Hansard Transcript 1988-Dec-01 | Legislative Assembly of Ontario

That, in the opinion of this House, recognizing the government of Canada’s inability to effectively address the issue of refugee determination which has resulted in a backlog of more than 9,000 refugee claims in the greater Toronto area alone; and recognizing that the federal policy is to refuse to issue work permits to refugee claimants which has the result of virtually forcing all of these claimants on to social assistance rolls, costing the government of Ontario approximately $35 million this year; and further recognizing that amending this policy would not negatively impact on the employment opportunities of Canadians and landed immigrants and would save the taxpayers money, given the present employment opportunities in Metropolitan Toronto and vicinity and the enthusiasm of claimants to work; therefore, the government of Ontario should urge the government of Canada to immediately amend its policy and issue temporary work permits until such time as the status of refugee claimants is determined.

The Deputy Speaker: The member has up to 20 minutes to make his presentation and may reserve any portion of that for the windup.

Mr. Ballinger: I am pleased to rise this morning in private members’ resolution time to put forth this resolution. The purpose of this particular resolution is a result of the tremendous pressure that Ontario is under due to the current policy of the federal government not to issue temporary work permits to refugees.

It is important for me to make the point that our purpose this morning is not to bash the federal government, but it reminds me of the story of trying to teach the donkey how to learn. The most important thing you do with a donkey is take a two-by-four and hit him over the head first, and that is primarily to get his attention. Quite frankly, with this resolution, that is precisely what we are trying to do.

The Minister of Community and Social Services (Mr. Sweeney) has had a great amount of concern since January of this year based on the fact that Ontario is spending somewhere in the nature of $35 million this year in general welfare assistance for the refugees who are landing in Ontario.

In the greater Toronto area, there is such a great opportunity for working. No matter where you go in Toronto, there we all kinds of signs in windows, illuminated signs out in front of small factories, saying, “We are hiring this week.” With the federal government’s current policy of not issuing temporary work permits, all of these jobs go open. There are not enough people in the area to fill the positions because of the growth in the economy of Ontario.

Because of the $35 million it is costing Ontario alone, it is a tremendous drain on the other parts of our Ministry of Community and Social Services budget. We could be spending that money in a much more worthwhile area. If you include the total amount of money being spent on refugee claimants on GWA across Ontario this year, it is somewhere in the neighbourhood of $90 million.

Now, what that does to people who land here as refugees who are willing and eager to work is it takes that incentive away from them. It is an education process that we as government should not be involved in, and that is encouraging people who are eager to work to be provided by the government with a paycheque. That is not our role as government and it certainly is not what they want as refugees. They come to Canada, hopefully, to start a new life.

Just so it is apparent that it is not only Ontario which is concerned, or our government -- because one of the problems we get into is the fear of partisan politics, we versus they; that is not our concern at all. Our concern is trying to convince the federal government that it should seriously address this issue which will help all three levels of government. There is only one loser in this issue and that loser is the taxpayer. They pay the freight.

Since I started collecting information and doing my own research, it is absolutely amazing the people who have contacted me or my office with information or stories which really relate to the topic here this morning. At this time, I want to thank the member for Mississauga North (Mr. Offer) who has provided me with an abundance of information about how this particular federal policy is affecting the region of Peel and what it is doing on behalf of its community and the refugee claimants who are residing within the boundaries of the region of Peel.

The member for Mississauga North met with the regional chairman, Frank Bean, to discuss how this was playing havoc on the social service budget of the region of Peel. I am very pleased to have with me today some of the information and data that Peel has collected in relation to its concern.

Just a couple of points here: In October alone, Peel social services paid almost $400,000 to help more than 800 area refugee families. This was a 30 per cent increase over the previous month. The real issue here, from Peel’s point of view, is that Ontario and the Ministry of Community and Social Services are picking up the bulk of that $400,000 because of the percentage breakdown in contribution that the province makes to the GWA.

On October 6 of this year, the region of Peel passed the following resolution:

“That the Minister of Community and Social Services be requested to assume the 100 per cent cost of Refugee cases until the Refugee status is changed by the Senior Levels of Government;

“And further, that the Minister of Community and Social Services be supported in his efforts to seek time limited renewable work permits from the federal government since this would definitely speed up the process as well as allow able bodied Refugees to assume work as soon as possible, instead of relying on General Welfare Assistance;

“And further, that a copy of the report of the Acting Commissioner of Social Services, dated August 29, 1988 and entitled ‘Refugees,’ be sent to the Association of Municipalities of Ontario, the Ontario Municipal Social Services Association and to all area MPs and MPPs for their consideration.”

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It just proves to me, as a member of the Legislature, that the region of Peel, outside of Metro, has aggressively taken a look at this issue, done the research and believes, as do we as members of this Legislature, that the inactivity of the federal government in this particular area is wrong. It is an area of concern that should be addressed immediately. The federal government, as late as November 21 of last month, got a clear mandate from the people of Canada.

An MP in my area told me that the two biggest issues he works on are unemployment and immigration. The bulk of his constituency work is spent on those two areas. The immigration issue is growing, and the federal government’s refusal to issue temporary work permits is causing all the area MPs themselves a lot of grief in trying to deal with the constituency problems that surround this particular issue.

I just want to say that with respect to the region of Peel and especially to the member for Mississauga North, who himself is involved in an area where there are many refugee claimants, he has a genuine concern --

Mr. Wildman: Why didn’t he introduce this resolution?

Mr. Offer: I wanted to.

Mr. Ballinger: I would like to respond to the honourable member that the member for Mississauga North wanted to speak to this particular issue, but unfortunately, under private member’s business, there is just not enough time in terms of the number of people who are allowed. The amount of information that I received from Peel was generated by the member for Mississauga North so that, in fact, when I was speaking, I would have an opportunity to put forth Peel’s concerns, and I am doing that. I want to thank as well the chairman of the region of Peel, Frank Bean, for providing the member with the statistical information that I could include in this morning’s presentation.

Just so that the members in the Legislature this morning understand that it is not only we as a government or the surrounding municipalities, let me just take a moment and read a few of the latest headlines that have been appearing in newspapers all across Ontario, more specifically in the dailies in the general Metropolitan Toronto area. I think this will really reinforce the importance of the issue and why it is absolutely important for us as a Legislature to get the federal government’s attention so that it will act.

Some of the headlines, “Immigration Offices Reeling Under Flood of Refugee Claims,” “Ottawa Seeks Way Out of Refugee Chaos,” “Refugee Delay Swells Welfare Costs, Metro Says,” “Welfare Termed Blow to Self-Esteem” -- that one, I believe says it all. “Refugees Caught in Welfare Trap, Advocates Charge,” “A Refugee Predicament,” “Refugees Want to Work and Pay Taxes,” “Processing Refugee Claims Shut Down Due to a Backlog.” There is an interesting one. They shut it down due to a backlog. Is that not the most ridiculous thing members have ever heard? The normal procedure when you have a backlog is to increase the staff to help to accommodate the process. “Backlog Leaves 15,000 Without Work Permits,” “60,000 Refugees on Hold,” “No Amnesty on 60,000 Refugee Claims, the Minister Says” -- that is the federal minister. “No Decision Yet on Huge Refugee Backlog, the Federal Minister Says.”

I do not think the federal government needs any more information or evidence than that to prove our point. I guess what we are doing in Ontario when these people come, willing, able and eager for work, all we are asking from the government of Ontario’s point of view is that, in the interim, while processing these particular applications, the federal government please address the issue of temporary work permits. That is all we are asking.

If they would do that, it would give the refugees some encouragement, in landing in Canada, that they have an opportunity to work while their application for permanent status is being processed. If in fact they do not receive permanent status, then the temporary work permit would be revoked and the refugees would be asked to leave.

I think that is a fair request from Ontario’s point of view. I know for a fact that the Minister of Community and Social Services, as late as January 1988, was in touch with the Honourable Barbara McDougall, asking her to address this particular issue, so that it will free up the something like $35 million of taxpayers’ money that we are spending in this particular area, as well as the contribution from all the area municipalities that are feeling this.

I know the areas surrounding Metro are all feeling this. The member for Ottawa-Rideau (Mrs. O’Neill) will be speaking and she will be outlining the concerns they have in that area, that in fact there is tremendous need for the federal government to address this very serious problem.

The scary thing is that all this money we are spending, something in the neighbourhood of $90 million, really only represents about one third of the available refugees. What are we going to do, all three levels of government, if the other two thirds decide, for whatever reasons, that they need social assistance in the interim, that they stop living with relatives and decide the government should just take care of them while they are here?

Take that $90 million and multiply it by three, and our general welfare costs associated with this issue will then run to $270 million. We just approved what I consider to be a working budget of April 1988, and people were concerned about our raising taxes in Ontario. The reason we do that is to meet the needs of the people of Ontario.

Here we have an example where we are tunnelling good taxpayers’ money to solve a problem on behalf of refugee claimants in Ontario that is not being addressed by the federal government. When the federal government closed down the refugee determination process, that really did play havoc with this issue.

In this particular case, I hope that the members of the Legislature will support this resolution for the main reason of drawing to the federal government’s attention what it is doing and the impact its indecision is having in Ontario.

At this time I would like to reserve any future comments for the windup.

Mr. Allen: I rise to support the resolution of the member for Durham-York (Mr. Ballinger) which I think, on the whole, is well conceived, notwithstanding some problems that I would like to point out in regard to it.

It is certainly clear, as he claims, that the federal government has a responsibility to see that refugees who arrive on our shores and in our midst are able to take up productive work as early as they possibly can and that any impediment that we place in their way is obviously not only of short-term detriment to them, but also certainly does lead them to a view of this country with regard to government provision of service that is probably unhealthy if it is maintained for too long.

There is no question that most refugees do arrive here with a sense that they are arriving in a country where they will be able to take up productive lives, where they will be able to work, where they will be able to exercise their talents in a new way, free from the persecutions and difficulties that they have experienced elsewhere. It certainly is a proposal that I and our party would wish to support, that the federal government immediately undertake to issue temporary work permits for all refugee claimants in our midst.

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However, in saying that, I would not want to leave the impression that I thought there were not important and justifiable needs on the part of refugee claimants for social assistance. It may well be that there is at this time, because of the lack of accessibility to work permits, a major problem in funding and in amounts of dollars which are given in the direction of social assistance which might otherwise be avoided.

At the same time, I think it behooves the provincial government, first, to make certain that all refugees who do come in our midst and who come out of very difficult circumstances and often may not be able immediately to adapt to working situations, have the conditions available to them which make it possible for them to begin their lives appropriately in this new country while they are waiting for the settlement of the determination of their claimant status.

In the first instance, it seems to me that it is important to clear away some roadblocks which do exist in the area of social assistance, because at present, while it is true that refugee arrivals generally are able to claim social assistance, Ontario health insurance plan benefits and access to the schools, it is not true that all refugees are in that position. It was not until recently, for example, that all out-of-status refugees were provided with access to assistance. The Divisional Court recently made a judgement in which it determined that the immigrant status of such an arrival was not a proper barrier to access to social assistance; the barrier placed in the way of out-of-status refugees was eliminated.

But there remain in-status refugees who come, for example, as visitors, who then remain in our midst claiming refugee status, who, because they are not permanent residents, are deemed to be visitors, are deemed to be resident of another jurisdiction, do not have the ability either to claim work permits from the federal government or social assistance from this provincial administration. It seems to me that it is important for the government to clean up its act with respect to all refugee arrivals and give them that option of availability of social assistance which, as the Thomson report reminds us, should be available in Ontario on the basis of objective need and not on the basis of some other discriminatory criteria.

Second, I think the member for Durham-York might well have called attention to other provisions that refugees need in order to get on with the question of working in this province. It is not just the absence of work permits: the problem, for example, of getting access to training programs and, in the first instance, to English-as-a-second-language programs which are often necessary to take advantage of the training programs. But it is very difficult for refugees at this time to get access to training programs sponsored by the provincial government. Many cannot qualify because their English is not good enough.

The Ministry of Skills Development, for example, is very paranoid about community-based training programs, which are the only ones refugees have access to. It dislikes the necessity of the programs having to have an English-as-a-second-language component, because it claims that is the responsibility of the Ministry of Citizenship. At the same time, it is difficult for those refugees to access other offerings in the field of English as a second language. It is true, for example, that the high school programs for English as a second language are free, but they are not very effective for recently arrived immigrants, refugees in particular, unless a person has undergone a six-month intensive course which is normally offered elsewhere and most properly available through many of the college-based programs.

Refugee claimants are not eligible, however, unless they directly pay cash for the programs offered through the community college system. Even if you did have the cash, you would have to wait probably for six months before you could get into them because the waiting list is so long due to the lack of overall, sufficient support for those programs in the community colleges.

There are a lot of problems at the level of accessing training, accessing language training courses that will enhance the ability to get into the workforce, that need to be dealt with by this provincial government and should not be skirted by the member as he seeks to change the mind of the federal government with regard to this very appropriate proposal; namely, that it should be offering temporary work permits.

Quite apart from the question of access -- I should not say quite apart from the question of access, but in the one area of access that the refugee claimant does have, namely, the community-based programs, he finds himself trying to access a program for which the funding from the Ministry of Citizenship and the Ministry of Culture and Communications has in fact not been keeping up with inflation -- three per cent, for example, in 1988-89. That has been the pattern for the last two or three years. The result, therefore, has been a declining ability to offer programs, let alone keep up with the demands that the arrival of immigrants and refugees in our midst places upon that kind of program.

Another area, for example, that the provincial government might well attend to has to do with the whole question of access to trades and professions. We all know the innumerable barriers that even well-trained nationals from other countries have when they try to move into trades and professions in Canada, and not least of all in Ontario.

It is true that the cabinet committee on race relations has recently hired a consultant to identify those barriers. That report was released a year ago and identified five major barriers, English proficiency being one of them. I have already referred to that and the problems around that. Evaluation of academic credentials is another. Credit for experience earned abroad is another. Retraining and examination requirements is another. Perceived discrimination, equivalencies granted to white-dominated countries, for example -- all constitute a formidable array of barriers for refugee claimants in their search for work and their ability to work in our country and in our province.

This task force has reported to the provincial government, but as yet there has been no action taken upon it. Those who work with the refugees and immigrant groups in our city, in Ontario and across the province are very concerned that action must follow this report to clear up those barriers, so the member’s good intentions to seek a work status for recently arrived refugee claimants need to be responded to at a number of levels. I salute him for the initiative he is taking, but obviously the undertaking has to have a broader dimension in a number of respects, and a number of those respects do demand that his government act in a number of directions that would facilitate the very work initiative that he is trying to secure for refugee claimants in Ontario.

I support this proposal with some reservations with regard to the undertakings that the provincial government might make.

Mr. Pollock: I would like to comment on this resolution and put some things on the record. I basically agree with the resolution. However, as the member well knows, this country has just been through a long, hard-fought election campaign and I am sure he realizes that when there is an election campaign on the go, everything basically gets put on hold. Even before the election, the minister was changed. When that takes place, it takes a certain time for that particular changeover.

I am generally surprised that there are as many unemployed people as there are. I hear on a regular basis that farmers cannot even get trained help. I have heard farm operators saying that they are going to go out of business because they cannot get skilled farm help.

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I am sure it does not take a lot of time to screen those who apply for refugee status. The fact that immigration is up and there is an increased number of people wanting to come to this country will only make that backlog worse.

The resolution raises some interesting concerns that I have. I am sure all members will recall the group of people who came ashore in Newfoundland claiming to be refugees. After some investigation, however, it was disclosed that they paid a German freighter operator to take them to Canada and put them adrift in boats off the shore of Newfoundland. The same sort of situation existed when a group of Tamils came ashore in Nova Scotia. It would not be a surprise to me if there were around 900 refugees here in the greater Toronto area; however, the fact that the number is around 9,000 does raise a lot of questions about the method we use to grant these permits.

If these refugees are coming from Third World countries and they are professional people who were educated in that country, or if there are skilled labourers who are needed in that particular country, then I have some serious questions about whether we are doing those countries a disservice by allowing these individuals to claim refugee status here in Canada when their abilities could be put to use in helping to develop their own homelands. To encourage a doctor to come to Ontario, where there is approximately one doctor for every 1,000 patients, and have him or her leave a country where there is only one doctor for 10,000 to 15,000 patients just does not seem right to me.

If these refugees are coming from Cuba, for instance, should we really become involved? If they are coming from Jamaica, what direction should we take? There has been no revolution in Jamaica that they would be fleeing from. There is a basic difference between what has become known as an economic refugee and a person who is fleeing a government or a nation that is repressive. Our immigration policy must reflect this difference and must treat each of these people in a different way. However, if some of these refugees are from countries like Haiti where there is a military dictatorship, then that is a different matter.

No doubt many of these refugees are unskilled workers. We already have a problem in this country with unskilled labour, and the numbers of people who fall into that category are clearly stretching our resources in terms of what retraining programs are available,

This attitude formed the basis of the federal government’s policy between 1980 and 1984 in which, in order for a relative to come to this country, you had to prove that the job he was going to be taking could not be done by a Canadian.

The member for Durham-York should perhaps show some proof with regard to whether there is a job to be had if these refugees received a work permit. I have talked to people who have come to this country through the legitimate immigration channels and they raise the question, “Why would we not treat everyone the same?” I believe we have to face reality with these refugees and at least in some cases grant them work permits.

I have recently been in touch with the federal minister’s office. He said that after January 1 they are going to be granting work permits to people who meet the basic criteria. What is going to take place as far as the roughly 60,000 to 80,000 refugees in this country are concerned has not been decided yet.

These are a few of the things that I wanted to put on the record. It is my understanding that there are over a million people who want to come to Canada next year. Right across the world, they claim that there are 100 million people who want to move someplace. With that, Mr. Speaker, thank you for a chance to speak to this resolution.

Mrs. O’Neill: I am very pleased to speak in support of this important resolution. I congratulate my colleague from Durham-York for bringing this serious matter to the attention of the Ontario Legislature. As a member from the Ottawa-Carleton area, I know first hand of the problems of refugee claimants in this country awaiting examination under oath.

Although the majority of refugee claimants in Ontario are currently situated in the Metropolitan Toronto area, it is a situation being experienced with increasing regularity in other centres across this province, including my own, Ottawa-Carleton. Estimates place Ottawa-Carleton as the third-largest home in this province to refugee claimants awaiting processing through the federal government. As the member for Durham-York has noted, these claimants, who are ready, willing, able and indeed eager to work and to make a valuable contribution to our society, are being denied this possibility by the bureaucracy and the political decisions made by the federal government.

With no other option available, refugee claimants are being put on welfare rolls. This is increasing the burden on the system itself, a fact which has been acknowledged in the recently released comprehensive review of the Ontario social assistance system. Ontario is, fortunately, home to many settlement organizations that offer assistance not only to those whose refugee status has been determined, but also to refugee claimants awaiting processing by the federal government. I would like to acknowledge the hard work and dedication of these organizations in our province.

Within Ottawa-Carleton we have the Ottawa-Carleton Immigrant Services, the Catholic Immigration Centre and the Jewish Social Service Agency. I applaud the work of the individuals who assist refugee claimants in finding food and shelter, obtaining the services of interpreters and dealing with the government and its institutions.

The provincial government has been very active in supporting these settlement and support organizations through a variety of grant programs offered by the Ministry of Citizenship. Many of these community-based support organizations have been overwhelmed by demands for services from refugee claimants. In June 1987 the ministry provided special funding for the Ontario Welcome House in Toronto, totalling $157,000, and to 13 community-based agencies, totalling $170,000, to assist them in providing services to the large backlog of refugee claimants. A survey of community agencies early this year confirmed that a continuing need still existed and the ministry has extended this special funding.

The ultimate goal of these settlement organizations is to help refugee claimants achieve a stability in their lives. All groups dealing with refugee claimants concur, however, that this stability cannot be established for these individuals until their status is determined. This determination is simply not occurring. The weight of the existing backlog of refugee cases in our country is estimated to be in excess of 60,000 people. Unfortunately, the federal government has yet to do anything to specifically address this existing backlog, and this brings us to the reason this resolution is before this House today.

In fact, the only action the federal government has taken in this area is to adopt measures that have actually worsened the situation. In the spring of 1987 the government decided to stop issuing work permits to refugee claimants, a measure that has left some 15,000 refugees without hope of obtaining such a permit. The rationale behind this move was an attempt to ensure that refugee claimants would complete the hearing process. However, this September, the federal government decided to stop processing new refugee claims, which would determine the status of refugee claimants and allow them to work.

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Considering that the cancellation of work permits was done to ensure that refugee claimants would complete the hearing process, the second move of stopping the hearing of cases makes no sense to me at all.

The federal government has yet to say how they will deal with this backlog, although a new system is scheduled to come into effect on January 1, as already mentioned. A report in last Saturday’s Globe and Mail quoted a spokesman for the federal minister of immigration as stating that after January 1 they did not even know whether the current backlog of refugees would be treated under the old or the new system of determination. Experts agree, however, that either system will not be capable of dealing with this present situation.

In the face of this indecision by the federal government, the only clear option that exists is to issue these claimants work permits until a decision is finally made regarding their status.

These permits could be time-limited and renewable in order to prevent any abuse and allow for proper controls. By not issuing these work permits, the federal government is forcing willing, able people to seek social assistance.

The resolution before us this morning, along with much of the debate that has taken place, has focused on the phenomenal cost to the province in both economic and, more important, human terms. As more and more refugee claimants willing to work but denied that right are placed on the welfare rolls, the cost will continue to grow. The inaction by the federal government is creating an intolerable, situation which is totally unnecessary.

I find that it is ironic, given the fact that the people of Canada received the Nansen medal in 1986 in recognition of our nation’s outstanding service to the cause of refugees. The most tragic component is the human toll. The psychological repercussions of such inaction are incalculable.

In essence, we are witnessing the creation of a most unfortunate situation by teaching welfare dependency to a group of individuals who are anxious to settle and become an active part of our Canadian community.

I invite members to pause for a moment and realize whom we are specifically speaking about when we talk about refugee claimants. Many of these individuals have faced persecution, hardship, imprisonment and even torture in their home countries. They have fled their countries in fear, searching for a fresh start, determined to make a better life for themselves once in Canada.

Once they are here, they are not only anxious to learn new skills and understand our culture, they also seek stability and acceptance that will help them to deal with the horror of their past situations. Instead, they are denied work in a booming economy and offered social assistance as a means to support themselves. Many of the benefits of employment, in allowing individuals to achieve acceptance and stability, are ideas that are expressed clearly and succinctly in the recent report of the Social Assistance Review Committee. Its fifth recommendation urged the federal government to issue work permits to refugee claimants while the validity of their claims is being established.

As noted in the report, newcomers to Canada face a host of cultural and linguistic barriers. The report, Transitions, concludes that it is essential that income security programs show sensitivity to these additional barriers to broader social participation. It seems ironic that when the government of Ontario is seriously examining the role of social assistance in our society and the underlying philosophy of that system, we are witnessing the federal government reverting to the narrow idea of the past by indefinitely placing an entire group of people on social assistance with little option or choice.

We are all aware of the findings of the SARC report. Its findings are in complete agreement with the arguments being made here this morning in support of this resolution. The investigations of the committee clearly showed that one of the most important and effective means of establishing self-sufficiency and integration into society is through employment. Indeed, the report recognized that one of the greatest barriers to full participation in a society was when people were not given the ability to assume personal responsibility to make real choices.

I challenge anyone to demonstrate how barring individuals from working and forcing them on social assistance month after month -- in some cases, claimants are entering their second year -- I question how this is giving them the individual responsibility to make choices and work towards fully entering our society.

Another danger of this present situation is that it is reinforcing negative stereotypes of refugees. Most refugees are highly motivated individuals, in many cases possessing needed skills, who are anxious to make a valuable contribution to our society.

In closing, may I say that Canada has a long history of showing compassion to refugees. Ontario, as the final home to more than half of the refugees who settle in Canada, can take particular pride in the recognition of our willingness to offer assistance.

I have been pleased with the efforts of the Ministry of Community and Social Services in lobbying the federal government to immediately issue work permits to these individuals. Let us continue these efforts through today’s resolution, urging the federal government to issue work permits and help alleviate this tragic problem. We must urge the federal government to put compassion before politics and grant these people the right to work.

The time for action is now. I urge all members of the Legislature to support this resolution.

Mr. Wildman: I too rise in support of the resolution, and I congratulate the member for Durham-York in recommending the resolution to the House. As a matter of fact, the member indicated to me that this could be regarded by some as sort of a motherhood resolution, and I want to say that I do not see it that way at all. Rather, it deals with a very practical problem related to a very difficult matter facing our national government and its ramifications on the province and on municipalities in Ontario.

I certainly agree that refugees should not be kept in limbo for as long as we have found over the last few years, nor be in a situation where they are unable to make a contribution to the new society they have chosen, whereby they become a burden on the social assistance program in our country.

I am very much in support of the resolution, not just because it would be a saving to the taxpayers in municipalities across Ontario and in this province but because of the effects it might have on the refugees themselves and the feeling that they can be productive and start to make a new life here in Ontario.

I must take exception, though, to some comments made by my colleague the member for Hastings-Peterborough (Mr. Pollock). He seemed to indicate that, after all, we have just come through a federal election campaign, and everyone in this House should recognize that things are on hold during an election campaign. Surely the member is not suggesting that this refugee mess we have in this country started some time in August or September.

We have had a problem in defining what a refugee is in this country for some time. There is the question of political refugees as opposed to economic refugees. We have a large number of people in Third World countries who are living in situations that they find intolerable and from which they wish to escape. In some cases, the situation from which they seek refuge is an economic situation and not one of political persecution. When those kinds of refugees, to use the phrase that is sometimes used, jump the queue of the regular immigration process, we have problems. Unfortunately, because of our attempts to deal with that problem in this country, we have made it more difficult for those legitimate political refugees to find refuge in this country.

I remember the horrific story a couple of years ago of the young woman from Guatemala who sought refugee status by visiting the Canadian legation in that country. She was told she could not be dealt with immediately and that she should return in three weeks. We know what happened in that three-week interval. This young woman was tortured and murdered and was unable to escape what she realized was a life-and-death situation. She lost her life simply because of the bureaucratic mess that we have in the refugee system in this country.

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I am concerned, too, about the bias that there seems to have been historically in the Canadian immigration system, as well as in the system with which we deal with refugees. There has been a tendency in this country to move very quickly to admit refugees from Europe, and I applaud that. There has not been such swift action in admitting refugees from countries in Latin America or Asia. I wonder what the reason is for that. I think all of us should ponder that. It might be related to language, race or religion.

I also am concerned about the tendency, even if one looks just at European immigrants and refugees, to accept refugees from the Iron Curtain countries more easily than refugees or immigrants from countries that are seen to be right-wing countries. For instance, prior to the overthrow of the dictatorships in Portugal and Spain, I believe it was easier for someone who was a refugee from political persecution from the far left, the Communist countries, to gain refuge in this country than it was for a refugee who himself or herself might be a leftist seeking refuge from persecution from right-wing governments such as the Spanish or Portuguese dictatorships.

I think that kind of ideological bias in our system was another reason for the difficulties we face now. We have an enormous backlog: 60,000 refugees who need to be processed, 60,000 people who are claiming refugee status. The federal government has really no idea of how to catch up on that backlog. We have a new system being introduced in January which should speed up the process somewhat, but it is still going to take a tremendously long time to deal with this enormous backlog.

There are 15,000 refugees who could be supporting themselves now instead of finding themselves a burden on the taxpayers of Ontario and the municipalities in which they are now living. But because of the federal government’s attempt to revamp the system, they have been prohibited from obtaining work permits, with the cost to the Ontario taxpayers and also the cost to themselves in terms of their own self-esteem and self-respect.

This is not an easy area. Immigration has always been important in Canada. After all, most of us in this House, if not all of us in this House, are either immigrants ourselves or descendants of immigrants. I may be incorrect, but I do not think that them are any native members of the House. They are the only ones who could claim, I suppose, not to be immigrants in this country.

The fact is that we need immigration. We should be opening our doors to people who are persecuted in other countries not just for humanitarian reasons but also for the self-interest that we need immigration, we need people. We have always had a reputation for opening our doors to people who need refuge.

I hope we do not somehow sink into a kind of xenophobia which says that people coming to this country are somehow going to take jobs from Canadians who are already living and working in this country. The fact is that the population projections indicate that, by the year 2000, we are going to be short of labour in this country unless we have a concerted effort to attract more people to our shores.

Obviously, I am not suggesting that we should allow people to jump the queue and to avoid the legitimate immigration process. But where we have legitimate refugees, we should be facilitating their movement into this country and into our workplace. Where we have people who are seeking refugee status and whose refugee status is being questioned, we should be ensuring that while they are awaiting processing, they should be able to contribute to our society, contribute to their own welfare and not be a burden on our taxpayers.

I commend the member for introducing the resolution. I would hope it would lead the federal government to change its policy and to allow refugees who have the skills and the desire to work and support themselves to obtain work permits.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. M. C. Ray): The time remaining is insufficient to accommodate the member for London North (Mrs. Cunningham). The next speaker is the windup speaker, the member for Durham-York.

Mr Ballinger: Mr. Speaker, how much time is left?

The Acting Speaker: Five minutes.

Mr. Ballinger: I would be willing to share that time with the member for London North.

Mr. Mahoney: We would rather hear Dianne, anyway.

The Acting Speaker: With unanimous consent, the member for London North.

Mrs. Cunningham: I would like to thank the honourable member for sharing his time. I think this is a resolution that he should be very proud of, and I certainly support him in his urging of the government of Canada to amend its policy immediately and issue these temporary work permits to refugee claimants.

I think the real issue here today, though, is far beyond what appears on this piece of paper. I think all of us who are involved in government have some responsibilities to work very hard on behalf of the people we represent. That is why I am complementing the member today, and I would like to take this just a step further.

We here in Ontario must be working very hard for immigrants, and this is one of the issues that is of concern to them. The Multicultural Work Group on Social Assistance has a number of other issues, and they relate directly to the Social Assistance Review Committee report. I do not have the time this morning except to put this on the record and to share it with the members who are here today.

There are a number of resolutions in that report that directly relate to the quality of life of immigrants, and I think that is what we are talking about here today. We would urge the Ontario government to be moving very quickly.

We think the ensuring of eligibility on the basis of need rather than immigration status for refugee claimants, recommendation 4, and for sponsored immigrants, recommendations 43 and 44, ought to be acted upon immediately. Although the government of Canada has its problems in getting its work done, so does the government here in Ontario have its difficulties.

Increasing ethnocultural representation at all levels of the social assistance delivery system, recommendation 140, and providing trained interpreters to assist clients applying for social assistance, recommendation 141, or appealing decisions to the Social Assistance Review Board, recommendation 166, should be acted upon immediately.

I say that because it would be unfair to mislead the public who are listening to this debate that everyone who is applying for this status would, first of all, get the work permit, and second, be able to work; and so we must work very hard to support them so that they can, in fact, work when they get the work permit.

The last recommendations that we should be dealing with, quickly, supporting multicultural community organizations as providers of opportunity planning for employment and skills training, which directly relates to this motion today, recommendations 14 and 75; and as providers of information referral, advocacy, community education and counselling, recommendation 143 should be acted upon immediately.

I will just close by saying that certainly George Thomson expected the government to react immediately to a number of recommendations. Those I have mentioned today are just some of them. In supporting the honourable member in his resolution, I urge that he go to his cabinet and try to get action on those to help the refugees we are talking about today here in Ontario.

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Mr Ballinger: I want to begin by thanking the members for Hamilton West (Mr. Allen), Hastings-Peterborough, Ottawa-Rideau, Algoma (Mr. Wildman) and London North, inclusive, for supporting my resolution. I wish I had some time as well to take issue with some of the things the member for Hastings-Peterborough said, but unfortunately time does not permit.

I just want to say to each and every member of the Legislature that this resolution was not intended to make light of the issue or to make fun of the federal government. It was to try and draw to their attention the seriousness of what is happening in Ontario and what it is costing this government and the municipal governments as well, which participate in a sharing of funding as it relates to general welfare assistance.

I hope each member of this Legislature supports this resolution so that the Minister of Community and Social Services can take that to Ottawa with a more unified voice on behalf of the people of Ontario as it relates to the federal government’s inactivity in handling the refugee problems in Ontario.

RURAL POSTAL SERVICES / SERVICES POSTAUX RURAUX

Mr. Hampton moved resolution 47:

That, in the opinion of this House, recognizing that the mail service in the communities such as Fort Frances and Kenora and many smaller rural communities of northwestern Ontario will deteriorate due to the fact that the sorting of the mail will no longer take place in these communities, but instead be moved to a central facility, the government of Ontario should condemn Canada Post for this action, and the failure to recognize the importance of quality mail service for the rural communities and small towns of northwestern Ontario, and the government of Ontario should urge the government of Canada to halt immediately these plans to cut service and to maintain and improve rural postal services across Ontario.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. M. C. Ray): The member will know he has 20 minutes for his presentation and may reserve any portion thereof for a windup.

Mr. Hampton: Mr. Speaker, I would like to reserve five minutes for the windup, if that is okay.

My resolution speaks to a question that is primarily a matter for the federal government. In my view, however, it is an issue that is most important to the small towns, villages and rural areas of Ontario, and therefore it is an issue this House should consider very seriously.

The fact is that in the modern world, a world that is overwhelmingly based upon the frequent and quick exchange of information, everyone, no matter where he lives, needs access to a high-quality and reliable postal system. Whether you reside in posh Rosedale in Toronto or a northern Ontario town like Sioux Lookout or rural route 1, Peterborough, you need to have a first-rate postal system if you are to participate meaningfully in our society.

Twenty years ago, even 10 years ago, even five years ago, it used to be the case that no matter where you lived in Ontario, the postal service you received was a good one. People who lived in the rural areas of my constituency, for example, one of the farthest away from the metropolis of Toronto, benefited from a postal service that was generally equal to the postal service enjoyed by Torontonians, or for that matter Hamiltonians. Each rural hamlet had its own small post office and farm areas had frequent rural route delivery. All the services that would be available from a post office in downtown Toronto were generally available from the small rural post office as well.

Sadly, that is not the situation in Ontario today, because over the past five years Canada Post has turned much of rural Ontario and many of the small towns of Ontario into second-class and third-class communities in terms of their postal service. In effect, Canada Post has eliminated the principle of equal service and fairness and put in its place the principle of, “Let’s make a profit no matter who we hurt and what we destroy in the process.”

Let me give some examples of the kinds of situations that are occurring. Last spring, for example, the member for Markham (Mr. Cousens) introduced a resolution dealing with boxes. It is quite a serious resolution; it is a serious matter. I understand that because I visited some communities that now have to deal with supermailboxes.

But I had to smile when he addressed the difficulties some people were experiencing, having to drive two or three blocks to pick up their mail. In my communities and in other communities across northern and rural Ontario, I know of people who are now driving 35 miles one way to pick up their mail.

The sad part is that many of these people are elderly and retired folks, many of them people who cannot afford to purchase a four-by-four or some other type of vehicle that will get you across the highway or down the country road in the middle of winter on every day you need to get there to pick up your mail or to get something in the mail. There exists out there in much of rural Ontario a serious hardship now in terms of getting access to adequate mail service.

Let me give another example. For people who are still served by a small rural post office, those who do not have to drive the 35 miles, in many cases the hours of operation of the rural post office have been cut.

At one time, if you were a farmer, a logger, a fishing guide or a commercial fisherman and you put in a long workday, you could still find some time during the day to make it to the post office to buy your money order, to pick up the kind of information that was available at your post office, perhaps in terms of tax forms or a passport application. There were all kinds of services that were freely and consistently available through the rural post office which you used to be able to access between the hours of eight in the morning and any time up to, sometimes, six in the evening.

Now many of these post offices have reduced hours. If you cannot get there during the two and a half to three hours it is open in the morning or perhaps the two and a half or three hours it is open in the afternoon -- in some cases it is not open in the afternoon at all -- then you cannot access the service. That is happening in many rural areas as well.

In addition, when you have this kind of deterioration in the service -- reduced rural routes, elimination of rural routes, reduced hours of the small rural post office in a hamlet or the elimination of the small rural post office -- you find that for many people who live in the more remote parts of our province or in the rural areas of our province, the time taken for delivery of the mail is unbelievable.

I want to give a practical example that has to do with the Minister of Labour (Mr. Sorbara) and the Workers’ Compensation Board. A contractor in my constituency was told he had to pay his assessment to cover his employees for workers’ compensation by such and such a date. The WCB said, “We must receive this by such-and-such a date.”

After watching the mail go back and forth and looking at the postmarks on some letters, we calculated that to be sure of delivery he might have to mail the thing three weeks before it was due in order to get it to the Workers’ Compensation Board on time.

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When we presented that argument to the Minister of Labour, he said that in this case a penalty was assessed on the individual because he was not able to get his payment to the Workers’ Compensation Board on time. We took it to the Minister of Labour and he said: “I have to agree with you. There’s an unfair penalty here. If the fellow lived in Toronto, he could probably put it in the mailbox the day before and it would likely be assured of delivery. In your case, having to mail it three weeks in advance is a penalty that the contractor, the entrepreneur, has no control over, so we will rescind the penalty amount that has been assessed by the Workers’ Compensation Board.”

That is the situation many, many communities in rural Ontario, in small-town Ontario and in the remote parts of Ontario face because of the reduced type of postal system we have to deal with. Those facts, in terms of elimination of rural routes, reduced service on rural routes, elimination of rural post offices or reduced hours in rural post offices, are just the beginning. If you look ahead to what Canada Post is planning in the future, the repercussions may be even more serious.

One of the determinants of how quickly your mail is sorted, gets into the mainstream of the postal system and goes from one part of Ontario to another part of Ontario or from one part of Canada to another part of Canada, or is shipped internationally, is how soon your mail can get into a postal sorting facility. Only when it gets into a postal sorting facility can it then be injected in the mainstream and move very quickly.

The next order of Canada Post reforms, if you want to call them that, is to reduce many of the regional postal sorting facilities we have across Ontario.

Mr. Wildman: This is not reformist; it’s revanchist.

Mr. Hampton: I can only agree. with the member for Algoma. Because he has many rural routes and many rural areas in his riding, I know he is experiencing many of the same situations, many of the same hardships I have found.

For example, the situation I am best acquainted with is, again, the situation in northwestern Ontario where Canada Post has quietly announced -- I say quietly because it does not want this to become widely known too quickly -- that it will shut down the postal sorting facilities in main communities like Kenora -- I see the member for Kenora (Mr. Miclash) is here -- or Fort Frances and will centralize them.

They are not specific about where they are going to centralize them. Originally they said, “We’ll just move it to the next small town.” That next small town might be Dryden, for example. But if you look further ahead at their plans, they start talking about even further centralization: “Let’s move it out of northwestern Ontario altogether and move it to Winnipeg,” or, “Let’s move it to Thunder Bay,” or, “Let’s move it all the way to Sudbury.”

What that kind of situation means is that for someone who wants to receive mail in a rural area, a small hamlet or indeed a small town of 10,000 people, or someone who wants to send mail from those kinds of areas, it is going to take even longer for the mail to be picked up, get to the distribution centre, get sorted at the distribution centre and then get injected into the main postal system. What looks to be happening in the near future is that the postal situation, the postal service for much of rural Ontario and small-town Ontario is going to deteriorate even further.

I have heard some people say: “It’s only the post; it’s only the mail. Don’t worry about it. There can’t be that many repercussions if it takes two weeks or” -- as I pointed out -- “three weeks to get your mail rather than two or three days.” The point is that for many of these smaller towns and rural communities, the repercussions are very serious.

We talk a lot in this House about trying to increase economic development in eastern Ontario, in northern Ontario and in rural southwestern Ontario, but you cannot get any type of small business person or entrepreneur to move to an area if the postal service is so inadequate, if it is so slow that you are going to have problems in terms of marketing your product or exchanging information.

There is a real economic repercussion for all of these communities, and there is a social repercussion as well. I come from a postal family. My grandmother was a postmaster in rural Ontario.

Mr. Villeneuve: How did you become a lawyer?

Mr. Hampton: My grandmother instructed me that there was no future in the post office, so I had better find something else to do.

As a young child, one of the things I experienced was the fact that the small rural post office is the social centre for many small towns, for many hamlets and for many rural areas in Ontario. It is the place where people come to pick up their passport application, to ask the postmaster to explain how to fill it out. It is the place where people come to pick up their tax form if for some reason it does not arrive in the mail. It is the place where people come to inquire: “How do I apply for my pension cheque? Do you know anything about unemployment insurance? Can you direct me? Who should I talk to in these things?”

The post office in rural Ontario, in the most remote parts of Ontario and the smaller communities of Ontario provides a service that holds the community together and gives the community its livelihood, so the repercussions from these kinds of cuts are very serious.

I say to the other members in the House that if we are serious about promoting better economic development in northern Ontario or rural eastern Ontario or rural southwestern Ontario, if we are serious about a better type of social fabric in these communities and making them more stable, then this is an issue that goes to the centre of those kinds of concerns.

Just to give an illustration, when I decided to put this resolution before the House, I wrote to the communities in my constituency and asked them to support the resolution. To a one, they have written back and said, “We absolutely endorse your resolution,” whether they are small towns or rural villages.

The township of Atikokan, the town of Fort Frances, the township of Chapple, the town of Kenora, the townships of Morson, Blue, Worthington, McCrosson, Tovell, Rainy River, Atwood -- these are all rural communities or small towns that depend upon a good and consistent postal service.

I ask members of the House to consider how important it is to promote economic and social development in the rural parts of our province, in the northern parts of our province and in the, most remote parts of our province. If they think promoting a more stable economy and a more stable social fabric in those communities is important. then I ask them to support this resolution, because I think we have to use every means possible to convince Canada Post that what it is doing is not just reducing a few hours of postal service; it is cutting to the core of many of these rural communities.

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M. Villeneuve: Il me fait plaisir de participer au débat sur le projet de loi proposé par le député de Rainy River (M. Hampton), projet de loi qui touche de près les gens de la circonscription que je représente et qui touche, j’en suis certain, Monsieur le Président, les gens qui demeurent dans la circonscription voisine que vous représentez.

It is a pleasure to participate and to support the motion of the member for Rainy River (Mr. Hampton) regarding problems that could be occurring within the postal system.

First, might I say that I represent a very rural area, as you do, Mr. Speaker, one that has some 40 rural post offices. We have no house-to-house mail delivery in any of our communities, the communities that are within the riding that I represent. My metropolis of Alexandria does not have house-to-house delivery, nor does my second-largest town, which is Kemptville. It does not have house-to-house delivery, and certainly Morrisburg, Winchester, Chesterville, and all of those small rural farming agricultural communities do not have house-to-house delivery. However, we do have an excellent rural post office delivery, five days a week, and I, on the farm where I reside, am very fortunate to have the mail delivered in the mailbox at the road on a dally basis, Monday to Friday inclusive.

Hon. Mr. Mancini: Special service.

Mr. Villeneuve: No, it is not a special service at all. It is available to all within the 23 rural municipalities that I represent. But some of the small towns, many of which are in the riding that I represent, do not have house-to-house delivery, and the residents do go pick up their mail on a daily basis, including Saturday morning till noon.

I do not believe the real crux of the problem is with rural post offices, as was well explained by the Canadian Postmasters and Assistants Association to all caucuses in this Legislature in the last 18 months. I am a little surprised and disappointed that the member for Rainy River did not put his finger on a certain union called the Canadian Union of Postal Workers. They are quite well paid and if, indeed --

Mr Wildman: They do not run rural post offices. What a silly argument.

Mr. Villeneuve: I notice I touched a small nerve here with my colleague the member for Algoma. He somehow realizes that some of the postal problems are stemming from the fact that there is a very strong union in place. A gentleman called Jean-Claude Parrot has a great deal to do with how things happen in the post office.

I would like the member for Rainy River to comment on where we should be trying to rectify some of the problems, because I firmly believe that the post office should be a paying proposition; in other words, the expenditures incurred should be covered by the consumers who use the service. I think that is important. I am sure that if we added up the total expenditures on the 40 rural post offices that service the riding I represent, those rural post offices are not a big drain on the total budget of Canada Post. I am quite assured that if we were to look into the ivory towers of Canada Post and into the highly paid unionized people who work at Canada Post, it would be interesting to see just how the balance sheet really comes out.

I can tell members that in the home town where I have my constituency riding, called Moose Creek, if I mail certain items of correspondence and it has to go through a central depot in Ottawa, yes, we do have quite a time lapse. If it goes directly from, say, Moose Creek to Maxville, Apple Hill, Morewood or Chesterville, then there is no problem. But quite often, and I am not sure how it happens, it has to go to Ottawa, and that is when we run into a major problem. I think we have a number of them that we should be looking at if we are going to streamline Canada Post and certainly the rural post offices are not the first place to start.

I assure members that all of the postmasters and postmistresses whom I know within the 40 post offices that service the area I represent are very dedicated people indeed. I reaffirm the fact that if the dollars in and the dollars out were considered, those rural post offices would not be the ones that are causing the red ink at Canada Post.

I cannot help but touch on the rural mail delivery. This is done by a contractor, someone who bids every three or every five years and has a total number of kilometres and a total number of stops. It is done on a contractual basis.

I suggest to you that the federal government and Canada Post should also look at that in the urban areas. I firmly believe we have contractors who could do the job with considerably more efficiency than some of the members of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers are doing it. Without being anti-union and without being a union-basher, I bring to the fore and I would compare what a mailman in the city earns with the salary being earned by someone who operates a small, rural post office such as the 40 that are within the riding that I represent.

In closing, I support the member for Rainy River’s private member’s motion. I believe he has brought to the fore a problem, which may or may not be corrected, with the very strong union representation that we have within Canada Post, and I think we have to address more than just what is covered in the member for Rainy River’s private motion this morning.

Mr. Miclash: Let me begin by saying that I stand to speak in favour of and support the member for Rainy River’s resolution. Being from small-town northern Ontario as well, I share the concerns of my colleague. I know what postal services mean to me and to my constituents.

As in the other small-town areas and ridings in northern Ontario, my largest community of Kenora has a population of 10,000 and the remainder of the communities run at less than that. They all depend very heavily on their local postal services. We know how important these services are to them and to us in the north.

As the member mentioned earlier, the government of Ontario at the present time knows the importance of servicing the communities of the north. We try to service the smaller communities, the small towns of the north, through our Northern Development offices, and we know what the northern communities, especially throughout the northeastern and northwestern parts of Ontario, give back to this province, and not only this province but also this nation as a whole, in terms of their mining industry, their forestry industry and their tourism. We know that the spreading of our provincial services is very important throughout these areas and we know that the spreading of federal services such as the post is very important as well.

How can we stand by and watch the federal government erode one of the most essential services in our smaller communities of northern Ontario -- that is, the postal service?

Together we have made Canada a country where we have agreed to give ourselves certain services. I will give some examples: fire, police, defence and, more recently, health services. We do not expect these essential services to make a profit. A federal post office system for all Canadians, no matter where they live, is, I believe, one such service.

Spinoffs from the raw materials from the northern part of the province, as I have mentioned, contribute greatly to the economic contributions of the nation. In return, our federal government wants to cut back on such an essential service. This does not sit well with me or my constituents in rural Ontario.

The federal government is failing to recognize the importance of quality mail service for the rural communities and small towns of northern Ontario by refuting that rural post offices are a part of an extensive network. They help each other and their communities, offering knowledgeable, reliable services. The member for Rainy River referred to some of the services that they do offer our constituents, services that are very important and that people in our small towns in northern Ontario rely on.

They also contribute to the economic viability of our communities. They provide essential support for our businesses and are an incentive for new businesses that want to establish in the areas of small towns. As one contractor has put it, no business wants to come to a town where there is no post office.

In a country as vast in its geographical scope as Canada is, the importance of effective mail delivery cannot be underestimated. Yet again Canada Post has demonstrated a convoluted sense of purpose, putting profit before service, despite the fact that legislation creating the crown corporation provided clear instructions to post office management to place service before financial self-sufficiency.

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Let me refer to a quote. “The Progressive Conservative Party feels that Canada Post’s current program of rapid debt reduction is unrealistic and is the underlying cause of the problems with regard to both declining postal services and ventures into ill-conceived schemes to generate greater revenues. I can assure you that restoring the quality of service will be our top priority with Canada Post. Our party is also committed to rebuilding the economy in rural parts of Canada.”

Yes, that is a quote from August 1984 when the then Leader of the Opposition, Brian Mulroney, was suggesting that restoring the quality of service would be a top priority for his government.

We have seen and will see this government’s operation. Is this just another lost promise of our federal government? Let me quote the opinion of the standing committee on government operations in Ottawa back in March 1987. It suggested, “Canada Post is not going to solve its physical problems by closing rural postal service.”

However, we now have a federal government that is telling us that it plans to remove mail sorting from the communities to a central facility. This promises to lead to a further erosion in the quality of services that it provides to us in northern Ontario, small-town Ontario. Canada Post justifies central sorting by saying that it will lead to more efficient service. I have to agree with the previous speakers that I do not believe so. This is the same crown corporation that told us supermailboxes would be more convenient to the customer. We know what a fiasco that turned out to be.

To add insult to injury, Canada Post is steamrolling its plan into action without listening to adequate input, without engaging in any kind of consultative process and without paying heed to our citizens’ concerns. Is this the expected behaviour of a crown corporation in a democratic society? The Conservative government’s obsession with profit-making at the expense of essential services to Canadian taxpayers, especially those in rural Canada, is totally unfair.

Mail service, as the previous members have mentioned, is a vital means of communication for us in rural Ontario and for all Canadians. But it is especially true for those of us who depend so much on it in our small communities throughout the rural ridings of this province. It is also important as an affordable and personal means of communication. We know the costs of long distance telephone charges at the present time. Most of those are unreachable for many of our citizens.

Canada Post gives a service to us that we rely on. They feel that by closing rural post offices they will save money to help reduce their deficit.

Some rural post offices, believe it or not, are profitable. But that is not the point. Canada would never work as a nation if everything were reduced to dollars and cents. Rural Canadians do not count the cost of their contribution to urban services like hospitals and transit systems, but they do expect to be treated fairly and equally with their mail service.

While it is obvious that Canada Post must act to remove its deficit, it might consider the example of postal systems that provide ways of increasing and expanding revenue through revenue-generating services. I will give the examples of both Australia and Britain where the post offices offer a great diversity of services that produce revenue. For example, the British Post Office offers 200 counter transactions. The revenues from those services make up 20 per cent of their total revenue. Australia, as well, receives considerable profits from special counter services.

Canada Post might be well advised to take a look at these systems and maybe streamline its system to help the plagued inefficiencies and delays that it presently has. Canadians are in favour of improved services before profits. Before Canada Post makes a decision that manifests the inverse of its priorities, it might take the time to think and look at the needs of the public it is serving.

The purpose of a crown corporation is to serve a role in the national interest. Service to people in urban centres and rural communities should never take second place to a bottom line. This is not to give Canada Post a blank cheque to ran a deficit, but let us look at serious ways of improving service or cutting costs, better than the quick-fix solutions it is looking at right now.

In the long run, these quick-fix solutions will fail. It seems that Canada Post not only is making it more difficult to receive mail but, as well, it is making it more difficult to send mail. Since 1984, Canada Post has cut back on the number of mailboxes, making access difficult for seniors, disabled individuals and anyone who has difficulty getting around.

Mr. Speaker, did you know that 5,221 federally operated rural post offices in Canada are slated to be closed, amalgamated or privatized over a 10-year period? This is according to Canada Post’s 1986 corporate plan. Of these, over half -- and I must stress this -- are located in the rural areas of Canada, areas of 5,000 people or less. Again, I go back to Mr. Mulroney’s promise to restore the quality of service as a top priority. This was the plan that I referred to earlier.

I thank the member for Rainy River for bringing this most important issue in his resolution to us and I definitely support him, as part of rural Ontario.

Mr. Wildman: I rise to support the resolution presented by my colleague the member for Rainy River and I want to congratulate him in his attempt here to make one of the first moves in this House to try to defend rural Ontario from the attack on it by the mandarins in Canada Post and in Ottawa serving their Tory masters. I cannot understand how a party in this country that claims to speak for rural Ontario, rural Quebec and the rural Prairies can countenance a policy which is designed to tear the hearts out of the small towns across this country.

One of the previous speakers said he believed that Canada Post was swimming in red ink and should break even. It is not acceptable to Ontario that we should be made the sacrificial lamb to some view that we should in some way be making a profit out of the post office.

When we mail a letter from my office here at Queen’s Park, it takes, on average, one week to get to Sault Ste. Marie. Then, of course, it has to be sorted and go to the rest of my constituency. Some people would attack Canada Post by saying, “How can it be that we have such a deterioration of service?” I suggest the problem is not one of the pay that people who work in the post office get, but one of the amount of junk mail that Canada Post has to deal with.

Mr. Black: Your householder.

Mr. Wildman: I have not sent out a householder this year, but I know a lot of other members do send out householders and I suppose they might be considered to be junk.

The fact is that many people will compare Canada Post service with courier services that are running in competition with Canada Post. They say, “Look, we can send a letter by courier service and it will be delivered the next day.” The question is how much you are paying to deliver a letter by courier overnight when in actual fact it takes about two days from the Sault to Toronto even though they claim overnight service. How much are you paying to get it here when you consider that a courier service not only is charging a great deal more -- 10 times as much, at least, for first-class mail -- but also does not have to carry any of the so-called junk mail?

The fact is that we have a tremendous amount of mail to be processed by Canada Post in a country that is as wide and sparsely populated as ours, and to suggest that this kind of an operation should be profit-making or, frankly, even should break even, is to misunderstand the necessity of a good postal service for our economy as a whole, and particularly for rural and small-town Ontario.

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As my colleague the member for Rainy River indicated, in many rural communities the post office is the centre of the community. People congregate at the post office to pick up their mail if there is no door-to-door service, as there is not in most small towns. It is a meeting place that attracts people and serves as the head of the community. The closure of many rural post offices in these small towns in some cases will mean the end of that community as a community. Yet the Conservative government in Ottawa is intent on making rural and small-town Ontario and Canada pay for its misguided approach to the whole postal service.

In my constituency there are some ridiculous situations with regard to post office service. White River, which is at the northwest comer of Algoma riding, is approximately 60 miles from Wawa. If a person mails a letter from White River to Wawa, it does not go the 60 miles from White River to Wawa; it goes from White River, through Wawa, to Sault Ste. Marie, approximately 200 miles. It is sorted in Sault Ste. Marie and then it is sent 140 miles north, back to Wawa.

This is all done in the name of efficiency. This is done because they want to have a central sorting mechanism similar to that which the member for Rainy River is talking about in the northwest.

It used to be even worse. It did not just go from White River to Sault Ste. Marie to be sorted and then back to Wawa; the letter used to go from White River to Sudbury. They have improved it a little; they have moved it from Sudbury to Sault Ste. Marie, but it is just plain silly. It means a deteriorating service for the small communities at a time when we are having to pay more for this service, even though I admit the cost of the stamp does not pay for the cost of the operation at all.

In some of the very small railroad communities in northern Algoma, we have a really serious situation with regard to the postal service. There used to be postal service six days a week at one time. Now, in Oba, for instance, which is at the junction of the Canadian National Railway line and the Algoma Central Railway line, if they are lucky they get their mail three times a week, because it comes from Sudbury or Capreol by train. Last year the post office threatened to cut it to two days a week, again all in the name of saving money. These communities are very isolated as it is. To have these kinds of cuts in service is going to isolate them even more.

I know it is tempting in this kind of debate to use the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, the union that serves the large urban postal service, as a whipping boy. CUPW is not a very popular organization in this country. I suppose it was tempting for the member for Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry (Mr, Villeneuve) to do a little union-bashing in his speech.

I submit that this resolution does not deal with CUPW, this resolution deals with a commitment on the part of the Conservative government in Ottawa to maintain postal services in rural, small-town and northern Ontario. The fact is that we do not have that commitment from the Conservative government in Ottawa. The Conservative government in Ottawa has said that it intends to consolidate the services even more, to cut the services even more and to charge more at the same time. We are getting less and less service and we are having to pay more for it. The postal service is an essential service to the rural communities of Canada, as it is to the whole country. What I am submitting in my remarks is that it is even more essential in small, rural Ontario towns than it is in a place like Metro.

I believe that we should be supporting this resolution. I supported the resolution presented against the supermailboxes by one of the Conservative members, and I also had a resolution in Orders and Notices some time ago about preserving rural post offices, so I am obviously in favour of this resolution. I think, though, that it is not acceptable for the Conservative members or any other members in this House to try to argue that the postal service in most Ontario is suffering because of union activities in the cities. That is so ridiculous.

The point is that it is suffering because we have a government in Ottawa that is not interested in improving the postal service, that is interested only in attacking the postal service and is going to make rural Ontario, small-town Ontario and small-town Canada pay for its inability to make the postal system work in the black.

Mr. Speaker: The member’s time has now expired.

Mr. Wildman: It should not be forcing it to work in the black; it should be providing an essential service.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Wellington, for up to nine minutes.

Mr. J. M. Johnson: First of all, I would like to express my support for the resolution, so there will not be too much heckling from the right.

Mr. Villeneuve: No, from the left.

Mr. J. M. Johnson: Nor from the left. Then I would like to point out a couple of things that concern me.

In today’s private members’ business we have two private members’ resolutions, and both of them deal with issues pertaining to the federal government. This assembly is suggesting what the federal government should be doing to improve the life of Ontario residents.

Maybe there is a misunderstanding, but I thought about a year ago there was a provincial election and there was a bunch of Liberals elected and they formed a government. I thought they had some responsibility to the citizens of Ontario to do something. Surely private members’ business should be dealing with what this government and what this assembly can be doing to help improve the services of the citizens of Ontario.

It is great to fire shots at the federal government, and before the federal election, that was quite reasonable and understandable. But since that federal election is now over, could we not concentrate and see if this Legislature could deal with issues we can handle within this assembly?

Having said that, I will now move on to the main part of the resolution and say that I do support the resolution presented by the member for Rainy River. It is a good resolution, but it could be better. The member makes mention of the fact that the mail service in communities such as Fort Frances, Kenora and many smaller rural communities of northwestern Ontario will deteriorate because of the declining mail service.

I would like to see the resolution expanded to take in all of rural Ontario, because in my part of the province, as well as that of the members from northwestern Ontario, we are concerned about any decline in mail service. Some of the urban members have spoken on different occasions about the concern they have with supermailboxes, I think they call them. In rural Ontario that is basically what we have, only we call them small post offices. People are usually quite glad to have the services of those small post offices, because it gives them an opportunity at least to pick up their mail when they do want to and not to depend on some service that may or may not materialize.

Of all the communities that I represent, only one municipality does have door-to-door mail service similar to what the urban members expect, and most of our people, as I mentioned earlier, are very pleased to accept the services provided by the small post office. One thing we do not want to see is curtailment of that service or even any decline in the services provided by those small post offices, or the rural delivery in some cases.

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It has been pointed out by the member for Rainy River -- one of the main concerns I would support him on -- that if we are to attract industrial or commercial development into northern Ontario, or indeed, into rural Ontario, we need all the services that are available, certainly not any decline in the services we now have, such as the postal service.

The smaller municipalities lack a lot of the advantages they have in the cities. That is why so many of the industries end up coming to the likes of Metro Toronto, creating further problems: housing, sewage, garbage, all types of pollution, traffic. These industries would be well advised to take a look at northern Ontario, eastern Ontario and western Ontario. They could find a much better place to set up their business, a quality workforce and, one hopes, the services they need to carry on.

I would like to add one other thought, and that would be to support the member for Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry and his reference to the fact that possibly the unions do have some say in the operation of the post office. Maybe they do not seem to feel they are directly involved, but I think they are very directly involved. I think the comments made by my colleague sitting to my right were very pertinent.

I will not repeat them except to say that in Queen’s Park, our mail service is not the best. I have raised this on occasion with the Minister of Government Services (Mr Patten). I have pointed out that sometimes it takes two weeks, three weeks and even four weeks to receive a letter from my riding, which is only 50 miles to 100 miles from Queen’s Park. In three weeks to four weeks, we could send it by pony express. In fact, many of my constituents have thought of the possibility of training pigeons.

I hope they do not have to resort to pigeons or pony express or something of this nature, but I do think there is something to be desired in the quality of mail service we are experiencing in Queen’s Park. I assume it is the same in this jurisdiction, because sometimes the ministers take two months, three months, four months to respond to a letter.

I see one of the ministers coming in now who is very prompt to respond to his letters.

Mr. Villeneuve: A very lonely minister at that.

Mr. J. M. Johnson: A very lonely minister. I think the members do have a responsibility to respond to their constituents as soon as possible. I try to respond within a day or two of receiving my mail. Unfortunately, as I mentioned, that sometimes is two weeks or three weeks. I am not sure that is quite addressing the resolution, but perhaps the resolution could be expanded to improve all mail services by whatever means.

I will close by simply saying that I do support the resolution of the member for Rainy River. I do encourage all members to support it as well, and I hope we can have a further resolution dealing with improving something in this province relating to this government.

Mr. Speaker: There is still a minute and a half. The member for Grey for a minute and a half.

Mr. Lipsett: It is a pleasure for me to have an opportunity for a brief second or two also to support this resolution this morning by the member for Rainy River.

I would like also to address the part of the resolution that states in the last couple of lines that it is applicable to all rural postal service across Ontario. Rumours of cutbacks per week of delivery, replacement of the present end-of-lane service and closing of rural post offices are all of concern to each and every one and do not enhance or improve the service.

We have adjusted to mail delivery loss on Saturdays but not without inconvenience. Any further reduction in that service would not be in our best interest, especially for subscribers to the daily newspapers. The Saturday paper is of very little use to them on Monday and even less so, if Monday is a holiday, on Tuesday. We get frustrations from the subscribers as well as from the people who produce the newspapers.

I think that today we take pride in our high-tech, instantaneous global communication system, but when it comes to rural mail delivery, it could be improved. I therefore support the resolution.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Rainy River reserved three and three quarters minutes, which he may wish to use now.

Mr. Hampton: Let me begin by thanking all members for their support on this resolution. It was very much appreciated.

Mr. Ballinger: We haven’t voted yet.

Mr. Hampton: Well, all those members who have so far spoken. As for the member for Durham-York (Mr. Ballinger), he should remember that we will be voting on his resolution as well this morning.

Let me respond to some of the comments that have been made, and first of all, to my Conservative colleagues and some of the comments they have made. The suggestion was made, in terms of the postal service, that everybody should pay his own way or that the postal service has to turn a profit. Let me say this: I think anyone can make a profit shipping mail from Toronto to Montreal, Montreal to Ottawa, Toronto to Vancouver, Edmonton to Calgary or even, for that matter, London or Windsor to Toronto. There are such volumes of mail and such large concentrations of population that there is no problem. You can make money off that.

The theory used to be that this was one community and that whether you lived in a rural area or an urban area, a metropolitan area or a remote area, there were some services that should be relatively equally available; there should be some equality of service. That is what I am asking for in this bill, the return to the equality of service. If the post office really is concerned about breaking even or reducing its debt, I suggest that it is going about it in the wrong way. What it is doing is trying to cut losses by cutting service and cutting employees, and that is going to hurt those communities that can afford it the least, small-town and rural Ontario.

What Canada Post ought to be doing -- and I thank the member for Kenora for talking about this briefly -- is trying to increase the revenue by increasing its service and the variety of service it offers across Canada, but certainly across Ontario.

The second thing I want to say is that I do not care who the employees are at Canada Post; they are only employees and they do not make the managerial decisions. I get really fed up when I hear some people say, “If we could only crack the whip on those civil servants.” I hear it all the time in my constituency. The guy who is a civil servant at the bottom of the rung does not make any managerial decisions. Somebody says to him, “You do this, you do that and you get to work on time.” I think it is the same in Canada Post.

It matters not to me if you are a member of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, you are a member of the letter carriers’ union or you are from the postmasters’ association. You do not make the orders, you do not give the marching orders and you do not make the decisions; you simply follow the rules. To blame some postal worker in CUPW who is making $35,000 a year, to say that it is because he or she is making $35,000 a year that some other part of the postal service is suffering, does not make any sense to me.

I want to say something, finally, about the relevancy of this resolution. When some of the Conservative members suggest that this is not an issue that we should be dealing with here, I want to say only this: They have not adjusted to opposition yet. One of the things you realize when you are in opposition is that you bring pressure to bear wherever you can. That is the idea behind this resolution, to bring pressure to bear on the powers that be. I think we in this province can exert some pressure.

Mr. Speaker: The member’s time has expired.

Mr. Hampton: I thank all members who spoke in favour of the resolution.

Mr. Speaker: That completes the allotted time for dealing with private members’ public business and particularly with ballot items 45 and 46 .

REFUGEE CLAIMANTS

Mr. Speaker: Mr. Ballinger has moved resolution 52.

Motion agreed to.

RURAL POSTAL SERVICES

Mr. Speaker: Mr. Hampton has moved resolution 47.

Motion agreed to.

The House recessed at 12:02 p.m.

AFTERNOON SITTING

The House resumed at 1:30 p.m.

MEMBERS’ STATEMENTS

AMBULANCE SERVICES

Mr. McCague: We have had an opportunity to speak to the Minister of Health (Mrs. Caplan) during her estimates, with very few answers. One of the main subjects being discussed is ambulance services. Most of us have all types of ambulance services in our areas.

I want to bring to the attention of the minister the situation in Wasaga Beach where the emergency services committee of council points out that the staff there are about $1 an hour behind the wage levels of other services in the province. Yet the minister refuses to acknowledge that, or at least if she does acknowledge it, refuses to fund it. It is a municipally run service where they do not charge up their administrative fees. I think the minister is getting a bargain and I would just ask you, Mr. Speaker, to pass on to her that we need a little more money in that area.

CFOS/CFPS-SUN TIMES CHRISTMAS FUND

Mr. Lipsett: I rise today to recognize the organizers and performers of and contributors to the CFOS/CFPS-Sun Times Christmas Fund broadcast. This year’s broadcast on Sunday will receive pledges from the listening audience, many accompanied by a request to have some local talent sing, play an instrument or recite an appropriate poem.

This year’s broadcast will be the 49th successive event to raise money for the Save the Children-Canada Fund, the Grey-Bruce Regional Health Centre and five county homes for seniors in the counties of Grey and Bruce. Last year, $24,606.83 was raised, of which $2,000 went to the paediatric ward of the hospital, $2,000 to the homes for seniors and the remainder to the Save the Children fund. This year’s distribution of funds will be proportionately the same.

I would like to acknowledge in this House the efforts and dedication over the years of the management and staff of the radio station and the Sun Times. I would also like to recognize and thank the people of Grey-Bruce area for their caring and generosity towards this worthy cause.

WORLD AIDS DAY

Mr. Eves: I rise today to comment on World AIDS Day. The World Health Organization has designated today as the day to publicize the worldwide fight against the acquired immune deficiency syndrome epidemic. There have been some remarkable efforts in this fight, especially with respect to stopping the spread of the disease.

Evidence from around the world shows that education programs can result in behavioural change. I am sorry to say, however, that news from the research front is not promising. It is estimated that it will be at least another five to 10 years before a vaccine against AIDS is developed. It was about seven years ago when we first started hearing about this disease, and since that time there have been 861 reported cases of AIDS in Ontario, 489 in Toronto alone. Worldwide, there have been over 124,000 cases.

The World Health Organization predicts that by 1991 there will be 100 million people with the disease. This is particularly important in light of the Queen’s University study which revealed that more and more teenagers are engaging in sexual activity without knowing the risks. It is also important that we continue to educate the public about how the disease is spread, so that we do not create fear of those people with AIDS.

The Progressive Conservative caucus encourages the government to continue and strengthen its AIDS education campaign. We also hope that this government improves its support for research for a cure and new and innovative ways to treat the disease. We would again like to remind the government and the Minister of Health (Mrs. Caplan) with respect to a needle exchange program, and for that matter providing needles to all those in need, especially diabetics.

CONSERVATION AUTHORITIES

Mr. Offer: On June 29, 1988, the Minister of Natural Resources (Mr. Kerrio) tabled a report entitled A Review of the Conservation Authorities Program. This report was received and accepted by the Association of Conservation Authorities of Ontario with this comment: “The report is a good start in dealing with a wide range of complex issues.”

The Credit Valley Conservation Authority is one of 38 conservation authorities across our great province which belong to ACAO. The CVCA, established in 1954, serves a number of communities, including my own, and is responsible for the watershed of the Credit River, which spans the townships of Mono, Orangeville and East Garafraxa and includes the regional municipalities of Halton and Peel to Lake Ontario.

Recently, the ACAO prepared a response to the report interested in reforming conservation authorities across our province. The Credit Valley Conservation Authority supports ACAO’s comments in their entirety. Both the CVCA and the ACAO have commended the Minister of Natural Resources for the opportunity to have real input into this very important topic which will shape the future of all conservation authorities in Ontario. The purpose of a single, united response by the ACAO on behalf of all Ontario conservation authorities is to ensure that conservation authorities receive the necessary responsibilities, funding and opportunities.

Mr. Speaker: Thank you. That completes the allotted time for the member.

Mr. Offer: I compliment the CVCA, the Minister of Natural Resources and ACAO in this consultative process.

RENT REGULATION

Mr. Breaugh: At a meeting of the Federation of Metro Tenants’ Associations on the weekend, we had some lengthy discussions about rent review. The consensus among tenants is that rent review in Ontario is indeed a mess. If there is any one opinion that is shared by both tenants and landlords, it is the simple, unfortunate fact that the rent review system in Ontario is not working and is getting worse by the moment.

It is interesting to note some statistics on the matter. Between July 31 and October 31 there was actually a decrease in the number of cases, but the decrease is largely attributable to the fact that there were 3,767 withdrawals of applications. We now have 242,000 rental units awaiting a decision. That is almost 24 per cent. Of the available rental units in Ontario, 23.2 per cent are caught in this logjam of rent review.

I think that many tenants are now beginning to understand that, no matter what the minister says in the House, the average is over 11 per cent in terms of the awards that are given by rent review and in fact landlords are rewarded for making what in other quarters would be considered just plain bad business mistakes. To quote one tenant who wrote to the minister, “Is it good business to buy something ‘at a loss’ and ‘suffer hardships’ because your laws have made such flipovers legal and guaranteed such poor businessmen a profit at the expense of the hapless tenants?”

Mr. Speaker: The member’s time has now expired.

Mr. Breaugh: The answer is yes.

BHOPAL DISASTER

Mrs. Marland: I rise today to speak about the Bhopal disaster. On December 3, 1984, a chemical leak occurred at an Indian chemical plant owned by Union Carbide. The plant, which produced potent pesticides, was located close to residential areas in the city of Bhopal. Over 2,000 people were killed by the deadly fumes.

On this day we join with Canadians of Indian descent, many of whose relatives were killed in Bhopal, in remembering a tragedy which took so many lives. This incident, like many others experienced throughout the world, serves to remind us of the need to maintain stringent safety standards in those plants which produce dangerous chemicals and in those warehouses in which hazardous materials are stored.

These global tragedies also serve to remind us all who live in freedom and a democracy that we are indeed blessed and that we should cherish our good life and use our days to always make life better for those who do not have the same opportunities or blessings.

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JOHN JONES

Mr. Faubert: I stand today to pay tribute to an up-and-coming resident of Thunder Bay, Ontario, who may soon become a household name, John Jones.

John Jones has recently taken another step upward in his auto racing career by being named the number one driver for the Labatt-Protofab racing team. Mr. Jones, who is the 1988 CART/PPG Indy Car World Series rookie of the year, will now have a very competitive car in which to compete.

Many racing experts are predicting even better results for next year. As auto racing fans across the province look forward to next year’s Molson Indy, the thought of the race being won by a Canadian driver is no longer the impossible dream.

On behalf of all members of this Legislature, I congratulate John Jones for his successes to date and I wish him every success in his promising future as a star in the CART/PPG Indy Car World Series.

Mrs. Marland: I rise to request unanimous consent to commemorate the anniversary of Portuguese independence.

Agreed to.

PORTUGUESE INDEPENDENCE DAY

Mrs. Marland: I rise today to commemorate the anniversary of Portuguese independence. It was on this date in the year 1640 that the nation of Portugal was able to regain its complete independence from Spain.

In the 15th and 16th centuries, Portugal’s close proximity to Spain on the Iberian Peninsula resulted in strong ties between the two nations. This culminated in a dynastic union of the Spanish and Portuguese royal families. In 1580, Philip II of Spain claimed the Portuguese throne by marriage and the Spanish king led a successful invasion of Portugal. Eventually, Spanish wars, taxes and internal domination led to uprisings in Portugal and a revolution gripped the nation in 1640. On December 1 of that year, the last remnants of the Spanish occupation force fled Portugal and the Portuguese state was re-established.

In recent times, Portugal has been rocked by internal strife and military rule, and continual power struggles between forces of the left and right brought great instability to the nation. However, the establishment of democratic government and rule by the people in the late 1970s has meant remarkable improvements in the standard of living enjoyed by the Portuguese people.

If there is one quality I admire most about the Portuguese it is their fervent desire to remain independent, to protect their culture and their heritage. Throughout the history of this small nation there has been one common theme: the Portuguese have fought to protect and strengthen their nation despite the presence of many larger, stronger countries nearby. I think it is true that the Portuguese have succeeded.

This has not meant that the Portuguese have built up walls to the outside world. On the contrary, the Portuguese state has shown great confidence in maintaining ties with its allies and neighbours. Of course, Portugal is a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization alliance and is a firm ally of Canada. Portugal has also entered into a free trade agreement by joining the European Community. I think it is clear that the Portuguese people are not afraid to be swallowed up under free trade, and our recent federal election proved that the Canadian people are just as confident in the future of our nation.

We in the Progressive Conservative Party join with the people of Portugal in marking the anniversary of the independence of this small but courageous nation.

I would like to take this opportunity to point out that close to 100,000 Ontarians are of Portuguese descent. Several large Portuguese communities have been established in such cities as Toronto, Hamilton, Brampton and Cambridge. These Ontarians came to this province seeking a better life and they have greatly enriched our cultural heritage.

Our ties with Portugal do not end there, however. In the past three years, over 220,000 Canadian tourists have ventured to Portugal. Some have gone to visit family members. Others have gone to enjoy the warmth of the Algarve. Still others just wish to explore this beautiful nation.

It is my hope that Canada and Portugal will maintain and increase our ties in trade and tourism as both nations move towards a very bright future, which I hope to a great extent will also include the province of Ontario.

Mr. Ruprecht: On behalf of the Premier (Mr. Peterson), the Minister of Citizenship (Mr. Phillips) and the government of Ontario, I rise for the purpose of recognizing an important event that dates back to 340 years ago, which has been celebrated as Portuguese National Day and Independence Day.

The celebration of the Independence Day of Portugal is special and unique in the pages of history. This date commemorates December 1, 1640, when a quick revolution in Lisbon on that day overthrew 60 years of Spanish rule and reinstated the Portuguese monarchy and the king, Don Juan IV.

On this historic occasion, we ask the people of Ontario and all those of Portuguese heritage to join us in the remembrance of this special day. We are, of course, cognizant and appreciative of the tremendous contribution that our Portuguese friends have made to the development and growth of our province and country, both in economic and cultural fields.

Yet, as important as the economic contributions are, the attention of Portuguese-Canadian children today is focused not on the prosperity and wealth that opportunities in Canada create, but on our democratic system of government, which allows all citizens in our multicultural society of Ontario to celebrate a day of national importance.

[Remarks in Portuguese]

Mr. B. Rae: I am delighted to participate in this celebration of Portuguese Independence Day. It is interesting to note that of all the countries in the world that have a connection with Canada as Canada now is, our association with Portugal probably goes back as far as with any other country. It is worth remembering that Portuguese fishermen were on the banks of what is now Newfoundland at least 500 years ago, that Portuguese communities date back some 500 years, that there is a very strong historic connection between our two countries for that reason, as well as for the obvious reason now, that particularly since the Second World War and indeed even more immediately since the mid-1960s, there has been such a substantial immigration of people from all over Portugal as well as the islands to Canada, and to Toronto in particular.

I am delighted to join in this celebration with my colleagues the member for Mississauga South (Mrs. Marland) and the member for Parkdale (Mr. Ruprecht), and to say to the House that we join in this celebration and look forward very much to a long and happy relationship with the people of Portugal, with the country of Portugal, as well as with the many Portuguese citizens who have done so much to build this great city of ours, who have done so much to add to the nature of Canada and the nature of Ontario and Toronto. Today is a great day and we are just delighted to be able to participate in this celebration.

[Remark in Portuguese]

STATEMENTS BY THE MINISTRY

COMPUTERS-IN-EDUCATION GRANTS PROGRAM

Hon. Mr. Ward: As members know, the Provincial Auditor’s report deals with my ministry’s computers-in-education program.

My ministry has introduced important changes in computer policy and in the administration of that policy.

First of all, we are no longer pursuing the concept of developing a single “ideal” microcomputer. The restrictive requirements for participation in my ministry’s grants program were removed earlier this year. What we are doing now is providing grants that allow school boards to purchase more widely available high-quality microcomputers and software that meet the needs of our students.

To deal with the concerns about incompatibility, I announced last summer that my ministry was undertaking a project to improve software portability. This would ensure that ministry- commissioned software would be able to run on all approved microcomputers with greater cost-effectiveness. The Provincial Auditor’s findings confirm our decision.

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In addition, I announced recently in the Legislature that school boards will be allowed to use a portion of their computer grants to purchase less costly machines. This will mean that we can meet our commitment to provide every student with 30 minutes of computer time daily by 1996 at substantially less cost to the taxpayer.

We have also taken steps to address the auditor’s concerns about management and control of expenditure in the computers-in-education centre. A change in organization within the centre this past spring has resulted in efficient and effective monitoring and control of money spent on the development and licensing of software.

I agree with the auditor that more must be done to train teachers in the use of computers. That is why I recently announced a measure that will allow boards to apply a portion of their computer funding to related teacher training.

With respect to research, there are currently three regional pilot test centres that study exemplary uses of computers in the classroom. I will be asking my Advisory Council on Educational Technology to make recommendations on the establishment of more of these centres over the next year.

These steps in the renewal of the computers-in-education program address the specific findings of the Provincial Auditor. This renewal has been under way for some time and further changes are forthcoming. I believe these changes ensure that public funds are spent more effectively, providing better value for tax dollars.

RESPONSES

COMPUTERS-IN-EDUCATION GRANTS PROGRAM

Mr. B. Rae: I am delighted to respond to the statement by the Minister of Education (Mr. Ward). I can only tell him that in the educational community I deal with and talk to, there is extraordinary scepticism about the program which was introduced by an earlier government and maintained and continued by his own; that the comments by the auditor have not been fully addressed in his statement; and that, in fact, there remain some very profound problems with the system with which various boards have been saddled.

It has proven to be a very expensive mistake. I might add that the Ministry of Education is not the only public body in this province, within my knowledge, that has been saddled with a computer system which is less than adequate to the needs of those who are using it. The provision of what I would describe as Studebaker systems of computers to various public bodies seems to be a habit of mind in this province, which is very troublesome.

I am glad the minister has indicated that there is going to be more flexibility in terms of the hardware that is now able to be purchased by various boards and obviously glad that software is being developed. I think this will be looked upon as an example of how not to make an intelligent decision with respect to the use of a new technology when we look back on it.

The saddling of the whole system with a technology which was not fully worked out, which is expensive and for which it has proven until very recently very difficult to find software which is usable and readily accessible for children, when at the same time kids at home are using entirely different equipment which is being replaced all the time, which has piles of software available, is a tragic misuse of public dollars.

I hope it is one in which the minister will continue to take a leadership role in making sure we accept the fact that a mistake was made, accept the fact that we are going to have to pay for that mistake, and that we get on with a flexible, usable, accessible system, accessible for all the kids who need it and who want it and, I might add, their parents who are being educated it the same regard.

Now I have to sit down because the member for Etobicoke-Rexdale (Mr. Philip) wants to say something.

Mr. Philip: The minister’s statement clearly does not deal with the essential problems we are facing in this series of revelations by the Provincial Auditor. In the first place, there were no clear, set objectives in place for this program. If there had been, there would have been an integration of this set of programs along with the 74 per cent of all software that was not encompassed in this program. Indeed, there would have been adequate training.

The teachers in the programs are the recipients of hardware without any adequate training so that they can use it in a way that will be of benefit to the students. There was no assessment, which should surely form the basis of any expensive program. So you have no setting of objectives, no co-ordination of the program with other programs, no testing and no training of those who are responsible for implementing the program. Clearly, this is a matter that should be investigated by the standing committee on public accounts. No doubt when the ministry officials are called before us, they will be questioned very strenuously by members of all parties on that commitment.

Mr. Speaker: Further responses. Ministerial statements and responses.

Mr. B. Rae: Wait a minute. You mean nobody is going to defend Bette?

Mr. Breaugh: I can hear Bette’s boots stomping already.

Mr. Sterling: Sometimes we know when to be quiet.

Mr Speaker: Order. Could I have the members’ attention? Oral questions. The Leader of the Opposition.

Mr. B. Rae: If the members of the Conservative Party want to respond to the statement, I am quite happy to allow them to do so.

Mr. Speaker: I appreciate the offer. However, they have had the opportunity and I have called for oral questions.

ORAL QUESTIONS

Mr. B. Rae: I might give the government notice that I do have a question for the Minister of Health (Mrs. Caplan) with respect to the tragedy yesterday. I understand that she is going to be here. I will not ask the question of the Premier (Mr. Peterson) because, frankly, I think the minister can give us a more up-to-date report than the Premier can as to what she found yesterday. So I will give the government notice that I will stand down that question. If I may turn immediately to my second question, I will ask it of the Premier.

TEMAGAMI DISTRICT RESOURCES

Mr. B. Rae: The Premier will know, I am sure, because he has been briefed on this matter by the Attorney General (Mr. Scott) -- at least I suspect that he has -- that the Temagami Wilderness Society filed its application with the Divisional Court on June 24, nearly six months ago. I wonder if he can explain why the government has not responded in any way with any documents at all to the application filed by the Temagami Wilderness Society, if he really is interested in getting on with this matter.

Hon. Mr. Peterson: The Attorney General can respond to that.

Hon. Mr. Scott: My understanding is that the Wilderness society, either under the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act or in the proceedings themselves, has requested certain documents. We are getting those documents together. If it has not already happened, they will in due course be filed.

Mr. B. Rae: But there is not even a response to the application. The Attorney General knows what an application for judicial review looks like. He has handled, I would think, a couple hundred of them in his role as a private practitioner. He knows full well that if you want to get on with an action before the Divisional Court, if you are interested in solving a problem before the Divisional Court, as a government you respond to them; as one of the parties to the action, you respond.

I might point out to the Attorney General that in its application and indeed in the accompanying documents that have been filed with the court, the Temagami Wilderness Society makes it clear that, in fact, there has been no environmental assessment of the entire question of logging practices, harvesting practices or any of the issues about the land around the road which was to be built.

I wonder if the Attorney General would not agree with me that if he is going to protect the environment or give the environment equal weight, as was implied in the statement made by his colleague the Minister of Northern Development (Mr. Fontaine), the very least that should be done is that there should be some kind of environmental assessment that deals not simply with the question of the narrow construction of a road, but with the broader question of what that road is to be used for and what the implications are of extensive logging practices on the future of the area as a wilderness reserve.

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Hon. Mr. Scott: The first point to observe is that the government, in fact, has responded to the applications. As the honourable member knows, there is a form under which that is done and we have done it. We will attend in court to respond to the case whenever the Temagami Wilderness Society arranges to have the case called. That is the first point.

On the second point, I would direct my honourable friend to the Minister of the Environment (Mr. Bradley) or the Minister of Natural Resources (Mr. Kerrio) who will be able to provide details for him, but my understanding is that the Red Squirrel Road was subjected to a full environmental assessment and indeed the Minister of the Environment imposed some 29 conditions on the mode, the manner and the timing in which that construction might take place.

Mr. B. Rae: The minister will also know, or the Attorney General should know if he does not, that the entire question -- first of all, there has been no hearing of any kind and the minister ordered that there would be no hearing, even with respect to the narrow question of the road. I say to the Attorney General that the question of the use of the area or the land around the road, the question of harvesting practices, timber practices, logging practices and the impact those are going to have on the environment is what is troubling people.

I would like to ask the Attorney General, does he not feel that this government has badly mishandled an issue, particularly when we know that on September 18, 1987, 700 delegates to the World Wilderness Congress passed the following resolution: “The fourth World Wilderness Congress urges the Ontario government to terminate roadbuilding and resource extraction activities in the Temagami-Lady Evelyn wilderness and to implement a form of wilderness reserve bordering the existing Lady Evelyn provincial park.”

Co-signatories to the resolution were The International Union for Conservation of Nature, the Wilderness Society, the Sierra Club of the United States and the Sierra Club of Eastern Canada, Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, the Federation of Ontario Naturalists --

Mr. Speaker: I am just wondering if the member does have a supplementary.

Mr. B. Rae: Why not subject the entire area to an environmental assessment hearing and not simply the narrow question of the construction of a road, which, frankly, is far less important than the uses to which that road is being --

Mr. Speaker: I am sure there is a question somewhere there.

Hon. Mr. Scott: I am sure the honourable member will want to direct his questions respecting the environment to the Minister of the Environment when he is here. But as the honourable member will know, 80 per cent of the projects that are submitted do not require an environmental assessment because conditions can be imposed. If he is unaware of that, he will want to ask the honourable member for Algoma (Mr. Wildman), who lobbied strenuously to avoid an environmental assessment at the Magpie River project, which was a project of very considerable importance to his constituents.

POLICIES ON ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES

Mr. Brandt: My question is for the Premier and it relates to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade meetings that are going to be opening this Monday in Montreal. It is my understanding that the Minister of Industry, Trade and Technology (Mr. Kwinter) will in fact be Ontario’s representative at that particular meeting. Is it the continued position of the government of Ontario that the government will be defying the decision by GATT, which ruling was brought down in November, 1987, with respect to Ontario’s suggested discriminatory markup and pricing policies, and is that the position the minister will be taking to Montreal relative to Ontario?

Hon. Mr. Peterson: With great respect to my friend opposite, I think his facts are wrong. There has been no final determination from GATT. There have been discussions with GATT. As the member knows, representatives of the various governments were in Brussels last week, I believe. There may be another meeting before the end of the year. There has been no meeting of the GATT council on this matter. Various positions with respect to beer and wine across the nation are being discussed but there has been no GATT ruling in that regard.

The member is quite right, the Minister of Industry, Trade and Technology will be attending, I believe just as an observer, for the opening of that midterm review of the GATT discussions next week in Montreal.

As I understand it -- it is, as I said, a midterm review --

it is to monitor the progress and at the same time take the international temperature or an assessment of the international will to proceed with the round of GAIT discussions. As the member knows, those will proceed if there is the collective political will in the free world to generate that. So that is what I think those meetings are about. I do not think they will be getting into specifics of particular problems.

Mr. Brandt: It is interesting to note that on the same day the Premier indicated that he would be defying any GATT ruling with respect to the suggested discriminatory pricing policy, he also made a comment in connection with his interest and the interest of his government in trading with the entire world.

Now, recognizing that GATT is, in fact, the world authority with respect to trading practices, I find that somewhat contradictory in that, on the one hand, the Premier is defying a GATT ruling and, on the other hand, he is indicating that he wants to open up Ontario markets to the rest of the world and not be so closely aligned with the United States.

The point I make to the Premier is that it is quite obvious that if the GATT ruling is defied by the province of Ontario it can then follow that the European Community can retaliate not just against Ontario but against the rest of Canada as it relates to trading practices. Does the Premier not find that the position Ontario is putting Canada in, relative to retaliatory action on the part of other signatories to the GATT decisions, is an unfair position and may well cost jobs in other parts of Canada?

Hon. Mr. Peterson: No, absolutely not, and I think my honourable friend’s preamble is incorrect. We did not talk about defying a GATT ruling. There are negotiations going on with GATT and they will go to the GATT council some time in the not-too-distant future. As the member knows, there is a preliminary rating and then it goes on to the council which, in the meantime, invites a national response. That is the way it happens with Japan, Germany or any other country.

So the question now is being negotiated before it goes to the GATT council. The question then becomes who is speaking out in our national interest, and are those negotiations being well conducted on behalf of Canada? Ontario is there, but all the other provinces are there as well. We have a particular interest in the beer and the wine issue.

The question before the federal government, which is in charge of these negotiations, is, are they good negotiators and are they putting forward Canada’s position in a forceful and effective way or are we going to get snookered?

Mr. Brandt: I think that is a little unfair. Let me say that the European Community has already made it very clear that it has been waiting for some 15 years for an appropriate change in Ontario’s policy with respect to markup and pricing practices. Those 15 years, admittedly, go back to the time of a former government, but the issue is before this government now to deal with. The reality is that the European Community has made it very clear that it is not prepared to wait another 12 years to have this matter resolved.

Looking at that in its proper context, the issue is coming down to the fact that the European Community, through GATT, is making it abundantly clear that this government’s pricing policies are not acceptable. What position is the Premier prepared to put before GATT on Monday in Montreal? If he says it is only a fact-finding mission, is he prepared to subject the rest of Canada at some later date to retaliation by other communities in connection with our trading practices? I think that is a very reasonable question.

Hon. Mr. Peterson: My honourable friend says that GATT has patiently waited for 15 years for a resolution of this problem. As a former Minister of Industry and Trade, he is now standing and acknowledging that he created the problem.

I understand, as he does, that Premier Davis gave certain assurances under his hand that his government did not honour and that, in fact, imperilled the credibility of the province somewhat in discussions. I recognize that.

We have put forward to GATT and to our Canadian colleagues a very reasonable position. We have discussed compensation and working out the system with the grape growers and with the wine industry. Now, if my honourable friend is standing up and saying that that is not reasonable, that we should be tougher on our wine and grape industry and wipe it completely out, then he should stand in the House and say that.

What I am telling the member, and I say it with great respect, is that he is getting incorrect information in his briefing documents, because he does not understand what he is talking about. What he should be doing is standing up and fighting for Ontario farmers and Ontario jobs. That is what we are doing.

Mr. Pope: Like the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. B. Rae), our second question is for the Minister of Health. We will stand it down.

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Mr. Speaker: We will start the regular rotation. The member for Oshawa.

ROOMERS, BOARDERS AND LODGERS

Mr. Breaugh: I have a question for the Minister of Housing concerning what is called, in the city of North York, Operation Dirty Harry. Is the minister aware that the city of North York, the city with a heart, has decided that it does not want rroming houses in North York, does not want to regulate, standardize or license them, wants to do away with them, and that it has instructed one of its building inspectors to go around and entrap those who would rent rooms to lodgers? Is the minister aware that that is obviously in direct contradiction to the stated policy intention of the province of Ontario to do away with these kinds of exclusionary bylaws; and what is she doing about it?

Hon. Ms. Hosek: What we have done, in trying to address the whole issue of having open communities in which people can live in communities in a variety of housing forms, is to indicate our commitments and our guidelines and goals in the land use policy statement. That statement is out for discussion with all the municipalities of the province, and in particular with the ones that face the most serious housing pressures, of which North York is one, as the member full well knows.

What we are asking all municipalities to do is to work with us to decide how to meet the goals that we have stated, and the goals include having open communities with a mix of housing types in which a variety of people can meet their housing needs. One of those goals is to indicate areas within each municipality in which boarding houses will be zoned and will be appropriate, with controls but none the less available.

We are working with all municipalities to reach that goal, and, as we do that, our policy statement stands as a kind of direction to the Ontario Municipal Board while it makes its decisions in the interim as we are working with municipalities to make sure that our goals are met.

Mr. Breaugh: The minister’s land use statement is not the only thing that is out in the cold. Is she not aware that while she is dithering through all of this, making her public statements, circulating her papers, there are people like John Laskey, who lives at 25 Purbrook Court in North York, whose landlord was in fact entrapped under Operation Dirty Harry? The landlord is facing a $20,000 fine. He wants to evict all of the roomers in the building. He went around and smashed all the windows to force them out on the street.

Is the minister not aware that while she is doing all of this discussing and circulating and talking about things, people are in fact going to be thrown out on the street in the middle of a Canadian winter while she goes through this pleasant discussion exercise?

Hon. Ms. Hosek: First of all, no landlord is free to harass tenants or to evict them in that way, and if he is doing so, there are ways of meeting those concerns through the systems we currently have.

I should point out to the member that, very recently, the Ontario Municipal Board ruled that a tenant in an apartment in the Beaches, who was facing eviction because of the municipality’s --

Mr. Breaugh: Don’t tell me, tell John Laskey, who is out on the street.

Hon. Ms. Hosek: Because of that reason, the OMB decision I think is a precedent. It is available for the future. It is a statement about the impact our statements have had on the Ontario Municipal Board. It seems to me that that is a very important new direction and that it is a direct result of our concerns about housing affordability.

TEMAGAMI DISTRICT RESOURCES

Mr. Harris: I have a question for the Premier concerning the announcement made in the Temagami district situation. For a year and a half his government has been dilly-dallying with the Temagami problem. It has not been able to make a decision on what to do, and because of the inability to act, the problem has continued to get worse and worse throughout this time. The latest attempt to address the situation has been a complete failure. Not only has it outraged all the parties involved, but also it has come far too late to be of benefit to workers of William Milne and Sons lumber. The company’s loan is being called today, as we speak.

The action the Premier took on Tuesday came a year and a half too late for some 200 workers and their families. Could he tell us today what facts he knows now that we in the north did not already know a year and a half ago, and why it took him so long to make a decision?

Hon. Mr. Peterson: I reject completely my friend’s analysis of the situation. He has followed this situation. I have read about a number of the things he has said many months ago and have heard the things he says in the House, and they do not always square, let me say, or square with other members’ advice on this matter. I think one of the things he has found is that this government has been consistent throughout this matter.

We have reviewed the chronology on several occasions. We faced an extremely difficult situation with the land claim, as the member knows, and with other legal problems that developed in the area.

We had said to Milne that we would guarantee that wood supply. We contributed some money to keep Milne going. If they have problems -- as the member knows, they have an enormous bank debt -- those are commercial problems unrelated to other situations. I think we have been fair about this; we have been patient, we have discussed it with all the various interests.

He can see, I assume, from what he is telling me today, that his view is very different from that of the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. B. Rae), who would have us do other things. I can say that we have canvassed all the options. We have been as fair as a government can possibly be. We have exercised restraint, discretion and judgement. I think that the course of action we have taken is a good one.

We are not just concerned about Milne. We are concerned about Liskeard and Goulard and, indeed, the economic viability of that area. We are also concerned about parks and we have substantially increased the parks in those areas, as the member knows. But we run into these difficult issues of resource management. Everybody thinks his claim is higher and more important than someone else’s claim in this matter. This government has chosen a course of action that is sensible, not just for the Temagami area but for the entire area and for generations to come.

Mr. Harris: There is not a single, solitary fact today different from what it was a year and a half ago. They were all before the Premier at that time. The Premier has said consistently, when it comes to free trade, that the federal government is solely responsible for any negative impacts that may come about from free trade. Now, I say to him that we in the north have been able to solve our own problems for a goodly period of years.

When left alone by those who know nothing of those problems in northern Ontario, the loggers, the tourist operators, the Indians and the environmentalists who live in the north have been able to solve those problems with the Ministry of Natural Resources. All the Premier has done in the past year and a half with his interventions is to put 200 jobs in Temagami at risk.

Mr. Speaker: Question.

Mr. Harris: It is his sole responsibility, the sole responsibility of his government, and I would ask him now, given that those jobs are lost, what is he going to do three months from now, a month from now, a week from now -- indeed, tomorrow -- for those 200 families so that they can have meaningful jobs?

Hon. Mr. Peterson: I think that this government has taken a fair, balanced and reasonable approach in this matter. Milne is a particular situation, as my honourable friend has brought up. As he knows, they are into the bank for some $5 million. We came to assist them some months ago with a $750,000 guarantee. There is a company that is in some trouble. We asked our industrial --

Mr. Harris: Because of the lack of security of wood supply --

Hon. Mr. Peterson: That is nonsense, I say with great respect. I know my honourable friend wants to stand up in this House and make a variety of charges. They have always had wood, and their problems are localized. The industrial restructuring commissioner is looking at it. If the member wants to know about Milne’s problems particularly he can look at its debt structure, its capitalization, its management and its commercial problems.

They have had wood and we have told them they would have that wood. I say to my friend that his analysis of the situation is incorrect. We have been positive, we have been constructive, we have tried to work with the various interests, because we think there is a balance that can be struck between the interest groups.

We have had numerous conversations and discussions. I know the member’s view is very different from that of the Leader of the Opposition. The member is entitled to his view in this matter. He would have disregarded the native groups, he would have disregarded the environmentalists and a number of others. But that is not our approach, and I think we have shown judgement in this matter.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I will remind the members, you are wasting other members’ time.

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LABOUR-BUSINESS-GOVERNMENT RELATIONS

Mr. Tatham: My question is for the Minister of Labour. Tim Armstrong, agent general, Asia-Pacific region, speaking to Queen’s University, talked about Japanese consensus methods and their relevance to Canada. He said:

“Having observed the Japanese system for two years and listened carefully to both sides of the debate, both here in Canada and in Japan, I have concluded that there should be no impediment to Canadians practising the same sort of collaboration in the work setting and in government business relations that has given such strength to the post-war Japanese economy.”

Should we be pursuing this same course of action?

Hon. Mr. Sorbara: I want to thank the member for Oxford for the question and for notifying me that he would be raising this issue with me in the House.

Let me say first of all that Mr. Armstrong, as Ontario’s agent general in the Asia-Pacific region, brings a great deal of authority to the matters about which he spoke at Queen’s University. Indeed, he has been not only Deputy Minister of Labour but also, before that, a noted professional in the Ontario labour bar.

The question of consensus within labour-management-government relations is a very important one, and I think I would agree with Mr. Armstrong that there is a great deal we can learn from the Japanese in that regard. At the same time, I think that there is a great deal the Japanese can learn from the Canadian experience, and I think there is no one better than Mr. Armstrong to help in that regard.

Of course, there are some limitations on the government of Ontario, because we do not have at our disposal the tools that a nation, whether that nation be Canada or Japan, has to create those sorts of models; but a number of initiatives have been taken in Ontario and in Canada.

Probably the most significant is the workplace hazardous materials information system, which really was a triumph in terms of collaboration among workers, employers and government.

Mr. Tatham: Should we encourage, through our school system, a consensus approach rather than a confrontational approach in labour-management relations?

Hon. Mr. Sorbara: I want to tell my friend the member for Oxford that there are a number of initiatives going on right here in Ontario which are building this consensus approach. Indeed, within an area of responsibility that falls squarely on the shoulders of the Ministry of Labour in Ontario, health and safety, we are now working on a model that would create a forum in which consensus on health and safety regulation could be the norm rather than the exception.

USE OF CONSULTANTS

Mr. Philip: I have a question for the Minister of Community and Social Services. The minister will be aware that a mother and three children aged 10 to 15 in this province will receive approximately $849 a month in family benefits.

In the light of that information, can the minister justify the criticism of the Provincial Auditor, who has pointed out that his ministry has used consultants unnecessarily, consultants whose earnings would be more than double those of employees doing similar types of work in that same ministry and who, in fact, would have earned more in two days than a mother and three children under his plan would earn in a month? Can he justify what went wrong to have that kind of expenditure?

Hon. Mr. Sweeney: I believe the reference from the honourable member is to the comprehensive income maintenance system, or CIMS, computer system that has been installed in our ministry. The honourable member might recall that this program started back in 1980 and that the original cost projection was dramatically out of line because the consultant who was brought in at that time totally underestimated the complexity of the Ontario income maintenance system. Once a more reasonable figure had been approached, it was obviously necessary to bring other consultants in to design the system and to make it work.

The member is obviously aware of the fact that while on a per diem basis it is more expensive to use a consultant, it is less expensive than to hire people on a full-time basis. That is the decision that was made prior to 1985 and that is the decision that has been made subsequent to 1985.

Mr. Philip: One of these consultants was in fact doing his so-called daily work for seven years, which strikes me as somewhat less than a part-time, temporary day or two at a time.

The minister will be aware that on July 29, the Chairman of Management Board (Mr. Elston) signed an agreement that these consultants could be hired, but only under certain conditions, the conditions being that the consultants under contract would have defined requirements. Can the minister tell us why his ministry did not meet those requirements set down by Management Board for the hiring of these consultants?

Hon. Mr. Sweeney: As the honourable member points out, when we employ consultants like this, particularly at per diem rates, we do have to check with Management Board and get approval. In each case, if we are unable to meet the strict requirements of Management Board, we go back to Management Board and make that correction. If Management Board does not support us, then we cannot do it.

I can assure the honourable member that we do not go off into left field on our own. We get our directions. We either follow those directions or we go back and get a change in those directions. The total amount of money we are allowed to spend is determined in advance, and if we exceed that we must go back once again and demonstrate in a very clear way why we need more money.

I would point out to the honourable member that part of the difficulty which the auditor discovered was true when I first became minister three and a half years ago. I can tell him that those particular problems have all been corrected. This computer system is now working very effectively in every one of our ministry offices. It has already been installed in four municipal offices, and we have been asked by seven other municipalities to install it in their offices beginning in February.

There were some problems with the original system. It was because of the complexity of it. Those problems have been resolved. The system is working. The other difficulties the auditor found with respect to our monitoring of the municipal systems is going to be resolved, partially at least, by this computer system.

NIAGARA REGIONAL POLICE

Mr. Sterling: I have a question of the Attorney General. Yesterday, during the probe investigating allegations of wrongdoing by members of the Niagara Regional Police Force, it was revealed that six volumes of material from an internal investigation were sent by the Niagara commission to the Attorney General’s office in June 1987.

The internal investigation recommended that a number of charges be laid. Following a review of this report by your ministry officials -- and I do not know whether the Attorney General reviewed it himself -- it was determined that no charges be laid.

There have been three independent legal opinions that were obtained on this very same material, and each of the lawyers found that reasonable grounds exist to lay charges.

Will the Attorney General explain this inconsistency?

Hon. Mr. Scott: I do not know that I can explain the inconsistency. I can explain what happened. What happened was that the police brought to the crown law office the results of their investigation. The crown law staff, the most experienced staff in Canada dealing with matters of this type, reviewed it and concluded that there was insufficient evidence to warrant the laying of any charges and so advised the police.

That, of course, does not preclude the police from themselves laying the charge by appearing before a justice of the peace, but they asked our opinion and we gave it to them in the best and most thorough way we could.

Mr. Sterling: Surely if there are reasonable grounds, it is the duty of the Attorney General to lay charges. We have been left now with a situation that is one of uncertainty. We have two opinions: one opinion of the ministry officials and one of three other lawyers who examined the very same material.

In light of this, would the Attorney General consider sending this particular material to either the whole standing committee on the administration of justice or to members of the justice committee, who could meet in camera and go over that particular material so they could clear the air with regard to this investigation on both sides, both for those people who have been alleged to have done some wrongdoing and for the members of the public?

Why does the Attorney General not let the justice committee have a look at this material in camera so that we can make a determination in this Legislature whether or not there are reasonable grounds for charges being laid?

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Hon. Mr. Scott: The material is not ours; it belongs to the police. The police showed it to us. After we had given our opinion, we returned it to the police. If my friend wants to get the material, he should direct himself to the chief of police of the Niagara region because we no longer have access to this material. I suggest to him he should therefore direct himself to the chief, who has the material.

If my friend is interested in other opinions, he will be interested to hear that we also have asked other counsel to examine our opinion and have received concurring opinions that our advice to the police was, in all the circumstances, entirely sound.

Mr. Speaker: The Leader of the Opposition might revert to the first question.

AIR AMBULANCE SERVICES

Mr. B. Rae: I have some questions for the Minister of Health with respect to the crash of the air ambulance yesterday and the tragic death of the four people who were on board the flight.

Yesterday, in my response to the statement that was made by the Minister of Northern Development (Mr. Fontaine), in expressing our condolences to the families of all those involved, I pointed out to the minister that Mr. Harris, one of the four people who died, was in fact here on November 17 at the time there was a general lobby of the Legislature with respect to the adequacy of our ambulance services.

I met with him, along with others, in our caucus room, and he discussed with me very openly concerns he had about the impact of subcontracting, as a pattern across the whole air ambulance service on the provision of that service. Those comments were backed up by statements made by Mr. Shapiro. I am speaking of Jack Shapiro, who is the commissioner in the public inquiry into ambulance and emergency services.

In light of this experience, does the minister not feel the need for a broader public inquiry into the question of the practice of subcontracting out flights and subcontracting out the entire ambulance service to the private sector? Does she not think that is now a worthy question to be studied by someone independent of the government?

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: As I rise today, I think it is important to offer condolences to the family, the friends and the colleagues of the four professionals who were killed in the air ambulance crash. As the Leader of the Opposition knows, I was in Timmins yesterday to express condolences on a personal basis.

The crash is currently being investigated by the Canadian Aviation Safety Board, as well as by the local coroner. I believe it is very important that all the facts come out. I have given my assurance that the ministry will co-operate in every way it can, not only in providing the support necessary for the investigations but also in helping to get whatever information they need to make sure that the investigations, which are so important, will be completed as soon as possible.

Mr. B. Rae: Ten people have died since 1977 in crashes of air ambulances. Mr. Shapiro raised a number of questions about the adequacy of the service. Mr. Harris raised with me some very specific concerns he had about safety. Indeed, he said to me he was preparing a case under our health and safety laws. He felt he had sufficient concerns about the practices within the subcontracted services that he was speaking with me, and I might add not only with me but I know with many other people.

In light of that, I wonder if the minister would not agree with me that neither a coroner’s inquest nor an air safety investigation, both of which are required by law, really deals with a separate policy issue.

Since her own ministry has made this policy decision, going back to 1977, that all air ambulance services will be offered on a contracted basis, as is much of the other ambulance service across the province, does the minister not feel that this entire question of the adequacy of contracting out these services, as well as other ambulance services, deserves a full public inquiry with subpoena powers and clear capacity to cross-examine witnesses, to get to the bottom of whether we are in fact providing the best possible service we can?

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: I think the Leader of the Opposition will know that I have said repeatedly during my time as Minister of Health that public safety is always my number one concern and that in making decisions I will always tilt on the side of public safety, quality assurance and protection of the public; that is always our number one priority.

In this particular case, I believe the investigation being carried out by the Canadian Aviation Safety Board is a very important one. I will do whatever I can to make sure it has whatever information the ministry can provide, so we can get the facts and make sure any and all questions being asked will be answered.

I will do that so we will have confidence, as we should, that the safety and the standards we have are appropriate to give the public confidence that the safety of the professionals who operate the machines and who provide paramedic services, and the safety of the patients and the people, particularly in northern Ontario, who rely on that service, is always assured.

Mr. B. Rae: Just so the minister will know the problem -- I am sure she is aware of it -- in Pembroke, for example, contracts have changed hands over the years simply because different companies find a problem meeting the requirements or they feel they are losing too much money providing a service, so a new company comes in and provides the service.

There are real questions about management, about whether this is the soundest and safest way to run an entire system. That is what is at stake here: an entire system that has been operated in a certain way over the years in order to save money and provide the best value for money in the system. That is the way the government of the day decided to operate it, on a series of contracts awarded at different times to different companies. They come and they go and they change.

As the minister will know, this was the first flight of this particular company with respect to the transfer of patients from this area; although not, I might add, from other areas.

The question of the overall management of that system, of the adequacy of the safety and the adequacy of the general level of service being provided was also very specifically criticized on pages 61 and 62 of Mr. Shapiro’s report.

Does the minister not now think it would be worth everyone’s time and worth perhaps many people’s lives and health if we had a thorough public review by someone outside the ministry who would have the power to question the policy decisions that have been taken with respect to the management of this service?

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: The ministry has very clear safety standards that are important and that we ensure are applied consistently across the province. We have those. They have been in place for quite some time. I think the Leader of the Opposition knows that is the truth and that is reality.

It is very important, when we talk about this issue, to recognize there are several concerns. One, is the concern to make sure that all the facts come out and that we have all the information. I believe very strongly that the Canadian Aviation Safety Board, which is a body independent of government, will do that. He and I agree on the need for that kind of investigation and I believe that is appropriate.

Where we disagree is on basic philosophy. He believes that quality assurance and accountability go beyond who delivers the service to the fact that government should run everything. There, we disagree. I believe that as long as we have safety standards, quality assurance and accountability, it is important to look at how service is provided, not at necessarily who in government is providing that service.

Mr. Pope: I would like to pursue the matter of accountability that the minister has just raised. The minister has said her ministry has clear safety standards and quality assurance programs in place with respect to the air ambulance system in northern Ontario.

Would the minister confirm that her ministry is responsible for administering the air ambulance system, including the safety standards and the quality assurances, and to maintain a constant quality and availability of service at all times in northern Ontario? Is that not the responsibility and mandate of her ministry, at all times to ensure the availability and quality of the service, regardless of whether it is contracted out or not?

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Hon. Mrs. Caplan: I think the member knows service is being provided in the Timmins area. Arrangements have been made so that the air ambulance service which is so important to the people of northern Ontario is being maintained.

Mr. Pope: Can the minister confirm that Air Ontario was allowed to assign its air ambulance service contract to Voyageur Airways and that the Ministry of Health assumed no role for the transition period, to maintain the quality and availability of service in the transition time between the removal of Air Ontario from the contract providing the service until the time Voyageur Airways assumed that service?

Can the minister confirm there was less than half the normal committed personnel in the transition period to deliver this service, that the dedicated aircraft could not be used because the personnel did not have the available certification to operate the jet aircraft that were sitting in the hangars in Timmins and were therefore using replacement propeller-driven aircraft, and that these pilots were not used to landing on airstrips in this region in northern Ontario? Is the minister not responsible for that kind of transition period?

Mr. Speaker: Order. It seems there are quite a number of questions there.

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: The ministry has a contract with Voyageur. Voyageur has provided charter air ambulance services for a number of years; in fact, it has provided services to the Ministry of Health since 1977. The member will know that contracts change from time to time, but that the standards and requirements of the contracts do not, and there is a valid contract between the ministry and Voyageur.

The questions he raises are all very good questions that should be answered and responded to. I believe the Canadian Aviation Safety Board will be addressing all of those issues as they relate specifically to this unfortunate and tragic incident. I want him to know that I believe it is very important the facts come out.

Mr. Pope: We agree with the Minister of Health that all the facts should come out. She knows very well that the air safety investigation will delve exclusively into the cause of the crash, and not into the surrounding circumstances of the obligation of the Ministry of Health to maintain quality and availability of service to residents of northern Ontario, and to have a smooth transition from one operator to another that maintains those quality standards.

The minister will now know from her conversations in Timmins yesterday that four hours before his death, Ian Harris contacted Kevin Vincent, the news director of a local television station, and made very specific allegations about what was happening that very day with respect to this service in the city of Timmins. The minister knows this. The minister has heard the two opposition parties on this matter.

Will she now have a full and complete public inquiry over and above the coroner’s inquiry and over and above the air safety inquiry? Will she have a full public inquiry into this accident and the ministry’s handling of this transition period and the assignment of this contract from Air Ontario to Voyageur Airways? If it is found that ministry staff --

Mr. Speaker: Minister.

Mr. Pope: -- were negligent in not supervising this transition, will she resign because that is what she is responsible for?

Mr. Speaker: Order; minister.

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: This is a very difficult time for the families, friends and colleagues of the four people who were killed; one a very experienced pilot. I know the allegations the member is making will cause undue pain to that family. I feel for them because I believe the investigation that is underway is extremely appropriate and that all of those questions and concerns will be answered and answered appropriately.

I call upon him, during this very difficult time, to show some sensitivity for those families of professional people who I believe will be hurt by the kinds of unfounded allegations that may be brought forward at this difficult time.

METROPOLITAN TORONTO CONVENTION CENTRE

Mr. Callahan: My question is to the Minister of Tourism and Recreation.

Mr. Wildman: He’s back.

Mr. B. Rae: The member looks like he has had a hard time --

Mr. Callahan: Thank you. I survived Hurricane Keith. I did not realize --

Mr. Speaker: And the question is to which minister?

Mr. Callahan: It is to the Minister of Tourism and Recreation, Mr. Speaker. I had not realized the Metropolitan Toronto Convention Centre was under our aegis until I was going through the estimates. I noticed in the estimates that there were certain moneys allocated to the Metro convention centre. I also noticed in reading the fine newspapers of this province that the Metro convention centre was doing very well. I would like to know, if the newspapers are correct and the convention centre is doing well, why we allocated money to the Metro convention centre.

Hon. Mr. O’Neil: May I first say to the member for Brampton South that the Metropolitan Toronto Convention Centre is very profitable for the province. The amount the member talks about in the 1988-89 estimates relates to government initiatives around the Toronto Economic Summit, which were funded through the centre. Part was for the temporary renovations for the leaders’ summit meeting room and the balance was for rental of the centre for the summit.

I would like to add that the centre’s facilities were widely acclaimed for how well they served both the leaders and the media. This was the first summit location able to accommodate the summit conference and the full media facilities under the same roof. I might also say that I was just looking through my newspaper clippings and on this particular article the headlines read, “Toronto Centre Packs in Delegates,” and, “Gaining Reputation as North American Jewel.”

The exact figures of the Metropolitan Toronto Convention and Visitors Association state that $460 million was spent by 540,000 convention delegates attending 743 meetings in Toronto.

Mr. Speaker: Thank you. I do not know if that will bring forth a supplementary. No? Oh; the minister has already answered the supplementary; fine.

UNDERSERVICED AREA PROGRAM

Mr. Hampton: My question is for the Minister of Health. In reviewing the statistics for the underserviced area program, a program the minister seems to be very proud of, I note that in December 1987 there were 17 communities in northern Ontario that were looking for a doctor. They were still looking in March 1988 and they are still looking today, in December 1988, for a doctor for their community. There are 17 of them and they go from the extreme northwest to the extreme northeast and everything in the middle.

With these kinds of statistics, will the minister agree now that more is needed than just the underserviced area program in terms of getting enough doctors to northern Ontario and keeping them there to do the job?

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: In fact, we have spent quite a bit of time during estimates discussing the issue. While we recognize there is sufficient medical physician manpower in the province, we have geographic difficulties, distribution difficulties, particularly through the north and in rural communities.

But we know that the underserviced area program has been making a significant impact in the north. We know there has been a 17 per cent increase in the number of personnel, physicians particularly, working in the north. There has been an increase in the number of bursaries. In fact, more than 800 doctors, dentists and other health care professionals work in 218 designated underserviced areas.

Mr. Hampton: I keep asking the question. I ask it in estimates and I ask it here so that we can perhaps get an answer. The minister can find all kinds of statistics that indicate, yes, doctors go north. They may stay there for a year; they may stay there for 18 months, and then they leave. The fact of the matter is that these communities have been looking for a year. In fact, there are more communities now, such as Geraldton and Dryden, that do not need just one doctor, do not need two additional doctors, but need three or four. The situation in those communities is getting worse, not better.

What does the minister plan to do? She has been given all kinds of recommendations, by the Ontario Medical Association and by the deans of the medical schools, on how she can help the situation. What, in addition to the underserviced area program, is she going to do to help these communities with basic health care?

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Hon. Mrs. Caplan: I think the member knows my concern for appropriate future manpower planning so that we can meet the needs of northern and rural Ontario specifically. That was the reason that we established the northern manpower planning committee, which I announced recently in Sudbury, so that we could identify areas of priority.

He should know as well that discussions are ongoing now with the deans of the faculties of medicine to discuss training opportunities throughout the north, so that young physicians will seek opportunities in the north after they have had an opportunity to gain experience through their training programs. I am very optimistic that the co-operation that we will receive from the schools of medicine will result in training for the needs of Ontario in the future.

PROPOSED HOSPITAL MERGER

Mr. Eves: I also have a question for the Minister of Health. On Tuesday of this week she responded to a question about the proposed merger between Wellesley Hospital and Sunnybrook Medical Centre, that she was not unduly concerned about a reduction of acute care beds because, to quote her, “We have to look at innovative and creative ways of maintaining and enhancing the levels of service for the people of this province.”

I want to make sure that I have this clear. Would she try to answer the question, for a change? Is the minister telling us that spending $365 million of the taxpayers’ money to eliminate over 200 acute care beds in Metropolitan Toronto is, in her opinion, an innovative and creative way of maintaining and enhancing the health care system for the people of Ontario?

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: The proposal that the member refers to is a proposal from two hospitals and the University of Toronto, which have told me that they believe that the sum of the merger of the two in a centre of excellence will in fact enhance service delivery. We are reviewing that proposal.

The very fact that the member is asking the question he is asking displays a complete lack of understanding of how health care has changed in the past and will change in the form.

Mr. Eves: I do not need any lectures from the Minister of Health. Maybe she could start spending some time with the people who deliver health care services in Ontario.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: You have no supplementary?

Mr. Eves: I have a supplementary. If the seals are through feeding, maybe I could ask it.

Mr. Speaker: Place your supplementary.

Mr. Eves: The Minister of Health told us on Tuesday, and she has told us again today, that new technologies mean that “beds are no longer the benchmark,” to quote her, of the health care system. Nobody suggested they were the benchmark. However, she told us on May 5, 1988: “In 1985, with some of the technological advances, the planners were telling us we could expect a decline in the number of procedures performed. In fact, the opposite has occurred.”

There is an increase in demand, a demand for more jobs. That was with respect to cardiovascular surgery. She responded to that demand. After we asked questions for months in the House, in June she gave us more beds. Now she is telling us that new technologies mean that we need fewer beds and we should spend almost $400 million of the taxpayers’ money to do so.

Mr. Speaker: Do you have a question?

Mr. Eves: Let me get this straight. Is that what the minister is doing?

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: I think it is important that the member get it straight, because we are talking about very specialized cardiac services in tertiary care centres which are very appropriate and can be delivered only on an inpatient basis. The practice of medicine has changed. Technologies are now letting us do things like cataract surgery, 70 per cent of which is now done on an outpatient basis. Before, you needed one person and one bed for five days; now you can provide the service to five people in one day on an outpatient basis. Lithotripsy, for which you used to have to be in hospital for 14 to 20 days, is now being done on an outpatient basis.

Surely it makes sense, as the experts and the planners are telling me, to identify what the hospitals do best and require inpatient care and allow them to do that and take the pressure off them by allowing for the reallocation of resources from inpatient to outpatient, to enhance care where technology is allowing us to provide services in alternative ways.

I agree. The member should learn and understand what is happening, because he is out of touch.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Once again, I am just waiting while you are wasting time. It will soon be over. We will just wait.

LITERACY PROGRAMS

Mr. Owen: I have a question for the Minister of Correctional Services. During the years I was defending people charged with criminal matters, I noticed time and again that the accused had difficulties with being articulate, reading and writing, the very basic skills. Time and again I realized that the hostility they showed towards society was rooted somewhat in this lack of education.

I know the minister has introduced literacy program in our jails and institutions looking after incarceration. I wonder if he could update us as to how extensive the program is and what kind of moneys are being expended in this direction.

Hon. Mr. Ramsay: The member is quite right. We really do find in surveys of people under our supervision that, from time to time, up to 40 per cent of the people under our care are functionally illiterate, meaning unable to read at a grade 9 level.

We have many delivery systems in which we afford programs to those under our care. The most popular one, and the one we are very proud of, is the individual contracts we enter into with local boards of education. This funding is supplied by the Minister of Education (Mr. Ward), for which we are very grateful. In total, we spend $3.4 million on education, and that does not include the cost of the money provided by the ministry in those local programs.

PETITIONS

ANIMALS FOR RESEARCH

Mr. Wildman: I have a petition signed by approximately 20,000 residents of Ontario:

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

“Each year, thousands of animals suffer and die slow, painful deaths in laboratory tests of cosmetics and household products.

“These tests are cruel and not required by any provincial or federal law.

“Safe alternative methods of testing such products do exist; methods that do not involve the use of animals, but do provide reliable results.

“Therefore, we, the undersigned, beg leave to petition the parliament of Ontario to pass into law a bill prohibiting the use of animals in cosmetic and product testing.”

NATUROPATHY

Mr. Ballinger: I have a petition:

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

“We petition the Ontario Legislature to call on the government to introduce legislation that would guarantee naturopaths the right to practise their art and science to the fullest without prejudice or harassment.”

It is signed by 50 residents.

SENIOR CITIZENS’ APARTMENTS

Mr. Harris: I am here today with the right petition. The last thing I wanted to do was to introduce the same petition twice. I do have the right one.

“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:

“Whereas in 1973, the Ontario Housing Corp. constructed a senior citizen complex, consisting of a senior citizen apartment building situated at 135 Worthington Street West, in the city of North Bay, and whereas it has come to our attention that senior citizen apartments have been rented to non-seniors, be it resolved that we the undersigned support the establishment of a regulation whereby senior citizen apartments be made available to seniors only.”

It is signed by a goodly number of very concerned senior citizens from this building. I, too, have affixed my signature to this petition.

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REPORT BY COMMITTEE

STANDING COMMITTEE ON THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY

Mr. Epp from the standing committee on the Legislative Assembly reported the following resolution:

That supply in the following amount and to defray the expenses of the Office of the Assembly be granted to Her Majesty for the fiscal year ending March 31, 1989:

Office of the Assembly:

Office of the Assembly program, $79,674,100.

MOTION

PRIVATE MEMBERS’ PUBLIC BUSINESS

Hon. Mr. Conway moves that Mr. Keyes and Mr. Offer, and Mr. Poirier and Mr. McGuigan, exchange places respectively in the order of precedence for private members’ public business and that, notwithstanding standing order 71(h), the requirement for notice be waived with respect to ballot item 49.

Motion agreed to.

ORDERS OF THE DAY

House in committee of supply.

ESTIMATES, MINISTRY OF HEALTH (CONTINUED)

Mr. D. S. Cooke: I would like to ask the minister a couple of questions, if I could get her to take her seat. She could listen when she is standing up, but I do not expect her to listen and walk and stand up at the same time.

I would like to ask the minister to make some comments about the Provincial Auditor’s report, since she was not in the House yesterday, she was up north, and the serious comments that were made in the auditor’s report about complaints about hospitals, patient complaints and the lack of adequate response.

I guess the first question I would like to ask is: Does the minister agree with the comments of the auditor on page 101 of the report, where he says, “Clearly, the Minister of Health has the ultimate responsibility for the operations of hospitals, including the quality of care provided and the cost-effectiveness of their administration”?

If, in fact, the minister agrees with that statement, and I am specifically referring to “the ultimate responsibility for the operations of hospitals, including quality of care,” why do she and her ministry constantly respond to patients and to anyone else who complains on their behalf about the quality of care that they should direct their complaints to the local boards of hospitals and that the ministry has no role in terms of investigating complaints directed at hospitals?

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: In fact, the member raises a very good question, and I think it bears some discussion of how our system works, how the hospitals operate, the responsibility of the boards and also the role of the self-governing professions in this province, because I think it is very important for everyone to understand how many partners there are, how this works and what the ultimate responsibility of the minister is.

One of the things I have said on a number of occasions is that I believe that accountability and quality assurance are extremely important, and if I had to set my priorities, my priorities are always, as I have said, public safety, accountability and quality assurance.

The auditor makes a very good point when he says that the Minister of Health has ultimate responsibility. That ultimate responsibility is reflected in the fact that where the minister has a concern about patient care, quality of care, management of the hospitals or governance of the hospitals, the powers of the Public Hospitals Act permit the minister -- as I did this past year, in fact -- to send in an investigator under the Public Hospitals Act to report to the minister the actual situation as it relates to patient care, management and administration of the hospital and governance issues.

Upon receipt of the investigator’s report, where the minister feels that the concerns are justified, then under that act the minister can send in a supervisor, thank the board for their service and dismiss them, appoint an interim board and actually have the supervisor run that facility. Thus, the powers under the Public Hospitals Act are very clear.

The member also raises the question of quality assurance. When we talk about the Independent Health Facilities Act -- and I say that we want the same level of quality assurance in an independent health facility as we presently have in a hospital -- it is very important to note that quality assurance means access to patients’ files on a peer review basis to make sure that there is quality assurance.

There are quality assurance mechanisms set up in hospitals today that are very sophisticated, as well as utilization review committees. When the minister sends in an investigator and inspector under the Public Hospitals Act, access to that information is made available so that there can be quality insurance. Accountability under that act is very, very clear and the powers are very broad.

The minister has similar powers under the Nursing Homes Act. When there is a concern about patient quality, ministry investigators, inspectors and assessors can go into the nursing home and review the charts to make sure that quality and appropriate care levels for patients are being provided. That is the reason why, when we receive a patient complaint, the first thing the ministry does is allow the hospital the opportunity to respond to that complaint. I would tell the members that I take the Provincial Auditor’s comments very seriously and believe that we have to do a better job in monitoring the results of those investigations to determine that the patients are satisfied with the response from the hospital and that the complaint has been addressed.

Many of the complaints that are mentioned in the auditor’s report relate to the care provided by the professionals. That is a very different case. The way the professions are governed in this province is by self-regulation. Each of the recognized professions has its own disciplinary college: the physicians have the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario, the nurses have the College of Nurses of Ontario, the pharmacists have the Ontario College of Pharmacists and so on.

Once I receive the recommendations from Alan Schwartz, a lawyer appointed by the previous government from five yews ago, we will have an opportunity to look at all of the professions and the several pieces of legislation that are in place today. The recommendations that Mr. Schwartz will be bringing forward will have a significant impact on how the professions govern themselves, what accountability government requires of the professions, and the issues around patient complaints will be raised once again in that forum.

The question that is raised is a very good one, because it happens that I do get letters from patients complaining or having concerns about the care they have received from a professional. At the present time, as minister I must refer all of those complaints on a referral basis to the college of the professional against whom the complaint has been identified. Then the college conducts its investigation, because it is the disciplinary body. The minister has no power whatever to interfere with that process.

There is in place the Health Disciplines Board. Where a patient is not satisfied with the response from the college, he or she can appeal to that board, which is separate and autonomous from the ministry. I think it is very important that people understand the degree of self-regulation and the empowerment of the profession in giving to them the responsibility for protection of the public.

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In my discussions with Mr. Schwartz, I told him that what I would be looking for from him in his report were recommendations on how we could make sure of protection of the public and on how quality assurance could be enhanced and to discuss the future role of the Health Disciplines Board, which is a body of public representatives, not of professionals. They are a lay board as opposed to the professional governing bodies.

I take very seriously all the recommendations of the Provincial Auditor, particularly those which relate to accountability and to a complaint process for patients, and I look forward to having the opportunity in this House to discuss at length the alternatives that we, as legislators, have to ensure the highest level of both public accountability and protection of the public in any piece of legislation which is brought forward.

Mr. D. S. Cooke: Some of what the minister said I have heard many times before and some of what the minister said is simply inaccurate. For the minister to say that when a patient complains about either the conditions in a particular hospital or the quality of care in a particular hospital, it is dealt with in a similar way to complaints from nursing homes is simply nonsense. There are not inspectors who go around and investigate each complaint.

If I file with her ministry a complaint about a nursing home, I know that the inspection branch is going to go out and I am going to get a report from that inspection. If I file a complaint about a hospital, I know that I am going to get back from her a letter saying that she has sent my complaint off to the board and that I am going to have the people I am complaining about responding to my complaint about their institution, which is simply not adequate.

I think what the auditor is saying, when he talks about 2,600 public complaints in 1986-87, is that there should be some system in place that holds the hospitals more accountable, that ultimately her ministry has the responsibility and that therefore she has to accept some of that responsibility to hold the hospital boards accountable.

I agree that with our system of self-governing professions there is a system of complaining. I think the minister, to be fair, would also understand -- certainly the government House leader when he was in opposition used to always complain -- about the system of complaints against doctors, lawyers and other professions. Whenever there was any amendment to the Health Disciplines Act, he was good for speaking for at least an hour to an hour and a half, and the current Treasurer (Mr. R. F. Nixon), if we mentioned lawyers, was good for three or four hours.

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: Our House leader?

Mr. D. S. Cooke: Your present House leader and the Treasurer as well.

There has to be a new system --

Hon. Mr. Conway: You are not mixing up the Treasurer and Conway with lawyers, are you?

Mr. D. S. Cooke: Well, lawyers and doctors are all the same when it comes to dealing with complaints.

The minister should understand that there has to be a new system put in place to deal with complaints against professions. Specifically on that, I would like the minister to tell us today how much money has been spent to date on Alan Schwartz and his committee reviewing the health professions legislation, which was supposed to take a relatively short period of time and has been going on now for several years. Could the minister at least give us the most recent figure that she has of how much money has been spent on this process and paid directly to Alan Schwartz?

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: I would be pleased to get the specifics for the member and present them to him. I do not have them at my fingertips at this time, as far as the actual cumulative number is concerned, except to say that the review has been going on for some five years. I am hoping to have a report, which will be in the form of draft legislation, from Mr. Schwartz before the end of this year or, at the latest, early in the next year since it is already December 1. Time sure flies.

The review has been going on for some five years and the recommendations should be in. I have made a commitment to all the groups that will be named in his recommendations that I will meet with them prior to making any comment on his recommendations, to make sure that -- given the fact that I have been Minister of Health for the last 14 months -- they will feel they have been listened to. Then I expect that the legislation will be available for the scrutiny of the House on an individual basis while I am meeting with the groups, and I know that it will result in much discussion in these chambers.

The member did raise an important part of this as well, and I think it is important that we take the opportunity to clarify it. I did not say that the nursing home legislation and the public hospital legislation were the same. In fact, what I said was that they were very different. I said that there are processes for inspection under both acts by the ministry, but they are different processes.

He is quite correct: The nursing home legislation has ministry officials actively inspecting and responding to complaints, usually on a peer review basis. We make sure that the investigators, assessors and inspectors whom we send in under the Nursing Homes Act are very familiar with patient care and quality-of-care requirements. The Public Hospitals Act is very different.

There is a reason for its being very different. The Public Hospitals Act has a medical advisory committee. It also has a very sophisticated quality assurance mechanism built into the hospital so that complaints and concerns which go to the boards that are accountable for the management of that hospital, not only for funds and administration but also for the committees that are established, have the opportunity, when a complaint comes in, to respond first.

I want to tell the member, as I have said before, that the ministry is working right now to improve its system of tracking and monitoring patient complaints so that we can be assured that those complaints have been responded to appropriately. If the minister and the ministry have concerns about quality assurance in a public hospital, we can, and as the member knows I did, this year, send an inspector into a public hospital who then reported back on the state of the quality of care, management, administration and governance issues. So I think it is important that we differentiate and understand that different pieces of legislation in the province give the minister different powers for responding to quality of care, protection of the public and accountability issues.

Also, I have made a commitment in this House and outside that we will be opening up the Public Hospitals Act. It is an act which is 40 years old. We know that much has transpired in the last 40 years and that the act is seriously out of date. We have been through the regulations, making changes. There was recently quite a large change to regulation 865 which, after years of consultation, was amended. They were management regulations. We are now consulting on regulations which will give nurses a greater say in resource allocation and participation on hospital committees, to respond to the changing role of nurses and the importance of having them participate as important members of the health care team, and being involved in management and resource allocation within hospitals.

We also want to be very clear about our regulations and as a result of the conjoint review of the 23 hospitals which had repeated deficits -- the Provincial Auditor’s recommendations, in fact, were very similar to the recommendations of the conjoint review. Actually, the auditor, I believe, inspected prior to the conjoint review. Their conclusions highlight the need for change in our funding procedures and being able to be clear to our public hospitals, not only about funding but also about our procedures and guidelines, our regulations and requirements of the board in the way of governance and all aspects of management in the hospitals.

The member would know that we are working with the Ontario Hospital Association cooperatively. We are working with the hospitals in this province, not only to develop a new funding formula -- we are working on an interim formula at this time, as we move to a fair and appropriate funding of hospitals -- but also we are consulting with them right now for some changes in the regulations under the Public Hospitals Act to require the kind of accountability and change that we can accomplish by regulation until such time as we are prepared to proceed with new public hospitals legislation.

I am hoping we will see that new legislation begin to proceed through the legislative process, hopefully within a year, but we know how important it is that we have consultation and input during the drafting of new legislation.

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There was one other point that the auditor made that I think bears discussion and that I would like to comment on because I agree with him. I am moving now to make sure that the hospital foundations will be required to submit audited financial statements annually and that the ministry will take further steps, as appropriate, to recover any funds that were inappropriately transferred.

I believe that the operating funds, which are patient care dollars, must be used for the purposes intended. As the member knows, the ministry had a requirement that hospitals receive ministry approval prior to any transfer of funds to foundations. I think he knows, and the other members of the House know, how strongly I feel about the hospitals receiving approval prior to starting new programs, adding new staff or transferring funds.

I want the member to know that I am quite satisfied by the level of co-operation, not only between the ministry and the Ontario Hospital Association but also between the ministry and the individual hospitals of this province. I think we are making real progress in trying to work together to resolve the many issues and the many challenges that face us.

I believe it is important that we have a level of accountability from our public hospitals, from their boards and trustees, who work on a volunteer basis within their community. I have great confidence that they wish to be as accountable as the Provincial Auditor believes they should be and that these issues will be able to be resolved.

As well, we are reviewing specific examples cited in the Provincial Auditor’s report, and I want to assure the member that we will proceed on any cases which we find require additional attention. I hope that answers his questions on the auditor’s report, but if he has any others I am always pleased to respond.

I have just received a note from ministry officials on the member’s question regarding the health professions legislation review under Alan Schwartz. To the end of October, the cost of this five-year task force is $1,945,815.99, a considerable amount of money, almost $2 million. I believe this represents five years of very important work, the results of which I am hoping to have very soon. I hope these will then begin a process of discussion with the professions which will result in greater public accountability, greater quality assurance, and also an acknowledgement of how the professions have changed. Not only has the practice of medicine changed, but in fact the professions have changed.

We have seen new professions emerge. We have seen great changes in the professions in this province, and I am hopeful that the discussions, which I believe will be very productive both in and outside the Legislature, will lead us to an era where we acknowledge that, as I have said in my speeches, consumers will have an understanding of how our professions govern themselves through self-regulation and a greater awareness of the role of the professions and the greater choices that are available to us among the professions. I believe that the work that has been done for the past five years will prove to be very valuable.

Mr. D. S. Cooke: The way the minister responds -- I know she likes to eat away at the clock -- she probably should have gone to law school, because she can speak as long as a professor at a university or as long as a lawyer.

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: But I say such important things.

Mr. D. S. Cooke: Eating away at the clock is what the minister is attempting to do. Anyway, I have one more question and then I am going to maintain my sanity and leave the chamber.

Will the minister be filing with the Legislature, the cost of the Schwartz committee?

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: I just read it out.

Mr. D. S. Cooke: Sorry?

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: You sit down and I will do it again.

Mr. D. S. Cooke: Okay. Just the one thing, the amount.

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: On numerous occasions I rise in the House and I say things like, “You don’t listen.” I just finished repeating for the member that I had the figures from very able ministry staff. I am pleased to read them into the record again. I will read them again if he will listen. All right?

As of the end of October, the total amount spent on the five years of Mr. Schwartz’s health professions legislation review is $1,945,815.99. That represents almost five years of work and almost $2 million, a very significant sum of money for what I hope will be an important report which will receive the attention of this Legislature and give us an opportunity to discuss many of the issues that we are discussing now in estimates.

Before the member stands up, I would like to say just one thing. There are three opportunities for questions in this Legislature and in these chambers. There is the opportunity in question period where Mr. Speaker is very firm about how short our answers have to be. There is the opportunity in estimates to look in depth at many of the issues and questions that members raise. There is the opportunity when we table legislation in the House and go through the legislative process, on second reading, on third reading and at committee hearings, to look at proposals and changes in a further in-depth way.

I am a little concerned at the suggestion that estimates is not the forum for answering questions in an in-depth way, because I believe it is. I am happy to answer the questions. I am quite frustrated that over the course of the past number of hours on Health estimates a lot of questions have been raised. I have the questions and I have the answers. I am prepared to answer the questions today and would ask the members of the opposition to give me an opportunity to do that without suggesting in some way that it is inappropriate for these responses to questions to be detailed.

Mr. D. S. Cooke: Perhaps what the minister should do is table her notes. They could be printed in Hansard in whatever way she wants and we could read them.

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: That’s an order paper question. Now there’s a fourth way. I will discuss order paper questions.

Mr. D. S. Cooke: Order paper questions? We never get them answered at all.

I would like to ask the minister one final question. I am amazed at the $2 million that has been spent on this review, which was supposed to take a much shorter period of time. I think that Mr. Schwartz, between the select committee on Ontario Hydro affairs a few years ago and this little project that he has taken on on behalf of this government, started by the previous government, certainly has done extremely well by the taxpayers of Ontario. I am not questioning his competence and his ability. But it has taken much longer than it should have and is much more expensive than it need be.

I do have a suggestion for the minister that I would ask her to seriously consider. When the final report comes in, I think she has to admit that there has been one serious group of people who have been neglected by this process, and that is the consumers of this province. The professions have been involved on a regular basis, through consultation, feedback and groupings in order to negotiate with one another and so forth, and while they are not all satisfied, they certainly have been involved.

Generally speaking, consumers have not been involved. I want to suggest to the minister that what should happen is that when there is draft legislation, that legislation should then be brought back to the Legislature and introduced in the form of a green paper, as was done with the children’s legislation a few years ago by the then Minister of Community and Social Services, Frank Drea. That green paper was sent out for public hearings and consultation, with another report by a legislative committee given to the minister, and then final legislation was brought in for first, second and third reading.

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That would give an opportunity for members of the Legislature to have involvement and certainly would give an opportunity for consumers to become involved before the legislation was introduced as a matter of principle from the government. Instead, it would be sent out for consultation. I think that would be a much better process.

I think it also would be very helpful to members of the Legislature if, instead of introducing legislation which the government has decided on, draft legislation was sent out in a green paper. It would give members of the Legislature, who have also, obviously, been shut out of this process up until now, an opportunity to become familiar with it and an opportunity, through legislative hearings, to become familiar with the many, many issues that are going to arise out of this legislation, which will take a fair amount of time to deal with in committee.

I think it would actually speed up the process but would offer another avenue for consultation with the consumers and a role for the members of the Legislature, while the government would not be locked into a specific piece of legislation. We could instead have a report back to the minister, as we did with the children’s legislation a few years ago with Frank Drea, as I say. I would ask the minister to consider that process.

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: I think it might be important to take just a couple of minutes on some of the history of this very important review process.

The Schwartz health professions legislation review was begun some five years ago by the previous government. Two years ago -- or actually, I believe, when my colleague the former Minister of Health sought advice from the professions on the value of the work that was being done by Mr. Schwartz -- there was a response from the professions that the work that was being done was important, was valuable and should continue. We made the decision to ask Mr. Schwartz to continue and to complete his work.

When I became minister some 14 months ago, I met with him and asked him when he felt that his recommendations would be complete. In fact, he has informed me that he is hopeful to have them to me by the end of this year. It is now December 1 and I expect that they will be available very shortly.

In fact, there was some consumer involvement in the process, although I would agree with the member opposite that the primary focus was discussions with the professions involved, and certainly there were some decisions made as the process went through its course. I have been told by the professions that this was a good process. They are very supportive of the process itself.

I understand that consumers were consulted: organizations and associations, the Ombudsman and consumer associations. Mr. Schwartz spoke with some individuals, but certainly not in a broad context; it was limited. Some patients’ rights groups were consulted as well for their input.

Since what we are going to be receiving in the form of a report is quite unusual -- it will be presented in the form of draft legislation -- the commitment that I have made to the professions that are going to be included in the legislation is that I will receive the draft legislation and I will not comment on it until I have spoken with all of those professional organizations. However, what I will do, in fact is that I will encourage circulation and discussion in numerous forms. Perhaps some groups will want to invite Mr. Schwartz to come and talk about it as I am discussing that with the professions.

I think it is important then to talk about how the legislative process begins, because there are many people in the province who do not understand that process. In fact, the process in the House, as the member knows, is the tabling of legislation for first reading. You then have second reading. It can go to full committee for discussions, if members wish, and then back for third reading.

I will take very seriously the suggestion from the member as I meet with all of those professional groups. I will seek their advice as well, because I believe this will be a very important change which will be proposed in this province. It is important that consumers and the people of this province understand what self-regulation is, what the proposals are that are being made, so that they be as involved as they can be. I believe very strongly in empowerment of the individual and empowerment of the community.

I have said here in this House that as we work to achieve our vision of health care -- which is equity and access to effective, quality health care, the very best that we can afford, as close to home as possible -- the tests for achieving that vision must always be quality of care, quality of life, dignity of the individual and empowerment of the individual and of communities, by giving them information so that they can participate more fully in making decisions about their own health, and understanding the role of the professions, how they are governed and how they discipline themselves. The regulatory process, I think, is very important.

I see the conclusion of this five-year process by Mr. Schwartz as being very, very significant. I intend to make sure that all of the recommendations, in the form of draft legislation, are published and available. I will seek comment. I want to give the member my assurance on that matter.

Mr. D. S. Cooke: All I was suggesting is that if the minister looks at the process that was followed with the children’s legislation a few years ago, there is another process. I understand that bills are introduced for first reading and then debated in this place on second reading. That is the normal process, but there are other ways of doing it.

His report could be reviewed by the ministry then tabled in the House and referred out to the standing committee on social development, so that the draft legislation could be reviewed before the minister locks herself into a particular position and so that members of the Legislature could become familiar with the process and have input and report back to her, which I think would be appropriate.

This is going to be a major change. This is a very important piece of legislation. It is going to be a very complex piece of legislation. It is going to be a piece of legislation that I would not want to sit on committee and listen to for the next number of months, because it is going to be a very difficult piece of legislation as well.

But if she wants members to understand it and be involved in it and offer an opportunity to the public to become involved more openly in the process than they have with the $2-million Schwartz commission, then she might be able to do that by using that draft legislation and referring it out to committee as a beginning step.

Then, when the report is written, the minister can either reject or accept some of the recommendations from the committee and bring in her bill for first, second and third reading and we can proceed with a piece of legislation which is developed more in a consensus than on a partisan line, which really is not applicable to this type of legislation. That is all I am suggesting.

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: I have said to the member that I am certainly willing to consider and to discuss his point of view with the professions and with the interested groups with whom I will be meeting. I would certainly consider his request.

I think it might be a good idea at this time, since I know that the people of the province do watch estimates on television -- although some of us who sit through it wonder if they sit through all of the hours and hours of estimates, but I know many do find it interesting -- since we are talking about the health professions legislation review, it might be helpful to place on the record the list of the professions that will be covered by Mr. Schwartz’s legislation, and also the criteria that were established through the review process for self-regulation.

The list of professions to be regulated is as follows: audiologists, chiropodists, chiropractors, dental hygienists, dental technicians, dentists, denture therapists, dieticians, massage therapists, medical laboratory technologists, midwives, nurses, nursing assistants, occupational therapists, ophthalmolic dispensers, optometrists, osteopaths, pharmacists, physicians, physiotherapists, podiatrists, psychologists, radialogical technicians, respiratory technologists and speech language pathologists.

Of those, there are some that are not currently regulated. They are the audiologists, the dieticians, the medical laboratory technologists, midwives, occupational therapists, respiratory technologists and speech language pathologists. This shows just how much the professions have changed, with the emergence of new professions, when we see this list of professions to be regulated. It will be, I believe, a cumbersome piece of legislation as we look at all these different acts that are going to be proposed.

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The criteria for self-regulation are something else that I think is important to have on the record since this was a five-year process that Mr. Schwartz undertook. At one point, the criteria were established. There were nine points that were agreed to almost unanimously by the professions and the public that these were good criteria for self-regulation. I think it would be helpful to put them on the record right now.

The criteria for self-regulation under the health professions legislative review are as follows: (1) relevance to the Minister of Health, (2) risk of harm to patients, (3) the fact that the profession was not already supervised by regulated practitioners, (4) no alternative regulatory mechanism, (5) body of knowledge, (6) diploma or degree from recognized Canadian institution, (7) leadership’s ability to favour the public interest -- and let me underline that one, (8) likelihood of compliance by the self-regulated, and (9) sufficiency of membership size and willingness to contribute to the self-regulatory process.

I think these criteria are very appropriate. They are criteria against which all will be judged. The reason I mentioned item 7, which refers to public interest, is that I agree with the member for Windsor-Riverside (Mr. D. S. Cooke) and with all members of this House who acknowledge that it is the role of government to ensure public accountability, to ensure quality assurance, and that any changes to how professions are governed and regulated in this province must meet the public interest test.

Just as every member here is elected by the public, it is our role to speak for the public. We are the ones in this Legislature who act in the public interest. We are the ones who make sure that our legislation responds to that public interest test, to the accountability of public funds and to the quality assurance that our public and the people who send us to this Legislature expect from us.

I think it is important, through this estimates process, to put on the record that I consider that my role as Minister of Health is to at all times ensure the public interest, ensure safety of the public and ensure quality assurance and accountability of the resources which are given to the Ministry of Health. One of the things I have said is that what we have in place is very good and we should have confidence in that. But one of the reasons it is so good is that we are always trying to improve it. To have an opportunity in estimates to discuss many of those issues facing health care and affecting this province, and answer specifically the questions that are raised, is something which I believe is one of the finest elements of our democratic process.

I talked about three opportunities to answer questions. In fact, there are four. The fourth one is the opportunity for members to place questions in Orders and Notices. I know the frustration is often there that these are not answered as quickly as members would like. That is because the questions are usually quite complicated and require quite a bit of ministry staff time to compile the data.

Often it is very expensive to do that, but I think it is important that the public knows this is the time for ultimate public accountability for the spending estimates of the ministries and the government. I very much support this process and the opportunity to stand in my place and discuss the fact that we are spending $12.7 billion on health care, slightly more than one third of the total provincial budget, that we have a significant commitment to effective, quality health care through the resources that the taxpayers of this province commit to it through their taxes.

I am pleased to begin now to answer some of those questions that were raised by the member for Parry Sound (Mr. Eves), although I know that some of the individual members of the House had additional questions that they wanted to put on the record. I would be willing to yield to allow them to place their questions so that their constituents will know that the questions have been asked, understanding that if that happens I will not have all of the time to answer in detail but will make the commitment that, as always, if members communicate with me on an individual basis, whether they do it through questions in Orders and Notices, through letters to my office, during question period time, I am always very pleased to answer their questions as fully as I may.

Mr. Eves: I have no objection. Obviously, one of the problems is that, for those of us who are critics, we always think the time in estimates is too short for the particular ministry, especially the largest ministry in the government. I certainly do not want to, nor do I intend to, prevent any other members in the Legislature from placing questions, but I would like to get the commitment from the minister that she will respond to the many questions that we did ask at the outset.

I do not think I should have to place order paper questions. I have already asked the questions; they are on the record in Hansard of November 14. As long as I can get the commitment from the minister that those questions will be answered shortly -- obviously, perhaps, not during the time allotted in committee of supply -- I would be satisfied with that.

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: I think the appropriate response is that during estimates time questions are placed; I am happy to answer. I would be pleased to start now and respond to the questions that were specifically raised. Any questions which we do not have the opportunity to complete during estimates time, the member can raise again through order paper questions and during question period in the House. When we proceed through committee with specific pieces of legislation, questions can be raised then, as well.

I am very pleased now to start with the question raised when the member was discussing administrative costs, that there was an average increase in program administration in the neighbourhood of 16 per cent. The actual response to that --

The Deputy Chairman: The member for Parry Sound is still on the question of how we are going to proceed.

Mr. Eves: I am trying to be accommodating here; I am not trying to be difficult. There are, obviously, members who have been around here a lot longer than I have, but having been a member since 1981 and having sat through many estimates committee processes, having chaired at least a half a dozen committees of the Legislature and sat through the committee process, I believe the general practice is that if ministers do not have the time to respond to questions during the hours and minutes allotted for the particular estimates of that ministry, it is a common practice for the minister to undertake to respond to that member by way of writing.

I do not find it acceptable that questions can be asked and answers not given and we have to go through some other procedure, such as another committee hearing, question period or order paper questions. I do not find that an acceptable response. If the minister is prepared to undertake that she is indeed going to provide us with responses -- she says she has the responses available -- surely it is not a difficult problem for her and her staff to accommodate all members, not just myself, who have asked questions.

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: As I said before, I am pleased to begin now to answer as many questions as we possibly have time for in the time remaining. I will say to the member that many, many questions have been placed. Some have already been answered. I will certainly undertake to communicate as best I can in the many different forums that we have. If the member will just let me know specifically which are his priority areas, because there is such a tremendous amount of information it would be so much easier if I could just begin to answer and place it on the record here.

The Deputy Chairman: The member for Beaches-Woodbine has a point of order.

Ms. Bryden: On a point of order, Mr. Chairman: It seems very odd procedure for the minister to be planning, apparently, to go through all of these order paper questions and give us the answers now, when we have only an hour or so left. I have some questions on health and this is the first opportunity I have had to be able to attend the Ministry of Health estimates. I hope it will not happen that the minister will go through each one of these order paper questions.

I am sure they are very important questions, and I certainly sympathize with the member and other members of his party who have placed them and not received answers. It is not much help for the minister to stand up and say there are all these opportunities for us and then we find the opportunities are not really being given to us to get answers.

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Hon. Mrs. Caplan: I would be pleased to respond to the member for Beaches-Woodbine in this way: There are some questions that have been asked that will be very appropriate questions in Orders and Notices and I think that is the appropriate way to receive them. There are others that are specific local constituency types of questions, and I will undertake, if a member will let me know he has a specific interest, to respond.

There are some questions that were raised that are broad policy issues, requiring discussion from the policy point of view, which I will be pleased to take the time now to discuss on an individual basis. I would be pleased to allow the member to place her question and will undertake to do my very best to respond, as I always do, to any question relating to a specific constituency issue or request.

Mr. Eves: As I have said on numerous occasions, I have no desire to interrupt the committee process. As a matter of fact, for the last three days these estimates have been discussed in the House I have stood aside and permitted all kinds of members from all parties to ask questions. I am just telling the minister that the standing accommodation or tradition around here in an estimates process is that the minister will undertake to answer each and every question.

If she does not have time to do it during the time allotted for estimates, I do not see why the minister is being difficult about this. All she has to do is to agree to give her undertaking that she will respond to every question. They are all there in Hansard of November 14. She has already told us she has the answers, that her ministry staff has prepared them and she would like to have the time to give them, but unfortunately she is running out of time.

I am prepared to accommodate her, if she will give me the undertaking that she is going to answer each and every question I asked, not questions in Orders and Notices but during the estimates procedure the very first day the estimates were discussed in the Legislature on November 14. I do not see what is so difficult about this. It is a simple undertaking we can get from the minister: yes or no.

I can recall James Snow in many estimates procedures. I can go through a list of cabinet ministers as long as both of my arms. This is a normal, accepted practice around this place and I do not know why the minister is being difficult about it. She has the answers. Surely her staff can reproduce them.

Hon. Mr. Conway: I would like, just because I have been listening to this debate -- I will not take any great amount of time. I have been here for over 13 years.

Mr. Hampton: Too long.

Hon. Mr. Conway: The member for Rainy River (Mr. Hampton) says perhaps too long and perhaps he is right.

I have heard the Minister of Health say that she will make every effort, both in the chamber now and in other ways, to answer all the questions. I have to say to my friend that I can remember having been through many sets of estimates with his redoubtable colleague the former Minister of Education, and I can assure the honourable member we had much more spirited and lively exchanges across this island. I do not ever remember the good doctor offering to answer all my questions.

I want to make clear, on behalf of the government, that our practice is to accommodate members both in the chamber and through other means to respond to all their questions. The minister has, I think, given that commitment. I simply suggest that we get on with the committee’s business and let all members, particularly those who are new to the debate like our distinguished senior colleague the member for Beaches-Woodbine (Ms. Bryden), participate in the debate.

I repeat that I think I heard the minister say she is quite prepared to answer in this chamber and through other means the questions put by the very inquiring member for Parry Sound and all other members.

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: I would like to thank the government House leader because he has represented my position quite accurately. I would be pleased to get on with the estimates discussion.

Ms. Bryden: Mr. Chairman, are we discussing a point of order at the moment?

The Deputy Chairman: We have exhausted that, I would think. The minister has indicated she is prepared to answer questions for the remaining 47 minutes.

Ms. Bryden: Except that the questions she is going to answer in the 47 minutes, as she says, in the House or out of it, will be all the questions that have been asked in these estimates or in Orders and Notices that have not been answered. This could take us maybe three or four days, which means that anybody who is here to ask a new question will not have any time, if what the government House leader has said is correct. The question is, will there be any time in these 45 minutes for me to ask at least one question?

Mr. Eves: I would like to remind the chair and the minister of the minister’s commitment, in Hansard on November 14, right at the outset of these estimates when I asked for a very specific commitment. I did it for exactly the reason we are seeing right now. We have 46 minutes left in these estimates, which were 13 hours. In effect, what the minister is now saying is: “Too bad. If I don’t have time in the next 46 minutes to respond to your questions, then you’ll have to do it by way of some other forum, by way of questions in Orders and Notices, committee, etc.”

She gave an undertaking on November 14 to respond to every question I asked. She has 45 minutes left to do so. I am willing to accept her undertaking to do it in writing. I find her conduct rather unbecoming for a minister, quite frankly.

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: On a point of order Mr. Chairman: In fact, the categorization by the critic for the third party is not a true categorization of the reality. I think it is important to have that on the record. At no time did I ever say what he just said. If members read the record in Hansard there are also the comments of the government House leader -- in fact I said I would be as accommodating as I could be in making sure the member had responses and answers to his many questions in the many different ways and forums that are available to us.

I would be pleased now to respond to the questions from the member for Beaches-Woodbine. I would say that the categorization of the critic for the third party is unbecoming for a Health critic, a member of this Legislature who knows his categorization is pushing the limit of perception, even.

The Deputy Chairman: We have a problem I may characterize as a choice between the nature and kinds of answers and the time available for answers by the minister on the one hand, and on the other hand the request for additional questions to be placed before the minister. In view of that, I am going to rule that the member for Beaches-Woodbine shall have the floor for the purpose of placing additional questions to the minister, who shall thereafter, if time remains, answer as she sees fit in the House and outside the House.

Mr. Eves: On a point of personal privilege, Mr. Chairman: I want to read the undertaking and commitment from Hansard of November 14. I stated, “I would like to obtain an undertaking from the minister, however, at the outset of these estimates, that she will be responding to questions directed to her, not only from myself but my colleagues and the members of the official opposition as well, before the estimates process is completed.”

That leaves the minister 43 minutes exactly. I wonder if that commitment might be forthcoming from the minister. The minister’s response in its entirety was: “Yes. I would be delighted to.” I expect every answer to be given in the next 42 minutes pursuant to her commitment. However, I am prepared to be reasonable and take her undertaking to provide them in writing and allow other members to place questions. I think she should answer those in writing, too, if she does not get the time in the next 42 minutes. I have said my piece, Mr. Chairman.

The Deputy Chairman: That is not a point of personal privilege. The member for Beaches-Woodbine has the floor.

Ms. Bryden: There is a subject I have a great interest in and want to deal with; that is, the question of community health centres and health service organizations. While I will be asking some questions, I will be content if the answers come after the estimates are completed.

Not having been able to attend the other sittings of this committee of supply on Health estimates, this subject may have been dealt with to some extent already, but I would like to place some very specific questions about community health centres and health service organizations.

I think it is time the government put its money where its mouth is. The Liberals say they are redirecting efforts from the treatment of illness towards the promotion of health and the prevention of disease, and that they are providing community-based services, but they are spending less than one per cent of the entire Health budget on community health centres and health service organizations.

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CHCs and HSOs are the only real existing alternative to fee-for-service medicine. They focus not just on treatment of illness, but on health promotion and on helping their clients to take control over their health and wellbeing. In 1983, when CHCs and HSOs were made permanent components of the health care system, there were 10 CHCs and 17 HSOs. As of June 1988 -- I do not have later figures -- there were only 13 CHCs and 34 HSOs in operation. Their development has been strangled by the government’s lack of commitment.

The government’s lack of commitment in providing real community-based alternatives was indicated by an election announcement of the Premier (Mr. Peterson). He said he wanted to double the number of people served by CHCs and HSOs by 1992, but that means he only wants to see about 500,000 people have access to these services, which would be only four per cent of the population.

It seems to me it is time the government got serious about establishing real alternatives to the fee-based sick care system. I wanted to put to the minister some questions about where we are with CHCs and HSOs. Incidentally, there is an HSO operating in my riding. It has been operating for three or four years and is a community-based HSO, which means the decisions about what services to offer are provided by a community-based group. It is trying to provide the kind of medicine the community wants, but it is only one of the 34 that were available in June.

I would like the minister to tell me, if she is in the House --

Hon. Mr. Conway: She is just under the gallery.

Ms. Bryden: Can the minister provide us with up-to-date statistics on the number of HSOs and CHCs in the province? I want them broken down so that they are identified as to which ones have a community board; the range of services each one provides, because some of them provide foot care and some of them provide well-baby care and things like that; the number that are connected with hospitals; the number that are independent centres in the community, operated by two or more physicians. Also, the number that are providing psychiatric or psychology services -- things covered in these health professions the minister was mentioning that are providing a good deal of various kinds of health care and health services, so that we have a picture of what sorts of services they are providing.

I also want some sort of commitment as to how much money the minister is going to put into developing this very valuable kind of centre. For instance, the estimates under vote 1805 for the community health program has an increase of about $42 million for community health services generally. This is not all HSOs and CHCs. If we could have a breakdown from that as to how much of that money is actually going to promoting HSOs and CHCs, that would be very valuable.

I think they are organizations that have been spoken about by past governments, from the days of Larry Grossman when he was Minister of Health and on up to the present Liberal government with its glowing promises in the two election campaigns as to how much it was going to put into preventive medicine. That is really the bottom line. It is also a more economical delivery of medical services.

I think it is time we looked at a much larger budget for these organizations and for the promotion of them, rather than just giving lipservice to the philosophy that they are a valuable form of health care delivery and an alternative to the fee-for-service system. We may need some considerable expansion of that kind of delivery of health service if we are going to get health costs under control. Could the minister give us some sort of picture of where we are going on those organizations.

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: I would be pleased to talk for a few moments about health service organizations and community health centres. Our Premier made a commitment to double the number of people in this province served by HSOs and CHCs. In my opening remarks, I talked as well about the CHO, the comprehensive health organization, which is presently under development.

These are alternatives to the fee-for-service system. These are alternative payment mechanisms, but they also provide an opportunity that the fee-for-service system does not, and that is an opportunity to do health promotion, disease prevention and the wellness orientation of keeping people well, which is something the health service organization and community health centre offer us as a real opportunity. I have said that health promotion, disease prevention and the expansion of community-based facilities are a priority of mine, so I was very pleased with the member for Beaches-Woodbine’s question.

I think it is important for the people of this province to know what a health service organization is. I will tell the member -- her question specifically was how many health service organizations there are -- that there are currently 36 HSOs, serving approximately 237,833 enrolled roster patients.

It is important to understand how an HSO operates and what its objectives are. The objectives of the health service organization are to create an environment that is supportive of physicians and other health care personnel and that allows flexibility in responding to the health care needs of the population served; to develop a coordinated system of health care delivery that makes the most appropriate use of health care resources and that is accessible, efficient and economical; to provide special attention to health maintenance and illness prevention measures that will enhance the health status of the population served; to decrease institutional health care by giving emphasis to ambulatory care, self care and home care.

This all fits within our discussions about individuals taking responsibility. In order for them to do that, they must have the information about health promotion and disease prevention opportunities that the health service organization provides.

There are three models for the health service provider and they are funded differently from fee for service. In fact, this is an alternative payment mechanism. As I said in my opening remarks in the Legislature, I do not like the term that describes it, but the term is “capitation.” It is a universally accepted definition and it is in our lexicon.

What it really means is that it is like a retainer. On behalf of the patient who becomes a roster patient of the health service organization, the government provides an annual amount of money to keep that patient well, whereas the fee-for-service method of payment allows us to pay only for the treatment of illness.

There is a lot of interest in the health service organization by providers of care who want to be able to focus on health promotion and disease prevention, because it gives us an opportunity to pay them through this retainer method, this capitation method, for the services, which are wellness, health promotion and disease prevention.

I mentioned there are three models. The first is the provider model. This is where the health service organization is owned and operated by physicians in a group practice.

The second model is the community board model. This is a nonprofit corporation or an association controlled by a board of trustees elected by the health service organization roster members and the community. Then anyone who wishes to join is welcome to -- the membership is open to anyone; I think that is important to note. It is absolutely accessible and universal. That was part of the objectives.

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The third model is the university model. This is where it is sponsored by a health science centre or a hospital and located in the community or within a hospital environment. Sponsors contract with the Ministry of Health to provide specified services and personnel on terms and conditions which are mutually agreeable, and the basic thrust of the health service organization is to achieve more effective and efficient use of health resources.

We know there are many studies coming out now which talk about duplication of services, which talk about actually unnecessary services that are provided, whether they are tests, prescriptions, X-rays or procedures themselves, which cause us great concern. We know that every incentive in the fee-for-service system is for volume. Those incentives are working well, and what we are finding is volume. In fact, the incentive here is for appropriate use of resources, for avoiding duplication, for making sure that everything that is done is necessary and will result in effective, quality care.

There has been a great deal of interest by providers in the health service organization model. Physicians are very, very interested, and I believe we will achieve our goal of doubling the number of people served by health service organizations and community health centres and that we will also see some innovative and creative proposals in the concept of the comprehensive health organization, which takes the very best of these models and combines them in how we deliver the very best quality, effective care to the people of this province. It allows us to do it in a community-based setting with a board or with the option of the university model or the provider model.

I will undertake to respond to the member as to the total number and the specific type. I could take the time now, but with only 29 minutes remaining, I would be pleased to give her a list of the 36 health service organizations that we have.

She mentioned as well community health centres. They are different, because while the providers, the physicians in the health service organization, are paid based on their roster of patients who choose that way of receiving service, which includes health promotion and disease prevention opportunities, in the community health centre, all the staff are on salary.

When we talk about alternative payments, we must recognize that we are not always talking about salary; we are talking about capitation opportunities, sessional fees and alternative ways to fee-for-service for paying for the services provided to the people.

Community health centres provide primary care services to specific target populations that require improved access to care, or have a higher disease burden perhaps, or require some additional resources. The objectives are very similar to those of the health service organization, but I think this is a very good model for allowing us to achieve what I refer to as equity in access, where you may need to add some special attention or special resources.

I am pleased to tell the member that in fact there are currently 18 approved community health centres, plus I just approved four that I think deserve special note and attention. There are 14 in full operation.

Of the ones that were recently approved, one will respond to the needs of access to services by the very significant French-speaking population of Metropolitan Toronto. We approved a community health centre here in Metropolitan Toronto targeted to the needs of that community, to give it access to services in the French language.

There me some 70,000 French-speaking people in Metropolitan Toronto. That community health centre is an excellent example of how we can reach out to a community with special needs.

Another example was the approval of the Anishnabwe Health Toronto centre to meet the needs of some estimated several thousands of native people living in the Metropolitan Toronto area. Some 30,000 or 40,000 is the estimate. That community health centre will meet the needs of the members of that very specific population to give them access in a culturally sensitive environment to their health care requirements.

As well, we approved a community health centre in London, London Inter-Community Health Centre, and in Metropolitan Toronto, the Davenport-Perth Community Health Centre and the Access Alliance. Actually, there are five. I realize that it was not four. I stand corrected there. There are five that have just been recently approved, which speak to the ability to target the special needs of a group in need of access to health services.

Again, I think it is important that the objectives be very similar to the health service organizations. We should take a moment to make people aware of how this works. The objectives are to create an environment which is supportive of physicians and other health care personnel and which allows for flexibility in responding to the health care needs of the population served. We develop a coordinated system of health care delivery, which makes the most appropriate use of health care resources and which is accessible, efficient and economical and provides special attention to health maintenance and illness prevention measures which will enhance the health status of the population served.

All the community health centres -- and this is where it differs from the health service organizations -- are sponsored by community-based organizations registered as nonprofit corporations. The boards of directors are composed of persons with expertise in the delivery of primary care services, persons with expertise to manage the centres’ business affairs and representatives of the target populations.

Some community health centres -- and this is a unique feature of the community health centres -- offer social, housing or legal services, services other than just health, as well as health care. In fact, they receive funding from appropriate ministries and from local government for these services which are other than those which are funded by the Ministry of Health.

So we see the opportunity. We know that the whole concept of health goes beyond simply the treatment of illness. The Premier’s Council on Health Strategy has acknowledged the fact that health is far more than the treatment of illness and goes far beyond just the mandate of the Ministry of Health. Therefore, around the Premier’s Council on Health Strategy, we see many other ministries represented: the Ministry of Housing, the Ministry of the Environment, the Management Board of Cabinet, the Ministry of Community and Social Services, the Office for Senior Citizens’ Affairs and the Office for Disabled Persons.

This acknowledges, in that forum, and I would acknowledge here in this House, that the social services provided by the Ministry of Community and Social Services, the housing services from the Ministry of Housing and the services provided by the Ministry of the Attorney General play a very important role.

The community health centre offers services that go beyond simply the treatment of illness and health care, that go beyond even health promotion and disease prevention. Those services are funded by other ministries. So the community health centre model really gives us the opportunity in another alternative way to reach out to populations with special needs.

The way that community health centres are funded is also different from the funding for health service organizations. Community health centre payments are based on an annually negotiated program base. Those budgets cover medical services and overhead expenses. This is in contrast to the health service organizations, which are funded on a capitation basis, which is the retainer method based on how many people you actually serve.

I have, and would be willing to give the member, a list of all the community health centres we have. As I said, there are some 18 which have been approved. I want to tell her there are a number which are under consideration. I believe that between community health centres and health service organizations we will achieve the goals. We will start to see a kind of positive shift to community-based services and to expansion of community-based facilities, not only through health service organizations and community health centres, but also through the Independent Health Facilities Act.

It is very important that we understand that the principles of the Independent Health Facilities Act will allow health service organizations and community health centres to enhance and expand their role as technologies change. As I mentioned today in question period, we know that the institutional sector was designed to deal with acute care, with those things that require inpatient services, certainly cardiac care, the many very specialized types of intensive care.

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There are very many things that we know require that kind of inpatient service, but we also know that there is a significant change in the past 10 years, which technology is now allowing us to address. Whereas the acute institution used to account for the overwhelming majority of the kinds of medical attention we received -- in fact, we know that in the past it was a case of you were either cured or you were not -- the advances of medical science, both in drug therapies and in changing technologies, are resulting in more chronic illness. In addition, because the population is ageing, the needs of the population are changing. We now know that nine out of 10 patient contacts with the medical care system are not for acute care; they are for chronic care and disability.

The Evans, Spasoff and Podborsky reports tell us that we must shift our emphasis from only that institutional focus, that much that is presently done in institutions could be provided not only safely but more cost effectively and more appropriately closer to home for the patient, through home care and community-based services. When we talk about the kinds of positive shifts that the Independent Health Facilities Act will allow us -- it will allow for the expansion of health service organizations and community health centres -- this really acknowledges how medical care has changed and the fact that our population is ageing.

As I said in question period not long ago, beds are no longer the benchmark for services. Now we can provide services, because of technology, because of drug therapies, in many other ways. What we want to be able to do is to use our hospitals and institutions for what they do best, which is acute intervention, and take the pressure off them by moving positively to the community-based kinds of services, community health centres, health service organizations, the many kinds of community-based agencies offering mental health services.

Everyone is telling us. As I said, the Evans report, the Podborsky report and the Spasoff report say there is an opportunity now to shift our emphasis positively and to have the kind of balance that will respond in the future to what the needs of our population are going to be.

I want to thank the member for Beaches-Woodbine for the opportunity to talk about what I think will be a significant initiative by the ministry. As I have stated clearly in this House on numerous occasions, the reason I tabled the Independent Health Facilities Act is that we want a legislative framework to be able to move aggressively. I thank her.

Ms. Bryden: I appreciate the minister giving us a picture of the situation with regard to these organizations. I think it was useful to define what they are for people who are listening or reading Hansard.

But I would like the minister to tell me how much of the $42-million increase in the estimates for community health services is actually going to be targeted to community health centres, health services organizations and the new comprehensive health service agencies that she mentioned. Incidentally, I would like this new category also to be included in the statistics that I am asking for as to how many there are, what sort of services they are providing and when they got started.

I think the minister is fantasizing a bit about how great a contribution these present organizations are making, because, as I mentioned, in 1983 there were 17 HSOs and today, five years later, there are 36. That is very slow progress. There were 10 CHCs in 1983 and now there are 18. When you are dealing with such small figures, you are not making very much of an impression on the community.

In addition to this question about the $42 million and how much of it is going to these organizations, I would like to ask the minister: Will some of the kinds of service organizations that will be authorized under Bill 147, the independent health facilities, be foreign-based, foreign-owned organizations that will come in and apply for status as an HSO or a CHC and will there be criteria as to whether these organizations should be developed by Canadian groups and organizations in preference to foreign-based ones, so that we can have a real development of this kind of preventive health care work and the kind of non-fee-for-service delivery of health services?

Could the minister respond to those two questions about the $42 million and whether Bill 147 will authorize organizations that may participate in the development of these organizations?

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: I would be pleased to respond to the member in this way. I believe that Bill 147, which is the Independent Health Facilities Act, is a very important piece of legislation because, as I have said, it will give us the legislative framework to plan properly for community-based health services. Not only will that allow us to have the legislative framework, but also it will give us the funding framework and flexibility to respond to the very different needs of the different communities of the province. It will allow us to respond not only to new technologies which are available today, but also to technologies which may be available in the future.

In fact, I believe that as we head through second reading of the bill, which I hope we will have an opportunity to do very soon, and then through the legislative process of committee hearings, we will be able to see what an important piece of legislation this is.

I say to the member that what is significant about that piece of legislation is that it is the establishment of community-based facilities in an orderly and planned way, with the same quality assurance and patient confidentiality that we presently have in our hospitals, in a community setting, so that we can respond to changing technologies, providing services as close to home as possible.

The act itself at the present time responds to a number of ways that we will be able to negotiate appropriate funding. As the member can see, community health centres and health service organizations are two alternative payment models. I believe the Independent Health Facilities Act will offer us another alternative payment method, and we have said that it is a priority of this government to encourage and respond to proposals for alternative payments.

As I have said, there has been an awful lot of physician interest in the health service organization in particular, and we have made a commitment to make these kinds of alternative funding opportunities available to physicians on a voluntary basis and to make them attractive and encourage them, because it gives doctors the opportunity to do more than simply treat illness.

I believe that the Independent Health Facilities Act will give us another pillar and another way of responding to changing technologies, another way of responding to our ageing population, another way of responding cost-effectively to our economic realities -- those three compelling and irresistible forces for change -- and I am hoping that we will ultimately have the consent of this House to move forward and proclaim that legislation at the appropriate time, following due legislative discussion. I believe that is a full and complete answer to the member.

My House leader has brought to my attention that the critic and House leader for the third party are concerned following our interchange regarding my desire to respond to his questions. I want to assure the critic for the third party, the member for Parry Sound, that in fact, as I have stated in this House, I would be pleased to give him the undertaking that I will respond to his questions in written form at an early time.

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I am having some difficulty in understanding the dynamic because it has always been my intention, as stated, to respond in the many different ways that are available. I was a little concerned last week, when I rose to answer questions in this House during estimates and his House leader said: “No, dispense; we’re not interested in those answers at this time,” that that might have been misinterpreted or that he thought I was upset about that; I was not.

I believe that the estimates process is extremely important, and I know that members of this House do not expect that it is just a time when everybody stands up and lists all his questions and then they get answered. This is the time when the minister stands in the House and responds and explains. We brought television into the Legislature so that the people of this province could watch this process with interest. I am committed to it, and I believe it is a very important process and an opportunity to stand accountable in the ultimate public forum.

We have many other ways of having questions answered, which is all I was really trying to say to the critic. The public should know that there is daily question period, where the responses are short for a number of reasons: because of Mr. Speaker’s hand and the time of question period is short. There are questions in Orders and Notices where we try to respond to details --

Mr. D. S. Cooke: Do you want us to talk about order paper questions?

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: I understand the frustration, and we will do what we can to answer the questions asked in writing in a timely manner, as appropriate.

Mr. Eves: I certainly accept the minister’s undertaking to do that. That is not what I understood she said earlier. However, now that she has clarified that point and in fact has given an undertaking to answer all the questions in writing, without having to go through another avenue, that is fine.

Ms. Bryden: I will be expecting a reply as to how much of the $42-million increase is actually going to health service organizations and community health centres, but that can come later.

I would like to raise a question. I have heard some complaints from HSOs that they have been suffering from a cash-flow shortage during the long negotiations that have been going on for the pay increase that the medical profession is seeking. I understand that they normally get a monthly remittance to cover their costs of operating but that the increase they would need to cover inflation this year was not coming through for some months -- I am not sure whether this situation has been corrected -- because it had not been decided how much of an increase the physicians would be given and this, of course, would affect the amount of money that would ultimately he coming to the HSOs and CHCs on a capitation basis.

It really puts some of them in a very serious position because they had no means of financing inflationary costs and were expected to go in the red or wait until these prolonged negotiations were settled. I think some sort of interim adjustment, at least for cost of living, should be provided for in whatever formula is used for transmitting their monthly payments to them.

The doctor in private practice, of course, is not getting his increase until this is settled; but on the other hand he has his own ways of financing his practice and he does not suffer from the same limits as the person on the capitation payments. I hope the minister will look into that particular question.

She did not really reassure me that the new independent health facilities would not be allowed to set up HSOs and CHCs from foreign bases, such as a health organization operating in the United States, which may decide to establish a branch in Canada, become an HSO or a CHC and benefit from any startup funding and the sort of funding that is provided. It would perhaps be competing with Canadian-based facilities that are being developed to meet specific needs and would be taking up some of the money that may he available for promoting the kinds of HSOs and CHCs that we have been supporting, and that the minister has been giving lipservice to but has not really promoted adequately.

I hope that in those two fields she will reassure us that there will not be a lot of foreign-based facilities moving into those fields and there will be much more promotion of Canadian-based HSOs and CHCs.

Mr. Chairman: Do other members wish to comment? Minister? Any more comments or questions? Is that it?

Ms. Bryden: The minister has not really answered my question as to whether foreign-based facilities may become HSOs and CHCs.

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: I will take note of the member’s request and consider it. Concerning any specific questions that have been raised today, as I have given my commitment to the critic for the third party, I would be pleased to do the best I can to see that questions are responded to in writing at as early a time as possible.

Mr. D. S. Cooke: That’s not good enough.

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: The member for Windsor-Riverside -- it cannot be heard on TV -- just said, “That’s not good enough,” which shows that the nature of this process is that we know we have critics who will criticize if we do it or if we do not do it, if we respond or if we do not respond. In fact, that is what this forum is about, the opportunity to stand accountable.

I want to state again my thanks to the members who participated in estimates and asked very good questions on behalf of their constituents. I would also like to thank the Ministry of Health officials, who did an outstanding job in providing the support and information necessary to allow me to respond to the many questions that have been asked by the members of the Legislature. The estimates process is the time when ministers stand accountable for the significant dollars that are spent. As I said, the Ministry of Health estimates for this year are $12.7 billion, accounting for about $1.4 million an hour. That is a significant amount of money, more than one third of the total provincial budget.

I do want to express my thanks to the members of the ministry staff who worked on estimates. I want to tell the House that there have been a lot of changes in the past year at the Ministry of Health -- I think they know that -- and changing times are always difficult times. We have only to look back to 10 years ago to see how many changes have already come. When I make speeches, I say: “How many people had a videocassette recorder? How many people had a microwave? Who ever heard of ultrasound or computerized axial tomography scanners or magnetic resonance imaging or lithotripters?” I mean, we can barely say the names of these new technologies, and they are developing so rapidly. How many people had personal computers at home 10 years ago? How many people 10 years ago were computer-literate?

These are the enormous challenges facing health care, the economic realities, the changing demographics and particularly changing technologies. Over the course of this next year, we will have the opportunity in many different ways in this Legislature to discuss the many issues facing us in health care. The challenges are enormous.

I appreciate the opportunity to stand in the House and discuss the issues raised by members of the Legislature. I would like to thank the government House leader and all the members of the Legislature for participating in the ultimate in democracy, which is the chance to stand accountable before the people of the province for the enormous resources which they give to us through their tax dollars and to stand accountable in this Legislature for how we spend those. I would also like to thank my ministry staff for their support.

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Mr. Chairman: The time allocated for consideration of the estimates of the Ministry of Health has now expired.

Votes 1801 to 1806, inclusive, agreed to.

On motion by Hon. Mr. Conway, the committee of supply reported certain resolutions.

RETAIL SALES TAX AMENDMENT ACT (CONTINUED)

Resuming the adjourned debate on the motion for second reading of Bill 122, An Act to amend the Retail Sales Tax Act.

Mr. Allen: It is always a delight to take over the floor from my colleague the member for Hamilton East (Mr. Mackenzie). We of course do a great many things together and this, I suppose, is another form of our collaboration, in which we pursue the interests not only of our respective constituencies in the city of Hamilton and the province at large but also the various groups in it for which we attempt to speak.

Bill 122, which we are addressing in the course of this debate, is of course part of a larger budget proposed in the spring by the Treasurer (Mr. R. F. Nixon). It was a budget which I think was notable for the way in which it continued certain trends of the past. Namely, it continued to tax low-income persons who ought not to be taxed. It continued to allow additional loopholes for those earning above $50,000 a year: persons who, through various advantages they had with respect to dividend tax credits, etc., were able to take advantage of tax loopholes and in many instances, pay no tax at all.

There were people like Peter Allen, for example, who is the head of Lac Minerals Ltd. in Ontario, one of the big gold mining companies of the province. Of all the executives in Canada last year, he was one of the highest paid at about $3.8 million a year. This man was able to save hundreds of thousands of dollars under the tax schemes of both the provincial and federal governments.

The notable thing about the tax bill we are talking about today is that it continues that element of regressivity that still haunts our tax systems in Canada. In fact, it is part, it would appear, of a worldwide trend to taxation on consumption rather than on income.

In this country, when we first initiated income taxes on any scale in the course of the First World War, the federal government at that time appropriated that income tax field from the provinces, and that has remained the arrangement in this country ever since. But at that point in time, it was clearly established as a principle that income taxes would be levied on a progressive basis, that those who had more would pay a higher percentage of their incomes in order that those who had less would pay a smaller percentage and would be hit least of all by the taxes that were levied, in that instance to pay for the war and the war effort of the First World War. That principle remained in place throughout the history of taxation in Canada up until this point in time.

We all know what is happening at the federal level. We know that there is a so-called tax reform in place, in which Mr. Wilson offered to the people of Canada a pre-election bonus, if you like, by reducing income taxes somewhat, having, of course, added over $1,000 a year to the average lower-middle-income family’s tax bill in the previous four years. He did drop those rates a little bit and gave some benefit to some taxpayers, but we all knew that the second shoe was about to drop after the election and that, of course, became part of the general election debate.

The big question in debate, it turned out, was whether the new consumption taxes, the new value added taxes that the Minister of Finance was going to add, would add $10 billion or $14 billion or some figure in between -- I think the Treasurer actually estimated $18 billion at one point -- to the tax bill that Canadians would pay as a result of the new value added, consumption-based taxes that the federal finance minister was about to levy. Of course, that has yet to come into place, but already, as is so often the case in fiscal and financial matters and in social policies, it seems Ontario is ready to lead the way.

The Treasurer of this province, in the budget offered last spring, engaged to move on to a new major tax initiative which would have added a single percentage point, but as we know, that was a one-seventh increase in the total tax bill yielded by sales taxes for the people of Ontario.

It is ironic that at the very time when the Treasurer was proposing to implement, and indeed in the wake of his budget announcement did implement, a sales tax increase on virtually everything that moved in Ontario, with the exception of food, if you put it broadly speaking, his government was expecting a report from the Social Assistance Review Committee, which had been established some 16 months before to look at the whole issue of social assistance in this province and to try to provide new ways by which the province might support those who are in genuine need and those among the working poor who need some assistance in moving their quality of life up somewhat, approximating at least the poverty line, as we have it described by such groups as the Social Planning Council of Metropolitan Toronto and others.

I say it is ironic because at the very moment that there is a major scheme afoot which would provide a blueprint for the province to attack the gross inequities that exist in the income levels of Ontarians, the very same government that sponsored that study and was inviting those proposals was engaging in a major tax shift on to the basis of consumption, with all of its regressive features upon the poor, low-income families of Ontario.

Taxation in general has never dealt kindly, even on a progressive income tax basis, with those who are in the lower-income status. We have had various studies in Canada and in Ontario which have demonstrated for us that in fact, even under the normally progressive income tax system that we did have, the poor fared very badly indeed.

For example, there was the Courchene study; there was a study done by the Quebec government in 1984; there was a white paper released by the Minister of Finance in that province; there was the study done by Donald Macdonald, by the Macdonald Royal Commission on Economic Union and Development Prospects for Canada, which we have heard so much about in the free trade debate.

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Each of these studies made it very plain that taxation, as it stood, impacted heavily upon low-income families. if you take, for example, the Quebec study, you discover that the head of a two-parent, two-child family who left social assistance for a minimum-wage job would have an implicit marginal tax rate of 80 per cent, and in some instances recipients could encounter implicit marginal tax rates of 100 per cent or even higher. In other words, as this study says, for every dollar they earn from employment, these people would lose the equivalent of a dollar or even more, compared with the amount of social assistance they would have received.

If you take an equivalent study done in Ontario, for example of low-income, single-parent families in Toronto with incomes of $16,000 or less, of approximately the same date, they faced marginal income tax rates that varied between 75 per cent and 100 per cent. The tax rates were considerably lower for single parents with higher incomes, obviously. But income tax, as it stood, obviously impacted very heavily upon low-income families.

When you look at the Macdonald commission, it concludes: “The analysis demonstrates clearly that marginal income tax rates are invariably higher for low-income earners than for those in higher-income brackets. These confiscatory rates create a veriltable poverty wall that encourages low-income households to remain dependent on social assistance programs. For many, it is simply not worth it to work. Inactivity or reduced participation in the official market appears as an economically rational choice. The choice can turn out to be morally costly. The individual loses the feeling that he can fend for himself or that he controls his future. This is the poverty trap.”

That is the trap the normal income tax system built for low-income earners, for low-income families, for those most in need.

But now what we appear to be turning to in this country, and not least of all in this province, is taxes based on consumption. We all know that they are inherently regressive, that they inherently attack the individual and the family at the low-income end of the spectrum, because all those persons have to spend all their income on the necessities of life.

In fact, it is rather ironic that at the moment this tax is going into place there are more and more families in Ontario for whom even the exemption of food will not mean anything because so many of them line up for the food banks in order to get their food from food banks. They will not be paying for food because they are paying almost all their social assistance rates on rent.

Of course, the rental market is being exacerbated and made worse and less accessible for these very families. Rents are being driven up by the very housing crisis we are in at the moment, and the housing crisis, in turn, is going to be made worse by the establishment of the federal sales tax system, which house builders and construction companies in this province have told us will add another nine percentage points to the cost of a house, driving up the cost of the average house by somewhere in the order of another $20,000 or $30,000.

The components that go into house building, into apartment building, even into building affordable housing, will make the cost of those units that much more and therefore the rental charges will go up, so that every time a poor person, a low-income family, even a middle-income family, turns around, it will find itself assaulted by the new consumption taxes at the federal level and at the provincial level, which will add up to new taxation rates of anywhere from 16 per cent to 18 per cent on the bills the individual and the family pay.

I referred to the Thomson report and to its comments on the way in which low-income people need to have a whole series of new supporting programs that would enable them to get off social assistance where that was possible, where they were not afflicted by a disability that made it impossible for them to work or where they were not bound up in a family situation that required them to have that assistance for the time being.

But for those who are employable and those who want to be employed and could be employed, it is important programs be put in place to enable them to move off social assistance, find an employment opportunity that would give them a new handle on life and move them upward in the income scale to become mobile once more.

Again, ironically, one of the items the Thomson commission spent a good deal of time talking about was the impact of taxation upon low-income families and the way in which it impacted even on those on social assistance, maintaining them in the poverty trap of the social assistance programs and making it difficult for them to get off.

They said some things very directly about the April 8, 1988, budget that this bill derives from. Among the things they were concerned about was the fact that the Minister of Revenue (Mr. Grandmaître), while he was constructing his taxation schemes, was not paying sufficient attention to the nature of the transfers he was engaged in making to various agencies and municipalities around the province, which in turn had to deal with those on social assistance and so on, and pointed out quite clearly that those families often found themselves caught in the crossfire between the programs on the one hand and the taxation on the other hand.

They wrote as follows. They said they acknowledged that the budget did contain a few measures of direct benefit to social assistance recipients, for example. They went on to say, however: “Social assistance recipients were also affected by some of the tax measures announced in the budget ... most notably the increase in the sales tax from seven per cent to eight per cent. And although there were nominal increases in Ontario tax credits, changes in the financial tests used to determine eligibility actually reduced the value of the tax credits for some recipients. When the increase in benefits and tax changes were considered together, we estimated that 60,000 social assistance recipients would be worse off financially as a result of the budget than they would otherwise have been. The losses, as high as $108 per year, were expected to affect primarily single parents and families with disabilities.”

In other words, some of the most vulnerable people in Ontario, 60,000 of them, are going to be adversely impacted by this tax measure we are debating, which will be imposed as a result of this bill if it is passed.

That, surely, is morally unacceptable, not only not just economically unacceptable, to the people affected who at this point in time are struggling to keep their lives together, such as single mothers who are trying to keep shelter over their kids, trying to see that they get off to school reasonably well-dressed, trying to see that they have food on the table, trying to see that they have shoes and winter coats to wear through the coming winter. With all kinds of pressures on them and unable to get through a month on the income they get, yet they are the ones who are being impacted the most heavily by the new tax measures this government is proposing to establish.

We have proposed in this party that if the government were interested in relieving low-income families of some of their burden, there might be some acceptable sales taxes we might be interested in seeing introduced.

For example, when it comes to the taxation of some of the business services that are not at this point in time sufficiently taxed and that are, of course, provided by or for business corporations, which have been increasingly getting away -- I will not say entirely scot-free in every case but in some cases scot-free -- with respect to the tax bills they pay, there are some areas of forgone revenue this government could use in order not only to get low-income taxpayers off the tax system and give them some relief, but also so they would have a little bit of money left over for some other things.

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For example. at this point in time the government forgoes taxes on management consulting in the amount of some $14 million. On engineering services, it foregoes revenue of $66 million that it could be taxing. There are architectural services of the order of $16 million, computer services of the order of $39 million, advertising taxation of $125 million that could be levied without any problem, and stock brokerage commissions to the extent of $35 million.

None of that would either dry up those services or drive anybody out of business, but at the same time it would generate twice the amount of revenue that is necessary in order to exempt low-income families from taxation and to get those who are living below the poverty line in Ontario off the tax rolls. That would be a worthwhile use of some kinds of sales taxes, but when one looks at the kind of tax that is being proposed across the board, then the opposite effect happens for those families.

I suggest that a government that had some moral sensitivity about it and was trying to begin even now to do some of the things it can do, without any major fiscal loss, for the poor in Ontario, for low-income families, could do so now without any great difficulty along the lines I have just suggested.

In the course of doing that, the government would be meeting at least one of the 274 proposals that the Thomson commission has proposed for the government. Yet we have seen the Minister of Community and Social Services (Mr. Sweeney), time and time again in this House, rise to say that he cannot respond to our demands for action on the Thomson committee’s report.

He has said repeatedly that this is a package and that it has to be acted on as a package, yet I was struck the other day that he told us he had in fact moved on the utilities cost proposal even before the committee published its report, so he himself is not viewing the package approach as a sacrosanct item.

I would have thought he would have found it possible to move on a number of these items that would not adversely impact on the packaging Thomson has proposed. That would have been something he could have done quite readily. I would have hoped a Treasurer with some moral sensitivity about him with regard to the plight of the poor in Ontario would have been willing to second that and to give him the backing he needed in order to do that.

Of course, the Thomson committee does not leave the other tax that is going to be levied on the poor in Ontario unremarked on in the course of its discussion of taxation. It does go on to make some very notable remarks with respect to the way in which the new consumption taxes proposed by the federal government will change the tax game entirely in Ontario.

We have noticed that when the Treasurer has been asked by the press how his sales tax scheme interacts and interfaces with what Mr. Wilson is proposing in Ottawa, he has been fairly coy about it. He has, of course, been very political in the sense that he has said, “Well, you know, we are not entirely happy with everything Mr. Wilson is proposing, but we do think that if Mr. Wilson goes ahead with this, it is going to be pretty difficult for us not to be part and parcel of all that.”

The provincial sales tax will have to be rolled into the federal sales tax. It will all become one vast national scheme and the result will be that we will be part and parcel of the new federal tax grab. That will implicate us in the overall sorry regressivity that will bring to the Canadian tax system as a whole.

When one talks about that regressivity, it is rather interesting to note the analysis that has been done on the way in which the combination of the tax bite of the two will impact upon various income levels in the country. This analysis was provided by the Toronto Star in its extrapolations of figures it got from the two ministries concerned in the two governments concerned.

It is useful to look at the percentages because they are shocking. They have to be shocking to any of us who have some concern about the kinds of things the Thomson report is trying to address -- the families, the individuals who are disabled, who are on social assistance, those who are struggling in low-income, minimum wage jobs, trying to preserve some dignity for themselves and their families by hacking it, if you like, even at considerable cost, in the job market.

If you take, for example, family income of less than $10,000, the sales tax increase that is entailed would be 97 per cent, a 97 per cent increase in total taxes. In the case of a $10,000 to $20,000 income, it is a 74 per cent increase, clearly payments that low-income families simply cannot afford. You move to the $20,000 to $30,000 income bracket and your increase in taxation is 47 per cent. In the $30,000 to $40,000 bracket, it goes to a 36 per cent increase. For S40,000 to $50,000, the tax goes up 31 per cent, and for $50,000 to $60,000, it is up 29 per cent.

It keeps on dropping until you get to $100,000 and over, and your increase in total taxes is only 18 per cent as compared with 97 per cent for those who are in the under $10,000 scale of income, whom we still, to our shame, tax.

When one listens to general rhetoric, which politicians of both the old parties still indulge in, about this being a compassionate society and how caring their political representatives are and so on and so on, one has to listen to that language with a great deal of scepticism in the wake of this move towards increasingly regressive taxes based upon consumption. This is not the vision of Ontario or of Canada that this party accepts or promotes.

In our view, it is possible to design a taxation system that deals fairly with the ordinary Canadian and the ordinary Ontarian, that deals fairly and justly with those who through no fault of their own find themselves locked into low-income jobs, find themselves as families hard-pressed in order to make ends meet, find themselves, unfortunately, on social assistance rates, or find themselves as elderly poor.

For example, 70 per cent of the elderly women in our province and in our country are locked in poverty. That is a shameful story. Any one of us who stood up to speak about it would have a lot of very heart-rending stories to tell. These are the people this new approach to taxation will more and more undermine and more and more demoralize.

They are not the only ones who will be demoralized in the process. All of us are demoralized implicitly in any condoning of any addition to our taxation system that will be regressive in the fashion in which this Treasurer’s new sales tax is proposed. It is magnified in turn, of course, by what will happen federally in the coming year.

In contributing to this debate, I want to underline once again on behalf of our party how desperately unhappy we are with last spring’s budget, and in particular how massively disappointed we are with the Treasurer of this province that he would even suggest to this House that we might move towards a tax system which was mom regressive than that which we have already in place in Ontario and which, as I said at the beginning of my remarks, is already a difficult tax system for the poor to cope with.

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I will leave my remarks at that. I hope this House will heartily reject Bill 122. I am sure that my colleagues in this House, and in this party in particular, will be making some further remarks in hopes that we will be able to persuade the Treasurer and the governing party to abandon this bill.

Mrs. Cunningham: It gives me pleasure this afternoon to be speaking to Bill 122 and to be speaking strongly against it. I am sure that the citizens in this province were quite shocked -- as all of us in the opposition parties remember when the Treasurer did in fact table his budget in this House last spring -- to see for the first time in six years, at a time when our economy was booming, that this Liberal government was prepared to participate in establishing an increase in the sales tax that affected each and every citizen in this province.

As my colleague has just stated, it affects people from the low-income families and middle-income families more than anyone at all, and I would like to speak to that now.

This tax has been spoken about as being extremely regressive. It is applied regardless of people’s ability to pay, and thus it has a much larger impact, as I have stated, on the poor and on low-income persons than it does on the well-to-do.

In 1982, in response to a Progressive Conservative budget measure which expanded the retail sales tax base but which did not increase the tax rate, the Premier described the measure as “regressive and inflationary” and said that it signalled “a change in the philosophy of taxation. We saw a move away from the progressive system which we as Liberals believe in passionately, taxation that is based on ability to pay, and we saw a major move towards flat consumption and regressive taxes.”

My, how people can change when they are in government. The Liberals’ own record shows that they left their passionate belief in progressive taxation behind them on the opposition benches.

The families most likely to be hardest hit by this budget, and particularly by the sales tax increase, are likely to be those who make just more than $25,000 a year, the income cutoff for tax credits, and up to $60,000 a year, the income level above which the impact of sales taxes decreases. Thus, the low-income and the middle class are going to bear the brunt of this tax increase more than anyone.

I can speak in the House this afternoon about what that really means when it comes to being the critic for the Ministry of Community and Social Services.

As members know, we had a number of promises that were made in this last election on behalf of the Liberals who ran for this House, and many of them were stuck with unrealistic promises that they made. If the persons who were running in that election had been well advised, they never could have gone out across this province and made some of the promises they made.

We are talking now about such things as building new schools, providing jobs in the environment, increasing the social service benefits --

Mr. Faubert: And they have,

Mrs. Cunningham: I beg your pardon? -- far beyond the rate of inflation, as they have not. I wish the member opposite would be recorded in the Hansard of this legislative session right now so that we can take him to task and quote him in our daily householder that we plan to mail out soon.

The point I am trying to make is that there are many promises that were made that in fact could never be kept, even with this kind of regressive tax that was placed on the citizens of Ontario at a time when the economy is booming.

The sales tax increase is inflationary. It will probably increase the province’s inflation rate by one half of a per cent. We already know, according to the analysis of the Treasurer, that Ontario’s consumer price index increase from 4.3 per cent to 4.7 per cent is a consequence of the budget measures. The Liberals have done nothing to help control inflation or to reduce inflationary expectations.

On the expenditures side, they have increased their spending at a rate double the average rate of inflation. That means that if you got a four per cent increase in your paycheque, you are going to pay taxes of eight per cent because this Liberal government really has to find a way of getting more money.

On the issue of hospitals and schools, let’s just have a little look at what the Liberals are going to do when it comes to building hospitals and schools. I m reading from the statements of the government here, last year’s budget: In 1987-88, capital spending is $2.72 billion. On page 50 of this year’s budget and capital spending book, the projection is for $2,803,000,000. The difference, in simple mathematics, is $83 million. So the increase in capital infrastructure, hospitals, schools, roads, the whole thing lumped together, is up $83 million, about three per cent. The budget is up eight per cent; capital is up three per cent.

The spending side is up $3 billion -- I should be correcting myself here -- about 9.5 per cent, not eight per cent but 9.5 per cent. So do not tell us the government is going to be building hospitals, schools and improving transportation. It is not keeping close to inflation on the capital side. That was not the reason for the tax grab. We will be able to prove that. We are doing it now in the estimates. It is really wonderful for us to have this kind of fun in the Legislature and to see the kids still sitting in more portables than ever before in the history of this province.

The government is up $83 million; that is how much in capital. Do members want to know what they are spending it on? One item: Government Services. Last year the budget in Government Services capital was $107 million. This year it is $190 million. It is up $83 million in Government Services. Everything else is flattened.

What does Government Services spend its money on? Why does it need more capital? For more buildings to house civil servants. They have increased the number of civil servants, the bureaucracy, in this government in the last two years by over 8,000 people. Let them try to defend that one in the next election. That is what the government spends its money on. They are not spending it on roads, they are not spending it on hospitals and they are not spending it on schools. They spend more money on facilities to house civil servants, and everything else is flat-lined.

When the citizens of Ontario took a look at that budget, they said to themselves, “We sure don’t know where the good news is.” The average working man and woman in this province must be wondering when they are going to be allowed to reap some of the benefits of the present economic boom. It has never been more wonderful to live in Ontario because people are working hard. They are trying to save their money. Our young families are trying to buy homes, just as we tried to do when we were their age. We are making it more difficult on a daily basis, especially this Liberal government.

These young people were planning this year not only on buying their homes, but on being able to take care of their families in many ways that many of us forget. Because we get so wrapped up in the day-to-day big money, big spending of government, we forget what it is like to really have to plan and save. They were planning this year on buying new homes, on buying clothes for their children, and on putting a little bit away for the future and for their children’s education. But they were not able to do that, and that is because this government decides it knows better about planning money. It knows that it cannot possibly leave an extra nickel in the pockets of average Ontarians to help pay the rent or to save for their children’s education.

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Government thinks it would be bad policy to let people keep a few extra dollars to buy some new children’s clothing or to buy more groceries, and it knows better than to allow them to start saving again. That is because they honestly believe that big government, more government and more spending are going to lead us to the promised land when, in fact, they are more likely to take us to the ditch, and I mean it. The Liberal members know as well as I do what the numbers are. People will be watching for a response to those election promises. By the way, they were the Liberals’ promises and not ours.

Let’s take a little look at what some of those promises were.

More schools: We have already talked about that. By the way, in London, the London Board of Education was provided with a bill of some $170,000 more after it set its budget, just to meet the requirements of the new retail sales tax. The minister knows that was some 14.3 per cent higher, as we move from seven per cent to eight per cent.

For some of the people in this Legislative Assembly I would think that the salaries of the people who are teaching children every day and facing the classroom are much more important than what the government is spending its money on and it knows where it is doing it: Government Services, big buildings for more bureaucrats, and what is it doing? It is not providing the services.

I just left a meeting in my office with a single parent who took time out of her busy day, before she went to meet her child from school, to come and tell me what this tax grab meant to her. These are the people we should be listening to. An eight per cent sales tax to her meant that she had to think very carefully about whether she would be able to buy winter boots this year. It meant that she could not help her child, in fact, buy his new hockey equipment. Those are the kinds of things that are being taxed, and she also told me that it is fruitless for her to try to save for a home because of the way inflation and the sales tax are going.

I would like to talk just a little bit about the sales tax increase being completely unnecessary.

Even if the Liberals had not increased one single, solitary tax in the 1988-89 budget, government revenues would have increased by 8.2 per cent or by $2.8 billion over last year’s inflows. Talk about greedy.

We are not unaware of what this government’s hopes are. I think this editorial, as written by Lorrie Goldstein of the Sun, would be an important one to remind the government of. “Parsimonious old farmer, my foot.” Guess who he is talking about? He is not talking about the members who are farmers. “Treasurer Bob Nixon yesterday plowed taxpayers into the ground and then stuck it to them with a gilt-edged pitchfork.” This is good stuff. “But this budget also employs the oldest political trick in the book,” and we are smart to this one. “It sticks it to the taxpayer in the first year of a majority government in the belief that the public has a short memory.

“A year ago, when the Liberals had only 51 seats and a minority government, Nixon said in his pre-election budget that ‘fiscal responsibility’ meant no new taxes.

“Yesterday, with the economy still strong and the social needs precisely the same, Nixon argued ‘fiscal responsibility’ demanded the biggest tax grab in Ontario history.” My goodness, I think the public is listening to that one.

I should give the House a little story about what it looked like in London last March when we had a little by-election. We knocked on the doors and wondered what the issues really would be. I will tell the House what they were. The Liberals gave the issues to us right in the middle of the by-election; that is how strategically stupid they are. One election issue was Sunday shopping. We will see how they deal with that one. They are going to have to find a nice little way.

Quality of life and Sunday working, that is what it is all about. This is not a party, obviously, that believes very strongly in the quality of life for families. A common pause day is something every family in this province deserves. What are we looking at? Sunday working, people having to work on Sunday, because those people opposite quietly make these decisions behind closed doors and do not tell the public what they are going to do. That is fine, but they have told them now.

The second issue was education; no school, We will see. Last year they did not give us a new school in London and we will see if they give us one this year. Okay?

The third issue was taxes, the sales tax. We had a ball going from door to door in London last March and we just sailed down here on a tremendous majority vote. Not because the Liberals did not have a terrific candidate -- they sure did -- but because they did not do one thing to help that candidate; not one thing. They threw the issues out there on a silver plate. If we had known what the budget would have looked like, we would have called it a gold plate, and the Liberals are the only people who own them. Big bucks, big spending, the biggest tax grab in the history of this province.

All right. In other words, economic growth alone would have given the government nearly $3 billion more to spend this year than it had last year, but that was not enough for this big majority Liberal government. Tax, tax, tax, spend, spend, spend -- that is their approach to fiscal management. As a wife and mother, I should tell them that if I overspent my budget three years in a row, there would be nobody coming to my rescue.

Do the Liberals know who came to their rescue this year? The public, the low-income people and the middle-class families who are out there working on a day-to-day basis. They came to the Liberals’ rescue. The Liberals did not need to be rescued, number one. The Liberals did not need their money. The increase is inflationary, regressive and unnecessary.

This year, Ontario government tax revenues will be 72 per cent greater than they were in 1984-85 and retail sales tax collections will be up more than 75 per cent over that same period. In three years, tax revenues are 72 per cent greater. Do members opposite know what people took home in their paycheques? They sure as heck did not take 72 per cent more home in three years. Retail sales tax collections will be up more than 75 per cent.

This is a wonderful message the government is giving to the young people who are out there working for their $20,000, if they have a university degree. What kind of a message is the government giving to young people? What a rotten example of planning, honestly, and the government hopes they will forget, just as Lorrie Goldstein said. All right. Members opposite did not like that one. Let’s get on with another one and then we will close.

Rosemary Speirs in the Toronto Star, April 21, 1988: The budget “ignores the fact that many low-income earners will pay the extra tax on leaded gasoline because they drive older cars. It also rather self-righteously assumes the poor find it easier to give up bad habits like smoking and drinking than the rest of us.

“They don’t, of course. and that means no matter how the Treasurer tries to paint it, his new taxes are going to mean more hardship for those who can least afford them ... . If anything, the poor will pay more, because a Treasurer who calls himself a progressive liberal chose to raise most of his new revenue through the regressive sales tax.”

I think that very clearly paints the picture. We could go on and speak about how much is enough and what is necessary and how the public really feels. I think this Liberal government underestimates what this public will remember about this government’s performance so far. We will try to see government members weasel out of their Sunday shopping issue. We will remind the people about the kind of money the government needs and what it did not do; there will be as many students in portables three years from now as there are now and as there were a year ago, because the government cannot deliver.

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There will be large class sizes because it was an irresponsible promise, one that I would have loved to have made to the teachers in the 14 years that I was on the school board. But I knew it would have been the wrong thing to do; we in London could not deliver, because it was not being responsible. It is something you do over a long period of time, not two years.

I shall close my remarks today, during this debate on sales tax, and just simply say that this government has not proven that it can plan, it has not proven that it can even begin to meet the promises, and it has left more poor people poorer with less services and facilities than it had two years ago when it was elected.

Mr. Harris: I am pleased to rise and briefly associate myself with the remarks of the member for London North. In a period of less than a year, the member --

Mr. Epp: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker: I understood that we go in rotation.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. M. C. Ray): The member for Nipissing has the floor. He rose first and I recognized him.

Mr. Harris: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I congratulate you, in your short period of time, on knowing the rules better than some of your colleagues who have been here for 15 or 20 years.

I am delighted, in the time left to me, to associate my remarks with those of the member for London North. I was about to say that in less than a year she has grasped some of the very complex financial issues far better than have certainly any of the members of the government benches whom I sat listening to with their silly interjections while she was speaking.

I also want to say that we do not blame the Minister of Revenue or Ministry of Revenue officials for the dastardly budget that was brought in that led to this 14 per cent increase in the sales tax. Nonetheless, the Minister of Revenue, in his constant badgering and interjections while the member for London North was trying to speak, said: “What would you have us do? Where would we get the money?”

Maybe, if his officials figured out how to stop a whole truckload of gasoline going across the border, they could come up with another $100 million right there. If he could solve that problem, that would be $100 million that he would not have to collect, as well, even with his spending habits and double-the-rate-of-inflation spending patterns, which has really caused the problems.

I really want to say that I enjoyed the remarks of the member for London North. I think she hit the nail right on the head. I want to say, as well, and conclude by reiterating that she has certainly demonstrated a grasp, on behalf of her constituents, far in excess of what one would expect in her short time here.

Mr. Daigeler: I just wanted to say to the member for London North, and also to all of the Tories, that I find it quite hypocritical. Over the last three or four weeks I have been sitting with the member for London North on the estimates of the Ministry of Colleges and Universities and the estimates of the Office for Senior Citizens’ Affairs.

Basically, every question that the member asked was asking for more money, for more services and for more programs. At the same time, now the member says: “We should not really pay for it. We should not raise taxes.” On this side of the House, at least we have the guts to say, “We want to pay now for the services, rather than burden our future generations with that increased tax load.”

Rather than saying this government is not providing the services, I think the member should at least acknowledge that we are providing the services; we are paying for them now. I would just like to say to the member for London North that she cannot have it both ways.

Mrs. Cunningham: I really take objection to the remarks that were just made with regard to my asking for more money. I would like anyone to produce the Hansard that has me asking for more money. I have consistently in this House reminded the government of its promises and I have consistently told it where it could get the money to spend on the programs: in the Office for Senior Citizens’ Affairs, in the Ministry of Education, in the Ministry of Community and Social Services. I speak with the Minister of Community and Social Services frequently about where he can find his money.

That is one argument they will not pin on me. I may in fact turn around some day and say that we need more schools, and I will tell the government where it can get the money for the schools too. They can get it from their own big bureaucracy. They can start taking a look at some of their regional offices and some of all the high-priced help, and their computers, which they do not know what to do with, and do not blame us on that one.

Four years ago those people started spending money on computers. Mr. Speaker, do not laugh. I do not blame you. Does it really take most good managers four years to figure out something is not working and, in the last two years, spend more than $40 million on something that is a flunk?

That is the kind of management they have, but they will not catch me telling them to spend more money. I will tell them to spend what they have got more wisely, and I will still stand in this House and tell them that sales tax was not necessary. It was regressive and it takes money from the people who need it the most, people who are working to contribute to this wonderful economy.

Do not tell me that in the estimates I am asking for more money. I am telling them where to spend their money, and if they listened, they might have one little hope of winning the next election, because I can tell them, a whole bunch of them are going to kiss their seats goodbye on Sunday shopping alone.

Interjections.

The Acting Speaker: Order.

Interjections.

The Acting Speaker: For the benefit of the record, I will explain my smile. I was admiring the member’s persistence and the lost opportunity on the government’s side to use four minutes for comments and questions in response to what she had said.

Mr. Charlton: I should not say it is a pleasure to rise to speak to this bill, Bill 122, because it is not a pleasure at all. I guess perhaps I could start my remarks by picking up on some of the comments that have been made in the last few moments.

First, I guess it becomes very noticeable when government members in this House -- and not just government members of the current government; it has been a tradition I have watched over the course of the last 11 1/2 years -- when government members are uncomfortable and embarrassed by a piece of their government’s legislation, they spend a lot of time during the debates barking and yapping without having very much to say, just to annoy those who are speaking on a piece of legislation.

I found it was particularly inappropriate, what I watched going on during the speech by the member for London North (Mrs. Cunningham), some of which I agreed with and some of which I did not agree with, but I sat and listened, at least.

I would like to say to the member for Nepean (Mr. Daigeler) -- and again, I do not wish to defend the member for London North, because I am not aware of whether she has asked for additional spending or not -- this party has asked for additional spending, but the member for Nepean from time to time, instead of just reading the stuff that is pumped out by the Treasurer and the Treasury, should take the time to read material that is put out by the opposition parties and not just the headlines in the media.

For example, when this budget was tabled last spring, we put out a counter budget package that, yes, has a number of spending proposals that were in addition to what the government proposed to spend. As well, we put out a number of additional tax proposals, which I can tell the member for Nepean were far less regressive and far more useful and progressive, in terms of their approach to fairness, than the one we are dealing with here today in Bill 122.

I think it is time some of us understood what this dollars-and-cents debate is about that we go through in this Legislature from time to time.

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I would like to put a few things on the record today that just came to light this morning in the standing committee on finance and economic affairs.

We were told at the time this budget was tabled that the changes to the retail sales tax from seven per cent to eight per cent and some broadening of the base would raise some $915 million in additional sales taxes in 1988-89. We were updated this morning by the assistant deputy minister from the Ministry of Treasury and Economics, and although the tax increase itself was only 14 per cent, what we had raised in additional retail sales tax in this fiscal year was an additional 23.7 per cent. That is the increase in retail sales taxes collected in Ontario; not $915 million, but $1.497 billion.

Again, for the member for Nepean, although he has not told anybody yet, the Treasurer is sitting there with half a billion dollars that he did not anticipate in his budget and that has been wrenched out of the pockets of Ontario taxpayers. But when we talk to the Minister of Community and Social Services or the Minster of the Environment (Mr. Bradley) or any number of other ministers across the way, they have no dollars to do the things they legitimately say they would do if they had the dollars.

That is half a billion dollars the Treasurer did not know he was going to get, or if he did, he certainly did not set it out in the budget. The figure he set out here in the budget paper was $915 million. A total of $1.497 billion came out of the taxpayers in this province, in addition to all of those taxes we have collected in the past -- $1.497 billion which would otherwise have been spent on consumption, on consumer goods and services. I think we understand that those goods and services represent jobs in the province.

We have stood here on both sides of this House talking about the potential economic problems that will confront Ontario as a result of the free trade pact. We have stood here in this House talking about the problems of infrastructure in the municipalities in terms of being able to renew their water systems, their sewer systems and so on. Unfortunately, we have had a government that has taken the position that it has to wait for the federal government to act before anything significant can be done to address that infrastructure renewal question.

I am going to take members back through a bit of history. I thought it might be useful in this debate, around this particular bill, if we had a look at what some of the present members of the executive council, the cabinet of this province, would have said about this budget just four or five short years ago. I heard the word “hypocrisy” used in some of the comments that were being yelled back and forth just a short time ago, and I think some of the members of this House need to spend just a little bit of time thinking about what they say and what it means, both in the past and in the present.

Here is a quote from Hansard of July 7, 1982. This quote is from a member who is no longer with us, Mr. Breithaupt, a former member of the Liberal caucus from Kitchener: “I recognize that the government majority is probably going to stand by the Treasurer, but I do believe that these exemptions have value to the people of the province, and that they deal with particular things that can be attended to without upsetting the budgetary process and the needs of the province.”

I picked that quote by a member who is no longer with us simply because it reflects a comment that I have heard both of the opposition parties making again this year in the face of a majority government, that regardless of the debate and regardless of what people really know is right or good or wrong, the majority stands by the Treasurer and the bill goes through.

I have some quotes here from the member for Renfrew North (Mr. Conway) in that same debate in 1982: “...our ongoing concern about broadening of the base for the application of the retail sales tax.” This was part of a fairly lengthy dissertation that the member for Renfrew North did on the retail sales tax changes in 1982. I will not read it all, because I do not want to waste the time of the House totally with a lot of what, in my view, is just rhetoric, but there are a few cogent points in the speech. The first one that I have just quoted was making a point about serious concerns about expanding the base, those things that are covered by the tax at all. Members will see a number of other references to this throughout the quotes that I will use today.

We have here a government that chose again to expand the base of the retail sales tax in Ontario; a government party that, for many years in opposition, criticized and belittled each and every effort on the part of the former Conservative government to expand that base.

“We are not at all happy about the sales tax provisions in this particular budget, and we will undertake such actions as we deem necessary and responsible to continue to draw to the attention of the Treasurer and the government, as well as to the attention of the public at large, the serious and negative effect this sales tax policy is currently having and is going to continue to have upon the economy of this province....

“None of us in this opposition wish to be considered difficult or obstructionist. We feel there is a responsibility, however, to fully ventilate the mounting frustration we have identified.”

Again, I use that quote from the speech on the retail sales tax bill in 1982 because of some of the things that have been said here this year about the opposition being irresponsible, about the opposition taking inordinate amounts of time on particular pieces of legislation.

I want to say very honestly that we feel very much in 1988 as the member for Renfrew North felt in 1982 about the seriousness of the legislation that we are dealing with and about our responsibility to ensure, to the best of our ability, not only that that legislation is very thoroughly reviewed. We had to fight with this piece of legislation to get it out to committee, the same with the Workers’ Compensation Board legislation, to ensure that there would be hearings on those pieces of legislation, hearings that the government did not want to have occur. It is all part of positions that this government has strongly advocated in the past, and yet they come so reluctantly to the things that they fought so hard for, over and over and over again.

Here is another comment in that same debate by the member for Renfrew North: “We feel the sales tax policy of this government is wrong, is having a very negative effect upon the economy we all seek to rehabilitate, and we feel very much that it is going to be our responsibility to discuss those matters fully in a committee of this House.”

Again, that is the same reference, and I point that out yet again, I guess, to try to elicit from the government why we find so much reluctance in terms of making the processes around this place more open and public, something they fought for for so long.

I would like to move now to the Premier (Mr. Peterson) in his former role as the Leader of the Opposition in those days: “How can the Treasurer extract all these consumption taxes and regressive taxes from those people least able to pay? He is increasing retail sales tax by 28 per cent.”

That was 1982. As I set out just a few moments ago, this year’s score is almost 24 per cent. I personally do not see very much difference, especially when you consider that the 24 per cent in the retail sales tax in 1988 is 24 per cent of a substantially larger number than the 28 per cent in 1982 was.

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Mr. Faubert: It was 14 per cent yesterday. You guys can’t make up your minds.

Mr. Charlton: That is my problem. The member has been sitting there throughout my comments, but he has not listened to any of them. I explained that and I am not going to explain it again. He should read Hansard.

Mr. Faubert: I’ll read Hansard, but it doesn’t make any more sense when you read it than when you listen to it.

Mr. Charlton: Oh, it does, my friend. You just never take the time to listen.

The Acting Speaker: Order.

Mr. Charlton: The 14 per cent was the increase in the tax. The 23.7 per cent is the increase in the take this year. That is how much extra they got out of the pockets of Ontarians. According to the assistant deputy minister from Treasury and Economics this morning in the standing committee on finance and economic affairs, 23.7 per cent -- $1,497,000,000 -- was the increase in the take this year.

I have momentarily lost my place, but I will find it again very quickly. Here it is. It is the Premier: “How can the Treasure extract all these consumption taxes and regressive taxes from those people least able to pay?” He is talking here about the same retail sales tax that we are extending yet further into the pockets of the poor and those who are least able to pay.

“He is extracting, in those categories alone, close to $2 billion.” The categories he is referring to there are several taxes. In this particular case, it was something in the range of $825 million in retail sales tax. As I have already pointed out, that huge grab in 1982 pales compared to either the originally projected grab of this year of $915 million or the actual grab of $1,497,000,000. It pales terribly.

The point, I guess, is that the Premier understood in clear terms in 1982 that the retail sales tax was a regressive tax that adversely affected those least able to afford it. He goes on: “I know, and the Treasurer knows, he got a lot of advice from economists saying he could not whack the already overburdened taxpayer at this time. Will he not admit that he does not understand the plight of some of these people and that he responded in an incorrect manner to the economic problems in the province at this time?”

Perhaps we could expect the same kind of admission by the Premier in his present role. What was appropriate in 1982 is appropriate in 1988, because the tax is still a regressive tax, as the Premier has said. The Premier goes on in that same debate: “The reality is that sometimes the Treasurer talks about essentiality, and sometimes he does not, to suit the purposes of his new round of tax and revenue grabs for his budget. Does the Treasurer not agree with me that his new round of tax increases hits the poor far harder than it hits the rich? Was that the intention of his budget, to extract more out of the poor?”

Perhaps the Premier should answer his own questions. It is my view that the job of the opposition in this province is to hold the government accountable not only for what it is doing today, but for what it has led the people of Ontario by its rhetoric in the past to believe it will do. I do not think there will be any doubt in anybody’s mind when I go through the quotes that I have that everybody in this province believed no Liberal government would ever dare to tamper with, expand the base of or increase the retail sales tax.

This time the Premier is asking a question of his predecessor in the Premier’s chair:

“I am sure the Premier, because he has a rudimentary knowledge of a wide number of things, is familiar with Samuelson’s book on economics in which the author says about customs and sales taxes, ‘In order of regressiveness, these would probably come first.’ How does the Premier square that with the Treasurer’s statement of last week that ‘I do not think the sales tax is as regressive as the member believes it is’?”

The Premier sets out in that question very clearly his view that the retail sales tax in this province is a regressive tax, that it is a tax on the poor, and perhaps he owes us an answer to that question, as well.

He goes on: “Does he not feel it is unfair to impose these regressive taxes on people least able to pay through the sales tax in order for him to have his transfers wherever he has decided to have them?” The same questions apply to this Treasurer and this Premier that applied in 1982.

Some will say that the circumstance has changed, and for many, the circumstance has changed since 1982. There are some people who are far better off than they were in 1982, but for the poor, for those unable to defend themselves and for those unable to pay this tax, their circumstance has not changed at all. In fact, as the government is well aware, it has probably worsened as the gap widens, in part because of economic changes that are going on in the society and in part because of the actions of this kind of government imposing this kind of tax that impacts on the poor.

This is the Treasurer again, just a few days later, in a question to the Treasurer of the day, Mr. Miller:

“The provincial expectation that municipal governments are able to assume these additional costs at a time when municipalities are already experiencing fiscal restraint is unrealistic. The budget, in effect, offsets the 1982 transfer payments as announced by the Honourable Claude Bennett on January 28, 1982. At the time when the transfer payments were announced, the association stated its concern regarding the inadequacy of the 10.5 per cent increase over the amount budgeted for municipalities in 1981. The impact of the Ontario budget now magnifies many times this inadequacy.”

This brings up two things I would like to take a few moments on in relation to this bill. I see that we are quickly coming to the hour of six, so I will perhaps make this my last set of comments for today.

What this points to -- and I have referred to it earlier -- is a government that stands in its place, talks about the terrible straits the municipalities are in in terms of infrastructure renewal, talks about the failures of the federal government to deal with those questions, talks in 1982 about the horrendous burden that the Treasurer of the day placed on those municipalities, but what have we seen here in this piece of legislation this year? Have we seen the Treasurer rescind those burdens that have exacerbated the problems of 1982? No. He has not rescinded them. What did he do? He increased them. He made the problems for the municipalities that much worse.

Mr. Speaker, I see your eyes fixed on the clock. I will move the adjournment of the debate.

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

The Deputy Speaker: The government House leader, the member for Renfrew North.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Hon. Mr. Conway: Thank you very much, Mr, Deputy Speaker. I note that with your wife in the precinct, you are in a particularly good mood, so I shall try to maintain that positive attitude and report that pursuant to standing order 13, I would like to tell my friend from Mount Forest and others that the business of the House for the coming week is as follows.

On Monday, December 5, we will deal with second reading of Bill 121, An Act to amend the Gasoline Tax Act, and the second reading of Bill 120, An Act to amend the Tobacco Tax Act. Any votes relating to the second reading of these bills will be stacked until Wednesday, December 7, at 5:45 p.m.

On Tuesday, December 6, we will deal with a number of bills awaiting third reading as well as a number of private bills awaiting second and third reading, as listed in the Orders and Notices paper. We will also continue with the adjourned debate on the report of the standing committee on resources development on accidents and fatalities in Ontario mines.

On Wednesday, December 7, we will continue the adjourned debate on Bill 122, An Act to amend the Retail Sales Tax Act. Any votes relating to the second reading of Bill 122 will be stacked until 5:45 that afternoon, as well as those earlier stacked for the same day.

On Thursday, December 8, in the morning, we will consider private members’ business standing in the names of Mr. Epp and Mr. Wildman. In the afternoon on Thursday, we will deal with the estimates of the Office of the Premier, the Cabinet Office and the Office of the Lieutenant Governor.

The House adjourned at 6:01 p.m.

December 1, 1988

ORDERS OF THE DAY

PRIVATE MEMBERS’ PUBLIC BUSINESS

REFUGEE CLAIMANTS

RURAL POSTAL SERVICES / SERVICES POSTAUX RURAUX

REFUGEE CLAIMANTS

RURAL POSTAL SERVICES

AFTERNOON SITTING

MEMBERS’ STATEMENTS

AMBULANCE SERVICES

CFOS/CFPS-SUN TIMES CHRISTMAS FUND

WORLD AIDS DAY

CONSERVATION AUTHORITIES

RENT REGULATION

BHOPAL DISASTER

JOHN JONES

PORTUGUESE INDEPENDENCE DAY

STATEMENTS BY THE MINISTRY

COMPUTERS-IN-EDUCATION GRANTS PROGRAM

RESPONSES

COMPUTERS-IN-EDUCATION GRANTS PROGRAM

ORAL QUESTIONS

TEMAGAMI DISTRICT RESOURCES

POLICIES ON ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES

ROOMERS, BOARDERS AND LODGERS

TEMAGAMI DISTRICT RESOURCES

LABOUR-BUSINESS-GOVERNMENT RELATIONS

USE OF CONSULTANTS

NIAGARA REGIONAL POLICE

AIR AMBULANCE SERVICES

METROPOLITAN TORONTO CONVENTION CENTRE

UNDERSERVICED AREA PROGRAM

PROPOSED HOSPITAL MERGER

LITERACY PROGRAMS

PETITIONS

ANIMALS FOR RESEARCH

NATUROPATHY

SENIOR CITIZENS’ APARTMENTS

REPORT BY COMMITTEE

STANDING COMMITTEE ON THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY

MOTION

PRIVATE MEMBERS’ PUBLIC BUSINESS

ORDERS OF THE DAY

ESTIMATES, MINISTRY OF HEALTH (CONTINUED)

RETAIL SALES TAX AMENDMENT ACT (CONTINUED)

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE