitment in a variety of ways. One very graphic and clear way is the number of resources that we are committing to the provision of nonprofit housing units all over this province. As announced in the budget, we have $2 billion for building nonprofit housing all over this province.

The provincial role is clear and will become clearer in all the initiatives we have taken and will take. The municipalities also have a role, and I believe it is important for us to work with the municipalities to find the best way to ensure that the people of this province get the housing they need and deserve.

Mr. Cousens: May the announcement be clear to the people of Ontario. The minister has now said yes, she is going to pass the problem of the provincial housing crisis over to the municipalities. It is no wonder that the home owners are worried: it is no wonder they are worried about the parking and it is no wonder they are worried about what is going to happen to their communities.

Mr. Speaker: Supplementary.

Mr. Cousens: While the Minister of Housing, out of one side of her mouth, is saying, “Don’t worry about anything,” the Minister of Municipal Affairs (Mr. Eakins), in his planning supplement to background, has an article that says, “There goes the neighbourhood.” In it he or one of his writers says, “Housing policies should ensure that accessory apartments are not inhibited by regulations aimed at protecting property values and neighbourhood quality.”

Dig that one. Out of one side of the mouth, one minister is saying, “Don’t worry,” while the next one is writing articles saying, “There goes the neighbourhood.”

Mr. Speaker: Do you have a question?

Mr. Cousens: Will the minister admit today that she is planning to change the fabric of neighbourhoods by forcing municipalities to change local bylaws?

Hon. Ms. Hošek: I am truly astonished at the member opposite. He has stood up in this House numerous times to say that the people of this province need help with their housing. I agree with him and I believe it is the role of everyone who has a contribution to make to make that contribution.

However, it is extremely important to me, and this is the message I want to give, that the people of this province get housed in communities that they can be proud of, in houses and apartment buildings that they are happy to live in and that the community is happy to have there. That is the kind of housing we are going to build and have in this province.

But the kind of tone of that question is not very helpful. I would like to point out to the member opposite that York region, his own region, just recently agreed to get involved in nonprofit housing, a move that I applaud and am excited by. What I would like to know is what the member opposite is doing in his community to be part of the solution and not part of the problem.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Order.

VISITORS

Mr. Speaker: I would just like to inform all members that we have some visitors in the gallery today who are used to a very quiet question period. The visitors in the Speaker’s gallery are from the House of Commons and they are members of the select committee of the House of Commons of the United Kingdom on the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration. They are meeting today with members of our standing committee on the Legislative Assembly and our standing committee on the Ombudsman. They are Sir Anthony Buck, MP, the chairman, Ronnie Fearn, MP, Frank Haynes, MP, and Jim Pawsey, MP. Also accompanying them is Bryan Sparrow, the consul general of Great Britain.

MASSEY COMBINES CORP.

Mr. Neumann: My question is for the Treasurer and Minister of Financial Institutions. On March 4, Massey Combines Corp. was placed into receivership, thereby ending over a century of farm equipment manufacturing in our community. Given that as recently as 1980 over 5,000 people were employed in this sector, the demise of Massey Combines, and prior to that of White Farm equipment, has had a profound impact upon our community, the workers and their families. Would the minister inform the House what this government is doing to address the adjustment issues flowing from the receivership of Massey Combines?

Hon. R. F. Nixon: I appreciate the honourable member giving me notice of this question. He would be aware --

Mr. Cousens: Oho!

Hon. R. F. Nixon: I do not see anything the matter with that. It seems to be appropriate for an important and complex question.

You will be aware, Mr. Speaker, that Ontario has a guarantee fund that has been officially designated by the Pension Commission of Ontario so that the payments from the fund will reinforce the pensions in the future. Varity has many contractual obligations to assist the funding of the pension plan and these are pursued. Examination of all legal documents is under way to determine whether Varity may have other obligations to the pension plan.

I am sure the honourable member will be glad to know that the documents have been supplied to all interested parties, including the union involved. There is a wide variety of counselling programs and an adjustment committee is in place assisting job search and placement. The Ministry of Industry, Trade and Technology is disseminating around the world information about this extremely desirable location in Brantford and in the Ontario manufacturing community.

The receiver is in the process of soliciting proposals, and government officials from both the federal and provincial governments are in contact with the receiver to provide whatever governmental assistance may be forthcoming.

Mr. Neumann: The minister knows that the vast majority of employees and pensioners affected worked for Massey-Ferguson Ltd. for many years. With the restructuring that occurred several years ago, these workers and retirees became the responsibility of Massey Combines.

Now that this company is in receivership while Varity continues to operate quite profitably, what is being done to ensure that Varity lives up to its full obligation to the government, and more important to the innocent victims, the families of pensioners and workers, not all of whom have a union to represent them? Furthermore, can the minister assure this House that the insurance companies involved will live up to their obligations to pay for insured benefits for pensioners?

Hon. R. F. Nixon: All legal agreements are being examined to ensure that contractual obligations are fully lived up to. Price Waterhouse is the administrator of the pension plan and, on behalf of the beneficiaries, it is pursuing whether Varity has any further or additional obligations. The Ministry of Labour is examining a request received from the Canadian Auto Workers that it determine whether Varity may be under further obligation for severance pay.

With respect to life insurance and extended health care and disability benefits, the ministry is in contact with the receiver and the companies involved in administering these plans to determine obligations. However, I should say that while it was considered to be an insurance package, in fact they were paid by the now bankrupt company as a condition of employment and they are therefore not covered by the guarantee that is in place under our provincial legislation.

ONTARIO FOOD TERMINAL

Mrs. Grier: I have a question for the Minister of Agriculture and Food and it refers to the Ontario Food Terminal and the status of the perpetual leases on some of the wholesale units there. It is an issue that I have raised before in this House and to which the minister has responded by saying that he is dealing with sublessees and that he is considering building new units. He has not mentioned what he is going to do about the assignment of the perpetual leases by some of the owners.

I would like to give the minister two facts and then ask him a question. The first fact is that last week the lease on one unit changed hands for $1.15 million and this week another lessee has been asked to pay $1,375,000 or to vacate by June, after 15 years’ business in the terminal. What is the minister going to do about this demand for exorbitant key money on publicly owned property?

1440

Hon. Mr. Riddell: I, like the honourable member, am sympathetic to the plight of Mr. Vetere and other sublessees who find themselves in the same position, but the honourable member knows, with her experience on the standing committee on government agencies, that I cannot legally do anything about these perpetual leases, which were established 33 years ago when the Ontario Food Terminal Board was first established; and I might say that was back in the days of the bad old Tories.

Had I been Minister of Agriculture and Food at the time, I would not have condoned this type of thing, but the fact of the matter is that they made provisions for perpetual leases and there is nothing that I, my ministry or the food terminal board can do about those. But what I have done is give approval for new units, and I will encourage the food terminal board to consider Mr. Vetere --

Mr. Speaker: I think that is a fairly full answer. Order.

Mrs. Grier: I know it has been the position of the minister that he is powerless to act in this situation. However, I would remind him that in 1979 there was a recommendation from a committee that suggested the Ontario Food Terminal Act be amended in order to give the minister the power to do something. This minister knows he has negotiated a new memorandum of understanding between the ministry and the food terminal board which was adopted by cabinet on March 9, 1988, and which reads, “In exercising its powers, the board shall be guided by its objects and any written policy directives of the minister expressing the objectives of the province of Ontario as they relate to the area of jurisdiction of the food terminal board.”

In the light of that power, will the minister order the food terminal board not to make any further assignment of the perpetual leases?

Hon. Mr. Riddell: Somehow, the honourable member seems to think the Minister of Agriculture and Food should jump in and interfere with boards which have been given the authority to operate and run their own business. The honourable member knows I have asked the Ontario Food Terminal Board to review its leasing policies. I asked it to do that in 1987. The board has undertaken and has substantially completed that review and the board’s solicitor is currently developing possible amendments to the Ontario Food Terminal Act and regulations to address the leasing issue.

I also have to say that the honourable member visited the food terminal board not too long ago and even she was surprised at the progress that board has made towards addressing some of the problems, the building of the new units, the plans for the new units, the fact that the solicitors are looking at ways of amending the legislation --

Mr. Speaker: A very good answer. Order.

ATHLETIC COMMISSIONER

Mr. Runciman: My question is for the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations. A few weeks ago, the province’s boxing commissioner, Clyde Gray, was suspended from his position and assigned other duties. As those of us who are boxing fans will know, Clyde Gray is highly respected in the boxing game throughout Canada and North America. He has worked tirelessly to promote the sport in Ontario and during his seven-year tenure as chairman there has not been a boxing death or serious injury. Can the minister tell the House just what it is that Clyde Gray has done wrong and when can we expect him back on the job?

Hon. Mr. Wrye: The decision to move Mr. Gray to other duties was taken after seriously considering a number of allegations and a review, which is still ongoing within the branch, as to whether Mr. Gray used his discretion in an area in which, as the honourable member will know, under our regulations no discretion exists.

I am sure the honourable member and members of the House in general will have read the allegations which were in the Toronto Globe and Mail. Those allegations were very quickly reviewed and in most cases, I say to the House, were substantiated. Mr. Gray was then assigned to other duties and we are continuing a full audit of the commission and of the role of the commissioner and indeed the whole area of that part of the entertainment standards branch. In the meantime, Mr. Gray is familiarizing himself with other aspects of the entertainment standards branch, and a decision will be made in the near future.

Mr. Runciman: This has all the appearance of a very public firing. All the evidence we have seen suggests that rigid and inflexible regulations are the real culprit here and the minister is trying to make Clyde Gray a scapegoat for his own failure to update unworkable rules. Does the minister not agree that a major revision of the boxing rules is urgently needed?

Hon. Mr. Wrye: I would be the first to join the honourable member in saying, and I do not mind saying, that Mr. Gray is a fine individual, an honourable individual who over a number of years has worked very hard in the industry and very hard on behalf of the people of Ontario.

Regrettably, that being said, there are a number of rules which the honourable member characterizes as inflexible which I would characterize as important safety precautions in the professional boxing industry. Quite frankly, those of us on this side of the House are not willing to see a diminution of those important safety rules in the professional boxing industry. They were put in for good reason, and it is not our view that many of the rules Mr. Gray was using with a degree of flexibility that was not called for should change.

LANDFILL SITE

Mr. Dietsch: My question is to the Minister of the Environment. The minister will be aware of the difficulties in the riding of St. Catharines-Brock with respect to the Glenridge landfill site, which my colleague from the third party, the member for Sarnia (Mr. Brandt), when he was Minister of the Environment, put under the Environmental Protection Act with little or no concern for the residents of that area.

I have had many concerns expressed to me, such as the leachate escaping from the site, the alleged poor clay liner and the extension of the life of the site, to name a few. Will the minister outline to this House the safety precautions to ensure a safe resolution of this very important landfill question?

Mr. Speaker: Could the minister respond briefly?

Hon. Mr. Bradley: I will certainly try to do so, because it is a very direct question.

It is my understanding that the city of St. Catharines, through the engineering department and through the consultant it has hired, is attempting to address any and all problems that have existed in terms of the operations of the landfill site. They have been doing some extensive studies of the site over the past year to determine the migration of the leachate and to overcome problems such as odour and problems where they feel the garbage is being placed in portions of the site where it would be better not placed.

As a result, there is going to be yet another $1.2 million spent on remedial action by the city of St. Catharines on the recommendation of Gartner Lee, the consulting firm. It is the hope of the engineering department of the city of St. Catharines that this will serve to alleviate many of the problems that have existed with the operation of that site over the past few years.

1450

Mr. Dietsch: Will the minister ensure the placement of the Glenridge landfill site under the Environmental Assessment Act to ensure that the highest possible safety standards for the residents of St. Catharines will be ensured in the continuation at that site or at least make it the safest possible site that can be made?

Hon. Mr. Bradley: There are two thrusts in this regard. One is the matter I have mentioned to the member already about the remedial action that will be taken and any changes in operation that are required to make it more satisfactory, particularly to the residents who are in relatively close proximity to the landfill site. The second question relates to removing the exemption the member says was granted by a previous Minister of the Environment for the site.

I have not received from the city of St. Catharines any application for changes to the site that would relate to an expansion of the site. Certainly, the 40 years that I have heard speculated about would have to be subjected to the greatest of environmental scrutiny. But I have not to this point received any application from the city of St. Catharines, so I am unable to make a ruling as to what regulatory regimen it would be under at this time.

CONVERSION OF RENTAL ACCOMMODATION

Mr. Philip: I have a question to the Minister of Housing. The minister should recall that 15 weeks ago I brought to her attention the fact that 47.9 per cent of tenants living in the riding I represent are living in rental buildings that are registered as condominiums. Even though these buildings have been operated as rental buildings for many years, the tenants are now being evicted as those units are being sold as condominiums. The minister will recall that at that time she said that under the Rental Housing Protection Act she would protect those tenants.

Interjections.

Mr. Philip: Well, the government is upset that I build more units than it does in the province of Ontario.

Mr. Speaker: Does the member have a question?

Interjections.

Mr. Philip: I can tell members I would not rent to the Liberal Party, because they are being evicted in Ottawa for nonpayment of rent.

Mr. Speaker: Does anyone have a question?

Mr. Philip: Would the minister tell us why she has introduced an act without the protection for those tenants that she promised 15 weeks ago would be included in the acts.

Hon. Ms. Hošek: When the member for Etobicoke-Rexdale asked me that question, the commitment I made was that we would consider that whole issue when we looked at the Rental Housing Protection Act. If the member takes a look at our plans to extend the act, we have also released a paper. In the paper, the whole question he raises is part of the discussion and will be part of the discussion with all the groups we are talking with. We will come to a conclusion at the end of that process, and some determination will be made about how to treat tenants in those apartment buildings that are registered as condominiums but are being used as rental accommodation.

Mr. Philip: I am sure the tenants will feel very protected by yet another paper.

The fact is that the minister on January 7 said, “We will undertake to look at that issue very closely and to make sure that tenants are protected.” What protection is being given to the majority of tenants who are living in buildings that were built after January 1, 1975, that are registered as condominiums? What protection is being given as those people are being evicted on the street at the moment?

Hon. Ms. Hošek: The question the honourable member asks indicates the complexity of this whole area of condominiums and apartments. That is the reason we have to look at all the different angles in order to come up with the appropriate answer. We will do that. Everything the member has said I will take very seriously as we come to our conclusions.

PETITIONS

SCHOOL FUNDING

Mr. Sterling: I have a petition, which reads as follows:

“To the Honourable the Lieutenant Governor and the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas the Minister of Education has refused to make available the public information pertaining to the amount of funding this government has given for construction of new schools and school renovation in this province in a list form;

“We, the undersigned, beg leave to petition the parliament of Ontario” --

lnterjections.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I have called for petitions and many of the members are not allowing the members to present their petitions and be heard. Order. The member for Carleton, continue.

Mr. Sterling: Perhaps with your indulgence, Mr. Speaker, I will begin again.

“To the Honourable the Lieutenant Governor and the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“We, the undersigned, beg leave to petition the parliament of Ontario as follows:

“We wish to make known to the officials and members of parliament of our provincial government our dissatisfaction with the following educational allocations in the form as provided to us by the Minister of Education.”

I will read off the allocation, which will generate capital works valued at approximately $111 million for York regional school boards. The York Region Board of Education has received allocation for six projects valued at approximately $53.5 million; the York Region Roman Catholic Separate School Board, eight projects valued at $57.5 million.

The Ontario government has allocated funds to the Dufferin-Peel Roman Catholic Separate School Board, the Peel Board of Education and the Dufferin County Board of Education, which will generate capital projects valued at more than $96 million. The Dufferin-Peel Roman Catholic Separate School Board’s projects include a new permanent high school, Father Michael Goetz, new secondary schools in the Brampton west and Lakeshore communities, new elementary schools in Heart Lake, Hurontario, East Credit and a major addition to St. Thomas Aquinas Secondary School. The Peel board’s projects are for new elementary schools in the Erin Mills west, Fletchers Creek and East Credit communities.

The Durham Board of Education has received allocations for three projects valued at more than $14.7 million; and the Durham Region Roman Catholic Separate School Board, eight projects valued at $35.5 million.

The Scarborough Board of Education will receive capital projects valued at $8.92 million. The projects include two new schools, Morris Road and Malvern No. 12.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I am just having a little problem following. Is this all one petition?

Mr. Sterling: Yes, it is all one petition.

Interjections.

Mr. Sterling: The Metropolitan Separate School Board will generate capital funds valued at $20 million. The Toronto Board of Education will receive $400,000 for renovations to Howard Public School.

The school boards in Peterborough, Victoria, Northumberland and Newcastle communities will receive capital projects valued at $4.159 million. The Peterborough, Victoria, Northumberland and Newcastle Roman Catholic Separate School Board has received allocation for two projects, an allowance for furniture and equipment valued at $160,000 for St. Stephen’s School in Bowmanville and $125,000 portapac for St. Peter’s School in Peterborough. The Northumberland and Newcastle Board of Education received allocation for five projects valued at more than $3.874 million.

The Cochrane District School Board will receive $1.941 million. The Cochrane Iroquois Falls Board of Education has received an allocation for renovations valued at $140,000.

The two Simcoe County school boards have received $16 million. The Simcoe County Board of Education has received allocations for four projects valued at $7.923 million. The Simcoe County Roman Catholic Separate School Board has received allocations for three projects valued at more than $B.5 million.

The North Shore school boards, both school boards, have received $652,000. The North Shore Board of Education has received an allocation of $362,000. The North Shore District Roman Catholic Separate School Board has received $290,000.

The Prescott and Russell County Board has received $512,000. Kenora’s two school boards have received a total of $3.6 million.

The Kenora Board of Education has received an allocation of $1.1 million; the Kenora District Roman Catholic Separate School Board has received an allocation of $2.5 million.

The Lincoln County school boards have received a total of $5.815 million. The Lincoln County Roman Catholic Separate School Board gets $5.7 million of that; the Lincoln County Board of Education gets $115,000.

1500

Mr. Speaker: I have looked carefully at the standing orders regarding the presenting of petitions. It says: “A member may present a petition from his place in the House during the routine proceedings under the proceeding ‘Petitions.’ He shall endorse his name thereon and confine himself to a statement of the petitioners, the number of signatures and the material allegations.”

It appears to me that the honourable member is reading from a great number of pieces of paper and I just wonder if the member would complete the petition with a very brief statement.

Mr. Sterling: Nothing would please me more. I guess my frustration is that this information has not been provided to me or any other members of the opposition in a coherent fashion, whereby I could present it in a coherent fashion. All of these pages represent part of the petition. It is unfortunate that the government tries to shield the information in terms of how they are presented --

Mr. Speaker: Order. I appreciate that and I just would like to ask the member to consider the rule carefully. I think he could do it in a more concise form, because we do not have an opportunity to view the petition prior to seeing it. We may have to rule it out of order-I am not sure-after seeing it. If the member could complete it briefly, I would appreciate it.

Mr. Harris: Mr. Speaker, the petition is an unusual one, but it is an unusual circumstance. As I understand it, the petition deals with the allocations of the funding, without getting into any specific details. The content of what the allocations are is, in fact, intended to be part of the petition.

I think the member is about a third or so of the way through those in there, and there may be reason to examine the petition after and say technically we are not 100 per cent sure it was all on the same piece of paper, except that I want to point out to the House that the member will have it all in order tomorrow and he will have to start all over again.

Given that and the liberties that have been provided in petitions in the past, it will facilitate time in the House today and tomorrow if he just finishes.

Hon. Mr. Conway: I want to speak to that because I appreciate what the House leader for the Conservative Party is saying. I have heard the comments made by the member for Carleton. Perhaps we could facilitate his concern and the business of the House which has been agreed to in terms of Orders and Notices today by supplying the honourable member with all of the information he apparently feels he needs.

In that way we could accommodate his real desire for the information, while at the same time moving on with the business of the House that has been agreed to today because, as the House leaders know, by agreement we decided today to proceed with second reading of Bill 115 and then to proceed with the budget debate, which has been much sought after and which a number of honourable members on all sides wish, I presume, to begin.

Mr. Speaker: May I just say I did not want to interfere in any way in the member’s presentation. However, I felt that possibly he was giving many reasons the petitioners were dissatisfied and that really is not necessary in a petition. A petition is just to state that they are dissatisfied. I hope the member will understand that.

Mr. Sterling: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I think it is very, very important that the public of Ontario, as well as the petitioners, get their right to place before the public of Ontario what these allocations were, because we have not got that information from the Minister of Education (Mr. Ward). He seems to like to hide it.

The two Sudbury boards of education have received $3,188,000. Of that $3,188,000, the public Sudbury Board of Education gets $75,000; the Sudbury District Roman Catholic Separate School Board gets $3,113,000.

The Lake Superior Board of Education and the North of Superior District Roman Catholic Separate School Board get a total of $107,000 -- the public board $58,000 and the Roman Catholic board $49,000.

The two Kirkland Lake school boards get $410,000; the Kirkland Lake Board of Education gets $260,000 and the Kirkland Lake District Roman Catholic Separate Board gets $150,000.

The two Kapuskasing school boards receive $1,175,000. The Kapuskasing Board of Education, the public board, receives $1.1 million; the Roman Catholic separate school board receives $75,000.

Geraldton’s two school boards receive $1.05 million; the Geraldton Board of Education receives $987,000 and the Geraldton District Roman Catholic Separate School Board receives $65,000.

The Ontario government has given to the Parry Sound Board of Education $298,000. The East Parry Sound Board of Education has received $255,000.

The Kent County school boards have received $465,000: $317,000 to the Kent County Board of

Education and $148,500 to the Kent County Roman Catholic Separate School Board.

The two Wellington county school boards have received $13.4 million. The Wellington County Board of Education received $7.4 million; the Wellington County Roman Catholic Separate School Board has received $5.98 million.

1510

The Fort Frances-Rainy River District Roman Catholic Separate School Board has received $927,000. The Fort Frances-Rainy River Board of Education has received $16,000.

Essex county’s two school boards have received $3.6 million, $55,000 going to the Essex County Board of Education and $3,525,000 going to the Essex County Roman Catholic Separate School Board.

The Welland County Roman Catholic Separate School Board has received $3,249,000 and the Niagara South Board of Education has received $279,000.

The London area boards have received $11 million. The London Board of Education has received $5.88 million and the London and Middlesex County Roman Catholic Separate School Board has received $5 million.

The Espanola Board of Education has a capital project valued at $1,071,000. The Muskoka Board of Education will be receiving $1.8 million.

The Brant county school boards, in combination, will receive $6,723,000. The Brant County Board of Education work will consist of a $525,000 addition to an elementary school and the replacement of a boiler at Echo Place school at $93,000. The Brant County Roman Catholic Separate School Board includes a $4.75-million addition to St. John’s College and a $1,347,000 addition to St. Leo school.

The Hamilton-Wentworth Roman Catholic Separate School Board will be receiving $3.25 million. They will also be receiving a new elementary school worth $3,258,000 in the Gurnett neighbourhood. It is unclear which board that is associated with.

The Renfrew County Roman Catholic Separate School Board will be receiving $6.25 million. The board will be receiving a $6-million addition to Bishop Smith Catholic school in Pembroke and an addition to St. James school in Eganville valued at $250,000.

There will be $1.3 million for the Northern Lights Secondary School in Moosonee operated by the James Bay Lowlands Secondary School Board.

There will be $407,000 for the Elgin County Board of Education.

For the two school boards in the counties of Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry, $1,439,000. The Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry County Board of Education will receive $1.4 million for renovations to La Citadelle in Cornwall. The separate school board will receive an allocation of $30,000 for a new boiler at St. Columban’s West school in Cornwall.

Hon. Mr. Conway: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker: I have been listening very attentively to the submissions of the member for Carleton. I am a very patient person. I am looking again at standing order 31 and can see no relationship between what the honourable member is doing and this standing order. I simply repeat that we have to operate this House with some regard to these rules and with some understanding of the way in which we have ordered the business of this place.

I ask you, Mr. Speaker, and quite frankly through you my colleague from Carleton, to think seriously about what is transpiring here. I think the standing orders are clear, I think they are helpful and I can in no way see what the relationship is with what the honourable member is doing, however strongly he feels about this issue. I might encourage him to engage in the budget debate momentarily, rather than to continue in a fashion which seems to be completely at variance with the spirit and the intent of standing order 31.

Mr. Speaker: I understand it was not really a point of order. However, it was a suggestion the member may consider.

Mr. Sterling: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.

The Carleton region school boards will receive a total of $32.25 million. The Carleton Board of Education will receive an allocation-not the money they get, an allocation-of $6.47 million and the Carleton Roman Catholic Separate School Board will receive $25.7 million in allocations.

The two school boards in Dryden will receive $200,000.

The Grey County Board of Education will receive $107,000.

The Norfolk Board of Education will receive $25,000 for some renovations to one of its schools.

The Huron County Board of Education will receive $150,000.

The Bruce County Board of Education will receive $1.5 million for a gymnasium at the Kincardine District Secondary School.

The two school boards in Thunder Bay will receive a total of $6 million. The Lakehead Board of Education will receive projects valued at $4.8 million. The Lakehead District Roman Catholic Separate School Board will receive allocations for projects valued at $1.2 million.

The Lambton County Board of Education will be receiving $775,000.

The school boards in the counties of Lanark, Leeds and Grenville will be receiving $230,000. The Lanark Leeds and Grenville Roman Catholic Separate School Board will be receiving $55,000 for a boiler replacement.

The Sault Ste. Marie boards will be receiving $4.9 million. The Sault Ste. Marie Board of Education has received $610,000; the Sault Ste. Marie District Roman Catholic Separate School Board will be receiving $4.3 million.

Mr. Callahan: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker: I just wanted to inquire whether the member is going to sign the petition, because under standing order 31(d), as a solicitor, he is not entitled to sign it.

Mr. Sterling: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

On the two Oxford county school boards, although the member for Oxford (Mr. Tatham) made an announcement, he did not tell us how much we were going to get in those particular boards.

The two Halton school boards received $18 million but it is not clear from the particular press announcement how much each of those two boards will be receiving. Again, the information is confusing.

The Perth county board will be receiving $125,000.

Waterloo region’s two school boards will be receiving $21 million: “The Waterloo county board’s projects include construction of two elementary schools in the Forest Heights West and Silverheights communities and additions to Bridgeport and Linwood district elementary schools.... The Waterloo County Roman Catholic Separate School Board’s allocations include a new Clemens Mill elementary school and additional allocation to the board’s new Kitchener high school of approximately $6.7 million.” It does not tell us what each of the boards is receiving.

1520

The Frontenac-Lennox and Addington County Roman Catholic Separate School Board will be receiving a total of $17 million. The Frontenac-Lennox and Addington County Roman Catholic Separate School Board has received allocation for Holy Cross high school valued at $13 million and for a new elementary school in the northwest Bayridge community valued at $3 million, as well as an additional allocation to J. J. O’Neill Elementary School.

The Nipissing district’s two school boards will be receiving $5.76 million. The Nipissing Board of Education has received an allocation for $1,015,000. The Nipissing District Roman Catholic Separate School Board has received an allocation valued at $4.75 million.

The Central Algoma Board of Education has received $66,000. The Timmins District Roman Catholic Separate School Board has received $951,000.

That completes the petition.

RETAIL STORE HOURS

Mr. Callahan: I have a petition here signed by a number of people from my riding and my colleague to the north. It is addressed:

“To the Honourable the Lieutenant Governor and the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“We, the undersigned, beg leave to petition the parliament of Ontario as follows:

“As concerned citizens of Ontario who worship in the city of Brampton, we are convinced that it is the province’s responsibility and not that of the municipalities to pass and administer laws regarding work and recreation on Sundays.

“We urge the Ontario government to revise the current legislation in order to uphold more strongly a common day of pause across the province. We believe that a common day for family and worship activities is essential to the wellbeing of Ontario.”

It is signed by myself.

NURSING SERVICES

Mr. MacDonald: I do have an important but short petition:

“To the Honourable the Lieutenant Governor and the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“We strongly disagree with the college of nurses’ proposed standards and levels of nursing practice. The college has been conducting information sessions around the province the past several months and will be in Peterborough today. Many questions and concerns have not been addressed following these sessions.

“We, the undersigned, beg leave to petition the parliament of Ontario as follows:

“To urge the college of nurses to cease and desist promulgating such divisive acts.’’

I support this petition.

RETAIL STORE HOURS

Mrs. Marland: I have a petition to the Honourable the Lieutenant Governor and the Legislative Assembly of Ontario, which in part says;

“Whereas Premier David Peterson wants world-class Sunday shopping, but the people of Ontario do not, we request that consideration be given to the views of” these people “who have signed the petition, which also reads:

“We love our families. Don’t legislate employees to work on Sundays. We do not need wide-open Sunday shopping.”

Mr. Speaker, rather than read into the record all the signatures to that petition, I will tell you there are quite a number. Two of the signatures are Doug Paton, 785 Eversley Drive --

Mr. Speaker: It is not necessary to read the names.

Mrs. Marland: I am just going to read two.

Mr. Speaker: It is not necessary to read any names.

Mrs. Marland: I do read into the record Doug Paton and Sonia Paton at 785 Eversley Drive, Mississauga, L5H 2E2. My signature is in support of that petition.

I also have some other petitions here, which number approximately 72. They are petitions which say: “Let’s not leave this issue up to the municipalities. This is the responsibility of the provincial government.” They are also opposed to Sunday shopping.

Mr. Speaker: Was that addressed to the Lieutenant Governor and the Legislative Assembly?

Mrs. Marland: Yes.

ORDERS OF THE DAY

TORONTO ECONOMIC SUMMIT CONSTRUCTION ACT

Hon. Mr. Sorbara moved second reading of Bill 115, An Act to provide for Construction Work in connection with the Toronto Economic Summit.

Hon. Mr. Sorbara: I am delighted that the House now has an opportunity to debate Bill 115 and give its approval in principle to the bill. As I mentioned in my statement of a few days ago when I advised the House of my intention to introduce Bill 115, I made the point that the bill is in fact facilitative and technical in that it allows and ensures that construction work at the Metropolitan Toronto Convention Centre related to the economic summit being held in Toronto between June 19 and June 21 can be done.

The work involves primarily security for world leaders who will be attending the summit. It ensures that the work will proceed without disruption, regardless of whether there are other work stoppages in Ontario’s industrial, commercial and institutional construction sectors. That part of the construction industry is commonly known as ICI.

I just want to point out to my colleagues in the House the purpose of the bill and why it is being presented at this time. Members of the House will know that all the trades in the ICI sector are governed by specific provisions of the Labour Relations Act which require that contracts in that sector of the construction industry be negotiated on a two-year basis. As my colleagues will know, all those contracts expire on April 30. There are, of course, important negotiations going on at present among all the trades in the ICI sector and all the contractors involved in that sector as well.

The design and thrust of the bill is to have absolutely no impact on those negotiations and at the same time to ensure that work will be able to proceed with the construction work that will be necessary to appropriately house and provide for the economic summit.

Within the ministry, we have done a great deal of consultation with all the parties and have heard from the parties in regard to this bill. What the bill does in fact is extend the contracts affecting those trades that may be required to do work at the Metropolitan Toronto Convention Centre and the other areas scheduled in the bill only to the extent, I point out, that work is necessary and required for the economic summit.

In effect, what the bill does is extend those contracts for a period of time, either to June 30 or, if the parties reach agreement before June 30, the time at which the parties have reached agreement. The bill, as I said, is facilitative and technical. But it is important as well to ensure that where work is being done, it is not being done contrary to the law. I say “not contrary to the law” because in the absence of this bill, were a trade on strike, the act as it currently stands provides that all members of that trade be on strike and that no work can proceed within that trade anywhere in the province.

This bill simply allows that the work will be able to proceed. I look forward to the comments of the members of both opposition parties on the bill and I also look forward to speedy passage of Bill 115 in this House.

Mr. Mackenzie: Very briefly, there is not a need to spend much time on this bill. It is an unusual circumstance, a specific situation and a specific project as a result of the meeting of some of the world leaders. If there is a sad side to it, it is that we should have to pass such a piece of legislation in Ontario. It speaks somewhat of the fact that there is not always good-faith bargaining in bargaining situations.

But this will have no effect on those workers, other than to see that this particular situation is taken care of, and they will get any of the benefits as a result of the contract negotiations. They themselves, I think, could point out also just how co-operative the workers are in a specific situation like this. I also wish we sometimes had the companies as co-operative as the workers and the unions are prepared to be in a situation like this. We support it.

1530

The Deputy Speaker: Do other members have questions and comments?

Mr. Harris: Our party is certainly supportive of the legislation. I believe it will, though, impact on the negotiations, and I hope it does so in a positive way. It removes from the bargaining process a very unique event, the threat of holding up, if you like, a very unique event.

As I thought about this particular piece of legislation-I thank the minister for the notice and consultation we had on it beforehand-I have tried to see whether in fact there is an advantage to one side or the other. There are two sides in labour negotiations; let us not kid ourselves. They each do represent a vested interest and both interests are very important. It removes from the negotiating process the threat, if you like, of interfering with and causing a real shemozzle with the Toronto economic summit.

I guess I would have preferred it, and I perhaps concur with my colleague from the New Democratic Party, if both sides had been able to sign a letter of intent on their own without the necessity of the legislation. I regret that did not take place. However, I really do not know whether the removal of this threat benefits the union side or the company side. I think it would have skewed the bargaining on the basis of this one project that is so important to our federal government and to our image on behalf of the federal government.

The Deputy Speaker: Thank you. The member’s time is over two minutes.

Mr. Harris: Mr. Speaker, I thought I was responding to the minister or to the-you asked me to respond to his comments?

The Deputy Speaker: That is right.

Mr. Harris: OK, there you go.

The Deputy Speaker: Do any more members wish to respond with questions and comments? If not, does the minister wish to respond to the questions and comments? Do other members wish to debate now? Maybe the member for Nipissing would like to continue.

Mr. Harris: Maybe I will continue with my debate. For the Hansard record, the first two minutes may be considered part of my comments on the bill. I apologize, Mr. Speaker, I did not hear you. I thought there was more debate.

I think this is where I was at: It removes a very artificial vehicle from the bargaining process that I think is important. As I have stated, this project is of significance to the city of Toronto, the province of Ontario, the government of Canada, and of course, to our image across the world, so we are very supportive of the legislation.

I would have preferred it if it could have been resolved without bringing in this bill, not necessarily the whole series of contracts, but in fact there was another vehicle whereby all the unions involved and those negotiating on behalf of the companies involved could have satisfied all parties.

However, having said that, I think this is the next best way around it. We are certainly not only supportive of the legislation, but are also supportive, as we always are with legislation in this House, in seeing that it receives speedy and unimpeded passage through this chamber on both second and third readings, hopefully this week.

The Deputy Speaker: Questions and comments on the statement of the member for Nipissing? If not, do other members wish to participate in the debate? Does the minister want to wind up, please?

Hon. Mr. Sorbara: Very briefly, I want to thank both of the speakers who have spoken in the debate who have indicated their support.

I will simply tell my friend the member for Nipissing, in response to his suggestion that he wished there could be another way we could accomplish the objectives of the bill, that I reiterate what I said in my opening comments, and that is that the bill is simply technical. The technicality of the Labour Relations Act as it currently stands is that a worker who is a member of a trade union that is on strike is prohibited by the act from performing work in any part of the province under any industrial, commercial and institutional contract. That is, in effect, why we are not able to do what the bill intends to do and what the bill purports to do by way of an agreement.

The good news, of course, is that the parties are agreeable to this bill being passed. There has been a great deal of consultation and both contractors and trade unions generally understand the importance of the economic summit the fact that Toronto and Ontario and Canada will be on stage for the entire world and that it is appropriate we show ourselves to be great hosts, to be the kind of hosts we know we can be.

In order to overcome the technicality and to ensure that by doing so we do not interfere in any way in the important collective bargaining process that is ongoing right now, we have seen fit to introduce this piece of legislation.

I end by once again thanking my friends in both opposition parties for indicating their support in helping this bill receive quick passage in this House.

Motion agreed to.

Bill ordered for third reading.

BUDGET DEBATE / DÉBAT SUR LE BUDGET (CONTINUED / SUITE)

Resuming the adjourned debate on the amendment to the amendment to the motion that this House approves in general the budgetary policy of the government.

M. Pouliot: Monsieur le Président, cela me fait plaisir de prendre les quelques moments que la Chambre nous alloue pour participer au débat concernant le budget du trésorier (M. R. F. Nixon) qui a été déposé en Chambre la semaine dernière. Vous allez bien comprendre que, dans d’autres circonstances, mon plaisir serait grandissant. Mais les données, la façon, la méthode dont s’est servi le trésorier de la province, n’apportent que des réactions négatives, surtout dans le Nord de l’Ontario.

I welcome the opportunity to participate in the debate. I would like to begin my brief remarks by congratulating the Treasurer (Mr. R. F. Nixon) on his good fortune. Indeed, he has hit upon good times. We have had a recovery in Ontario that started somewhere around 1982. In fact, figures will attest that in 1987, last year, the economy grew by some 4.2 per cent in Ontario. In the past three years, Ontarians have benefited to the tune of some 16 per cent in economic growth.

Ironically, even with economic growth to the tune of 16 per cent, the disparity between northern and southern Ontario continues to exist. The disparities between the more fortunate people, like the Treasurer of Ontario, and the people who work for small salaries get wider and wider.

Never in the history of the province has such an opportunity been given to a person to rectify what is wrong with the tax system. No one has ever been better equipped to achieve fairness in the tax system. I, too, have searched long and hard -- -l really have -- to find an answer to the problem that is plaguing the citizens of this province.

1540

I know, and I have known for the past three years that the Treasurer of Ontario commands respect

Interjection.

Mr. Pouliot: -yes, affection, and admiration like no other member of this House.

Mr. Wiseman: Don’t go that far.

Mr. Pouliot: I am not going too far.

Hon. R. F. Nixon: Well, what are you leading up to?

Mr. Pouliot: The Treasurer should just stay around. He should stay tuned. I will help him.

In fact, it is said that the new members of the Liberal caucus, and there are many, almost worship the ground the Treasurer walks on.

Hon. R. F. Nixon: Get serious.

Mr. Pouliot: No question. The Treasurer is an educated person. The Treasurer is intelligent. The Treasurer is a person of authority. The Treasurer is a powerful person.

The Treasurer should be accountable, and yet he can laugh, he can ridicule members of this House when they convey the following thoughts: that we have people in this province who are working for the minimum wage, which is $4.55 an hour-the working poor-but we have, on the other hand, corporations that are making, collectively, hundreds of millions of dollars and not paying any taxes, yet some of those people on the minimum wage are paying taxes.

I have searched long and hard. Why would the Treasurer allow this system to continue? What about a social conscience? Is it because those companies bought him off? I do not think so. Why is it? Is he hoping that if he socks it to us during the first year of office, people will forget in the second, third and fourth years and allow him to continue? If so, must I remind the Treasurer of Mme Denis on the steps of Parliament Hill addressing the Prime Minister and shaking her fist as a result of the attempt to partially de-index old age security? How can he hope that, when he should be accountable to all Ontarians?

His mandate is to represent people from the north and people from the south; rich, middle-income and poor. He had an opportunity with increased revenue to ease the burden on the middle class and on the less fortunate in our society. That was his mandate. If he has a social conscience, his first duty is to put more into the pockets of the less fortunate and make the people pay who can well afford to pay, so that we can at last say we have a fair tax system.

New Democrats are the first ones to recognize that to build more and better roads costs money and that to enjoy facilities such as more new hospitals and better, more modern schools costs money. We have no quarrel that the Treasurer must balance and pay for those facilities. We have no quarrel and have never had any quarrel with this simple equation. But what we will not and cannot tolerate is that not everybody is being treated the same, and it is a disgrace. It is a situation we cannot tolerate.

On page 10 of the budget presented last week-before the minister chose to run away, when he just tabled the budget-under the heading “Roads, Highways and Transit,” my friend the Treasurer says, “We enjoy an excellent system of roads and highways.”

The world does not end at Earl’s Shell station. Who told the minister that-the boys at Shell?

“We enjoy an excellent system of roads and highways.” Yet the contradiction is so clear: He commits very little money, but the Treasurer has the audacity to impose a one-cent increase on gasoline prices across the province. The minister must pay for better roads, so we will give him one cent more a gallon. But what the Treasurer does not tell us is that this afternoon at Earl’s Shell, and the boys at Shell told us this, the price of a litre of unleaded gasoline was 41.9 cents.

Hon. R. F. Nixon: At Earl’s Shell?

Mr. Pouliot: That is right.

In Schreiber, Ontario, it was 56.9 cents, a disparity of some 15 cents a litre, and the Treasurer will recall that we travel longer distances up north.

Hon. R. F. Nixon: You’re being ripped off.

Mr. Pouliot: If we are being ripped off, the Treasurer is saying it.

In the community of Kingfisher Lake, it is 66 cents a litre. In Fort Severn-those people are Ontarians as well-they pay $1.01 a litre. They were paying a buck, but that was not enough, the Treasurer says. There are no roads leading to Fort Severn. The road system ends in Pickle Lake. A buck a litre for our first Canadians, for the people of the north, is not enough so we will make it $1.01.

Surely, the more money the minister spends on essential services up north-his provincial sales tax, for instance. What we have been saying for a number of years-it is a reasonable alternative; it is done elsewhere and it works-is, why does the minister not give us a bit of a tax break for goods that are manufactured and produced in the north?

Oh, the minister may not wish to eliminate the sales tax and go from seven per cent to zero, but if he made it four per cent instead of seven per cent, now eight per cent, he would encourage people to come and establish themselves in the north. They would produce in the north because they were getting an incentive. Then they would believe in the Treasurer because finally he meant what he said.

What he has done is he has taken money out of the economy of northern Ontario in a climate that needs incentives. He certainly has not taken his responsibility seriously, and I am very disappointed.

I am hoping the Treasurer will honour his promises, the promises he made last year when he announced with great fanfare that he was introducing a northern Ontario heritage fund, something we had been asking for for a period exceeding and surpassing 15 years, a special fund so that people could look to the future with confidence. Some communities may wish to establish land banks. The Treasurer would give incentives.

We agreed. We went into the Treasurer’s office with our ideas and came out of his office with his, but we said: “It’s OK. The guy means what he says.” No. It was $30 million in the budget of 1987. What happened to that money? Not five cents of it was spent.

Then, last week, the Treasurer trumpets in a born-again heritage fund. Illusions last year; a bit of magic last year. “We promised $30 million. We didn’t spend a penny. We broke our promise. But now this year, we promise that you’ll get $30 million for the next 12 years.”

1550

I want to believe the Treasurer. I want to believe him, but he has to give me a chance to do so. His track record is dreadful. While I convey the sincere thoughts, aspirations and needs of the north, the Treasurer just lies there and intends to do little to honour the commitment.

It is a terrible situation. Over $34 million has been taken from the export duty on softwood lumber, and $30 million for the heritage fund that was not spent. The Treasurer owes us $30 million, and $34 million that left the north --

Hon. R. F. Nixon: We didn’t have a chance to pass the legislation; somebody kept calling elections.

Interjections.

The Deputy Speaker: Order, please.

Hon. R. F. Nixon: You people were obstructing the business of the House.

The Deputy Speaker: Please. The member for Lake Nipigon has the floor.

Mr. Pouliot: He also owes $34 million derived from the softwood lumber that left the north and went down south. That is $64 million the Treasurer owes us, because we believed him. That $64 million goes some way; it gives us, indeed, “a break.”

The people of the north, after receiving his budget, are saying, “We was robbed.” It is a terrible situation.

Hon. R. F. Nixon: You can be a lot more dramatic than that.

Mr. Pouliot: No, I do not catastrophize. It is the truth. The Treasurer knows how to play the game. He is hiding $282 million under the auspices of a liquid reserve. It will resurface in the third or fourth year of office.

There is a silver lining to the Treasurer’s budget. The issue of Sunday shopping in northern Ontario has been resolved. There is nothing left. We make less money than our counterparts down south and it costs us more money to live. We are getting the worst of both worlds. Northerners are the first people to recognize when fair play is achieved.

We choose to go up north. Many of us did so in quest of jobs. We thought that we would enhance our lot, that indeed things were going to get better. Things are better, but we have yet to enter the economic mainstream of Ontario. In many cases, the gap keeps getting wider and wider.

The Treasurer has hurt us severely and he will have to carry the guilt. To give us a one per cent increase in the sales tax when we were expecting a benefit, when he could have achieved it, is indeed a disappointment.

A full cent for the price of unleaded gasoline hurts in the pocketbook of average people. There was no need to do it. The Treasurer had enough money. He chose to ignore his responsibility to tax the people who could afford to pay taxes.

Mr. Speaker, you will recall that some three years ago we conveyed to the Treasurer the need to establish fairness in terms of the Hemlo gold fields. The three mines at Hemlo are the richest gold deposits in Canada. They pay. They are assessed for the purpose of schools. They pay school taxes. They pay a good deal of money: more money leaving the north, getting into the general revenue of the province.

The municipalities of Marathon and Manitouwadge in the riding of Lake Nipigon and the sister municipality of White River in the riding of my colleague the member for Algoma (Mr. Wildman) have received nothing in terms of municipal assessment. Of course, there has been some recognition in lieu of assessment: they have received approximately half of what reasonable assessment would generate.

It has taken more than three years to have the richest gold deposit in Canada pay taxes like everyone else so that the communities’ other industries as well will not be asked unjustly to carry the burden of infrastructure work in their communities. We provide schools, recreation, sewers, water and fire protection, and we do not mind. You pay taxes, you go to work, part of your paycheque goes to taxes. Fair game. We are getting service and we are proud of it. Yet you cannot help but ask what is happening with all that gold leaving the north and not five cents of taxes going back to municipalities.

I ask the Treasurer, how can he live with himself? What is he doing here? He has all that power He can do something. He can put more into the system than he takes out. I am not asking the Treasurer to play the poverty game. I am not asking him to do that. I am asking him to give a chance to people to have confidence in the system one more time. He is not helping out.

We signed an accord three years ago in good faith, saying that after 42 years of Progressive Conservative government we would give a chance to the Liberals to see what they could do: “We will sign a deal and it will work.” The kind of budget that was imposed on the people of Ontario would never have taken place two years ago, nor before the election, because we would have kicked those rascals out, nothing short of that. The Treasurer knows that.

We will not see this kind of budget in the third or fourth year of office. What is being done here is he is socking it to the average people of Ontario in the first year of a majority government, which reflects typical arrogance, you people cannot stand political prosperity, but people will not forget.

I wish to close on my usual positive note. Not all is bad. When the north is the recipient of well-thought-out government programs, it appreciates them. I take some pride and some honour in mentioning that, not in terms of the riding of Lake Nipigon-it matters little-but, more important, in terms of northerners, yes, things are looking better. It does not pain me to say this. The entrepreneurial spirit of the people of the north has taken care of it, coupled of course with some government initiative with little direction. We still do not know where we will be three, four or five years down the line. We still believe the government is working at it.

But the disparity we feel keeps growing. Our appetites are larger. We see what is happening elsewhere. We are better informed. We know it is not easy. It is much easier to stand here and say, “Gimme, gimme, gimme,’’ and when the government does, I can say it is not enough. But it is beyond this.

I think northerners have a legitimate beef. Nine times out of 1O, the grievances that I hear are legitimate. I am sure the Minister of Natural Resources (Mr. Kerrio) hears the same and would share that sentiment. People mean well. People do not lie. They want to be like the others. I have lived 23 years in a community where we had 4,000 people and we had to come to ministers with cap in hand asking for a chance to be like the others. No public transportation system: those things have been rectified because we have hit upon good times, but we cannot do it by ourselves up north.

1600

This budget could have given us an injection. This budget could have allowed for lower hydro rates. This budget could have given flexibility to a government to take a chance, to be imaginative and to be innovative, to cut electricity rates and to cut the sales tax some to encourage people to come up north. It is done in other jurisdictions and it works.

If we are to compete with the Barries of this world, we need a blend of the entrepreneurial spirit that we have and a gentle push, not interference, from the government. The Treasurer has the means. He needs the political will. He needs the courage. He needs to be bold. But heavens, he has the money to do so. If he does not have it now, he will never have it.

I am disappointed that he chose the other direction, but the future will last some time, and I know the Treasurer will join with us in realizing next year that the future of Ontario belongs up north, with its people and its resources, and that he will acquiesce in our legitimate demands and will give us the tools to do and to achieve what the people down south take for granted.

Hon. R. F. Nixon: I appreciate the positive note that marked the end of the honourable member’s comments. l always enjoy very much hearing him speak, as do other members of the House. I regret that his natural ebullience and good humour are so much submerged by the fact that he has to follow the old New Democratic Party whining, gloom-and-doom approach to what really must be one of the most buoyant economies the north has experienced in his lifetime, and even mine.

It is almost impossible to understand how he can express these negative views when the price of metals is the highest it has been, almost in history. Gold is being produced at a rate greater than in almost any other nation in the world. Our pulp and paper industry is working at capacity, at the highest prices in history. In fact, the north is-I am not going to use the word “booming” because probably it is not booming-progressive and expanding, with opportunities for young people and even people the age of the honourable member.

I want to reiterate one comment he made, that we have initiatives dealing with Manitouwadge and other communities which have not had their share of municipal revenues. I think that in his own way, he gave us a bit of a backhanded, underhanded compliment by recognizing that we have moved in that direction. Manitouwadge itself, I believe, received $50O,000 from our provincial Treasury last year just because Wendy Bell was so appropriately aggressive in these important matters. I give her, and other municipal politicians in the north, a lot of credit for assisting the government in coming to a conclusion that will be for the benefit of all.

I have a feeling that I will have a further chance to comment on the honourable member’s speech, but I want to thank him for his views, and I regret, along with him, that his being immersed in democratic socialism has somehow put his natural abilities under such a bushel.

Mr. Pouliot: It is ironic that the Treasurer should mention the revenues from the mining industries. Again, he is quite right. In fact, the minister is so right that revenues from mining in northern Ontario will exceed and surpass anything that has been seen before. However, provincial revenues will not improve because of a style of management imposed by the provincial government. It is called a tax break for mining. There is nothing wrong with that, but try to establish a mine. Electricity rates are too high. What we are saying is, offer incentive to get people into production, and once production is achieved, then let the people pay a “fair rate of taxation,” like everyone else.

It is the world upside down. Revenues have gone down from the mining sector, and they are achieving record profits. Does that make any sense? If I make more money, I will pay more taxes, and I should. But the more the mine makes, the less money it pays. So again, it is ironic: It is the world upside down. This is the kind of system that we wish to rectify.

The Deputy Speaker: I think the government whip wanted to make a request.

Mr. Reycraft: It is apparent that there has been some confusion about the order of speaking in this afternoon’s debate. The agreement among the whips was that we would follow the established practice, with the government, which adjourned the debate yesterday, opening the debate this afternoon, to be followed by the official opposition and then the third party. It is obvious that certainly was overlooked, and certainly nobody intended anything untoward.

I wonder if I might ask for unanimous consent to allow the member for Halton Centre (Mrs. Sullivan), who had planned to speak first for us in the debate this afternoon, to speak next, then to go to the third party and then back to our next speaker, so we are back into the order that had been agreed upon.

Mr. Pouliot: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker: I wish to apologize, but, honestly, I was unaware and, of course, therefore recognized by the chair.

Mr. McLean: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker: I would be pleased to forgo my turn and to heed what the government whip says, because I would certainly love to hear the good part of the budget, and I am sure that she will not be very long.

Mr. R. F. Johnston: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker: I think it is important to know that the member rose to be recognized, as members do in the order, and, as he was recognized, began to speak. But we have no problem with shifting back to this rotation.

The Deputy Speaker: Thank you for the points of explanation and the points of generosity.

Mrs. Sullivan: I am pleased to participate in this debate on the budget in what is in fact my first address to the House. Having drawn number 55 in our roster for the throne speech debate and number 93 for private members’ bills, I am indeed happy to be on the floor before the next election.

Mr. Wiseman: You could come over here and you would be on a lot faster. You would be on every second day.

Mrs. Sullivan: I will forgo that opportunity, thanks.

Many members will know that for two years prior to my election I worked with the Treasurer, and that time was enervating and challenging. In fact, I can echo the Treasurer’s words and say that being there was like having died and gone to Harvard. I came to share the Treasurer’s respect for the “several acres of experts” in the Frost building. Those words came from the Treasurer in a different role at a different time, but he certainly was describing a group of dedicated public servants, whom I join the Treasurer in commending.

During that period I participated in the production of three budgets, all of which were presented to the House with a formal address, I might add. This budget, however, continues the tradition and direction started in the last three budgets, and in my view it is one of the most solid fiscal documents that has ever been presented in Ontario. The budget puts forward a plan that addresses immediate social needs of today. As well, it takes significant steps in planning for tomorrow, for the time that our children will be taking their place in the workforce.

It is an investment plan for continued prosperity. It is a plan for a time when what we now consider innovation and opportunity will be the standard methods of operation, when markets that are being explored or opened today will be our valued and substantial business partners, both in Canada and elsewhere; and it is a plan which underlines that continued economic prosperity will ensure that we can continue to treat our people with fairness and justice in the future.

1610

I am proud to represent Halton Centre in this Legislature and while I do not intend to give members a hills-and-valleys speech about my riding, I do want to acquaint members with some of its features, because in many ways Halton Centre is a microcosm of Ontario, a mirror of the province.

We have vibrant industry, including a significant manufacturing component. We have a strong agricultural community, including some of the most forward-looking farmers in Ontario. We house the main campus of Sheridan College. There is a provincial park within our boundaries and we share with surrounding areas a portion of the Niagara Escarpment.

Along with other communities surrounding Metro, we have a burgeoning new population which has put stress on our infrastructure: our schools, our roads, our health services and our social support systems. We have a sophisticated and highly skilled workforce which is sought out not only by local business, but in other centres as well.

Like other Ontarians, residents of Halton Centre have high expectations of the province and of the programs and policies which the provincial government provides. Like other Ontarians, Halton Centre people are willing to pay the cost for delivery of high-quality services, and like many other Ontarians, my constituents support action that enables the less fortunate of our population to have a share in our prosperity. This budget, therefore, is important to the people of Halton Centre.

The member for Nipissing (Mr. Harris) complained yesterday that the Treasurer frequently referred to the fiscal and financial record of the previous government in a negative way. Well, people in my riding know that the capital allocations for new schools in Halton, which were announced yesterday, have a value equivalent to 25 per cent of the allocations for the entire province in the last year of Tory government. They know there is a need for the substantial capital commitments for new schools which this government has made; that the promises which were being made are being kept and that new schools are being built; that the $900-million, three-year funding commitment is vital for both today and tomorrow. They know that things have changed since the bad old days my honourable colleague hopes we will forget.

People in Halton Centre know the face of the province is changing, that in the last 25 years the look of our workforce has altered. In the l 950s, less than one quarter of Canadian women were in the paid workforce. By 1986, this figure had risen to two thirds of Canadian women. In Ontario, of a population of 4.2 million women, 2.1 million are now employed. The adult female full-time employment grew by 4.5 per cent in 1987 while male full-time employment grew only by three per cent, and two thirds of women with children under the age of 15 are now employed.

People in Halton Centre know that child care is both a fiscal and a social issue and that this government is addressing it. Every new school will have a child care centre. Since 1984-85, this government has increased spending on child care at a compound annual rate of 36 per cent; that, with a $121.3-million increase included in this budget, a total of $300 million will be spent on child care in 1988-89.

People from Halton Centre know why the member for Nipissing is anxious that we do not refer to the record of the previous government in delivering child care services. They know the previous government did not deliver.

Halton Centre is served by three local hospitals in Oakville, Burlington and Milton. Last June, two of these hospitals shared in announcements of new capital funding from the $850-million multicapital plan which was introduced in the 1986 budget. The multi-year approach was heartily welcomed not only by hospitals in my region but by hospitals throughout the province, because it meant that for the first time an appropriate planning mechanism was put into place and it was readily measurable.

We are all familiar with pressures on our health care system, through advances in medical technology, changing demographics and increased demand for hospital services. It is clear that my honourable colleague’s federal counterparts have added an additional pressure on health delivery in Ontario by reducing the rate of increases in federal transfers to the province. I expect the member for Nipissing does not want us to talk about that, either.

I have been struck, as I have been discussing these issues with people in and out of the health care field, by the enthusiasm people have to this government’s approach in coming to terms with these health care pressures. They like the fact that the government is seriously examining how to develop productivity improvements and lower cost alternatives for health care while maintaining quality of service and accessibility, and they like the fact there is a get-tough approach in that examination and implementation.

Getting tough implies a discipline, not only in the central planning functions but in the broader sphere. It is no accident that the operating budget is in a surplus position this year. It is very much a part of the disciplined approach which the Treasurer has taken in every one of his budgets. It is no accident that provincial borrowing will be at its lowest point in close to two decades this year, and it is no accident that tax increases are contributing to a substantial decrease in the deficit. On the streets of Halton Centre, as in every community in Ontario, these actions matter. They are not only welcomed; indeed, that kind of discipline is demanded.

One initiative which has been particularly admired is the opening up of our lottery revenues for hospitals. With a name like Sullivan, I can barely avoid reference to the Irish sweepstakes which has made such a significant contribution to hospital funding in another jurisdiction. People know that this is an innovation here, and what I have heard so far is merely the question, “Why was it not done before?”

As in other areas of Ontario, in Halton Centre there is an identified need for housing for low and moderate-income people. I am pleased to say that our regional government has established a nonprofit housing corporation and that many groups and organizations are coming forward as well to assist in meeting that need. Recent increases in the maximum unit prices for nonprofit housing construction in Halton communities, in Burlington, amounting to over 25 per cent, are very important to us. The track record of nonprofit projects in other areas, in terms of award-winning, attractive, architectural design which complements the community environs, are without question important considerations in finding community acceptance in estate fished areas for new projects.

One extremely attractive provision in this budget is the opening of Canada pension plan funds to nonprofit housing groups, a creative way of reducing financing costs for organizations which are providing nonprofit units. Canada pension plan rates are historically one to two per cent below conventional mortgage rates. For those groups which are involved in making housing available for senior citizens, the disabled and families, this is an extremely important step. Along with many others in my riding, I am looking forward to our local organization sharing in that $2-billion CPP funding availability.

I have a particular interest in the strength of our farming community. As a youth, I raised cattle in what is now Halton Centre and exhibited them in major shows both nationally and internationally. In Halton Centre, agriculture has changed significantly since my childhood days. The amount of farmland has shrunk while the extensive use of technology on the farms that are left has grown. Many of our farmers, often sons and daughters or grandchildren of the original farmers, worked land that is now owned by developers who are waiting for municipal plans to catch up with their particular vision of the future community. In a changing environment for agriculture, with a crisis in commodity prices, a need to adapt to new technology and a cash-flow crunch, one cannot help but be impressed with the fierce dedication of our farmers to stay in business and to stay in business successfully.

Farmers in Halton Centre are optimistic, and if once again I can refer to a figure that my honourable colleague the member for Nipissing does not want us to mention, farmers know that the Liberal government has increased the agricultural budget by 86 per cent since his cohorts were making decisions. Tripartite stabilization, the Ontario family farm interest rate reduction program, a revitalized emphasis on farm safety and land stewardship tell the tale of a government that is committed to stability and prosperity for our agricultural industry, and new programs such as the Food Systems 2002 program funded in this budget once again reiterate that we are looking at tomorrow as well as today.

That approach tells the tale of why the Toronto Star called this a Liberal budget, and those of us who were elected under that banner in September, whether as new or returning members, make no apologies for the fact that this is a Liberal budget. It takes tomorrow into account.

1620

In looking at the needs of tomorrow, the government is taking major steps to prepare for an altered trade environment by providing incentives to our business community to step up investment in research and development. New money has been allocated in both the public and private sectors, and out of this investment will come the technology, the trained people and the products which will keep us on a firm footing in the next phase of economic development. It will help us to improve technological innovation and introduce new production methods.

In short, these steps will assist Ontario business to be innovative, adaptable and entrepreneurial, and the business community in Halton Centre is very supportive of those initiatives.

A continuing healthy economic environment must provide the base so that we can guarantee a place for those who might not share in our good fortune, our vitality and our enterprise. This budget provides a solid base on which to move forward. It treats people with fairness and equity; it provides services and programs that are clearly needed; it has discipline, and it looks to the next generation.

In the budget text which he did not deliver to the House, the Treasurer concluded that public and private sector investments proposed in the budget are designed to keep Ontario dynamic, compassionate and competitive. They are fitting and elegant words to describe this year’s budget and I conclude with them.

Hon. R. F. Nixon: l would like to make just a brief comment. The honourable member, as she pointed out in her opening remarks, was the executive assistant to the new Treasurer three years ago. I just want to tell the honourable members what a marvellous job she made of that very difficult assignment. As a matter of fact, she established, I would think, the smallest and lowest-paid but most effective ministerial staff in North America. It did not please them so much but it is a fact.

Besides that, the honourable member’s background was extremely useful under those circumstances and serves the people of the province and her constituency well in her elected capacity. She has had independent business and advisory responsibilities, but at least as important as that, she is, of course, the mother of-five? Four marvellous --

Mr. Breaugh: Maybe five.

Hon. R. F. Nixon: -I never was good with figures-and was able to balance her personal responsibilities with her professional responsibilities in an extremely advantageous and effective way.

Also, the constituency she represents is part-way through the transition from one of the best rural agricultural areas in Ontario to one of the most rapidly growing urbanizing ones and her background satisfies those requirements. For many years she was a junior farmer. As a matter of fact, she looks as if she would still qualify.

But besides that, she is of course very knowledgeable indeed in the modern issues of the day, and the topics that she selected for her excellent address simply underline those abilities.

Mr. Harris: I wanted to concur with the Treasurer’s comments on the qualifications and the background of the member for Halton Centre. I wonder, though, given those qualifications and potential and background, why she read a drivelly speech that obviously somebody else wrote for her.

She mentioned Sheridan College and how this budget benefits it. I would like to ask her about Canadore College in North Bay, which has a food technicians course, or used to have. Students went there for one year. They are so short of money they are being told, Sorry, we’re cancelling the program.” You have one year of nothing when you have one year of a two-year course. That is how severe the cutbacks are in the community colleges in North Bay.

Perhaps there are similar experiences being experienced at Sheridan College, which she mentioned. If not, maybe they are doing all right and the rest of the province is having problems.

She also mentioned that this is the fourth year of a similar direction of the three previous budgets. She was proud to be associated with the other three, as she is of this one. I am just as pleased to indicate my total disdain for all four of these budgets and the massive double-digit, triple-digit spending that these budgets have brought in.

I would also ask her if she heard the Premier of New Brunswick, Mr. McKenna, in his comments that were made in Ontario two days ago, where he said, “David Peterson is a friend of mine, but....” He talked about fiscal policy; he talked about a balanced budget, he talked about wanting Ontario industries there. But he said this: “If you are looking for a government grant, we do not want you. That’s not the philosophy this Liberal government in New Brunswick wants.” Obviously, there are several Liberal philosophies --

The Deputy Speaker: Thank you. The member’s time is up.

Mr. Harris: -and, quite frankly, we are totally opposed to the one that is being presented here in Ontario.

Mr. Breaugh: This is the honourable member’s maiden speech, and I think normally we would hear these things much earlier in the year. I congratulate her for her tenacity in persevering through the suppression by her own caucus of her right to speak as a member. We have had an opportunity this afternoon finally to hear from her, and we are grateful for that.

I think as well that she is to be congratulated as one of the few people who have actually lived through the sad experience of being on the staff of the Treasurer of Ontario. It must have been a difficult and trying time in her life fetching all the chocolate bars for the Treasurer, as it is widely rumoured that is all his staff ever really do for him.

Hon. R. F. Nixon: One of her jobs was to get me to lose weight. You can just see how successful she has been.

Mr. Breaugh: The Treasurer has just said that one of her jobs was to get him to lose weight, and as he shakes his jowls all over his chair, we have to admit at least one failure in her past work experience.

I want to congratulate her on finally letting slip one truth. This was indeed a Liberal budget and, oddly enough, it looks very much like a Tory budget. For those of us who have observed both kinds roll through here, the similarities are absolutely astonishing.

The Deputy Speaker: Do other members have questions and comments? If not, does the member for Halton Centre wish to respond?

Mrs. Sullivan: I am touched with the words of the Treasurer. I will not dwell on those words.

I would like to address one or two items that the member for Nipissing raised: in particular, the reaction of people from Sheridan College to the budget. Indeed, there was enormous enthusiasm-and I have spoken with those people-for the initiatives that are being taken in terms of technical training and the emphasis that is being put on skills for tomorrow. I will be meeting further with them and I know that they will be meeting with officials in the Ministry of Colleges and Universities. I believe this thrust is going to be very important at Sheridan College as well as at other community colleges. Indeed, in terms of the record of the four budgets, they were fair, equitable and fiscally responsible.

On that note, I will leave my response.

The Deputy Speaker: Order. As I should have recognized in the beginning a government speaker to complete the rotation as per the usual rotation, I will now ask a member from the third party caucus to speak, and we will revert afterwards to a Liberal, so that after four speakers, we will have retained our normal rotation.

1630

Mr. McLean: I am pleased to take part in this budget debate. I am also pleased to have the opportunity to discuss what I believe was one of the cruelest budgets ever brought down by a Treasurer of a Canadian province.

This government has a history of sticking it to the people of Ontario. We saw the government stick the financial knife in the backs of taxpayers in the past, and rather than remove this dangerous cutlery, the government decided instead to give the knife a little twist by increasing the sales tax by one percentage point, by increasing personal income taxes by two percentage points over two years, by increasing the so-called sin taxes and by increasing the tax on unleaded gasoline by one cent a litre and on leaded gas by three cents. This government has given the knife a substantial twist, and the people of Ontario will now be forced to sit back and watch as their pocketbooks and wallets bleed to death.

Last September, we watched in horror as Liberal candidates promised everything under the sun in an attempt to win a majority government in Ontario.

Interjection.

Mr. McLean: Well, they got that majority and the people of Ontario got $1 .3 billion. The member for Lincoln (Mr. Pellisero) just said, “And it worked.” Well, it did work, but this $1.3 billion in tax increases is a backhanded way of saying thanks.

This budget is a clear indication to me that this government plans to continue with its policy of taxing and spending with a vengeance. Not once during last year’s election campaign did we hear the Liberals use the term “tax increases,” but we certainly heard it loud and clear on April 20, and it was louder and clearer than anyone could believe or ever wanted to hear.

Taken together, the increases in the personal income tax, the retail sales tax, the gasoline tax, the alcohol levies, the tobacco tax and the changes to corporate tax represent the single largest tax grab in the history of Ontario. The people at Earl’s Shell will never forget the Treasurer for this.

This tax grab comes at a time when Ontario has been in a position of strong economic growth. For the past five years, since this government took office, it has had a cumulative increase of over $29 billion in revenues to meet program needs and development. This is without taking into account the tax increases announced in the April 20 budget. Rather than getting involved in the largest tax grab in Ontario’s history, the government should have taken the opportunity to cut taxes, not increase them.

There is so much to criticize in this budget and so little time in which to do so. The following are some of the areas which are of major concern to me, and I would like to spend a little time now in focusing attention on these issues.

Even without the tax grabs, Treasury revenues would have increased by 8.2 per cent. That translates into a massive $2.8 billion over last year. In 1987, this government overspent its budget plan for the third consecutive year. In 1988 and 1989, government spending will increase by 8.6 per cent, and that rate is more than double the current rate of inflation. This government is taking credit for $350 million in in-year savings last year, and it should be noted that what this government is really saying is that had it been more efficient, it would have spent even more than it had.

In the fiscal year, the government has created $500 million in in-year savings and constraints to its expenditure account, which means that the $473-million deficit is in reality a $973-million deficit. The interest in this province is $4 billion a year on the total cumulative debt. The Treasurer justified his tax increases by saying the money was needed for more schools, more roads, more hospitals and more capital for universities, but the capital-spending increase for 1988-89 is about $120 million after deductions for projects’ in-year savings, or only 12.6 per cent of the total tax grab.

I would like to spend the remainder of my time enlarging on some of the concerns I have with this budget, but first I have a number of questions for the Treasurer which I do not believe he answered on April 20.

First, where is the allocation for the construction of an Oak Ridge facility in Penetanguishene Mental Health Centre, which has been promised by the Minister of Health (Mrs. Caplan) for two years now? There was no mention of this in the budget, yet two of this government’s Health ministers have stated unequivocally that they support the construction of a new facility on the existing site in the town of Penetanguishene.

A report commissioned by the current Minister of Health has called Oak Ridge “an antiquated prison that is a relic of another age.” This report notes that Oak Ridge was built in 1933 and modelled on a 1920-era prison; it goes on to say: “The urgency of building a new modern hospital cannot be stressed enough. The status quo is not only clinically unacceptable but fraught with danger.”

Second, what has this budget done for the tourism and hospitality industry in Ontario? It has hurt this vibrant industry, which can generate unparalleled economic and employment opportunities, substantially reduce our provincial travel deficit and attract our rightful share of world travel and tourism revenues. This budget, with its enormous tax increases imposed on most Ontarians, will have a negative effect on this business. Leisure, travel and vacation people in our province will be affected, and this cost-sensitive industry will be one of the first to bear the brunt of the economic downturn which I believe this budget virtually guarantees.

The Ontario government, through this budget, neutralized many of the positive benefits of stage one of federal tax reform for taxpayers and businesses and has placed numerous Ontario tourism and hospitality enterprises at an even worse competitive disadvantage with the bordering American states.

The increase in the personal income tax rates, the net increase of 14 per cent in the provincial sales tax rate and the escalation of levies and taxes on beverage alcohol and gasoline will discourage consumption of the products and services offered by the tourism and hospitality industry and nonessential travel by the tourism and hospitality industry within Ontario.

In my view, these unprecedented tax increases in excess of $1 billion are unnecessary, regressive and inflationary. Ontario has enjoyed a 53 per cent increase in tax revenues during the past four years. During the same period, the province has increased its spending by 9.5 per cent annually, or more than double the federal rate. Surely this spending can and must be curtailed.

The Ontario tourism and hospitality industry generated an estimated $9.3 billion in expenditures during 1987, or six per cent of the gross provincial product. It is the largest employer in the service sector, accounting for 402,000 full-year-equivalent jobs in 1985. This industry is the province’s second largest export industry, producing an estimated $2.9 billion in valuable foreign exchange earnings in 1987.

While I am on the subject of tourism, I would like to talk once again about the tax increase on gasoline, because it affects many more people than those who drive automobiles. Many of the tourism and hospitality operators in Ontario, like many of those in Simcoe East, offer boats for fishing or cruising, and these vessels operate on the same gasoline that the government is increasing taxes on. This means many potential tourists and fishermen will be reluctant to rent boats because the cost of operating them will be too high a financial burden to bear. In the long run, it will be the tourism and hospitality operators who will suffer, because they will be taking the flak for this increased cost. Many potential customers will turn up their noses, and that means the loss of badly needed business.

1640

My next question deals with the unprecedented increase in sales tax, from seven per cent to eight per cent. What does this do to the purchasing power of the average Ontarian, and what will it do to the sale of goods in this province? I know of one example personally where someone was going to purchase a new car next month. Now he is confronted with approximately $200 added to the final price tag, just because of the one per cent increase in the sales tax in Ontario. Are we going to see more and more people holding off on major purchases, or are we going to see manufacturers suffering because people decline to buy their products because of sales tax hikes they just cannot afford?

This is the first increase in the retail sales tax since 1973, and I defy the government to justify this increase at this time. When the retail sales tax increases on May 2, it will result in this government raising an additional $820 million in the fiscal year and $986 million in a full year. This increase is expected to cost a married couple earning $35,000 with two children a minimum of an additional $112.

With this budget, the government has raised the personal income tax rate twice since taking office. In 1988, the personal income tax rate will be increased from 50 per cent of base federal to 51 per cent of base federal. In 1989 that rate will increase a further one per cent to 52 per cent.

When you stop and think about it, during this term of office this government has increased the personal income tax rate by 8.3 per cent, from 48 per cent to 52 per cent, and the proposed increase in the personal income tax rate will reduce by more than half the benefits which otherwise would have accrued to Ontario taxpayers as a result of the federal tax reform.

In addition, a 10 per cent surtax is imposed on individuals earning more than $85,000, to raise an additional $52 million this year. The personal income tax increase, combined with the surtax, will raise an additional $272 million in 1988-89 and $286 million in a full year.

Paralleling federal corporate income tax changes will raise an additional $80 million for the province in 1988-89, offset in part by a number of changes which will cost $51 million, producing a net of $29 million in new revenues in that area.

Levies will increase on spirits, wine and beer effective May 24, to generate an additional $62 million this fiscal year. These new tax increases include an increase of eight cents-from 10 cents to 18 cents-in the levy applied to each 750-millilitre bottle of spirits or wine and to each 12-pack of beer, an increase of two percentage points from 21.2 to 23.2 in the manufacturer’s licence fee on the production of domestic beer for sale in Ontario and a two-percentage-point increase in the markup on imported beer.

Effective midnight on April 20, the tobacco tax was increased by one cent per cigarette to 3.83 cents per cigarette and by 0.6 cents per gram of cut tobacco to 2.2 cents for each gram. This measure is expected to raise $158 million in additional revenues in this fiscal year alone.

I have outlined some of the areas where this government has increased taxes substantially because it claims the money is needed for more schools, more roads, more hospitals and more capital for hospitals, but there is nothing in the budget that indicates to me that more money has been allotted for more schools and more hospitals and more roads and more capital for universities.

I would like to take this time to point out the failings of this government in a number of areas. It may take some time, but the first area I would like to look at is our elementary and secondary education system in Ontario.

It should be noted that the operating and capital expenditures in the April 20 budget were actually announced earlier. Operating expenditures were announced last fall and capital expenditures were announced last spring.

The capital allocation for schools this year is $238 million, of which $11 million is to cover previously announced programs to put day care centres in schools, and the remaining money is for new school construction, renovations and repairs.

Points of interest in the budget relating to education include the fact the school boards requested in excess of $1 billion in capital funds for 1988-89. The Ministry of Education declared $900 million of the request as “educationally justifiable,” which I think is ministry gobbledegook for “needed.” According to the April 20 budget, school boards in Ontario will receive $226.4 million or approximately 25 per cent of what they asked for.

It is interesting to note that the previous speaker indicated there is more money going into education in the area where she is from than there ever had been in the previous government: 25 per cent of the whole budget. I remember back a few years ago when the province was paying 50 per cent of the education costs. The present government had indicated it would increase that to 60 per cent. I find now that it has decreased to approximately 42 per cent.

Interestingly enough, the picture for the post-secondary education system in Ontario is just about as bleak as the elementary and secondary school system. Excluding funds earmarked for special purposes, university-based operating grants will increase by only 4.5 per cent this year. As a result, the Council of Ontario Universities is predicting that 10 per cent of all qualified applicants will not find a place in Ontario’s universities this fall. Last year’s accessibility fund did not prevent five per cent of all qualified applicants from being turned away, and this year’s $38-million fund will probably be just as successful.

In summary, this budget was a shocker that is aimed at bleeding the taxpayers of Ontario so that this government can continue its record of spend, spend, spend and spend again. Like many people of this province, I cannot believe this government would introduce a budget that basically shifted around the pre-promised money for services, put an extra burden on the taxpayer and threatened to slow this government’s economic growth.

This government’s pledges, contained in the April 20 budget, to education, health, roads and other services or programs are, in reality, only about the same or slightly higher than existing funding levels from this government. What we got is increased taxes to generate revenue needed to offset the growth in the bureaucracy and the commissioning of scores of expensive studies, reports, reviews and commissions.

The problem with this budget lies in the fact that this government has hired almost 6,000 new civil servants, and there are two or three studies being undertaken by each ministry. That costs millions of dollars, and it is a clear indication to me that we are getting far more government than we want or need. Someone has to pay for all this, and unfortunately, this government is putting the squeeze on the wallets and purses of the people in Penetanguishene, the people of Gingersnap Junction, the people in Orillia and the people of other villages and hamlets, from the cities and from the towns and from the city of Toronto. No one will escape the sticky fingers of this government as it pilfers more and more money from the people of Ontario through increased taxation.

This government is taking advantage of Ontario’s strong economy to increase taxes and spending. Despite six years of uninterrupted economic growth and expansion, the deficit continues to rise. The alternative was rejected because this government has to pay for all the bills that have resulted from expensive election promises. It should be noted that when the price of everything is raised, as this government has with this budget, it stands accused of deliberately creating inflation. That is just simple arithmetic. That is a dangerous thing to do, especially in a booming economy that could, with intelligent and prudent care, have provided ample funds without slamming the people of Ontario with higher taxes.

In Ontario, 75 per cent of school buses use leaded gas. The Treasurer has increased the cost to the taxpayers of this province drastically by increasing the price of fuel by approximately 18 cents per gallon, an increase which other governments have been defeated on. The school boards right across this province will have drastically increased costs by that extra funding revenue that is going on the gasoline tax.

1650

The other industry that is going to feel it substantially is the trucking industry. Over 50 per cent of all the transports on the road today use leaded fuel, and it is a substantial increase to them. Not only to them, but there are many farmers in this province who have tractors and trucks that use regular fuel and who are being pressured and now have to pay that extra 18 cents a gallon for their fuel.

Not only that, but the Ontario Federation of Agriculture president, Brigid Pyke herself, is not all that enthusiastic about the budget. She is not very pleased about it. She has said that.

Madam Speaker, I want to thank you for the opportunity to speak briefly on the budget that was presented on April 20. I know that the people of Ontario will have a lot more to say about it before it is finally approved. It is one of the most drastic budgets that I have ever seen brought forward in this province.

I have always trusted Farmer Bob for good management and good foresight. However, I do believe that there were other people who drafted this budget and who indicated that the spending of this government has to be met by increased taxation. The Treasurer should have been more fiscally responsible. He should have had better management, paid off the deficit and looked after the costs as they occur and not as he anticipates.

Hon. R. F. Nixon: I want to thank the honourable member for his comments. I think there were a few positive suggestions in there about the fiscal policy of the province, but his references to the gas tax concern me, because he is a very strong Progressive Conservative. I do not think I can find anything shaky in his antecedents. I cannot remember when he was a Liberal. Maybe his mamma was or something like that. He is a good Tory, but it is the Tories in Ottawa who have increased their gasoline tax here.

As a matter of fact, Michael Wilson raised the gas tax one cent a litre on January I this year, and he raised it 1.1 cent a litre on April I this year. That raised the federal tax on gasoline in the province to almost 10 cents a litre, about 9.9 cents. Our tax is 9.3 cents. To tell the truth, this increase at the federal level took place in just three years. During the same period of time, with increases in the federal sales tax, the Department of Finance in Ottawa has increased the revenue out of Ontario by about $1.6 billion.

The honourable members opposite are talking about the biggest tax grab in history and saying I am responsible, even though that is factually incorrect. In fact, the federal initiatives in these three years alone have been larger than this increase. That is why I am not so concerned when people on the other side say that these are inflationary and do not fit in with federal policies. I think if tax increases are inflationary, it is the federal policies we must be concerned with, because we have reduced our deficit to the lowest level in 19 years. That really takes the pressure off inflation, and therefore it is something that even the honourable members opposite, including the budgetary critic, who is now galloping in to take his place, should be prepared to support.

Mr. Ferraro: I want to say to my friend across the way that I enjoyed listening to his speech as well, but I have a question. As a member of the standing committee on finance and economic affairs, as is the member for Nipissing, during our preparation of a paper, if you will, to the Treasurer on recommendations for the budget, members should know that we received requests from different sectors-whether it was hospitals, education or so forth-over and above present expenditures, capital allocations in excess of $14 billion.

This is $14 billion above the then roughly $36-billion budget. We had to deal with that. When you take that into consideration with the fact that the Treasurer indicated the federal government indeed is not only taxing us to death on gas but reducing the increased amount of transfer payments to us something to the tune of $2 billion over the next couple of years, and add that to Treasury’s saying that we are going to have continued strong growth in Ontario, roughly 2.5 per cent from the period of 1989-91, although inflation is going to be 4.7 per cent, you are left with a predicament that the Treasurer and the government have to deal with.

You can deal with it only this way, considering that the pie is only so big: You either have increased taxes, which the member and his party object to and say is totally wrong; or you add to the deficit, and the Treasurer has already indicated that with this budget increase in taxes, the deficit is going to go down a further $750 million to the lowest deficit in 19 years, $473 million; or indeed you have the final alternative, and that is to cut services to the 9.2 million people in Ontario.

Take that in conjunction with the fact that we have had an influx of 110,000 new citizens to Ontario. I ask my friend the member, what services would he cut to those 9.2 million people?

Mr. Harris: I want to say how much I enjoyed the remarks that were made by the member for Simcoe East (Mr. McLean). He is certainly a member who has a great grasp and understanding of how budgets affect the average person in his riding, certainly the average farmer. He, like the member for Halton Centre, is a family man. He has several children, I know. I just thought I would throw that in. It seemed to be the order of the day to talk about everybody’s family. I know that gives him an appreciation of what it is like to try to struggle along with a family. Is it four children?

Mr. McLean: Four.

Mr. Harris: Count them, four.

The member for Guelph (Mr. Ferraro) talked about capital allocations. I heard his remarks; I was in the back listening to them. He talked about there being no new capital. I was surprised at a member of the standing committee on finance and economic affairs talking about the $14-billion requests for capital, yet the capital allocation, if the Treasurer wants to check his two page 50s, from this budget and the last budget, is up only $100 million of the $3-billion increase.

The member also talked about Oak Ridge hospital in his riding. I wonder if the member could comment. We have a situation in Nipissing where they have been waiting for capital allocation for a combined hospital which would save on the operating cost. That is where you spend capital. You spend capital to save on the operating, yet there has been virtually a less-than-inflation increase in the capital allocation. It is an embarrassment for this Treasurer, and I wonder if he can explain that.

Mr. McLean: I can say to the member for Guelph that when the government wants to save some money, it could save it by being more responsible. It has hired almost 6,000 new civil servants. It has hired all kinds of studies. It has consultants, lawyers and all kinds of professional people running around this province doing studies. It has increased the executive assistants’ salaries from $40,000 to $60,000 or $70,000. It has increased the deputy ministers’ from about $78,000 up to about $110,000. If it wants to talk about saving a few dollars, the government had better start with its own civil service.

It is interesting to note, talking about tax reform, that in 1985, the Treasurer had 19 tax increases. In the 1987 budget, he did not increase taxes any and they say, “Well, we need more money.” If he was so interested in doing it gradually, why did he not put a tax on last year?

He brought a budget in with not one tax increase. Is that being fiscally responsible? I think that is what is called playing games with the public, conning them so they will vote for this government. It worked, but I am going to tell members, what happened in Manitoba yesterday is exactly caused by Ontario. They saw what happened here with this budget on April 20. They do not want to see another majority government anywhere in Canada. They are sick and tired of majority governments. They saw what happened here. They are just taking the taxpayers right to the cleaners.

I want to remind the Treasurer that this is the very same Treasurer who said in 1973-in fact, the last time the tax was raised, to seven from five per cent, in 1973, the Liberals railed at the regressive nature of the tax increase, because it would unfairly hit the poor harder than those on high incomes. I want to remind the Treasurer of what he said at that time. Does he know what he said? “We should go to the people to decide in fact whether they are satisfied with the care” --

1700

The Acting Speaker (Miss Roberts): Order.

Mr. McLean: -“or whether we should continue spending. We need an election on this budget.”

Ms. Hart: It is with great pleasure that I rise to participate in the budget debate.

Mr. Harris: It’s our pleasure to listen to you.

Ms. Hart: Thank you.

Ontario is currently in its sixth year of strong economic performance, and current indications are that this trend will continue, at least for the next year. Inflation is expected to remain low, the unemployment rate is at its lowest point since 1974 and housing starts are expected to remain high. All in all, the picture appears rather rosy, the perfect setting for a steady-as-she-goes budget.

But the Treasurer has clearly not taken that course. Instead, he has chosen to take an aggressive approach in his budget, and I applaud the Treasurer for his foresight. He has realized that today’s prosperity is a transient thing whose presence cannot be taken for granted. The world is a rapidly changing place, and therefore we must be prepared to direct this province into new productive areas. The Premier’s Council report on technology has already pointed out the path to take, and this budget, with its incentives for expenditures in research and development, takes the first steps towards a more secure economic future.

Preparing for the future involves more than just setting an economic course. Without the ingenuity of the people of Ontario to drive the economy and to help the environment to sustain it, even the best-laid economic plans are doomed to failure. Economic prosperity is a double-edged sword. It makes life more enjoyable for many people, but it also draws people from less prosperous areas hoping that they might participate in this province’s success. This places a tremendous burden on social systems such as education, health care and affordable housing, because they are unable to handle the rapid rise in demand. I am not saying that I disapprove of people moving to Ontario, particularly since I fit into that category myself. I am simply pointing out that there is a price for economic prosperity. This budget makes a serious start at relieving some of the pressure on the system, but true solutions cannot be expected overnight.

Because of my own special interest, I would like to say a few words about what this budget does for the environment. I am a fervent believer that the maintenance of a strong economy is dependent, in the long run, on a healthy and well-managed environment. This was the message of the universally heralded and respected Brundtland report to the United Nations, released just one year ago, and the Treasurer’s budget clearly demonstrates that our government is firmly committed to this principle. The Ministry of the Environment’s budget for 1988 has risen nine per cent, to $426 million. That is an increase of 51 per cent since 1985. This increase is being channelled into programs designed to meet the specific challenges that we in Ontario face today.

For example, funding for the LifeLines program is increased to $12 million this year to help municipalities evaluate and rehabilitate deteriorating underground sewer and water infrastructure. In many of the world’s major centres, infrastructure deterioration has reached crisis proportions, thus creating some serious health hazards. Once deterioration reaches this stage, rehabilitation is impossible, and the system must be replaced. By looking forward and anticipating the effect that future growth and the passage of time will have upon the system, this government will be able to prevent this crisis and reduce the overall costs of maintaining our sewer systems.

A case in point is the $5.95 million of funding provided by the Ministry of the Environment to my own municipality of East York to upgrade its badly decayed sewers. The expenditure of these moneys will have the additional salutary effect of substantially abating the summer pollution of Toronto’s beaches by storm water runoff.

When one speaks of an environmental crisis, especially in southern Ontario, one cannot help but think of garbage. This is an indication of what can happen if we choose to ignore the kinds of early warnings that led this government to propose the LifeLines program.

Although the disposal of garbage is a municipal matter, we must pull together and create solutions that are more than just short-term, Band-Aid avoidance tactics. We must change our approach to garbage in order to encourage greater recycling, reduction, reuse and recovery.

Towards this end, the Ministry of the Environment has allotted $22.9 million to assist municipalities in dealing with their garbage disposal problems. This represents a 205 per cent increase over last year’s level of funding. In addition, municipal curbside recycling funding was increased to $7.7 million, up from $5.7 million in the previous year.

In the area of water pollution control, the Treasurer in his budget has indicated that MISA, the municipal-industrial strategy for abatement, marks the way for the future.

In a world where technological advances are developed at an ever-increasing pace, across-the-board regulations are no longer feasible. Variation between sectors can be enormous. Therefore, effective pollution control must take into account the technological capability of each sector to reduce its own emissions.

At the same time, the ability of the surrounding environment to assimilate pollution must also be taken into account. It is useless to place controls on a pollution source if the allowable limits still destroy the environment. If the plant cannot operate in harmony with the environment, then its technology must be changed for it to remain.

MISA responds to both of these problems. Rapid advances in technologies, both between and within sectors, are incorporated into sector-specific best available technologies. In addition, regulations based on the assimilative capacity of receiving waters will be enforced if emission levels are still too high.

The Treasurer has ensured that MISA will be able to proceed in an effective manner by increasing funding to $15.2 million, an increase of 77 per cent. This will allow the ministry to take significant steps towards its goal of improved water quality.

Many of our initiatives and programs depend upon a co-operation between officials at the Ministry of the Environment and representatives in industry. The ministry must be able to check the accuracy of industry data as well as to enforce the regulations of the province. For these reasons, the Treasurer has increased the number of staff in the investigations and enforcement branch by 34, bringing the total to 107. This fulfils the first half of an election promise to double the ministry’s enforcement staff in two years.

1710

The environment provides the essential raw materials necessary for sustained economic prosperity. It also has a recreational function that may be our only respite from a stress-filled world. For many people, one of the most cherished summertime activities is still a visit to the beach. Unfortunately, a number of Ontario’s beaches, especially those near urban centres on Lake Ontario, are forced to close during the height of the season because of poor water quality. In response to the need to provide Ontarians with good, safe, recreational water the Treasurer has doubled the funding for beach cleanup from $15 million to $30 million per year for a five-year period.

This money will go towards water quality studies, as well as improvements to sewer infrastructure. In total, this budget represents an increase of $35.4 million for environmental programs in Ontario. That is up 9.1 per cent over the previous year and up 51 per cent since 1985. This is clearly a government for which the environment is a very high priority.

Members will remember that I earlier spoke of the double-edged sword of prosperity. It is clear that the rapid influx of people from other parts of the country and beyond has caused a serious strain on our health care, education and affordable housing systems just to mention a few. With the persistent calls from many quarters for immediate action in all these areas simultaneously, it would have been easy for the Treasurer to neglect the environment, but he did not. He did not because he realized how important a healthy environment is to a healthy Ontario.

At the same time, he realized that a successful future for Ontario depends upon proper government today, a government that takes steps to repair and update our ageing infrastructure of hospitals, schools and roads and to expand it in areas of pressing need. The Treasurer showed this foresight in seeking greater revenues to accomplish these goals now, while the economy is strong. He has also significantly reduced the budget deficit so as not to burden future generations with our current expenditures.

The Treasurer has also introduced a special levy of three cents per litre on leaded gasoline to discourage its use over unleaded gasoline. The deleterious effects of lead on the central nervous systems of children have been clearly documented, and future generations will therefore benefit by the reduced use of this toxin.

I believe I could be legitimately accused of avoiding contentious issues if I did not speak directly to the issue of tax increases. Yes, there are significant increases in the amount of tax taken in by the Treasurer, but as I mentioned before, the costs of prosperity can be equally significant.

In the areas of environmental protection and improvement affected by this budget, survey after survey has indicated a willingness by the people of this province to pay significant sums of money if the result is a cleaner and safer environment. Surely, the same can be said for health care, education and housing. What Ontarians want from their provincial government is good, sound management. This requires not only the prudent administration of today’s programs, but also creating the base for a fiscally secure future. We all very much want our children to grow up in an Ontario that will be as prosperous as the one we live in today. I believe many will agree with me that the Treasurer has launched us on that road.

Mr. Harris: I want to congratulate the member for York East on her pitch for the Environment portfolio when the new shuffle comes up. Given the performance we have seen in the Legislature since the September 10 election, I am sure the shake-up is coming very soon. I do not want to name names because, as members know, it is not my nature or my wont to get into personalities, but I think anybody who has observed the Ontario scene since the September 10 election will know that there is probably in excess of half the cabinet who do not deserve to be there.

I want to say that I thought it was a good pitch, a strong pitch from the member for York East, and I understand her concern, particularly with what has been happening in the environment. Hopefully, if the Premier ever reads the speech -- unfortunately, he does not come in to listen to his backbenchers in the chamber, so I understand why she would want to put forward her concerns with the environment. We too have concerns with the environment. While it is one thing to applaud the Treasurer for putting money into the environment, that truly is not the solution to the problem, as the member knows, and I think that is why she focused in on some areas.

I might ask her if she has had any answers why the superfund that was promised in 1985 as the key environmental program put forward by the government has never been implemented. Not one cent has been put into it yet.

Mr. Runciman: I might make a brief comment about the fact that the member, during the time I was able to hear her comments, failed to mention the rather cursory way in which the Treasurer treated eastern Ontario. He virtually ignored it in respect of the budget.

An hon. member: Forty-seven thousand jobs last year.

Mr. Runciman: Yes. I guess we would like to know where those 47,000 jobs are in eastern Ontario. We have a real problem with how this Treasurer defines eastern Ontario, where he is running the boundaries.

Mr. Villeneuve: East of Yonge Street.

Mr. Runciman: I think so.

When we take a look at not only the budget but the education capital allocations, it is obvious there really is no understanding or appreciation of the very valid and legitimate problems that exist in many of the areas of eastern Ontario, and we are not talking about Kingston township or the Ottawa-Carleton region.

Let us take a look at the remainder of eastern Ontario. Obviously, there are a number of spots in eastern Ontario that are doing reasonably well, but by and large, we in that sector of the province are not enjoying the prosperity that southwestern Ontario is enjoying. I urge the Treasurer, at some point in the near future, to take a look at what is occurring in eastern Ontario. He should get a couple of people from that region into the cabinet who will adequately represent it and voice the concerns of those people.

Mr. Villeneuve: Not just lipservice.

Mr. Runciman: Right. He should do away with lipservice and let us see some action for the people of eastern Ontario.

Hon. R. F. Nixon: I am sorry that I missed just a part of the speech of the member for York East, but I want to congratulate her for her perceptive review of the budgetary initiatives. I certainly appreciate an objective approach to these issues. Not all the members of the Legislature know that the honourable member had a distinguished career as an attorney specializing in transportation law, and although she is well-known among the cognoscenti in this area, I thought it should be brought to the attention of the honourable members. With the reallocation of additional funds for Ontario’s highways, there is no wonder that she is particularly interested in that aspect, as well as the broad advances brought forward in the budget.

It is interesting to note that while there were minor increases in gasoline taxes in certain special areas, still, diesel fuel stayed just where it was, at the relatively low level, which is an encouragement to truck transportation, which is so essential to the economy of the whole province. Eastern Ontario, particularly, has benefited from this, as well as the allocation of an additional $100 million this year over and above the very generous allocation for highways, because we understand how important that is to all of the province, but particularly to the east. The budget has an array of programs that are beneficial to communities in eastern Ontario and the whole province.

The member for Leeds-Grenville (Mr. Runciman), who was just complaining about that, is no doubt aware of the recent allocation of an additional $237 million for school capital. We are very proud we were able to do this, particularly to benefit the eastern part of the province.

1720

Hon. Mr. Kerrio: I must, of course, pay tribute to the speaker who touched on the subject of the environment. I was prompted, because of comments made about various members of the cabinet, to share with people here how important the environmental question is and that the budget is going to play an important role in this very important initiative.

I am standing in my place because I took a bit of an exception to the member from the other side suggesting that half of the cabinet should not be there. I interjected a comment, but I should not just interject. I should get up and put on the record that in the last election the people obviously decided that none of the cabinet from the other side should be there. That is the result of that election.

To question the integrity of this government regarding the environment is something I take exception to, because this particular minister is doing more to protect the environment of Ontario, more of an initiative than was ever seen by the former government; indeed, I would suggest across Canada or all of North America. He is doing a job that we in this government can be proud of. I am very pleased that the member has spoken to this issue and that the Treasurer has seen fit to inject huge sums of money into that, because the people of Ontario feel the environment is a very high priority and this government is responding to that in this budget.

As I have said before, I think the record speaks for itself. I would hope one of the most forceful governments in the world, in the United States, would listen to the Minister of the Environment (Mr. Bradley) of Ontario and respond to the request to stop polluting the air with acid gas emissions that are causing us great pain to the lakes of the province and the trees in the areas in which I am very interested.

Ms. Hart: I would like to thank all the honourable members for their comments. I am particularly heartened to hear the comments of the member for Nipissing and the member for Leeds-Grenville, because as I indicated in my speech, and I believe very strongly, we all have to work together to clean up our environment.

I ask them for their help in speaking to the industries in their tidings by telling them that when they are making a change in their processes, they should think about the environmental damage that comes from one process or another. It is easy to persuade people who are given the appropriate information to make the environmentally correct decision. I welcome their assistance in that, and the assistance of all the honourable members.

With reference to eastern Ontario, may I say that the programs in the Ministry of the Environment spread across all of Ontario. They are not limited to Metropolitan Toronto. The new programs in enforcement, in cleaning up the beaches, in water quality, are all completely enforced in eastern Ontario, as they are right here in Metropolitan Toronto.

The spills bill is a very important initiative. I worked on that before I came to this House. It has proved very effective to have spills reported so they can be dealt with in an appropriate manner. In fact, I have made inquiries recently to find out how effective it is, and both the truckers and the ministry officials have been saying it is one of the most effective pieces of legislation that was ever passed.

The Acting Speaker: Would any other honourable member wish to participate in the debate?

Mr. Mackenzie: I rise to participate in this budget debate in a laid-back mood, if I can generate it, I guess, but with both some sadness and some anger: sadness that we are not as a government moving in a direction of fairness, equity, and justice in our tax system, that we have not recognized as a priority in a civilized society the hopes and needs of ordinary citizens in Ontario.

Even more so, we have not recognized the very real needs of the disadvantaged in our communities, the disabled, the handicapped, the poor, those on fixed and low incomes and those getting by on the various kinds of assistance programs; yes, and that rapidly growing portion of our population, our older citizens on pensions, who have made their contribution to our great province throughout their lifetime and are rewarded in this budget, as far as I can see, with a good swift kick in the teeth. They get almost nothing in the way of tax relief or recognition for their contribution.

My anger, which I at times have difficulty in controlling, stems from the realization that in spite of its claims to openness and concern for the disadvantaged, on the one hand, and for the large group that we could call the middle-class wage earners, on the other, this government has simply in this budget underlined the truth of a very old saying, that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

This government has become the master, as far as I am concerned, of talking out of both sides of its mouth, the master of saying one thing and doing the opposite, the master of making promises that it obviously has no intention of fulfilling. We have seen a string of election promises that were broken and I intend to deal with a few more here in terms of this budget. Sometimes it seems they were broken almost with relish, and now we have a budget that makes a mockery of the strident and forcefully presented arguments against unfair methods of taxation made by the Premier and the Treasurer when they were in opposition, arguments now tossed out of the window when they have absolute power in this House.

Do they really believe that this kind of hypocrisy, this kind of fooling the public, fooling the good citizens of Ontario-do they really believe that the large majority given to them at the polls justifies this kind of an approach to the people in Ontario, the arrogance that seems to have rushed in with this government? The only reason they need to renege on positions they articulated before the people of Ontario before the election is the fact that they now have 94 seats in the House. A large majority, absolute power, is not and can never become a substitute for honesty and commitment to principles and positions argued before the voters of Ontario.

Yes indeed, as far as I am concerned, this government deserves the anger of the citizens of Ontario and I think it should bow its head in shame. It has quickly forgotten the basic tenets of honesty and commitment to the people who elected it. It seems sad that we got rid of an insensitive majority of Conservatives in this House, the majority we had from 1981 to 1985, only to have them replaced with an even more insensitive majority of conservatives called Liberals.

I suppose there is one positive in this whole mess, the proof it provides the voters of the merits of minority government in place of majority government, the hard evidence it provides that the commitment and the push for most of the more responsible initiatives the government had from 1985 to 1987 required, it seems, the New Democratic Party as the push on this side. That was more fundamental, it appears, than any principles this government seems to hold.

I find it sad that we have a government now that seems to be controlled, as my colleague the member for Cambridge (Mr. Farnan) says, by the emperor and his court of three advisers on the front bench and supported by a cabinet that appears to me to be largely yes-men and yes-women. I am not sure where their principles are in terms of the promises they have made on some of the issues in the past. They have obviously got a whole contingent of backbenchers who desperately want to be liked and hope to move up to the cabinet where the perks are.

I think my colleague the member for Nipissing was a little bit unkind when he said that half the ministers deserve to go. We have got it down to about five who are likely to be appointed in the next round and five who are likely to go. Mind you, we figure there are about 15 who desperately want in but are not likely to make it in the next round.

The difficulty I find with the back-benchers on the Liberal side is that they do not seem to have the courage or the conviction to question the betrayal of some of the promises that have been made or to challenge the unfairness to the people of Ontario. They do not have the perception to realize the arrogance and corruption of power that seem to be taking place in this House.

I find it very much now like it was right after the 1981 election and I find that disturbing. It may be hard for some people to understand, but it certainly does not give people in this House a feeling that once there is a huge majority, there is much use in trying to have any real input into the kind of legislation that comes before the House.

1730

The Tories always used to have the odd red Tory. I know they were reviled by some of the members in the Tory caucus, but it gave them a little bit of balance. They are all now long gone, of course, in that caucus. What bothers me also is that I cannot find a single really progressive spirit in the new horde of blues, sporting occasional red ties, that seem to have filled this chamber.

Mr. Runciman: Let’s introduce him to Ian Scott after.

Mr. Mackenzie: I would not call him a progressive at all.

I do not intend to go into great detail on the various regressive tax increases, but it is useful, I think, to outline the main concerns and then add my own comments.

The most regressive tax of all, of course, is the retail sales tax, increased to eight per cent. This tax takes more out of the wallet of a senior, a worker, those on ordinary, fixed incomes or even middle incomes, than it does of the wealthy. It has never been known as a progressive tax.

It is one, I am sad to say, that I predicted and predicted with the media. Immediately following the budget, I had one of the reporters back to me who said, “Well, you were dead on in what you thought the Treasurer was going to do with the sales tax.” I could see that when we had the lunch with him in our standing committee on finance and economic affairs, when he told us with some relish, although assuring us also that that was not necessarily the route he was going, of the vast sums of money-I think he put it at just short of $1 billion, which is about what it is for one full year-that could be made out of a one-cent, across-the-board increase in sales taxes. It was obvious to me at that point that the Treasurer had pretty well made up his mind where he was going with that particular tax.

I think it is unfortunate, because somebody who is making $40,000 or $50,000 or all the way down is going to pay more, once again, on that tax than somebody who is making $80,000 or $90,000 or $100,000. It is going to cost him more, it is going to cost him a larger percentage of his pay packet.

I think the comments of my colleague the member for Nickel Belt (Mr. Laughren) and his quoting of the Treasurer’s own remarks back in 1982 are very apropos, and I want to repeat them once again, if I can. I think there is a lead-in here which is useful to it:

“When I look at the federal tax regime for a moment, I think of the 20 per cent of the tax savings from Michael Wilson’s tax reform that is going to go to the top two per cent of families with incomes over $100,000 a year. Michael Wilson’s intentions, which were endorsed by the Treasurer, are to move further away from income tax as a means of generating revenue and to rely more heavily on the most regressive of all taxes, the sales tax.

“...the Canadian reliance on sales taxes at both the federal and provincial levels is truly frightening. Nearly 35 per cent of total revenues in Canada are raised from taxes on goods and services, compared with only 17 per cent in the United States...and an average of 29 per cent in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries....”

“It is actually quite unbelievable that this government introduced a $900-million increase in the sales tax, a move which is nothing but a cheap tax grab directed at those who are least able to pay.”

This is the same government that protested so strongly when the Conservatives were in power and increased the sales tax in 1982 by $340 million, just one third of what this government has grabbed, and it was that party that was screaming blue murder about it.

“They protested so much that they walked out of the Legislature for four days and left the bells ringing.”

This is the same government that complains about people using tactics in the House.

This is the same government whose Premier (Mr. Peterson) and Treasurer said in the past: “I am truly galled that while individuals continue to pay sales tax on more and more goods and services, businesses, as is so often the case, continue to pay less than their fair share. While Ontarians who cannot afford a new pair of shoes must pay sales tax on the cost of repairs to the old shoes, as well as the cost of repairs on their appliances and cars, there continues to be a whole range of business services” which is now exempt from the seven per cent retail sales tax, including management, consulting, engineering services, architectural services, advertising and stock brokerage commissions. A tax on these services would generate $300 million, or more than twice the amount of revenue required to exempt families living below the poverty line from Ontario income tax, a subject I will come back to later.

Those are comments that came from the leadership of that party back in 1982, and I wonder where it is now when it is doing the same thing in spades to the people of Ontario.

Families, young and old, and certainly all of our seniors, know what this tax does to them, and there are very few who will appreciate this government’s priority on whom to tax and how to tax.

Second, the one-cent-a-litre increase on gasoline taxes, over four cents a gallon: it is not hard to understand, as my northern colleagues have made the point, that they are going to have to pay more because of distances, and the fact also that this tax will take a larger portion out of the budget of most of those who are at the lower income levels than it will out of those who are at the higher income levels.

Once again, it is an unfair tax that is probably reaching the saturation point. Considering that so much of our prosperity in Ontario does depend on transportation and the ability for people to move around, whether jobwise, for recreation or in terms of our recreation industry, which fuels our economy, this may be, in the long run, a negative tax, or a tax that is going to cost more than the government is going to gain out of it.

Third, we have the increase in personal income tax. The principle of this we support. The problem is that this is on the so-called reformed federal income tax, so it will not necessarily mean a tax increase in all cases.

I will have less comment or concern with respect to the sin taxes: alcohol and tobacco.

The lack of progressivity is compounded by the lack of real offsets, as well as the failure to deal with the obvious loopholes and unfairness of some of the taxes, or lack thereof, in Ontario.

It is interesting to note that corporations were not taxed. not even a minimum tax so that the major companies would not get off scot-free, as is the case for some of them at present. The current budget has no increases for corporation taxes, continuing the smaller and smaller share percentagewise of our revenues that they are paying. Indeed, they get a variety of different additional tax breaks.

I think my colleague made this point well in his release of 1988, and I want to add a comment of mine to that as well, when he talked about making the poor people pay.

Today in the Legislature I asked the Treasurer who should pay the most income tax and who did pay the most tax for 1986: an Ontario family of four with a 1986 income of $21,705-in other words, living at the poverty line-or Brascan Ltd., an Ontario-based corporation with 1986 profits of $136.8 million; or the Cadillac Fairview Corp., an Ontario-based corporation with 1986 profits of $58 million; or Xerox Canada, an Ontario-based corporation with 1986 profits of $59.7 million; or the Toronto Stock Exchange, which had a 1986 profit of $6.1 million.

These are the profit figures I am quoting. The answer to the second part of my question is the family of four living at the poverty line, who paid $1,846 in federal income tax and $909.50 in Ontario income tax. Brascan, Cadillac Fairview and Xerox paid not one cent of federal or Ontario income tax; and in fact received tax credits of $2.3 million, $9.1 million and $10.7 million, respectively. The Toronto Stock Exchange, as the Treasurer noted, is designated by the government of Ontario as a nonprofit corporation and therefore does not have to pay taxes. I ask members in this House: can anyone justify it? Maybe someone can. If he can, he certainly operates on different wavelengths than I do.

I want to pass on to members one additional comment on this very same area. We had a very good session, although not very productive, in the standing committee on finance and economic affairs. We had witnesses before us in the week and a half that we dealt with prebudget matters.

I think one of the witnesses before us was a vice-president-he was one of the executive officers-of Hudson’s Bay. When we challenged them on some of their statements about the kind of tax reform they wanted to see, he got angry. I forget what the interjection was or the question that was asked. He said, “Well, it is not really fair for you people to always accuse these wealthy corporations of not paying any taxes.” He said Hudson’s Bay has not paid any corporate income taxes for three years now. It is not my research. This is quoting the executive officer of Hudson’s Bay: “Three years we have not paid a cent in corporate income taxes.”

But he said there is a justification for it: “The two or three years prior to that our company lost some money.” Maybe they were reorganizing; I do not know what they were doing-something, I am sure, that was in their long-term benefit-but they lost money, and therefore, “We are only taking advantage of the tax laws to allow us now to claim against those losses that we had two, three and four years ago.”

I want to ask all of the members in this House in good faith to tell me the worker who is laid off at Firestone, Goodyear or some of the other plants and is half a year out of work and can go and claim so that he pays not a cent of income tax to make up for some of that lost income from the previous years.

1740

You see, when you get down to it, you could use any number of cases, but the point I am trying to make is that we have a case here where a company that is obviously doing very well, thank you, in the last three years in Ontario-Hudson’s Bay-is not paying a bloody cent, as were these other companies. Yet there is nothing in this budget that addresses one of the most inequitable methods of taxation and unfair kinds of loopholes that are there for these kinds of companies, as against the ordinary person who is paying every cent that is required of him in his personal income tax and in the sales taxes.

The standing committee on finance and economic affairs of this House held some prebudget hearings. We obviously did not have much influence on the Treasurer. As a matter of fact, I would go so far as to say we had absolutely none whatsoever. In fairness, we may have started a little late, after the Treasurer had already worked out his budget and already made his decisions, although we were holding the hearings several weeks before this budget presentation.

Maybe he felt he could not let us know that he would not accept any of our recommendations because he did not want to waste our time or something like that, I am not sure; but I can tell members that what the budget provided was not the kind of reform that was in a number of the recommendations made by our committee. We did not win many of the arguments that we really tried to make before that committee, from my party at least, nor did the Conservatives.

But there were some of them-one of them was to eliminate Ontario personal income tax for those living at or below the poverty line. The recommendations are in the report of the committee, and some of the members should take a look at it. The committee voted for that.

Well, the very slight move we have is not something anybody should be proud of in terms of eliminating personal income tax for those at or below the poverty line. As all members know from the questions we have placed in this House, people below the poverty line to this day are paying, and paying very heavily, while others are getting a break.

Eliminate Ontario health insurance plan premiums for the working poor. Once again, the Treasurer made a very slight movement to increase, I forget the number, by 15,000 or 30,000 the number of people. But we still have not eliminated a very basic and very tough tax on people who probably need the help most.

When we tried to get an increase in the value of the Ontario tax credit system, we were defeated in committee. When we tried to reintroduce succession duties on the estates of the wealthy in order to capture revenues lost by the generous manner in which capital gains are taxed, we were defeated in the committee. We did not have the government’s support on those particular items, and obviously there is nothing in the budget that shows them there, either.

I could go on at great length with the recommendations made. Most of them in our committee’s report were not that startling or that progressive, but I can also tell members there are very few of them that were touched, and none of them that really dealt with a switch to a more progressive form of taxation in Ontario were touched at all in this particular budget.

Then you have to wonder what the purpose is of some of the committees that we are setting up, some of the committee work that goes on in this House. Is it just a way to farm out contentious issues to a committee to the benefit of the government? You have to begin to question these kinds of issues, because it does not appear to me that there was much to be gained, even though I myself would say that it was a useful and a good exercise if the committee really had some clout. But it is obvious to me that, at least this first round, we might as well not have held the hearings that we did hold.

The Advocacy Resource Centre for the Handicapped is another group that was before our committee. I raise them because I think they made one of the most compelling cases that could be made for assistance to people who really are in need, the handicapped, the disabled; and some of them have a pretty sorry state in life. They came before our committee with a number of recommendations based on what they felt they might now get as a result of some election promises.

I want to read one paragraph from Mrs. Potter talking about her meetings with, I guess, the Treasury people and then her appearance before our committee. Just so that I am not misleading anybody, I will give the members the question I asked that sponsored or provoked her response and a couple of other comments here.

“I guess what I am wondering in my own mind is this.” This is my address to Mrs. Potter. “In the areas that you highlighted-in particular, transportation, assistive devices programs, attendant care for disabled people, the advocacy request-I gather you are feeling that something may be about to happen in these areas. What have you achieved in terms of hard progress over the last couple of years? I know we do not have an advocacy system in place yet, but have we seen substantial improvements in transportation or in the assistive devices program, or are they all things that for the first time you feel you have a commitment to?”

Mrs. Potter replied thus: “We have had quite good response over the last two years, but there is still a great deal more to be done. We are not making enough headway with it. We have got to make sure that these promises that were made during the elections are kept up in front. We cannot allow them to be buried any more. Where everybody else finishes up with promises and commitments, we finish up with surveys. We are tired of surveys. We have been surveyed to death.”

I could go on with some of the other very useful comments in this particular report, but that was the comment of Mrs. Potter.

I think I will not leave it without adding two little notes that I thought were useful. They were comments of two of the Liberal members of that particular committee.

The first was the member for Eglinton (Ms. Poole)-I do not think she is a regular member but was sitting in-and she said to them after they had made their presentation: “I would like to thank you for coming here today. We are hearing moving stories which have, certainly for me and I suspect for many members of the committee, told a much more effective story than any number of written pieces of paper that you could have.”

She makes some comments to one of the individuals, and then she goes on: “It just seems to make common sense that what you are asking for you should not even have to be asking for. I am glad you brought that,” these arguments, “to the committee’s attention.” Those were the comments of the member for Eglinton.

The member for Brantford (Mr. Neumann), after they had finished, said, and I quote out of the Hansard of the committee: “I must add my comments to those of my colleague Dianne Poole. Your presentation has been most impressive and I must say I am just sorry the television is not with us today, because of all the presentations I have had the pleasure of sharing with this committee, this is the most moving.”

I use those two quotes from two of the government members to underline the comments we had also from Mrs. Potter and from the various members of that committee who talked about some of the real problems they had in surviving in today’s world.

Well, what did they get? They were fairly satisfied with the assistive devices improvements. They made some gains there. It is something, I might say, that both we and Liberal members, in government and while they were in opposition, have been shouting about as not being adequate for a good number of years in this Legislature, and they did make some gains there.

Beyond that, they got very little. On transportation for the handicapped, as they have pointed out again to us since, there was an election promise of $84.1 million over five years. They expected to get $15 million in this budget-I do not know where or what led them to believe that. What did they get? They have $7 million in the first year. If there was an election commitment of $84.1 million over five years, the government is really going to have to jump it in the next few if it went for only $7 million this year, and it knows what the need for transportation does in terms of assisting the handicapped.

They got a very poor response and no help in probably the most legitimate complaint of all, attendant care. Once again, why I think it is so sad that we have not looked at some of these problems is that it may be costing us in the long run. They have made a very effective case, as they did before our committee, that without attendant care they cannot cope in the real world, they cannot cope with the jobs that, in many cases, they are able to get, and we are going to end up with them in some form of assisted care homes in more and more cases. I do not think that is the approach we want to take. Certainly it is not the approach that adds anything in terms of quality of life or indicates a caring society.

They got nothing in terms of the advocacy help they had requested. They got nothing in terms of the employment assistance, or very little of the employment assistance that they asked for-all of the things which would have helped one of the most disadvantaged groups in our community cope for themselves, or at least try to cope for themselves; give them pride, at least.

There are one or two members of our committee who are sitting in the House right now. They may very well remember the effect of that group, and I think they probably agreed with the comments of two of their colleagues that this is one group that should not even have to be asking for it. Some of those members may have talked to them after the budget presentation, or as late as today, as I did. We have an extremely unhappy group who felt they were totally had in this budget; and they are right, they are right in terms of priority and the needs of ordinary people.

I guess there are so many things I could say and would say. I guess I had myself psyched up to the point where I really did not care what the heck members thought of my comments when I started here today, but I simply want to say that the Treasurer has not moved in the direction of fairness; he has not moved in the direction of equity; he has not moved in the direction of helping the most disadvantaged groups; he has not moved in the direction of plugging the loopholes.

1750

He has certainly gone with one of the biggest tax grabs we have ever seen, in terms of $1 billion a year in the sales tax increase; and people who are at a high-income level are going to do better on the personal income tax situation than those at the low-income level, as my colleague the member for Nickel Belt has pointed out in this House so adequately.

I guess the bottom line is, how can they be proud of the particular budget that has been brought down here today; and where is that commitment?

While we did not get many of the individual points in the standing committee on finance and economic affairs in the prebudget stuff, at least there was a general feeling that we had to move in a more progressive taxing direction. That has not happened, and I think the members of this government are resting on the arrogance of a 94-member majority. I do not see anybody in the back benches challenging them as they should be challenged over something as basic as this, and I wonder what their commitment is and what their commitment is worth. To me, not a heck of a lot. A commitment from this Liberal Party, based on what we have seen in this budget and based on some of the election promises, is not worth the powder to blow it to hell.

Hon. Mrs. Wilson: I feel compelled, as Minister without Portfolio responsible for senior citizens’ affairs, to rise to comment on some of the remarks made by the member for Hamilton East. In my particular role, I do have the opportunity to visit with seniors in many situations and I agree with the member that the best way to become informed and become knowledgeable, and then in fact caring, is to get out and work at the grass-roots level with the people for whom you are responsible.

There are two areas of the budget in particular which are of significance to seniors across this province. These two areas, I believe, are housing and health care. Housing is an area where there have been significant dollars addressed in this budget. Those dollars are of importance and significance to our senior citizens.

The area of health care is an area that seniors will be extremely interested in. Today in this province, senior citizens use 22 per cent of physicians’ services, 44 per cent of acute care dollars and 78 per cent of chronic care dollars. The significant dollars that have been put towards health care in this budget will make a great deal of difference to seniors across this province.

Let me also direct members to page 46 of the budget, where in-year expenditures are outlined. Again, the commitment of this government to our seniors is shown: the Ontario health insurance plan, $198 million; the Ontario drug benefit plan, $52 million; home care, supporting seniors in their homes, $38 million additional, and homes for the aged, $26 million.

This budget does address in a very significant way the needs of a group of Ontarians who have contributed, and who continue to contribute in their senior years, so much to this generation.

Mr. Harris: I want to say I have been in this chamber for a little over seven years now; some days it seems like 30.

Hon. R. F. Nixon: It seems like that to us too.

Mr. Harris: The Treasurer indicates it seems like 30 to him too.

But I want to say I enjoyed the remarks of the member for Hamilton East. In the seven years I have been here, I have always almost totally agreed with everything he has ever said, whether I have been on that side of the House or on this side. My recollection is that he has always been able to get right to the point, and I am very pleased to once again-as I almost unanimously have, as I said-associate myself with his total condemnation of this disastrous budget that has been foisted on the people of Ontario.

I also commend the member for his comments on seniors. I suppose there were really two things, but I am prompted to comment on this subject because the Minister without Portfolio responsible for senior citizens’ affairs (Mrs. Wilson) has said a few things in response to the speech that indicate to me that she does not have a clue or a total idea of what senior citizens want or what their concerns are.

They do not want to be in hospitals and they do not want to see more doctors. It is not dollars we are talking about. What we are talking about is how those dollars are allocated and what services indeed are being provided for. I hope that the minister will spend a little bit more time discovering just what it is that senior citizens do want. I think we will also find that health care dollars can be spent far more efficiently in this province than in looking for more doctors and OHIP and beds and drugs for senior citizens. They are tired of that.

Mr. Mackenzie: I am sorry to say that the minister who responded seems to have totally missed the point of my remarks. It is an overall problem. We can go into the individuals too. I can tell her that my contacts are pretty good. I have probably got the oldest population of most ridings in Ontario. Certainly, I know that for a number of years we have been second or third in the entire province in terms of 50th and 60th anniversary plaques and 90th birthday plaques. A lot of my work is with the seniors in my riding and they are not very happy, but they are probably more unhappy with the sales tax than they are with some of the other issues that the minister raised; although I do not think we have done that much.

We have no commitment in this budget to improve community-based options to institutional care for seniors and the disabled, one of the points I was trying to make in terms of the disabled. We have nothing to increase community-based health services. The spending on community and public health has declined from 4.2 per cent of the total health spending to 3.7 per cent in the last decade. That in itself is probably crazy because it should be the opposite when you take a look at the growing older population in our province and community today.

Without going into any more points than that, let me simply say that the minister had better bone up on the kind of arguments that are being made. If she does not agree with them, fine and dandy, but let us not try to sell a bill of goods when it does not exist when it comes to fairness in taxes, because the Treasurer has not done that; and when it comes to dealing with some of the most disadvantaged groups in our community, because we have not answered their needs and problems as well.

On motion by Mr. Villeneuve, the debate was adjourned.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Hon. R. F. Nixon: The mother of the member for Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry (Mr. Villeneuve) is a Liberal.

Hon. Mr. Conway: It is quite true what the Treasurer says about-well, not necessarily so, but I have some very good friends in Moose Creek who tell me that there are lots of good Liberals down there.

Anyway, for the squire of Moose Creek and others, I would like to read a business statement for tomorrow. That is simply to inform the House that the first item of business tomorrow will be third reading of Bill 115, the Toronto Economic Summit Construction Act, to be followed by a continuation of this most interesting and lively budget debate.

The House adjourned at 6 p.m.

April 27, 1988

MEMBERS’ STATEMENTS

COLLEGES OF APPLIED ARTS AND TECHNOLOGY

SCHOOL FUNDING

MANITOBA ELECTION

USE OF PRESCRIPTION DRUGS

SCHOOL FUNDING

CARASSAUGA

STATEMENT BY THE MINISTRY

POST-SECONDARY EDUCATION

RESPONSES

POST-SECONDARY EDUCATION

ORAL QUESTIONS

SCHOOL FUNDING

1987 CONSTITUTIONAL ACCORD

RAPE CRISIS CENTRES

OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND SAFETY

HOUSING SUPPLY

VISITORS

MASSEY COMBINES CORP.

ONTARIO FOOD TERMINAL

ATHLETIC COMMISSIONER

LANDFILL SITE

CONVERSION OF RENTAL ACCOMMODATION

PETITIONS

SCHOOL FUNDING

RETAIL STORE HOURS

NURSING SERVICES

RETAIL STORE HOURS

ORDERS OF THE DAY

TORONTO ECONOMIC SUMMIT CONSTRUCTION ACT

BUDGET DEBATE / DÉBAT SUR LE BUDGET (CONTINUED / SUITE)

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE