Hansard Transcript 1989-Feb-16 | Legislative Assembly of Ontario

That, in the opinion of this House, the Ministry of Consumer and Commercial Relations should consider strengthening the Ontario new home warranties plan by:

1. Adopting a standard form of agreement of purchase and sale, with rights and obligations of both purchaser and vendor delineated;

2. Introducing an optional extension of the Ontario new home owner warranty to cover minor and major structural defects, to allow warranties to apply for a period of up to two years of the date specified in the possession certificate;

3. Adopting a provision that would:

(a) permit the purchaser at the time of closing to pay to the Ontario New Home Warranty Program the value of uncompleted work, and deduct the amount so paid from the balance due to the vendor on closing and

(b) permit the purchaser to authorize the Ontario New Home Warranty Program to make one or more payments to the vendor as unfinished work is completed;

4. Extending the warranty provisions to alterations, deletions, additions or upgrades specified by the purchaser and included in the agreement of purchase and sale;

5. Extending the provisions of the act to include restorations, renovations and additions to existing residential properties.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Halton Centre has moved private member’s notice of motion 63. I will listen to the honourable member for up to 20 minutes. If she wishes to reserve any of that time for the final discussion, that is within order. I will also listen to any other members for up to 10 minutes.

Mrs. Sullivan: This resolution is derived from the experiences of my constituents in a high-growth area who purchase new homes with all of the hopes and expectations that accompany that and it is also derived from the experiences of people in the home building industry itself who face changes in their sector that have kept them scrambling to keep up.

To put the resolution in perspective, I would like to take a moment or two to describe the Ontario New Home Warranty Program. Since its inception as a provincial program in 1977, the Ontario New Home Warranty Program has provided protection for purchasers of every new home built in Ontario. In its 12 years of operation, close to half a million homes have been warranted by the plan.

The program requires that anyone who is selling or building a new home must be registered. It says that every seller of a new home must warrant to the person buying that the home is constructed in a workmanlike manner, is free from defects, is fit for habitation and is constructed in accordance with the Ontario Building Code.

The act provides further a warranty that the home is free from major structural defects. That includes defects that lead to failures in load-bearing portions of the building and other such serious problems as collapse of joints or roof structures or chemical failure of materials.

The act and its regulations and the practice which has evolved over a period of time are clearly an improvement over the caveat emptor approach. Warranty programs exist in all provinces and in the Yukon Territory. The Ontario program is, however, the only mandatory program in Canada and one of three mandatory programs in the world. In making improvements to the program, Ontario has looked to other jurisdictions, but just as important, it has looked to our own experiences and our own requirements.

The most recent enhancements to the program were introduced by the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations (Mr. Wrye), and they went into effect in June and August of last year. They addressed needed changes in meeting problems associated with delayed closings, major and minor substitutions of equipment or material, standards of workmanship, after-sale service and incomplete construction. These changes went a long way in helping the purchaser, who faced continuing frustrations in reaching a satisfactory conclusion on the details of buying a new home, and they were welcomed.

The changes were made after consultation with the home building industry, consumer associations and people who work in the administration of the program itself. I think it important to note that there has been a continuing co-operative approach among the key players. It was very clear to all of these participants that changes were needed, and they were made. But problems still exist. While there are rational explanations for the problems -- labour market conditions and sectoral growth -- the explanations do not mask the need for additional action.

Since 1982, we have been in the midst of a sustained building boom in homes in Ontario. Both builders and buyers have been reeling from the shock of that boom, builders because of a continuing shortage of skilled artisans and tradesmen and buyers because their high expectations have often been dashed. We have had too many hopes, too many promises, too much anger and too much frustration.

Many of my constituents have been caught in this cycle. It is largely because of their experiences that I am putting forward very specific suggestions for consideration, but as well, my discussions with home builders, some of whom are also constituents, are part of the recommendations here and reflect some of their concerns.

Like many other industrial sectors which are struggling to attract and keep trained workers, the residential construction industry has been faced with increasing and sustained demand for output. Too often, it has coped with unskilled labour doing skilled jobs in a kind of on-the-job training scenario. The industry itself has recognized and made attempts to deal with this situation by sponsoring forums such as Future Building ‘88, designed to bring information about the industry to young people so they can see it as a legitimate career option.

The industry has also participated in community-college industry programs. By example, in Hamilton, some 100 students were involved over a period of two years. But the industry itself also admits that these efforts frequently are not enough to meet the demands of the marketplace.

The industry identified early some of the problems which were facing consumers as a result of a labour market condition. Difficulties with on-time completions brought late closings. Deficiencies in after-sale service to correct shortcomings were obvious to the industry. If they were obvious to the industry, they were more than obvious to the home buyer, who often could not move into the new home on the appointed date or, if able to move in, had to put up with unfinished or badly finished work and the prospect of workers where a wall should be.

From both sides of the contract, I, who have never occupied a new home, came to learn a great deal. One of the things I learned from industry representatives is that many, if not the majority of people, who are buying new homes do so without legal counsel. Verbal understandings, or misunderstandings, and the pitch of the eager salesman are too often built into conceptions of what the contract of purchase and sale includes or does not include.

The Toronto Home Builders’ Association has drafted a standard agreement of purchase and sale which is used by approximately half of regional new home builders. I asked a group of people in my riding, the Glen Abbey Ratepayers Association, to review the contract from a consumer’s point of view. Many people in the association have had recent experience in buying a new home and signing an agreement to purchase.

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I also asked other people who were home buyers who had faced problems with their contracts to consider the merits of a standard contract of purchase and sale. The conclusion was very clear. There is a great deal of interest in a standard agreement of purchase and sale, and a sense that, were it equitable to both buyer and seller, it would be a useful addition to the process of new home purchase.

I noted that many of the observations put forward by the people underlined the need for strengthened communications, by contract if necessary, between buyer and seller. Suggestions for improvement related directly to the Ontario New Home Warranty Program’s addendum to agreement of purchase and sale, which is built into the Toronto Home Builders’ Association standard agreement.

But there were specific other areas noted as well, including extending the buyer’s right to have reasonable opportunities to visit the property during the construction period and a need for specific consultation and agreement on any alteration of the plans or specifications or substitution of materials.

Words used in the Toronto Home Builders’ Association agreement were of some concern. What does “substantially complete” or “reasonably may be occupied” mean to the family who is taking possession of a property if the dwelling is not in truth ready for comfortable occupancy?

From a buyer’s point of view, this kind of communication was not seen simply as a matter of courtesy on behalf of the vendor; it was seen as a vitally important part of the purchaser’s right to know about the progress, quality and standards of what will become his property. If that kind of information cannot be guaranteed by a handshake or an understanding as it might have been in another time, then the conclusion was that it should be written down and made more formal.

My constituents who were purchasers tell me that a standard agreement would be a step forward. The industry says it would be a step forward. The next step then is to produce a standard agreement of purchase and sale applicable throughout the province that is equitable for buyer and for seller. That is my first recommendation for strengthening the program.

My second recommendation relates to the time period of the warranty itself. In Ontario and elsewhere, the warranty takes effect when the purchaser takes possession of the home and a certificate of possession is issued. The certificate is completed only after a joint inspection of the house by the buyer and seller, during which time all observable defects are noted.

That list may be long or it may be short, but what it includes are things that are clear to the eye on a walkabout, and therefore the list tends to underline the obvious. Any other defects in workmanship and materials which are identified by the purchaser over the course of the first year of occupancy must be raised directly with the vendor, who is expected to correct the deficiencies.

In the case of major structural problems, the defects must be identified before the end of the fifth year of occupancy. In 1987, I should point out, Ontario extended the basic warranty period to two years with respect to water penetration in the basement or foundation of a new home.

What purchasers tell me, however, is that on the basic defects a one-year identification period is not enough. The kitchen cupboard may work itself loose from its ceiling join 15 months after occupancy. The weakened carpenter’s glue on the balustrade may not be apparent until a few months after a full season of central heating. The improper fitting of a window or the use of wrong paint on the exterior surface may not become obvious until more than 12 months have passed.

Purchasers have told me that they would like to see an optional extension of the warranty for what are known as minor defects -- which are not at all minor, I should point out, to the new home owner -- to ensure that the identification and correction of defects in workmanship and materials can be warranted for two years following the date of possession.

Their views, I should point out, have been supported by the consumer legislative review project. In its report, the review team has gone further than my constituents and has said that the extension of the warranty provisions for two years should be provided as a matter of course.

Similarly, my recommendation would extend the warranty provisions on major defects for an optional one-year period to six years. The legislative review project has recommended that the period should be extended from the current five-year coverage to a period of eight years after possession.

Whatever time periods are chosen, the essence of the issue is that there is a need for more time and that there are very practical reasons behind the identification of this area as one where change should take place.

Another area where there is a concurrence on the need for fairness between home buyers and home builders, but less of a measure of concurrence on how that fairness should be achieved, relates to the question of holdback on payment on work that is incomplete. Builders recognize that there is not a full measure of equity when the buyer must close the deal and pay in full for work that is not yet complete. They say, however, that if the buyer is allowed to hold back a portion of the payment of the purchase price, there will be an inevitable increase in the cost of the house to cover the costs associated with the holdback.

The purchaser sees the holdback in a different light, however. First, there is a sense that there should not be an obligation to pay for work that is not done or is not done properly. Second, there is a view that if the builder knows that the work will not be paid for until it is done, the work will be done and it will be done in a satisfactory manner.

I am pleased to incorporate in full into my resolution the recommendation which came from the Glen Abbey Ratepayers Association. I think it provides a recognition of both builder and buyer interests and provides a level of comfort to both. It says that the purchaser should be able to withhold moneys due on closing to the seller to the value of the uncompleted work and, in turn, should deposit that amount in trust with the home warranty program. The purchaser can then authorize the program to pay moneys to the seller as work is completed to a satisfactory level.

That recommendation makes eminent sense. Both buyer and seller are protected and ill will is lessened because both would have a promise and a guarantee of performance. This would not be the first time that common sense has prevailed in improvements to the home warranty program, but I believe that this recommendation is particularly worth exploring.

Another commonsense recommendation concerns the situation when the purchaser contracts for alterations and changes to the specifications of the model home or model house plan: that those upgrades, deletions or changes would be covered by the warranty program. It seems almost silly to me that if pine floors are standard in the agreement and a purchaser contracts for and is willing to pay for maple floors, for example, that the maple floors would not be covered under the warranty program. I am told that is so because they would be contractual add-ons, and yet the purchaser should be afforded the same protection for the correct installation of the maple floors as for the pine floors and the equivalent guarantees of quality.

The recommendation to extend the warranty provisions to specified alterations, deletions, additions or upgrades, which are included in the agreement of purchase and sale and which are carried out by the builder, is straightforward.

My last recommendation is less easy to deal with, but I believe it should be on the table. My suggestion is that the warranty program should be extended to include restorations, renovations and additions to existing homes.

Many people in my community and elsewhere have opted not to get into the new home market but to change what they already have to meet changing circumstances. In some cases, families are welcoming grandparents to their homes or they may be seeing the return of married children with their own offspring, or children who have completed their schooling but do not yet have the wherewithal to establish an independent home may be coming back to the parents’ place. Rather than change communities, the choice is to adapt home surroundings to changing demands.

An addition is a realistic alternative. Other families choose to renovate to bring older houses into a more modern phase, and some of us who have been categorized as fools, and I count myself as one, choose to restore historic or near-historic properties.

There is a segment of the building industry that is very skilled and very conscientious in addressing each of these varied requirements, and I would be the first to point out that it rarely encompasses the new home builder who works in a different sector.

One of the strengths of the home warranty program is the registration process and the authority to deregister the nonperformer. Another strength is the warranty that work will be completed in a workmanlike manner, free from defects, constructed in accordance with the Ontario Building Code and fit for habitation.

Once again, it makes sense that similar rules could apply to another sector of the shelter industry without duplicating the bureaucracy. The experience of the people in the Ontario New Home Warranty Program could well benefit this increasing sector.

The legislative review project has suggested that home improvement sellers should continue to be registered with the Ministry of Consumer and Commercial Relations, but points out that they are now classified as itinerant sellers. Why should they not be registered as a segment of the home construction industry?

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The review talks about improved contractual disclosure, including the commencement and completion dates, and establishment of penalties if work is not completed on time. The review also recommends a home improvement compensation fund in the event of discontinuance of business or bankruptcy of the home improvement specialist.

To me it is obvious that we have an argument for extension of the Ontario New Home Warranty Program and, further, that we have the experience to make it work. I think that the person who decides to add on or to renovate or restore should have equivalent protection to the person who buys new. Whether from a cost benefit or an efficiency analysis, we should use what we already have that we know works well that has a flexibility that allows adjustment to protect a different sector of consumers.

I hope that members in the House will support these recommendations and that the ministry will consider them. They do not come from a vacuum, but are a result of interventions from people who are buyers and people who are sellers. They make sense to me and I hope that they made sense to my other colleagues in the House as well.

I would like to reserve any remaining time for the conclusion of the debate.

Mr. McCague: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker: I did not want to interrupt the member for Halton Centre, who is not the subject of the few words I would like to say on a point of order under standing order 71.

We began our proceedings this morning at 11 instead of 10, as would be the norm. The reason that we did not consider a private member’s bill at 10 this morning is not clear to me. I can only speculate as to why there are no Liberal members prepared to take advantage of the private members’ opportunity made available to all backbenchers.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. M. C. Ray): Yesterday, on a motion by the member for Fort William (Mrs. McLeod), the acting government House leader at the time, it was ordered by the Legislative Assembly “that, notwithstanding standing orders 2(a) and 71(b), the House shall meet at 11 am, on Thursday, February 16, 1989, to consider one item of private members’ public business and that, notwithstanding standing order 71(h), the requirement for notice be waived with respect to ballot item 63.”

Does the member have another point of order?

Mr. McCague: Mr. Speaker, standing order 71 clearly says that we need two weeks’ notice for private members’ bills and we have no notice whatsoever for next --

The Acting Speaker: Order. I remind all members that we are now using the one hour of available time on these dubious points of order.

Mr. Callahan: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker: The member just speaking is, in fact, speaking to the ruling you made. That is out of order. The only right he has is to appeal the ruling of the chair.

The Acting Speaker: The question of notice was dealt with in yesterday’s order, which I quoted.

Mr. Farnan: As the New Democratic Party critic for the Ministry of Consumer and Commercial Relations and as the member for Cambridge, a community experiencing considerable growth in recent years, I am very concerned about the strengthening of the Ontario New Home Warranty Program. Experience has demonstrated the need for legislation that will provide protection and fairness to new home buyers.

Surely the time is long overdue for the government to seriously address the hazards, risks and uncertainties experienced by home purchasers in Ontario. This is not a new problem. New Democrats have been pressing for consumer protection in this area for many years, and all members of the assembly will attest to the long and vigorous campaign waged by Mel Swart, the recently retired member for Welland-Thorold, to have the government introduce consumer protection legislation for home buyers and home owners. Indeed, my predecessor as NDP Consumer and Commercial Relations critic even went so far as to draft appropriate legislation and press a succession of Liberal ministers to take effective action.

On December 17, 1986, then Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations, the member for Wilson Heights (Mr. Kwinter), announced certain revisions to the new home warranty program and said that these changes, plus tough policing, “will provide the home buyers of this province with the best consumer protection available in Canada today.”

Tell that to the home purchasers who may well be forced into an apartment as they await the construction of their new home. Tell that to the tens of thousands who are forced into similar situations by the failure of the developer-builder to meet completion dates. Tell that to the young couple whose roof leaks, whose drywall crumbles or whose basement is flooded. Tell that to the occupants without a driveway and proper grading and with a garden of rocks. Tell that to the family that takes possession of its home in desperation, realizes that there are deficiencies in the painting, finishing, trim or brickwork, and then embarks on the often hopeless task of getting the builder to remedy minor or major structural defects or to finish uncompleted work. Tell that to the countless individuals and families who have cut their losses and simply given up in frustration.

Now, two years later, the consumer is still suffering and has little meaningful protection.

We must face the fact that some developer-builders are using unrealistic closing dates as a gimmick to promote sales. This results in less than quality workmanship, as corners are cut in an attempt to meet these unattainable closing dates. This is further compounded by unskilled labourers doing skilled work.

Apprenticeships are not required for carpentry or bricklaying. While it has made available, through community colleges, 20-week training programs in these trades, the government has given no consideration to making these training programs compulsory. It is little wonder that the home purchaser is so often confronted with an unsatisfactory and deficient product as a result of shoddy workmanship.

Another practice involves the developer-builder consciously delaying completion in order to get a higher price from a new buyer if the original one backs off because of the delay.

In all of these circumstances, it is the buyer who loses. I was under the naïve belief that a major function of a consumer minister was to protect consumers against situations like these, yet Consumer and Commercial Relations ministers have rejected legislative action based on the argument that there was only a small segment of the building industry creating problems. Well, only a small segment of motorists drives while impaired. Would the minister suggest that we should not have drunk-driving laws? Of course not. Why then would the minister refuse to legislate against those who create horrendous problems in new home sales, even if it is only a minority of developer-builders who are guilty? Prevention of these problems is not difficult to achieve. It is the lack of political will on the part of this Liberal government that has permitted them to occur.

I support the general intent of the member for Halton Centre in her desire to strengthen the Ontario New Home Warranty Program. Certainly, it must be mandatory that a standard form of agreement of sale be used. I am also supportive of the recommendations that would withhold from the developer-builder an amount equivalent to the uncompleted work at the time of closing. This money would be paid by the purchaser to the Ontario New Home Warranty Program and would be relayed to the developer-builder in instalments as the unfinished work was completed. These measures would provide the home purchaser with a considerable degree of protection, which does not exist at the present time. They would give the purchaser some leverage in having outstanding work completed and, at the very least, they would ensure that the purchaser is not paying for work that might never be completed.

However, there is little in this resolution that would penalize a builder-developer for not living up to the terms of the agreement.

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In my view, it is not unreasonable that where the builder-developer fails to meet the completion date of an agreement, substantial penalties be paid by the developer-builder to the purchaser, and that where there is a long postponement of completion, the buyer would have the option of cancelling the purchase contract with the down payment refunded and interest and penalties levied against the builder.

An independent panel including consumer representatives would be established with authority to waive part or all of the late-completion penalties, if it was established that the delay was beyond the builder’s control as a result of strikes, unavailability of materials, etc.

Thousands of new home buyers have been severely hurt or seriously inconvenienced by late completions. This is the type of legislation that would guarantee the future protection of consumers in the housing market. Many of the structural defects, both minor and major, are only evidenced after new home owners have lived in their home for some time. It would certainly make a lot of sense to allow warranties to apply for a period of up to two years of the date specified in the possession certificate.

I would go further and suggest that the present guarantee fund of the Ontario New Home Warranty Program, which is currently used to correct certain defaults by builders, should be extended to provide coverage to include home completion. Home purchasers should not have to absorb the costs of renting an apartment while they wait after the completion date to take possession. These costs should be drawn from the guarantee fund, into which the builders would contribute.

The use of such a fund for protecting home purchasers is not unreasonable or unique in any way. There is a travel industry fund to protect travellers and there is a compensation fund to protect motor vehicle buyers from lawsuit or bankruptcy or other failure of the dealer to fulfil purchase contracts. The purchase of a new home is the single greatest expenditure that most people make in a lifetime. Why should that purchase not be protected in a manner similar to purchases of automobiles or travel?

It is significant that the travel industry fund is financed by the agent and travel businesses. The same kind of financing is used for the motor vehicle dealers’ fund. Therefore, the builders, not the customers, should finance the building completion fund as part of the new home warranties plan, even if that means new enrolment fees for them.

Finally, it makes very good sense to extend the warranty provisions to alterations, deletions, additions or upgrades specified by the purchaser and included in the agreement of purchase and sale and to further extend the provisions of the act to include restorations, renovations and additions to existing residential properties.

Given the failure of the Liberal government to seriously address the abuses to which the home-buying consumer is subjected, I commend the member for Halton Centre in bringing forward her resolution. Much of the substance of her resolution has been championed by New Democrats for many years now. It contains many suggestions, promoted by Mel Swart, that would improve the situation of the home buyer and the residential owner and is certainly an improvement on the current situation. It is a good first step.

It is sad that a private member must prod her own government to action when the evidence is so overwhelming that the consumer is in such desperate need of protection in the housing market. However, I am sure New Democrats will see in the member’s presentation of her resolution the dawning of enlightenment on the Liberal benches. We New Democrats have a tradition of promoting innovative and progressive ideas and we rejoice in prodding the Liberal government, however reluctant it might be, to enact legislation that will provide some reasonable degree of protection, fairness and justice for home owners.

If Mel Swart were here today, I think he would say, “We’ve got them moving in the right direction, but let’s keep up the pressure until we get the kind of legislation the home buyers and the home owners of Ontario deserve.”

Mr. McLean: I want to speak briefly on this resolution before us today. However, I find it difficult to participate in a debate when we get such short notice. This House, I understand, is having a very hard time controlling its agenda -- we did not start today until 11 o’clock -- and I find it very demoralizing.

I want to talk about the resolution with regard to the Ontario New Home Warranty Program which we had before the standing committee on the Ombudsman last year, in August, to look in depth with regard to the Ontario New Home Warranty Program.

I can tell the members that the objective of the Housing and Urban Development Association of Canada new home warranty program was “to establish, organize and administer in Ontario a new home warranty program for the benefit of persons who purchase or agree to purchase residential housing from builders who are participants in such program, and in connection therewith, to give warranties, commitments, undertakings and guarantees to such purchasers to protect them against substandard construction, faulty workmanship and materials.”

It was “to promote better understanding and communications between builders and purchasers of new homes”; it was “to provide purchasers of new homes with a forum for complaints and grievances relating to the failure of participating builders to fulfil warranties and guarantees so that such complaints and grievances may be dealt with in an expeditious and equitable manner.”

It also goes on and says: “Once purchasers become owners, they are provided with a one-year warranty on workmanship, a two-year warranty against leakage of the basement and a five-year warranty against major structural defects. Again, if there is a dispute between the builder and the owner, the program will move in, mediate and conciliate at the request of either party and offer a decision as to the benefits a purchaser is to receive. Maximum coverage is $50,000. This is a conciliatory, not an adversarial process. In many instances, program staff help to resolve contentious issues between owners and builders that are not provided for as a part of the plan.”

During the testimony given at the evidence with regard to the Ontario Home Builders’ Association, the member’s colleague the member for Halton North (Mr. Elliot) said, “I would like to add my congratulations and thanks to those who have already said thank you for a very good presentation here.”

The member for Halton North went on: “In glancing quickly through the statistics, as I indicated, this morning I think, the Ontario New Home Warranty Program people should be very pleased with their record to date. It is a very impressive program and I do not think very many people are getting through the cracks in the particular program.” That is coming from the member’s colleague, the member for Halton North.

The member for Halton North also said: “I have found in my experience with the program it is excellent, as you have said, and my concern is twofold. One is that it is so excellent that those squeaky wheels that are really going after restitution of builders are getting more than their fair share.”

He also says: “I am not suggesting that the warranty people go overboard in satisfying the claims unnecessarily, but they have been very accommodating in the experience I have had in this.” He even talked about how well this system that the member wants to amend is working. He said, “. . .but if you discover something like that while doing a renovation in the basement two years after the home was purchased, at the present time, technically it would not be covered.”

Mr. Heron, from the Ontario Home Builders’ Association, said: “No, it would be covered. It is covered under the structural warranty.” The member for Halton North said, “So it is up to five years for the structural warranty, “and the witness said, “Yes.” The member said, “Good.”

I would like to indicate that the member for Chatham-Kent (Mr. Bossy) had indicated that it falls right in line with what I wanted to ask concerning fixing what is not already broken. So the member’s own colleagues are saying what a wonderful program this is that she wants to amend. The Ombudsman’s representative, with whom we were dealing in this program, indicated: “We are here for a couple of reasons.” He said: “In our experience, we do receive a mere handful of complaints a year against the program. Not very many. There are a number of reasons for that. First, as Dr. Hill said in his position paper, the program appears to be working well, because we do not get that many complaints.”

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Here we have a member who has a resolution to amend the Ontario New Home Warranty Program, which her colleagues say is a wonderful plan. I will be listening carefully today and I hope the member for Halton North participates in this debate to compliment further how well the program is working so that perhaps some of the comments that he made in committee may be verified.

I am a strong believer in the home warranty program that is in place. I think it does an excellent job, as has been indicated, and perhaps the member for Halton Centre should be looking at one or two amendments with regard to the numbers of years that are involved. I find her resolution with regard to the new home warranty program rather interesting.

Mr. Offer: It is my pleasure to join the debate on this resolution of the member for Halton Centre and to congratulate her on a very important resolution.

This resolution is important in two ways. It is important because it puts forward specific proposals for consideration; I want to deal with those proposals in some detail later on. Second, it also sends out a very clear message that the Ontario New Home Warranty Program is one which is constantly changing, constantly needing analysis, a re-examination, to make certain that it meets the needs of the persons it was designed to protect.

I think this resolution, because it comes to grips with and addresses those two very important points, is one which should be supported by all members of this Legislature.

I have had occasion to view in many ways at first hand the workings of the Ontario New Home Warranty Program, what was originally known as the Housing and Urban Development Association of Canada. When one deals with the program, we must be very clear that we are not criticizing the builders or the building industry.

The builders and the building industry are there to construct homes and to sell those homes in accordance with an agreement of purchase and sale, and generally that is indeed exactly what happens. However, there are occasions when the purchasers of new homes do require extra protection -- protection from some builders who, because of financial reasons, are unable or unwilling to complete homes. That is what this program is designed to address.

I would like to step back in time in dealing with the history of this program, because its history indeed is not terribly long. This program came into force first, I believe, in 1976-77. Before the existence of a formal warranty program, many builders offered one-year warranties to their own customers.

In 1976 HUDAC’s new home warranty program was implemented in Ontario by the Ontario council of HUDAC, which is now called the Ontario Home Builders’ Association. This was a voluntary program and it was established in May 1976.

The Ontario New Home Warranty Program became provincial law on December 31, 1976, which superseded the voluntary type of plan. Since its inception on January 1, 1977, this program has provided protection for every new home built for sale in Ontario, a total of somewhat more than 480,000 homes. Let’s be certain that this particular program is self-funding. It does not cost the taxpayers any money. It is, and we must be very clear about it, the only mandatory home warranty program in Canada; indeed, one of only three in the world. So we are talking about a very specific, unique form of protection given to the purchasers of new homes in Ontario. I have been given some information that the program, since its inception, has paid out almost $32 million in claims to home purchasers.

This warranty program is administered by a board of directors composed generally of eight members nominated by the Ontario Home Builders’ Association, and one representative from each of the Ontario division of the Consumers’ Association of Canada, mortgage lenders, mortgage insurers, municipalities, the Ministry of Consumer and Commercial Relations and the manufactured housing industry.

Not only is this program dealing with the protection given to new home purchasers, it also has another function which is, in many areas, to educate and inform consumers of their rights to protection and also to educate builders in order to improve the standard of home construction in Ontario. So this program is not just protection given to purchasers of new homes, but it also is a very important program in terms of educating the public at large.

Outside of the specifics of this resolution is the message that the program must constantly undergo a re-examination and a reanalysis. I am a member in an area which is growing dramatically, not only industrially and commercially, but certainly residentially. I have seen examples of this program working. I have seen examples in some cases where a particular individual has had a whole home rebricked. That protection was allowed under the program.

However, I have also seen examples where the program has not provided protection -- indeed, cases of people who contracted to buy a home and, prior to completion of the transaction, the builder went bankrupt and they were left without any real remedy. I believe this resolution is important because it does re-examine and reanalyse whether the program is continuing to meet the needs of the people for whom it was designed.

I would like to deal with some of the specifics of this resolution because I think these are very well thought out improvements to the program. The first I would like to talk about is the adopting of a standard form of agreement of purchase and sale with rights and obligations of both purchaser and vendor delineated.

I guess in this type of an issue you really have two countervailing factors. Number one, people who buy new homes, whether it is in an active or a less active real estate market, generally do not seek legal advice prior to signing the agreement. They generally do not seek legal advice before what is for most people the single largest purchase they will ever make in their lives. I think that is an important fact to keep in mind. On the other hand, one must wonder whether a standard form agreement of purchase and sale will promote their seeking such legal advice prior to entering into an agreement. I think such a standard agreement of purchase and sale will not in many ways promote people to seek lawyers.

However, the fact of the matter is that in most cases -- and most members in the Legislature and certainly most members of the practising bar and most people who buy new homes know that they do not seek legal advice prior to entering into an agreement -- a standard form agreement will provide some greater protection to the purchaser of a new home, not only protection in terms of the terms and conditions of the agreement, but also in terms of confidence that this is an agreement which is accepted and acceptable throughout the province and is one which they can rely on. I think it is an important aspect in increasing the protection given to purchasers of new homes.

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Finally, I would like to talk about the optional extension of the Ontario New Home Warranty Program. I remember when the program was first introduced, there were generally two forms and two time limits. There was a five-year time limit for a major structural defect and a one-year time period given for a minor structural defect. With respect to the major structural defect, the five-year limit is still in existence. With respect to the minor structural defect, it still applies in all cases except to water leakage in a basement. That has been extended by one year to two years.

I believe very much that the member for Halton Centre has really captured an increased protection that should be given to the purchaser in terms of extending at least the minor protection on an optional basis a further year. Many times, the time period in which you complete the transaction really presents a difficulty in uncovering any defects within one year. I think the proposal made by the member for Halton Centre is one that should be taken into consideration very seriously. I would like to compliment the member on a very important resolution that will protect, in a very strong way, members of the purchasing public.

Mr. Pollock: There are a few things I would like to put on the record.

One of them, in regard to this particular resolution, is the fact that I have served on the standing committee on the Ombudsman with the government members, and in the 1988 report, Dr. Hill recommended expanded jurisdiction. We have had several meetings on expanded jurisdiction. Those recommendations included expanded jurisdiction over the children’s aid societies, hospital boards and the Ontario New Home Warranty Program. We have had these people come before our committee and make comments.

As my good colleague the member for Simcoe East (Mr. McLean) just mentioned, some of the government members spoke in favour of what was in place right at the present time and felt that the Ontario Home Warranty Program was working reasonably well. In discussing this at different times on the committee, I have to admit I did not get a feeling from government members on whether or not they wanted expanded jurisdiction over the Ontario New Home Warranty Program by the Office of the Ombudsman. That still seems to be in limbo.

I really believe they are not going to go for expanded jurisdiction over the Ontario New Home Warranty Program. In a way, I would tend to agree with them for the simple reason that this is not funded in any way by the government; it is funded totally by the builders. Therefore, I tend to agree with them that we should not go for expanded jurisdiction in this case.

We are still discussing expanded jurisdiction as far as hospital boards and the children’s aid societies are concerned. They are getting some funding from the government. In fact, in some cases it is up to 80 per cent.

So this whole resolution seems to be a bit of a red herring, to take away from whether we give expanded jurisdiction to the Ombudsman or not. It is a concern to me. It is a little like the resolution we had last week when the member for Northumberland (Mrs. Fawcett) asked the Ministry of Natural Resources to put legislation in place banning all-terrain vehicles and dirt bikes. They have the authority to do that right now, so it is along the same line as that particular resolution.

I think we all know that even if the Ombudsman took over expanded jurisdiction, he cannot enforce anything. He can investigate and write a report on it, but he really cannot enforce it.

We have two chances at the present time, one to bring in legislation with regard to the Ontario New Home Warranty Program and another one to update it, so before too long, they should have all the holes plugged and have a good program in place.

I do not have an awful lot of fault to find with the present home warranty program. I just wonder how far back we can go in investigating things. We could also run into a situation where people will do something to the property, to the structure. For instance, they could remove a support post and cause some problems to the building, and that is not the builder’s fault. It is pretty hard to prove who did what and when. This creates a lot of investigation and a lot of problems.

I do not believe we can solve all the problems with the home warranty program. I just want to put a few of those things on the record. I would ask the member for Halton Centre to comment briefly on what she thinks should take place as far as extended jurisdiction of the Ombudsman is concerned.

Mr. Speaker: I will listen to the member for Halton Centre for the final two minutes.

Mrs. Sullivan: I am interested in the remarks of my colleagues the member for Cambridge (Mr. Farnan), the member for Simcoe East and the member for Mississauga North (Mr. Offer) relating to the program itself, and comments made by the member for Simcoe East relating to statements of the member for Halton North in the standing committee on the Ombudsman.

I think it is very clear that the Ontario New Home Warranty Program is a good program. That does not necessarily say we should not have an opportunity to make it a better program. Many people in my riding, like people in Cambridge, like people in Mississauga North, like people in many other areas of the province, have indeed been served and have had no problems that could not be solved outside the circumstances of the warranty program. However, many other of my constituents, like constituents in other places, have had serious problems that could not be solved within the current bounds of the program. That is why I have put these very specific recommendations forward. I could have included other ones as well.

I believe the program should be strengthened. The history of activity in the program and change to the program in the past has been one of flexibility. It has been characterized by a flexible approach, by changes which are made to meet the needs of the times and the needs of economic and other influences in the industry.

One of the other things that has been very clear is that as changes have been made to the program to strengthen it in the past, there has been a very strong co-operation among the industry, consumer and warranty program people.

I believe these recommendations that have been put forward make sense. They are a result of interventions from people who are buyers and who are sellers and I would appreciate the support of my colleagues in the House in ensuring that they reach the attention of the Ministry of Consumer and Commercial Relations.

Motion agreed to.

The House recessed at 12 noon.

AFTERNOON SITTING

The House resumed at 1:30 p.m.

MEMBERS’ STATEMENTS

PLANT CLOSURE

Mr. Farnan: Yesterday, Inglis Ltd. announced the shutdown of its Toronto plant within a year, and a restructuring that will see the loss of 60 jobs in Cambridge and 25 jobs in Montmagny, Quebec.

New Democrats and trade unions predicted the consequences of the free trade agreement in the appliance industry.

As the member for Cambridge, a major concern for me is that displaced Cambridge workers should be treated fairly. In discussing the benefits that these displaced workers might expect with John Utter, the Inglis director of corporate industrial relations, he indicated that the company would be discussing severance arrangements with union representatives. These severance packages, he suggested, would apply only to the Toronto employees involved in the shutdown situation, but not to the Cambridge employees who are involved in a layoff due to decreased work orders.

The argument for treating the Cambridge workers in the same manner as the Toronto employees is obvious. All are employed by the same company. The decision to shut down the Toronto plant results in the loss of jobs for Inglis Cambridge employees who produce dishwasher parts for the Toronto operation. It appears to me that basic justice demands that the Cambridge employees should receive the same severance package as the Toronto workers negotiated between Inglis and the union in the months ahead.

Surely it must be obvious that one company shutting down an operation that is supplied parts by a sister company ought to treat all of the displaced employees in a uniformly fair manner.

NATIVE PEOPLE AND THE JUSTICE SYSTEM

Mr. Eves: Yesterday, the Assembly of First Nations told Ontario’s Race Relations and Policing Task Force that racism is alive and well in Canada with respect to the treatment of native people and called for a wide examination of the problems facing the native people in their dealings with the justice system.

Our party echoes those concerns. It was only two days ago that my colleague the member for Carleton (Mr. Sterling) joined with the Native Peoples Justice Review Committee in calling for a full public inquiry on the issue of native justice in Ontario.

I was dismayed to note that the day they demonstrated here at Queen’s Park, no government representative was available to speak to the native people. They protested the sentence of two years less a day given to Joseph Constantineau for committing an indignity to the dead body of Virginia Nootchtai from the Whitefish Lake Indian reserve. Ontarians should be appalled not only by this heinous crime but as well by a justice system which appears to be unequal in its treatment of our native population.

The recently announced provincial task force to study justice services among aboriginal communities is not what is needed. We do not need another task force. What we do need is a full public inquiry such as the government of Manitoba is presently undertaking. The time for study is over; the time for action is now.

CONTROL OF SMOKING

Ms. Hart: I rise today to commend the staff and students at Leaside High School in my riding of York East for their efforts to promote nonsmoking at school. Sixty pairs of students consisting of a smoker and a nonsmoking buddy entered a contest to quit and win. The contest, which was sponsored by the East York health unit and the Leaside High School student council, required students to remain nonsmokers for one month. Thirty quitters and their buddies qualified for prizes donated by the Leaside business community.

Winners of the draw for the grand prize, a pair of mountain bikes donated by the student council, were April Marshall and Caroline Visentin. April told me that although she used to play sports regularly, she could not keep up the pace when she smoked, so she stopped playing. Within one month of becoming a nonsmoker again, April was able to rejoin the school soccer team.

The quit-and-win contest was just one event in a two-month smoking cessation program at Leaside High School. Other events included a nonsmoking week, classroom presentations and a skit entitled Seven Minutes, because every cigarette takes seven minutes away from your life.

I hope that the other high schools across Ontario will follow Leaside’s excellent example and encourage students to stop smoking or, better yet, never to start.

DERELICT MOTOR VEHICLE SITES

Mrs. Grier: In 1979, the Ministry of the Environment ended its responsibility for licensing, regulation and monitoring of derelict motor vehicle sites, leaving the responsibility to each municipality. Soon afterward, the then Ministry of Transportation and Communications announced that it would no longer regulate the appearance of auto wrecking operations. Municipalities now have complete responsibility for these sites. What municipalities do not have are the resources or the expertise to monitor and inspect such operations. Many of the smaller municipalities do not even have full-time bylaw inspectors. In addition, there is often confusion about when a derelict motor vehicle site, a municipal responsibility, becomes a salvage and scrap yard, which is still under provincial jurisdiction.

The Ministry of the Environment’s abdication of its responsibilities for derelict motor vehicle sites is completely unacceptable, given the variety of environmental problems associated with these operations. Neighbours consider them eyesores and are worried about potential contamination of water sources from oil and old batteries.

Last year, I wrote to municipalities across the province to find out how widespread the problem was and to ask them how best to regulate auto wrecking yards. The response was overwhelmingly in favour of the Ministry of the Environment resuming responsibility. Municipalities complained about their inability to regulate these businesses and about how slow the ministry was to respond to their concerns.

I urge the Minister of the Environment (Mr. Bradley) to resume responsibility for derelict motor vehicle sites to ensure that adequate protection of the environment is provided and that legislation is uniform.

ASSISTANCE FOR THE DISABLED

Mrs. Marland: My statement today is, in fact, a very sad story. It is about the McConnell family. There are two daughters in this family: Maria, aged 21, and Theresa, aged 19. Both of these girls in this family were born with microcephaly, smaller heads. Both the girls have epilepsy and progressive ataxia. Both these girls have been in wheelchairs for 10 years. They are able to wheel themselves around, but of course they need help with being lifted in and out of those wheelchairs. They obviously need help with their personal hygiene.

Their mother, Mrs. McConnell, has taken care of both these girls all their lives without any assistance from any government. The saddest part of all is that Mrs. McConnell has cancer. Mrs. McConnell has been trying for five years to get a residential setting for both of her daughters. Obviously, it is imperative that these girls stay together. They have been together all their lives. How sad it is when applications to organizations such as Participation House in Brantford or Participation House in Markham, tell them that Maria and Theresa are too low-functioning compared to other people in those residences and that they are too low a priority to be accepted.

If this Liberal government can look after normal kids in grades 1 and 2 across this province, surely it can look after the special needs of this family.

LITHUANIA

Mr. Fleet: Today is of special importance to the members of our Lithuanian community in Ontario. February 16, 1989, is the 71st anniversary of the restoration of independence in Lithuania following the First World War.

This anniversary is especially significant as only recently have the language, flag and anthem of the Lithuanian people received official recognition by the government in their homeland. In Toronto, St. Catharines and communities all across Ontario, flags will be raised to commemorate this day and to herald the advent of freedoms finally re-emerging in Lithuania itself.

All Ontarians are free to retain their cultural heritage and to share it with others. We encourage and celebrate the strengths of multiculturalism, as well as the exercise of many political and personal freedoms. Since the turn of the century, people who came from Lithuania have richly contributed to the development of our province and to our shared ideals of freedom.

Let us honour that commitment to freedom and the contribution of all Ontarians of Lithuanian heritage. I ask all members to acknowledge the community representatives with us today in the members’ gallery: Joana Kuras, Herbert Stepaitis, Dainius Vaidila and Angelica Sungaila. Thank you very much for your contribution.

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HANDGUN REPLICAS

Mr. Farnan: In today’s Toronto Sun we read that Toronto’s emergency task force was called out after a 14-year-old boy’s replica gun was mistaken for the real thing. The ETF set up a command post outside a Pizza Hut restaurant. Upon arrest, they found the replica gun was modelled after a nine-millimetre automatic handgun.

“You could have an ugly ending,’ Peel Sergeant Doug Turner said. ‘The youth thinks he’s handing over the weapon; the police officer thinks it’s real and then you’ve got your split-second timing.’”

Is it not time the government brought in legislation modelled on my private member’s bill, Bill 145? Fifty-six different police commissions and police brotherhoods have passed resolutions supporting Bill 145, which demonstrates the seriousness with which police officers and commissioners consider this issue and the broadly based support for Bill 145. The government should not wait until we have another fatality.

COURT RULING

Mr. Jackson: I rise on a point of privilege. For many months now, the member for London North (Mrs. Cunningham) and I have been in touch with a group called Mothers on Trial, which is an advocacy support and lobby group for women dealing with support and custody issues within the court system. Oftentimes, members of the group bring to our attention issues of a personal nature arising from specific actions and motions now before the courts. These women are turning to members of this Legislature because, from personal experience, they see the need for judicial reform in the area of family law.

A leading member of the group is Ms. Christina Benson. On May 27, 1987, the Honourable G. Thomas Walsh, senior justice of the family law division, Supreme Court of Ontario, issued an order which tells Ms. Benson that she is “expressly prohibited from writing or contacting any party in respect of this action.”

Mr. Speaker, this order purports to prevent Ms. Benson from contacting members of this Legislature, including me, about her troubles with the family law system. I am rising on a point of privilege to ask you whether this court order is of any force and effect in so far as it attempts to prohibit communication between Ms. Benson and members of this Legislature.

Beauchesne, in section 16 of the fifth edition, defines the privileges of this House as “rights which are ‘absolutely necessary for the due execution of its powers.’ They are enjoyed by individual members, because the House cannot perform its functions without unimpeded use of the services of its members.”

You yourself, Mr. Speaker, in a ruling on June 10, 1986, at page 1297 of Hansard, explained privilege as follows:

“Parliamentary privilege relates to the rights and immunities that belong to Parliament, its members and others, which are essential for the operation of parliament. These rights and immunities allow the Legislature to meet and carry out its proper constitutional role, members to discharge their responsibilities to their constituents, and others properly involved in the parliamentary process to carry out their duties and responsibilities without obstruction or fear of prosecution.”

I think it is clear that one of the most essential rights we have is the right to communicate freely with the public. Without the right to hear their grievances, or listen to their concerns, we simply cannot function as elected representatives of the public.

Ms. Benson has several legitimate grievances. Yesterday, we read about her as the woman in the Globe and Mail who lost custody of her child because she has gone to a shelter for battered women. Yet here she is being told: “You will be found guilty of contempt of court and you will go to jail if you so much as breathe a word of this to anyone -- even to an elected MPP.”

First, I remind you that the right to address grievances to this House is enshrined in our standing order 31. Yet this court order would even prevent Ms. Benson from signing or sending a petition to the Lieutenant Governor and the Legislative Assembly of Ontario.

In further support of my point of privilege, I would like to refer to several authorities which make it clear that the right of members to communicate with the public -- and I refer to two-way communication -- cannot be impeded.

Erskine May states on pages 167 and 168 of the 20th edition that “the special position of a person providing information to a member for the exercise of his parliamentary duties has been regarded by the courts as enjoying qualified privilege at law... .Administrative action has also been taken to preserve the liberty of the electorate in communicating with members of Parliament.”

Looking in both Erskine May and Beauchesne, we can find at least four precedents which make it clear that the right to communicate freely with MPs and MPPs cannot be breached, and that when it is breached, it gives rise to a question of privilege.

These previous rulings include the following: first, where British servicemen have an absolute right to communicate with their MPs, so long as they do not disclose state secrets; second, a government department cannot disclose to third parties the contents of a letter sent by an MP’s constituent; third, in 1974 the wiretapping of a Canadian MP’s office was determined to be a prima facie matter of privilege, but the MP never proceeded further with his complaint; and finally, the censorship of incoming mail and phone calls to MPs was raised as a matter of privilege in 1942, but was defended by the Prime Minister as necessary to wartime security.

I suggest that by attempting to prevent Ms. Benson from taking her case to members of this House, Mr. Justice Walsh has breached the privileges of all members, but especially those of us who have been providing her with advice and assistance.

I understand that standing order 19(d)(7) prevents any MPP from discussing an issue that is before the courts and “where it is shown to the satisfaction of the Speaker that further reference would create a real and substantial danger of prejudice to the proceeding.”

This section, in my view, only reinforces my arguments. This standing order makes it clear that it is the Speaker and the Speaker alone who decides whether we can discuss specific legal issues in this chamber. Mr. Speaker, if Ms. Benson complains to me, you have the authority to decide whether I can talk about the issue in this House; but that power belongs to you, not anyone outside this chamber, be he a judge or anyone else.

It seems clear to me that it is a breach of privilege to tell MPPs that they are no longer allowed to hear from particular constituents. After all, representing the public is at the very heart of our role. I like to think of the Legislature as a court of last resort in Ontario, and if citizens cannot turn to us, where can they go? No outside party, not even the courts, can take this right away.

I refer finally to Wade and Phillips, in their text on constitutional law on page 124, for your consideration, Mr. Speaker. It says, “Parliament has always held the view that whatever matter arises concerning either House of Parliament ought to be discussed and adjudicated in that House and not elsewhere; and that the existence of a privilege depends upon it being declared by the high court of Parliament to be part of the ancient law and custom of Parliament.”

Finally, a member is obliged to rise on a point of privilege as soon as it arises. I regret that I did not learn of this court order until this morning, so this has been my first opportunity. Mr. Speaker, you must determine whether or not I have raised a prima facie case and, if you do so, sir, I am prepared to raise the appropriate motion.

Hon. Mr. Scott: I would like to respond briefly to the point. I think the members of our caucus accept the general proposition that has been stated at such length by the honourable member.

As you consider it, Mr. Speaker, I think it would be useful if you took into account the reasons for the order that the Honourable Mr. Justice Walsh has given, as I am sure you would want to do, before the ruling that you make is in fact made.

Mr. Speaker: I listened very carefully to the member for Burlington South and to the Attorney General. I certainly will take into consideration the suggestions made. I would like to ask the indulgence of the House while I study the point of privilege raised by the member for Burlington South. I will, at my first convenience, report my decision to the House.

STATEMENT BY THE MINISTRY

ONTARIO TRAINING CORP.

Hon. Mr. Curling: Last spring, I announced the creation of the Ontario Training Corp. The OTC is Canada’s first public corporation with a mandate to work with the private sector to increase workplace training.

Today, I wish to inform members of this House that the Ontario Training Corp. guidelines are now completed for its two investment funds, the training materials fund and the training technology fund. The corporation will now be accepting and processing proposals that will support the development and commercialization of new training materials and technologies for the Ontario workplace. There will be $3.2 million available for the investment funds.

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The training materials fund invests in workplace training products, including manuals, interactive computer programs and instructional videos; for example, a basic chemistry course for mill and refinery workers in the mining industry.

The training technology fund invests in applications of emerging technologies for workplace training purposes. These new workplace training products will be state of the art, using new technologies such as authoring software, videodisc and CD-ROM.

All proposals to the investment funds must be commercially viable and must be useful to a wide range of potential customers.

The investment funds will generate partnerships between the Ontario Training Corp. and private sector innovators that will bring new training materials and technologies into the marketplace. This will help Ontario’s training industry to become a leader and will stimulate training within Ontario’s workplaces.

As well, the corporation offers a skills bank that will provide an inventory of all existing training programs, materials and services in Ontario, and it is also encouraging new ways to train up-to-date trainers for the marketplace.

Through this and other initiatives, the OTC and this government will continue to build a strong training culture. When Ontario business and industry routinely invest in on-the-job training, we will see the results in a heightened productivity of Ontario’s economy. Establishing a training culture will enable us to meet the labour market adjustment challenges posed by new technology, changing demographics and new global trading patterns.

I want to congratulate Sandra Birkenmayer, president of the Ontario Training Corp., and David Lewis, chairman of the board, on the release of these important guidelines. I also want to acknowledge the vital support of the labour movement for the efforts of the Ontario Training Corp.

The new investment funds and the OTC itself continue to be an outstanding example of partnership among government, business and labour. I look forward to communicating further OTC initiatives in the coming months.

RESPONSES

ONTARIO TRAINING CORP.

Mr. Farnan: We on this side of the House welcome any effort, no matter how small, that will improve our competitive edge. As we address the challenges of the future, I think we must all realize that the tools, the technologies and the methods that make industrialized nations competitive in the marketplace of the future are available to all nations and that what is going to make the difference in giving us a competitive edge in the world of tomorrow will be to be competitive in the quality of our trained and skilled personnel.

There have been some initiatives from this ministry that we can commend. I think the industrial training committees are an initiative we can commend. This particular initiative is, again, something we can commend and applaud. But when we look at the amount of dollars being invested in the initiative to develop the potential of the skills that will make us competitive in the world of the future, $3.2 million is a paltry amount of money indeed. We have to be realistic. If we are to compete at the razor’s edge of the competitive industrial world, $3.2 million is a drop in the bucket and certainly will leave us far behind in the pack.

Nevertheless, it is a step in the right direction, a small, baby step but a step, and we have to commend the government on that. There must be real investment in this before we can make any meaningful progress. I hope the minister is fighting in cabinet for real funding for his area, because without that funding we are going to lose our place as a potential industrial leader.

We are trying the co-operative approach and we can commend the volunteer effort, but at some stage the minister has to look at the possibility and the potential of making apprenticeships obligatory. We have in place some formulas in which we have apprenticeship to journeymen and skilled tradesmen. That is fine, there should be these formulas in place; but if the private sector is not co-operating and training apprentices to keep us competitive, and if we continue to go to the United Kingdom and abroad to bring trained employees to work in the factories and the plants of Ontario, then it is clearly indicative that his ministry and this government is failing.

The reality of the matter, as I talk to the business leaders in Cambridge and in Ontario, is that they are saying to us, “We don’t have skilled workers.” It requires, clearly, leadership on the part of the government. There has to be something of an obligatory nature in the apprenticeship program. There has to be more flexibility to allow smaller firms to hire apprentices under rules that are not as stringent as those for firms of a larger nature.

Putting the minister’s announcement in the House today in context, it is a very small but positive gesture towards skills development. We can accept that; but I feel the minister must stand here making that announcement with some embarrassment, because he knows as well as anybody in this House what the real need of the future industry of Ontario is. The real need of the industry is skilled labour.

With $3.2 million in additional funds, the minister is not going to make an impact of any significance on the need we have for skilled labour. If he looks at the routes New Democrats have been pointing out in introducing some form of obligatory apprenticeship and in providing greater flexibility, then doing these other things helps it along.

In conclusion, I would add that there should be a commendation and recognition of those volunteers who are assisting his ministry in improving apprenticeship training as it stands at the moment.

Mr. Cousens: In responding to the statement of the Minister of Skills Development (Mr. Curling) today, I have to agree with one thing in his presentation: the desire to increase workplace training. Yet I wonder why it is that this very minister has not addressed some of the ways he could really go about doing something to increase the quality and quantity of people in the workplace to meet the needs of our growing industry in Ontario. I have four recommendations for the minister that come out of his presentation.

1. Increase the ratio of apprentices who can work with tradespeople. In the electrical industry, where there are three apprentices for one electrician, why does he not increase that to five apprentices to one electrician? Go through the different industries where there is a specific need for new trainees where he can then expand and build upon the apprenticeship training program. That is one thing the minister could be doing, working with the Minister of Labour (Mr. Sorbara) and other ministries to try to make that happen.

2. I am surprised that his ministry has not done a detailed analysis and forecasting model of where the needs are in Ontario, so that the community colleges and other institutions of training are turning out the right kind of individual to be trained for the kind of needs that exist in different parts of industry. Do something in developing a model of the requirements for Ontario. He has not done that. That is not part of his agenda right now. I wish that would be part of his program.

3. Is it not time that his ministry established a closer liaison between community colleges, universities and educational institutions with labour and with industry so that there is a dialogue that goes on between both the ministry and industry?

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I know the York Technology Association has been very close to Seneca College, York University and the University of Toronto in trying to develop that working model where industry and educators are working more closely together. That is not happening in the minister’s program anywhere; if it is, it is not something that is being directed, supported, financed, underwritten, guided and inspired by him or his ministry.

Finally, I do not think the Minister of Skills Development has even read the Premier’s Council report, Competing in the New Global Economy. Recommendation 13 of the report has a comprehensive people strategy. It says, “The Premier’s Council should work with appropriate areas of government to develop a comprehensive people strategy that would address vital education, training and labour market policy issues as an integral part of the council’s next agenda.”

I am convinced that this minister and this ministry are not aware of what is in the Premier’s Council report, because it has come forward with some solid recommendations. What he is doing is just meddling and playing around with the system and not coming up with a comprehensive plan. The Premier’s Council has said methods need to be found to increase “the amount and quality of training in industry through incentives or a regulatory framework.”

It has said nothing about the kinds of things that he is innovating right now. What he is doing is viable and it is good, but why does he not get on to some of the recommendations in the Premier’s Council report that really have something to do with the long-term needs of the province?

I venture to say that the Minister of Skills Development is not on the Premier’s Council. He should be. He should be speaking to the Premier (Mr. Peterson) and telling him that he wants to take part in it, that he has something to offer, and if he sat around that table --

Hon. Mr. Curling: I am on the Premier’s Council.

Mr. Cousens: Are you on it now?

Hon. Mr. Curling: I’m on it.

Mr. Cousens: You are not. I didn’t see your name in the front. They missed your name. Mr. Speaker, they missed his name.

Hon. Mr. Curling: Read the book.

Mr. Cousens: Hey, I missed it. It’s alphabetical. His name is first on the list. I apologize. The minister had better attend the meetings. It’s time he started getting involved and understanding what they’re trying to say, because he is not practising what they’re suggesting.

Recommendation 13 calls upon this minister to do something. I wish he would read the report. Recommendation 13 has an awful lot to do with what this minister is doing. I am convinced he has not begun to do the job that the Premier’s Council wants him to do.

I will close with a slight apology. I am sorry I did not see his name at the top. I am proud that he is there, so he should start thinking about it and doing something about it.

ORAL QUESTIONS

AUTOMOBILE INSURANCE

Mr. Kormos: I have a question for the Minister of Financial Institutions. I am referring, of course, to senior citizens. Seniors, even those with the best of driving records, are going to suffer substantial hikes in insurance rates. The report from the Ontario Automobile Insurance Board that was released on Monday makes note of that more than once.

The Premier (Mr. Peterson) says that the government might step in to help. Will the minister please tell seniors in the province how much of a buffer they will get when their rates skyrocket to $923 from the really already high premium of $776, an increase of almost 20 per cent?

Hon. Mr. Elston: I am not sure of the exact location of those numbers. I presume that is for Metropolitan Toronto seniors perhaps, I am not sure. But the honourable gentleman would want to quote for the benefit of seniors around the province that there are other areas outside of Metro in which there will be substantial decreases on the basis of the figures that were also released and that have been worked out by the board.

I can tell the honourable gentleman that he ought not to be so provocative in the way he addresses the issue. There is no question that there will be some adjustment required in the market, but in this particular situation I am advised that the effect on seniors across the province will be somewhere around one per cent. That being the case, it is not going to be what he is trying to make it seem, that for every senior in the province there is going to be a tremendously huge increase.

I think he owes it to the people to be particularly careful to indicate that across the province there will be decreases as well as a result of the territorial structure under the plan as it has been set out. That is important.

Mr. Kormos: That is fine. Let us talk about seniors in Scarborough, because they are the ones who, the board report indicates, are going to suffer hikes of almost 20 per cent. On behalf of those seniors -- we will talk about the ones in urban centres -- is the 19 per cent hike really fair? It is not fair for those seniors; it is not just; it is not reasonable. Why cannot those seniors who are going to suffer the 19 per cent increases be treated fairly and reasonably? Will the government order a phasing in? Will the government order a cap with respect to those seniors in large urban centres?

Hon. Mr. Elston: The member will want to know, as the seniors of the province will want to know, that there will be filings of rates coming about in the 30 days following the Monday introduction of this new rate structure. We will be looking at the rates as they are filed by the companies. One of the advantages that the people will have is that the board will be making available a comparative list of rates which are available through various companies.

I would think we would want to be very careful in following the logic which this honourable gentleman would like to foist upon the people of Ontario, by letting people infer from what he says that all seniors are going to have very high increases. That is not what is indicated. He would want to be quite clear that there are places where there will be decreases and I can tell the honourable gentleman that I am interested in looking at what happens when the rates are filed by the various companies.

The member should know that is happening and I think he should tell the people of the province that is happening. In addition, there will be comparative lists of rates among the companies so that all consumers, whether senior or otherwise, will be able to shop with some degree of certainty and understanding about the marketplace.

Mr. Kormos: What I can tell the members is that seniors do not consider fair either a premium of $922 -- because that is what is proposed, albeit as the maximum for seniors in urban centres like Scarborough -- or the existing premium of $776, and that is what a 65-year-old driver with a 40-year clean driving record is paying and will pay.

In Regina, the very same driver will pay $448, 51 per cent less. In Winnipeg, the very same driver will pay no more than $510, 45 per cent less. In Vancouver, no more than $658 --

Mr. Speaker: Are you asking the minister if he agrees with those figures, or do you have a question?

Mr. Kormos: I have a question. The rates are anywhere from 30 to 51 per cent less for that very same driver in western provinces. When will the minister tell the seniors in the province the whole story: that fair, affordable auto insurance premiums are going to take place only when there is a public auto insurance plan in this province?

Hon. Mr. Elston: Again the honourable gentleman is being very provocative because, of course, there is a whole series of initiatives which this government has introduced and he has failed to recognize in speaking about the marketplace in Ontario; a series of items which include items like tort reform, the opportunities available through driver education, highway safety and other things which all add up to deal with the critical issue, whether we are under a public or private form of supply of auto insurance, and that is the loss costs which are accumulating as a result of driving risks which are aggravated by the number of cars and other things.

That gentleman would want to know that the people of the province are assured that we are taking every opportunity to effect a decrease in loss costs by examining ways in which those can be reduced. That is what we are doing, and they include a series of initiatives about which we have made announcements in this House and about which we will be making further announcements. I can tell the honourable gentleman that he will want to explain fully that those initiatives are being taken by a caring government in the province of Ontario.

Mr. Laughren: The headline in the Toronto Star says a great deal about this government’s attitude.

1410

PROPERTY SPECULATION

Mr. Laughren: My question is to the Treasurer. The Treasurer knows that since his government came to power in 1985, the price of new homes in Metropolitan Toronto has increased by 146 per cent and the price of resale homes by 135 per cent. In more than a dozen communities in this province, the rate of increase has been more than 100 per cent.

Can the Treasurer please tell us what is so unreasonable about our proposal that Ontario impose a land speculation tax that would impose a 100 per cent capital gains tax on the gains for nonresidential homes and land sold in the first 12 months and 75 per cent capital gains tax on land and buildings that are sold in the second 12 months? What is so unreasonable about that proposal?

Hon. R. F. Nixon: I do not find that unreasonable, but I would like to point out to the honourable member that the policies of this government have expanded the rate of the provision of housing in this municipality and elsewhere across the province at a tremendous rate.

At the same time, we have to recognize that people everywhere in the world and everywhere in Canada and everywhere in Ontario are attracted to this fine Metro area as a place to raise families and make a living, and we feel that the dislocation associated with the honourable member’s proposal is not at this time balanced by the advantages that are so apparent to him.

I indicated yesterday that, as we come within two or three months of a budget, all sorts of alternatives dealing with the needs of the community are under review. The honourable member would be aware that, as usual, the recommendations he makes in this House as budget critic are always considered seriously.

Mr. Laughren: On Monday we raised in this House the question of the problem of inflation in the price of detached homes, on Tuesday we raised the question of the cost of apartments, and yesterday we brought to the Treasurer’s attention, because he did not seem to understand, that this was a province-wide problem not restricted to Metro.

For two years now we have been trying to get the Treasurer to bring in this speculation tax and he has done absolutely nothing to deal with the question of speculation on land and homes. I ask the Treasurer, very simply, will he step aside and let someone else who will do something about land speculation fill the position of Treasurer?

Hon. R. F. Nixon: The answer to the question, naturally, is no. I would sooner the Premier (Mr. Peterson) be here to answer on my behalf, but since he is not, I will have to do it myself.

The honourable member did initiate a series of questions earlier this week. Yesterday he indicated that Brantford, Ontario, I believe it was, a city I know very well, had the highest rate of increase of prices in the housing market; at least this was average increase.

I thought, so the record would not go uncorrected, that he should know the increase in one year -- very high indeed -- in the Toronto area was 25 per cent. In Sudbury, for reasons that are apparent, it was 18.3 per cent. In the Brantford region, the area which he thought was the highest, it was 24.1 per cent, which is not the highest.

In order for the record to be complete, the member should be aware that the increase in the average resale in Brantford was from $87,717 in January 1988 to $108,868 in December 1988. It is quite apparent that Brantford and Brant county and that marvellous part of Ontario are probably the most desirable places that could possibly be considered by any family --

Mr. Speaker: Thank you.

Mr. Laughren: I guess it is expecting too much for someone in the Treasurer’ s position or the Premier’s position to understand what the escalation in the price of houses has done to ordinary people in Ontario, not just in Metro either.

The Treasurer has refused to do anything about the speculation on land, absolutely anything. He has said no every single time we have raised the question, despite the fact that in 1974, when a land speculation tax was imposed in Ontario, the escalation in the price of the sale of homes in Metro, for example, which the Treasurer likes to talk about, decreased from a 30 per cent rate to nine per cent in one year after the imposition of that land speculation tax.

I would like to ask the Treasurer, since he seems to have absolutely no solution to this problem, could he tell us why in the world, instead of sitting on no policies at all, he will not at least step aside, resign and let someone take that position who will do something about it?

Hon. R. F. Nixon: The simplistic approach taken by the honourable member --

Mr. Laughren: It worked before.

Hon. R. F. Nixon: -- has no role at all in a rational solution to a problem that is associated with the tremendous rate of growth of this community.

If the honourable member, as budget critic, had reviewed the statistics that are readily available to him, he would know that the rate of economic growth in Toronto has been greater than almost any other community in the western world.

Mr. Laughren: So what? Talk about Ontario.

Hon. R. F. Nixon: This surely is one of the apparent reasons for the kind of problem that he raises on a day-by-day basis.

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Hon. R. F. Nixon: I think the member would also know that the people in this province are better housed than in communities anywhere else in Canada. In fact, the number of people who have moved into their own homes in the last few years has been at a rate faster than at any time in our history.

I think this is a matter that should concern the member when he tries to bring forward his alternatives in a fair and equitable way rather than on the basis that he apparently uses.

Mr. Laughren: What a wonderful bunch. I hope you all own your own homes now. You people must all have your own homes.

Mr. Speaker: Order. The member for Burlington South would like to ask a question, if the member for Nickel Belt would allow it.

COURT RULING

Mr. Jackson: My question is to the Attorney General. The minister will be aware that in yesterday’s Globe and Mail there was an article about Christina Benson, who is a victim of domestic violence. She has been living at Nellie’s Hostel for Women on Broadview Avenue in Toronto.

The minister will also be aware that Ms. Benson has lost custody of her nine-year-old son Gabriel because Mr. Justice Coulter Osborne says that living at this shelter is “not in the child’s best interest.” Does the minister agree with this decision and, if not, what is he going to do about it?

Hon. Mr. Scott: First of all, I do not think my honourable friend has read the decision of Mr. Justice Osborne or he would not make the observation he did in the House or the observation he has made in this news release, which seems to be the focus of his attention, where he says that Christina Benson recently lost custody of her nine-year-old son because she is living at Nellie’s.

As the honourable member will come to realize when he reads the decision, the trial judge in this protracted matrimonial dispute had to make a selection between what he regarded as a stable domestic environment and living in a hotel or hostel. He made no pejorative judgement about one or the other; he simply had to make a comparison between them in terms of the stability of the child. He also considered a raft of other factors that are traditionally taken into account when the interest of the child is at stake. Of course, he has made his order, which is subject to appeal in the normal fashion.

Mr. Jackson: The Attorney General will be aware that the matter I raised with the Speaker some 12 minutes ago had more to do with the censoring of this citizen’s access to any member of this Legislature. That was Mr. Justice Walsh. The matters I am raising before the Attorney General are matters with respect to Mr. Justice Osborne.

This matter does create a dangerous --

Mr. Black: You didn’t listen, Cam.

Interjections.

Mr. Jackson: Mr. Speaker, it may be a constituent of the members opposite I am trying to raise the question about, and with their indulgence I would like to proceed.

Mr. Speaker: I appreciate the member’s assistance.

Mr. Jackson: This does create somewhat of a dangerous precedent, given the fact that women who are experiencing domestic violence must choose between proceeding to a shelter and leaving that situation of domestic violence, or perhaps leaving their children behind and then proceeding to a safe hostel. It seems unfair that this judgement would create an image in the minds of those battered women in regard to the status of their children once they enter a shelter.

1420

Mr. Speaker: Question?

Mr. Jackson: Does the Attorney General not agree that this is a bad precedent for victims of wife assault and their children, and will he give his government’s commitment that no woman will lose her child merely because she has been forced into an interval or transition home by an abusive spouse?

Hon. Mr. Scott: The honourable member knows that in these custody cases, and this case has raged vigorously for at least four years in the courts, the judge is obliged by law to consider solely the interests of the child. I do not believe that any honourable member present would want any other standard to be considered.

In making a determination of what is in the interests of the child, the judge has to consider, where it is appropriate, the stability of the environment, the location of the parents and a wide variety of other factors. He did that in this case, and anyone dissatisfied by the order can of course appeal his order and have it re-examined. But it would be wrong to say, as has been said elsewhere, that he deprived this mother of custody because she was living at Nellie’s. He commented on a wide variety of factors.

It seems to me his observation about the stability of the proposed home on the one hand and Nellie’s on the other would have been the same if Nellie’s was the Royal York Hotel. He was speaking of finding a stable environment that would best serve the interests of the child. As everybody understands, that is what is to be determined. The child is not regarded by the court as to be bounced from one side to the other to protect the interest of either parent.

Mr. Jackson: Twice before in this House I have raised with the Attorney General the issue of the attitude of judges. The Attorney General’s response to me in the House is that the autonomy of judges makes it impossible to interfere in order to educate judges or to sensitize them to issues involving women who are victims of rape or domestic violence.

In this case, Justice Osborne seems to have said that Ms. Benson cannot obtain custody of her son until she moves into a stable, permanent shelter. Yet the type of roof over a woman’s head has nothing to do with the kind of parent she will make.

If the Attorney General agrees that this case presents an attitudinal problem on the part of our judiciary, what steps can his government take to ensure that judges are more sensitive to the plight of abused women like Ms. Benson?

Hon. Mr. Scott: There are no doubt cases that reveal the attitudinal problem my friend has referred to, and I have had occasion to comment on them from time to time and to consider with him steps that can be taken. When this judgement is read, however, I do not think it reveals the attitudinal problem to which my friend refers. He is seeking a platform, but regrettably it is not to be found in this case. In this case --

Mr. Jackson: Both you and I are aware of this case, Ian. For two years you were women’s advocate for your government and did nothing.

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Hon. Mr. Scott: I do not know if the honourable member wants to get another supplementary in, or does he want me to respond?

Mr. Jackson: You are helping me by responding. I appreciate the additional response.

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Hon. Mr. Scott: If my honourable friend will take just a moment -- it will not take much longer -- to read what the judge had to say, he might focus on the fact that the court quite properly does not consider this a dispute between parents which is to be resolved in the interest of one parent or the other but regards it, as I am sure all honourable members would, as a determination to be made on an interim basis for a stable environment for the child.

If the member looks at the five or six factors Mr. Justice Coulter Osborne referred to, I think the judgement will be deprived of the kind of inherent bias my learned friend seems to suggest is found in it. It can be appealed. Legal aid facilities are available for that purpose and that is the appropriate forum for reviewing it. Regrettably, it cannot be made a platform for my friend’s political purposes.

SECURITY IN PREMISES USED BY PUBLIC

Mr. Sterling: My question is to the Attorney General as well. Two days ago we debated Bill 149, the Trespass to Property Amendment Act. At that time I raised concerns with respect to a property owner’s apparent diminished right to control the environment of his or her premises if this act was passed.

Earlier this week we learned of problems faced by merchants in the Scarborough Town Centre with respect to marauding gangs of youths and actions of intimidation and violence perpetrated on patrons and merchants by these youths; $2.50 Tuesday now doubles as fight night, quite the entertainment bargain. How is Bill 149 going to assist merchants in dealing with these violent situations?

Hon. Mr. Scott: First of all, as the honourable member knows, the bill does not restrict in any significant way the capacity of mall owners or other property owners to control the use of their premises. They may post reasonable rules and they may give notices. What the bill essentially requires, or insists on, which is surely a protection that everybody would seek, is that you cannot be banned from a public place without some reason being given for that ban. That is all the bill does.

As the honourable member will know, of course, mall owners and others have recourse to the police in the normal way and can exercise all the rights of a landlord in protecting their property and maintaining order in connection with it.

Mr. Sterling: I would quite disagree with the minister’s interpretation of his own bill. Let me outline the scenario that the minister has put forward in Bill 149, if it in fact passes in its present form.

A street-smart gang enters an establishment like the Scarborough mall. The merchant or the security guard must give gang members notice of what activities are not allowed. Suppose they violate this posted rule. Then the security guard must give them written notice of the violated rule and also advise the street-smart gang members of what their defence might be to this allegation. If the street-smart gang members object to the notice and continue to persist, they can do so, as long as they give notice of their defence to the security guard or the particular owner, until the matter is resolved in the court.

Is this going to de-escalate the confrontation which is now taking place?

Hon. Mr. Scott: I think the answer to the honourable member is: “Return to Go. Do not collect $100.” If he reads the bill, the honourable member will see that is not the way it is designed to work. It is perfectly possible for a landlord who finds a citizen or members of a gang on the premises who are in the course of either committing some antisocial behaviour or breaching any reasonable posted rule of the establishment to give them notice, orally or in writing, that they will be required to leave. If the law is being broken the police can be summoned for that purpose.

The purpose, of course, of the written notice that is later required is to ensure that the citizen who is put out will have an opportunity to contest the grounds on which he is removed from the property.

Mr. Sterling: Of course, the Attorney General does not mention that the alleged trespasser can return the next day or the next hour with a notice that the conduct complained of did not occur, that in fact he did not breach a rule that was supposedly posted. This will therefore lead to a confrontation between the merchant or the security guard trying to maintain a level of public order and a street-smart gang which can, and in fact will know what this law says; it will lead to further confrontation.

In light of the fact that without this law as it is now proposed in this House there is a significant problem with regard to security control in large shopping malls, will the minister now consider withdrawing this ill-conceived bill at this time in order to allow there to be a semblance of public order in our shopping malls across Ontario?

Hon. Mr. Scott: I suggest to the honourable member that he take his lead from the honourable member for Leeds-Grenville (Mr. Runciman), whose moderate, thoughtful response to government bills is always of great help to the ministry. It seems to me that any minister is anxious that an intelligent, thoughtful criticism be made of his legislation in order to make it better, and we are grateful to have that.

But why does the honourable member for Carleton (Mr. Sterling), whose seat is safe at least for a couple of years, want to alarm everybody about completely imaginary concerns? It does no good whatever and in all probability nobody is paying attention to him.

[Later]

Hon. Mr. Scott: Mr. Speaker, can I rise to correct the record?

Mr. Speaker: A point of personal explanation, yes.

Hon. Mr. Scott: In the answer given to the member for Carleton (Mr. Sterling) today, I suggested that no one was listening to him. On reflection, I think that is a little ungenerous and I want to apologize to him. He is my critic and I listen to him attentively.

1430

CHLOROFLUOROCARBONS

Mrs. Grier: My question is for the Minister of the Environment who made a major announcement this morning to the media. I regret he did not see fit to make a statement in the House, but I am glad he has at least come so we can ask him some questions about it. His announcement that he was going to ban chlorofluorocarbons is a welcome one. It would have been nice to have been able to say congratulations for once, but I can do that now. At the same time, I want to ask some questions about the timing of that announcement.

The minister, I am sure, will recall that in December 1987 his own air resources branch recommended to the management committee of his ministry that Ontario take steps to reduce CFC emissions. When I raised the issue in this House in June, the minister was very defensive and gave me one of his usual nonanswers that indicated nothing was going to happen. I now find that just at the time I raised the issue, the ministry was considering an application by a company called Techni-Therm Inc. to build a new foam insulation plant in Cornwall that would use CFCs.

Mr. Speaker: Do you have a question?

Mrs. Grier: Can the minister explain this? Does he not feel it is contradictory to announce today the banning of CFCs, when last August he approved construction of a plant that came into operation in November and that is not going to comply with the legislation?

Mr. Speaker: Minister, you might have a brief response.

Hon. Mr. Bradley: Everybody has to comply with the legislation. First of all, I should thank the member for her kindness in making a complimentary remark. I know she is always very fair in her assessment of any of the initiatives that are taken in this House. I appreciate the fair and constructive criticism she provides.

The fact of the matter is no matter who is operating plants in Ontario, they must comply with the rules and regulations that have been set out, which will come under the umbrella of the amendments to the legislation.

I want to tell the member that what is happening out there in the industry at the present time is that people are literally scrambling to find alternatives: first, to find CFCs that have less potential for depleting the ozone; second, to find ways of recapturing and recycling them; and third, to find alternative products. In fact, they are seeing those kinds of changes, partly because of consumer demand, partly because of impending government regulation and partly, I think, just because of a large public concern out there that is being assisted by scientific knowledge being shared with the population of this country and other jurisdictions,.

I expect that these companies, as they set up operations in Ontario, will modify those operations. They will of course have to modify them because they will have to meet the requirements of the regulations.

Mrs. Grier: The minister seems to have missed the point of my question. Knowing industry was seeking to modify its operations and knowing there are substitutes available to make foam insulation, why did his ministry in August of last year approve construction of a plant that is a joint venture by Domtar, which started to operate in November, which is using CFCs for which Domtar acknowledges it will not be able to find an alternative for another three or four years?

Does he not think it is a contradiction to work towards eliminating CFCs, while at the same time his ministry is approving plants that are using CFCs when they could find alternatives? He is trying to have it both ways.

Hon. Mr. Bradley: It is like, I guess, bringing an automobile on that must meet requirements. For instance, there may be new automobiles that come on each year. They are going to have to meet new requirements under regulations that change each year. As these companies come on stream, they are simply going to have to meet the regulations of Ontario.

I indicated clearly a timetable, that when there were substitute products that were available, for instance, we would convert to the other products because we want to ensure that everybody plays under the same rules. In fact, I think the deadlines we have set out have been very realistic and responsible and are certainly ambitious deadlines. I expect jurisdictions right across this country will follow the leadership of Ontario in this regard.

What we did, as the member knows, and this has been our policy, was to consult widely with the industry, with environmental groups, with scientists and with technical people, to determine what would be the best possible mode of operation, the best possible program we could bring forward.

I think you will find that objective observers will see this as a significant step forward. We hope to build upon this through the regulations the enabling legislation will allow us to bring forward. Any new company, regardless of where it is or when it came on stream, will have to meet our regulations.

Mrs. Marland: My question is also for the Minister of the Environment. Today he announced this phasing-out of the use of chlorofluorocarbons, CFCs, and Halons over the next 10 years. The first phase of this program will be to ban the use of CFCs in aerosols and foam packaging by July 1 of this year.

I am concerned with the practical enforcement of this ban. It may be easy enough for consumers to identify food products that have CFCs contained in them because it is mandatory for food products to list their contents; however, there are many other products such as bug sprays, medicinal sprays and household cleaners that are not required to list their propellant contents. Does the ministry have a comprehensive list of all the CFC users and producers? If not, how will it possibly enforce this featherweight solution to this heavyweight problem?

Hon. Mr. Bradley: I find it amusing, first of all, that the member would use that terminology in view of the fact that we have been the jurisdiction that has taken the first action in Canada. We are probably one of the leading jurisdictions in the world in this regard. It does not mean we will be the only one. There will be lots of others that will be on stream. We think there is going to be a good group of people that will get together from various countries to undertake the same action.

As to the details, I know we can get hung up on practicalities, but if I had got hung up on practicalities with other programs I have brought forward, of course, we would never have seen a program.

I think the member makes a legitimate comment when she says public education and knowledge are going to be essential components of this. I want to assure her we have a number of these substances that we are aware of at the present time, and we will be adding to that list. By the deadline we have set that information will be available to people. The member makes, I think, a very legitimate comment when she says that kind of information has to be available to the manufacturers, the people in business and the public at large. I want to assure her that information will be available.

Mrs. Marland: The minister says he is not hung up about practicalities. He makes an announcement that he is going to ban something by July 1 and the practical reality is he does not know how he going to do it. How can he do it if he does not have a list of the products that have those contents? What is he going to do? Is he going to go into stores and pick up the cans and say, “Maybe this has it, but we don’t know, so we’ll ban it”? This is more than practicality; it is reality we are dealing with on this issue.

It certainly reads very well in the minister’s announcement, but in fact, even on that issue alone, we are talking about a 100 per cent problem and an eight per cent solution. This is only eight per cent he is dealing with on this subject.

Mr. Speaker: Do you have a question?

Mrs. Marland: Yes, I do, Mr. Speaker. Since the minister is making this statement today, and I understand later on introducing the bill, I want to know if he can tell this House how he is going to enforce any of his statements, when obviously no real thought has gone into this announcement before today.

Hon. Mr. Bradley: I have heard two versions of this now. One is that we did not move quickly enough and probably gave it too much thought. Here is another now, that we have not given it enough thought and we have moved too quickly or something. I cannot figure out exactly what it is, except to say that we did wide consultation with representatives of the environmental community who have shown leadership and interest in this subject. We consulted representatives of the industry widely, because they are the people who can tell us about a lot of those products.

Where you used to get resistance in years gone by, those people want to respond to consumer demand. They have to respond to regulation and legislation. They have to respond to the scientific knowledge that is brought forward. We will have such a list. A wide number of those products are known today and with further consultation we will expand the list.

I think the member will see it as a very practical, reasonable, aggressive, far-reaching -- what is another word I can use?

Hon. Mr. Wrye: Visionary.

Hon. Mr. Bradley: I heard “visionary” -- announcement today. I was glad the member was at the press conference today. I appreciated her interest and I appreciate the interest of the member for Etobicoke-Lakeshore (Mrs. Grier).

1440

ANNIVERSARY OF QUEEN ELIZABETH WAY

Mr. Dietsch: My question is to the Minister of Transportation. Recently, I met with John Sherk who had sent the minister a letter concerning suggestions for the commemorative event in honour of the 50th anniversary of the Queen Elizabeth Way, which as he knows will take place in June of this year.

I am aware there has been considerable dialogue with members of his ministry to consider such options as a re-creation of the original dedication ceremony, perhaps including such special arrangements as some of the original cars or other antique cars that could be used in such a celebration. Can the minister please provide me and the House with an update on what progress has been made with regard to the organization of such an event as this?

Hon. Mr. Fulton: I thank the member for St. Catharines-Brock for his question. I particularly thank him for his interest and his sense of history with respect to this particular highway. As members would be aware, it is not simply another highway within our provincial network, but is the first major freeway in Ontario, on which many of our other roads, highways and interchanges, here and around the world, have been modelled. It really was the forerunner of the great network we have here in the province.

I appreciate the member’s interest in bringing this to the House’s attention, with this being the 50th anniversary, having had the King and Queen here in 1939 to open it. We have established a committee within our ministry and we are looking to see what we can do, without creating a traffic jam, to recognize and honour the 50th anniversary of this very important highway.

Mr. Dietsch: The minister will know it is exceptionally important to take into consideration all the expertise we have that surrounds this Legislature, in the people of the province. Will the minister tell this House whether he would invite participation from beyond this provincial government? For example, will local communities and businesses have an opportunity to contribute to this celebration?

Hon. Mr. Fulton: I think it is a very interesting and very wise proposal the member is making. In most of the projects that we engage in across the province, given the nature of this ministry, we invite public participation, but generally of a somewhat different nature.

I offer him, to pass on to his local residents, the good people of the St. Catharines area, the opportunity. I think we should invite the school children at various levels. Certainly, the business community should be involved. I suggest some of the service clubs in the area might also wish to play a role. We would welcome that input and look forward to continued dialogue with the member.

PLANT CLOSURE

Mr. Mackenzie: I have a question for the Minister of Labour. Back in October 1986, the former president of Inglis, Robert Collins-Wright, told the Inglis workers that free trade posed a threat to their jobs. Testimony before a committee of this House investigating free trade clearly indicated that the appliance industry would be one of the first casualties. New Democrats told this government on many occasions that jobs would be lost and legislation was needed to protect workers and to retrain those workers. Indeed, we extracted a promise from him that he would respond.

That is a promise his government has broken. What will he do now for the better than 500 Inglïs workers, so many of whom are older and difficult-to-place workers?

Hon. Mr. Sorbara: A number of things are under way already. The member for Hamilton East refers, of course, to the announcement by the management of Inglis that a facility is going to close. It affects some 650 jobs in Toronto plus, as I understand it, 85 jobs in Cambridge and 25 jobs in Montmagny.

I want to tell my friend the member for Hamilton East that a number of things are going to be put into place: an employment adjustment committee comprising the company, and of course the trade union, along with both the provincial government and the federal government. In addition to that, I understand representatives of the United Steelworkers of America will be undertaking negotiations with the company for an appropriate package of benefits consistent with, and I would expect and hope above and beyond that called for in the Employment Standards Act to be given to the workers.

There has been some degree of emphasis put on the fact that the plant is 109 years old and is manufacturing a product that is 30 years old in its design. I am not sure those are the relevant statistics. I think the relevant statistic is that there are some 700 workers here who need the assistance of this government, of their union and of the federal government. I hope the mechanisms we put in place are going to respond to the needs of those older workers, and in fact all the workers in the plant.

Mr. Mackenzie: I wonder if the minister has taken a little broader look at it. First, does he recognize that the jobs in production will be going to the US? Imports to Canada will increase. Local production will disappear. Both federal and provincial grants to this company failed to modernize the plant. A site selection committee, supposed to scout the province for a new site, was just another corporate ploy to appease the workers. Or is this another Goodyear?

Whirlpool, which only had a 40 per cent interest in this plant three years ago, now has a 72 per cent interest, certainly not an arm’s-length relationship. Is this the best this government can offer by way of an industrial and labour strategy to protect workers and jobs in Ontario?

Hon. Mr. Sorbara: I do not have any information whatever on whether there was a committee looking for an alternative plant. Nor can I comment specifically: it would be too difficult in this particular case to analyse the impact of the free trade agreement.

I just want to say to my friend the member for Hamilton East and to other members of the House that I think this party and this government argued that issue as forcefully and as effectively as any party at any level did during the course of the last federal election. Certainly, we have a particular vulnerability, which our Premier (Mr. Peterson) talked about during the recent federal election campaign.

The honourable member’s question in supplementary is, what is this government doing to deal with issues of labour adjustment? I have already pointed to some of the programs. I should mention again the Transitions program that my good friend and colleague the Minister of Skills Development (Mr. Curling) is managing, and the fact that within the employment adjustment branch we are organizing our affairs so we can intervene as early as possible to ensure that a worker who looks at the prospect of losing one job has at the earliest possible moment an opportunity to begin work in another job that pays equally well and provides the same sorts of benefits.

SALARIES OF SUSPENDED POLICE OFFICERS

Mr. Runciman: My question is for the Solicitor General. The minister will be aware of a story in today’s Toronto Star that reports she will be introducing a new Ontario Police Act in April or May. The report suggests that the new act would make it harder for police officers who have been suspended from the force to receive full pay, that in fact their pay would be cut off three to six months after their suspension.

This means an officer who has a criminal charge laid against him could be without a job three to six months later, before having his day in court. This would put police officers at the mercy of the criminals they deal with. Will the minister assure the House that officers will not be docked pay before judgement is rendered on charges against them?

Hon. Mrs. Smith: I am happy to assure the member for Leeds-Grenville that the Police Act, which is being worked on, is being worked on very carefully and that no changes being introduced in the Police Act will take effect until it is thoroughly discussed within the community.

This report is full of information that is not properly based. I do not know exactly where this information came from, but I believe the member should not overreact to a newspaper article that has so many strange statements in it.

Mr. Runciman: I hope the Star reporters noted that.

In any event, the Solicitor General should be concerned with respect to the fact that she has not allayed the concerns among police officers right across this province. It is an indication of her insensitivity to the morale of police forces in this province. She does not hesitate to hit the rubber chicken circuit to present plaques, but when it comes to taking courageous stands in support of police against vocal pressure groups or the assaults of the Attorney General (Mr. Scott), she is nowhere to be seen. Will the Solicitor General assure the House today that her proposed Police Act will not cut off the salaries of suspended police officers before they have their day in court -- a simple question -- yes or no?

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Hon. Mrs. Smith: I would like to assure the member for Leeds-Grenville that the people who are meeting on the Police Act have my confidence, as indeed I have their confidence, whether as a result of rubber chicken or not. We are working together very closely and cooperatively, and I can assure both the member and them that I do not mean to discuss publicly at this point what they are doing. They are working very closely in co-operation with each other and it would be very counterproductive for me to get into any discussion of what they are saying.

HAMILTON AIRPORT

Ms. Collins: My question is for the Minister of Transportation. The minister is quite aware of the severe congestion at Pearson International Airport in Toronto. He is also aware of the tremendous opportunity to divert some of this air traffic to Hamilton Airport in Mount Hope. Could the minister advise this House what he is doing to promote Hamilton Airport as an alternative to Pearson airport?

Hon. Mr. Fulton: I thank the member for Wentworth East for the question and her continued interest in transportation issues, very specifically those that affect the Hamilton-Wentworth region. From previous responses in this House, the member will be aware that some two years ago we drew to the attention of the then federal Minister of Transport our growing concerns with respect to the congestion question. One of the alternatives that we indicated was the use of Mount Hope in Hamilton for offloading some of the traffic that is now in and out of Pearson airport.

The member would be aware that the Crombie commission is exploring issues with respect to offloading Pearson and making use of other airports. Toronto Island Airport and Buttonville have been mentioned, and certainly I expect that Mount Hope would figure prominently in the resolution of the situation that currently exists at Pearson.

Ms. Collins: One of the major impediments identified by airline and travel industry executives and by passengers is the lack of good ground transportation accessibility. The ministry has plans to build a new Highway 6 alignment between Highway 403 and Ancaster in Caledonia. Would the minister seriously consider accelerating the first link of this project, which is approximately six miles long, between Highway 403 and the airport?

Hon. Mr. Fulton: I thank the member for her supplementary and for her interest. In fact, the member would be aware that only this week we met with the new regional chairman, Mr. Whynot, from Hamilton-Wentworth and others representing the area. The member was present for that meeting.

We have certainly indicated an interest in moving on with that and other projects. Of course, we have to satisfy the environmental requirements for that very important link. We consider it very much a priority. It is a $33-million project, and assuming we can get the other hurdles, the technical issues and the environmental issues, out of the way, we would certainly want to move ahead very quickly with the Highway 6 project the member has brought to our attention.

WORKERS’ COMPENSATION

Miss Martel: I have a question for the Minister of Labour. The question concerns the public hearings on Bill 162. The minister will know that the response from the public on the hearings has been overwhelming and that we have some 612 groups that wish to have standing before the committee. Only half of those groups will be able to appear under the present schedule. I know that the minister is now receiving telegrams from labour unions concerning this. They are expressing grave concern with the situation.

The minister will also know that in the standing committee on resources development this afternoon the whole question of accommodating all of the groups that wish to appear will be discussed and a determination made. But I would like to ask the minister, what is his own personal view on the matter of accommodating everyone who wishes to appear before the committee on Bill 162?

Hon. Mr. Sorbara: I have always been amazed at how effectively the member for Sudbury East has come to understand some parts of the way in which this place operates. One of things she has not learned yet is that the scheduling of public hearings by a committee of this Legislature is a subject that is dealt with by the committee.

I understand that committee has, by way of protocol, established that it will hold public hearings for some six weeks during the recess, which we all hope will come very soon, and that it has a protocol for determining which groups will or will not appear before that committee.

I want to tell you, Mr. Speaker, and the members of that committee and the members of this House, that I do not feel it is appropriate, as a minister bringing a bill to the Legislature, to dictate my own preferences as to how that committee should undertake its business.

Mr. Mackenzie: Does the Minister of Labour not believe in an open government and that every citizen who may be affected by a piece of legislation which has been sent out for public hearings should have a right to be heard at those hearings? For example, can he explain why miners from Elliot Lake will not be heard at that hearing, because they are considered to come under the rubric of a United Steelworkers of America local in Sudbury that has nothing to do with the serious problems we have at Elliot Lake?

Hon. Mr. Sorbara: Let me tell the member for Sudbury East and the member for Hamilton East that I believe in open government more than I believe in anything else. As a matter of fact, since the day I introduced that bill, I have been meeting, on a weekly basis, with groups all over this province to hear their views. In fact, I advised the committee that I would be bringing forward amendments to that bill based on what I had heard so far.

The committee of this Legislature determined its schedule and, in respect of the democratic process, I respect those decisions. It is interesting that two members of the New Democratic Party are raising those issues with me when the chairman of that committee -- doing an excellent job, I want to tell members -- is the member for Nickel Belt (Mr. Laughren) who is also within the New Democratic Party.

AFFORDABLE HOUSING

Mr. Harris: Yesterday, the Premier (Mr. Peterson) and the Minister of Housing admitted their lack of policy direction in some areas, and I would suggest some of the moves they had made, had made the dream of ever owning a home with your own little piece of turf a dream that is gone for ever for middle-income Ontarians in Metropolitan Toronto. I congratulate the minister and the Premier for admitting failure, because that is the first step they must take if they are going to change the direction they are going in.

In light of that, I would ask the minister if she is prepared now to look at some of the solutions the government should have been looking at in the last three and a half years: things like reducing taxes on the cost of home construction instead of increasing them, reducing red tape instead of increasing it, increasing land made available instead of tightening it up, things like infrastructure -- sewer, water, roads, transportation -- the things we have been telling the government for three and a half years it should be doing; is she now willing, albeit three-and-a-half years late, to move in that direction?

Hon. Ms. Hošek: Every Ontarian, as the member knows, has a right to a decent, affordable place in which to live. That is one of the things that animates this government and drives us in what we have been doing in housing. Some of the things the member has suggested as solutions are in fact things we are doing. This government has made a commitment that on our land we are going to make sure that people get homes they can afford to buy and homes they can afford to live in. I wish the honourable member would make some of this point to his federal colleagues about government land.

Mr. Cousens: What an answer. He asked you a question and you are just giving him a sidestep. You would be a better dancer than you are a minister, because you have not begun to understand what this man is asking. He is concerned about housing.

Hon. Ms. Hošek: The member for Markham (Mr. Cousens), who used to be the Housing critic, responded to our initiatives on the land use policy, which would make sure that one quarter of the homes that are built in this province would be affordable, by saying --

Mr. Cousens: They are a failure.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I would like to stop the proceedings and remind the member for Markham that another member is speaking.

Hon. Ms. Hošek: The first thing we have done is to make a commitment to use government land to increase the supply of affordable housing in this province. The second thing we have done is we have made it very clear to the municipalities and to the builders that we expect them to use land in more intelligent, creative and innovative ways to increase people’s options in this province, because of course the people in this province have different lifestyles, different family sizes and different wishes.

The diversity of the people of the province must be accommodated by a diversity of housing types. In order to make that possible, municipalities must make it possible through their zoning and planning process. We have expected them to do exactly that --

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Mr. Speaker: Order.

Mr. Harris: Platitudes and condescending words do not build the kind of affordable homes that the people of Ontario are being denied by this government. They do not contribute one whit to that.

I have been saying for some time that this government is prepared to tax us out of house and home. Now it appears it has succeeded. Yesterday, the minister and the Premier admitted that they had. To add insult to injury, they now still refuse, as a government, to abandon their plans to slap another $8,000 to $10,000 on the cost of affordable home ownership.

Instead of criticizing the federal government about its land policies, when the only piece of land the minister has made available for housing sold for $4,000 a foot and pierced the ceiling for the most expensive piece of land in the whole history of this province -- so I would not look at her own record --

Mr. Speaker: Question?

Mr. Harris: Is the minister now willing to speak out against this regressive move and proposal to further escalate the price of housing by increasing lot levies?

Hon. Ms. Hošek: My commitment to making change in this province on behalf of the people who need housing is absolutely clear. I do not appreciate being called condescending. The member opposite might think about that.

It seems very clear to me that what we have done in this area is significant. I do not claim it is ever enough, but we have built partnerships with other groups in this society who share our commitment to affordable housing; with the Catholic archdiocese, with various municipalities in the province and with the Toronto Real Estate Board.

It seems impossible to build a partnership with the people opposite on this floor, who do not seem to be willing to understand that what has to happen is that we need to build in new ways and to use land in a more creative way. What we have said to municipalities is that we expect them to make sure that land is used in a more innovative fashion.

The biggest cost of housing right now, the biggest proportion of it, is the cost of land. What we can do to make sure that the cost of land is more reasonable through innovative use of land, and creative planning will make an enormous difference. We have said that to the partners who work with us, the federal government, the municipal governments, the private sector builders, the nonprofit builders and the communities out there that really care to address this problem.

If the member opposite were one of those, I would feel a little more sanguine about where we will go.

FALBY CHILDREN’S CENTRE

Mr. Allen: As the zeros flash, I will direct a question to the Minister of Community and Social Services.

A week ago, the minister will remember that the two-year-old Falby Children’s Centre in Ajax was closed and is now under investigation by his ministry subject to concerns around child abuse in that centre.

The minister will remember that the most unusual feature of this particular story was that two years ago when this very centre was being licensed, the operator, Mr. Kates, was at that time charged and convicted on charges of abuse with respect to a previous centre he had owned.

Will the minister explain how it is possible that Mr. Kates actually achieved licensing under those circumstances, and why it is, as his officials tell us, that there are now no procedures for screening applicants for day care licences and certainly no procedures for requiring a record of past convictions --

Mr. Speaker: Thank you. There are two questions already asked.

Hon. Mr. Sweeney: We were aware of the situation the honourable member describes, but I would remind him that the charge levelled against the operator was not upheld. He was not convicted. That lack of conviction was later appealed, and the final hearing on that appeal did not take place until after the licence was issued, not to that particular person but to his daughter. The licence was not given to him. It was given to his daughter separately and we had no grounds legally for refusing her, because she was not part of the original charge and even her father had not yet been legally convicted of the charge. I think that came about two months later. There was no way we could act on that information at that time.

PETITIONS

TEACHERS’ SUPERANNUATION

Mr. Black: I have a petition addressed to the Honourable the Lieutenant Governor and the Legislative Assembly of Ontario, which reads in part as follows:

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

“To amend the Teachers’ Superannuation Act, 1983, in order that all teachers who retired prior to May 31, 1982, have their pensions recalculated on the best five years.”

I have attached my name to this.

DRUG BENEFITS

Mr. Neumann: I have a petition signed by 374 individuals from the Brantford area, three of whom are present in the gallery. It reads as follows:

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

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

“This is a petition to the provincial government and the Ministry of Community and Social Services to urge that the coverage of the drug benefit card issued to all parents on assistance be extended to include the cost of infant formula. We believe in and are committed to this effort to ensure that the nutritional needs of the children of Ontario will be met.”

I have affixed my name to the petition.

OVERCROWDING IN SCHOOLS

Mr. Cousens: “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:

“Given that the present population of Brother André high school in Markham consists of 1,500 students and is at capacity; and

“That the projected enrolment for September 1990 is approximately 2,700, with the majority of increased enrolment at the grades 9 and 10 level; and

“That the potential overcrowding will have serious repercussions for students and teachers alike;

“The Ministry of Education, in consultation with the York Region Roman Catholic Separate School Board, move immediately to approve a new high school for occupancy in September 1991 in Milliken Mills that will include initially grades 9 and 10 and therefore alleviate potential intolerable conditions at Brother André high school.”

So submitted and signed by myself.

NATUROPATHY

Mr. Elliot: I have two petitions I would like to present on behalf of my colleague the member for Peterborough (Mr. Adams). I realize the first is a lengthy petition, so I will not read it all. It concerns the recent report from the health care professions legislation review and the situation of naturopaths in the light of that review. The petition addresses questions of the regulation of naturopath standards and the regulation of such therapy as botanical medicine and acupuncture.

The petition is, as it should be, addressed to the Honourable the Lieutenant Governor and the Legislative Assembly of Ontario, and I have affixed my signature to it as well, on behalf of my colleague.

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION

Mr. Elliot: “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:

“In light of the rapidly escalating ecological crisis, which is threatening the health and very survival of all life on earth, we urge you to greatly and immediately increase the efforts to educate the public on environmental issues;

“To promote clean, safe and renewable energy resources; and

“To increase the legislative and enforcement power of the Ontario Ministry of the Environment.”

This petition has more than 50 signatures on it and I have affixed my signature to it as well.

EXTENDED CARE

Mr. Miclash: I have two petitions I would like to present on behalf of the member for Cochrane North (Mr. Fontaine). The first reads in part:

“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:

“I urge the Ontario government to reform the extended care system so that it is uniform, fair and equitable with regard to funding and regulation, and so that seniors in all extended care facilities receive the quality of care that they deserve.”

This has been signed by 365 people and I have attached my name as well.

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AUTOMOBILE INSURANCE

Mr. Miclash: The second petition reads:

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

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

“We desire to express our disapproval of the issue of the exorbitant increase in insurance premiums proposed recently and demand that Premier Peterson honour his promise on this subject.”

This petition has been signed by 976 people, and I have attached my name as well.

INTRODUCTION OF BILL

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AMENDMENT ACT

Hon. Mr. Bradley moved first reading of Bill 218, An Act to amend the Environmental Protection Act.

Motion agreed to.

Hon. Mr. Bradley: The bill deals with the following: that the making, use, transfer, display, transportation, storage and disposal of specified things containing an ozone-depleting substance and of specified things made using an ozone-depleting substance are prohibited.

The Lieutenant Governor in Council is authorized to make regulations respecting the use, transfer, display, transportation, storage, recycling and disposal of things containing or made using an ozone-depleting substance.

In addition, the Lieutenant Governor in Council may make regulations providing for exemptions from the requirements of the bill and regulations thereunder.

ORDERS OF THE DAY

House in committee of supply.

ESTIMATES, MINISTRY OF HOUSING / CRÉDITS, MINISTÈRE DU LOGEMENT (CONTINUED / SUITE)

Vote 1901, ministry administration program; item 1, main office:

The Deputy Chairman: When last we met, the minister was in the process of giving her introductory comments.

Hon. Ms. Hošek: I would like to ask the permission of the House to move to the front row and to have staff present on the floor.

The Deputy Chairman: Is there unanimous consent that the minister be permitted to occupy the front row together with her staff?

Agreed to.

Hon. Ms. Hošek: Let me start by saying that I am very pleased to continue with the presentation of estimates which I began exactly a month ago today on January 16. I am hearing that some of my speeches are getting quite long, but this is the first time it has taken me a full month to get this far.

To refresh members’ memories, I started off last month saying that I welcome the opportunity to discuss the goals and achievements of the ministry and I look forward to hearing members’ ideas and suggestions. Let me briefly summarize my earlier comments.

Our comprehensive housing initiatives are a direct response to a pressing need in this province, a need that will not go away. Attracted by the promise of a healthy economic future, more than 110,000 people migrated to our province in 1987 alone. These people are not only welcome; they are a necessary addition to an economic climate that is creating more than 100,000 new jobs every year.

That huge influx of families and individuals is having an enormous impact on the availability and, consequently, the affordability of housing. In large cities especially, the supply is stretched to the limit, leaving increasingly more families with fewer choices. It is our responsibility at the Ministry of Housing to draw together all the players who have the ability to stabilize the housing market. Our policies directly address the key issues to meet that goal.

In order to build houses, one needs land. Any plan to stabilize the housing market requires aggressive policies aimed at identifying and freeing up parcels of land appropriate for housing.

This government’s Housing First policy addresses the need directly. Working with the Ministry of Government Services, we are releasing surplus government lands on a site-by-site basis. Already eight sites have been released: one in Mississauga, one in Stoney Creek, one in Guelph and five in Metropolitan Toronto.

Increasing the supply of housing is another challenge which is being met by our nonprofit housing programs, most notably by our Homes Now program, which was announced last fall. It provides $2 billion to create 30,000 homes over the next three to five years. It will provide housing for 90,000 people. To put that in perspective, if all those new housing units were located in a single community, it would be a bustling new community the size of Oakville.

But it is not just the number of homes being built that makes a difference and that is significant. It is the kind of homes being built that will make a difference in our communities now and very far into the future. Up to 70 per cent of these 30,000 units are being built for moderate-and low-income families. That means that families and individuals who find it difficult to find accommodation that suits their needs at a price they can afford will have new choices.

Who will be living in these new communities? Let’s take a moment to consider who the new tenants will be. In one of the new units recently completed there might be a single mother working to support her young family on just one income. Clearly, she needs more than a one-room basement apartment, but that may be all she can afford on her single income. Through the Homes Now program, she and her family will have a new home and the rent she pays will be geared to her income, not to the size of the apartment.

Another tenant might be a pensioner living on a fixed income who needs help paying the bills. In the same new housing development there might be a young couple with two incomes who can afford to pay all the rent on their own. All these people and more will be making up the new communities which are being built across the province right now. They will be part of our new neighbourhoods and reflect society at large.

As I said earlier, Homes Now is our biggest housing project, but it is not our only one. We also have a nonprofit housing program aimed at those in society who often have a difficult time finding appropriate housing.

When people with disabilities go looking for housing, they often come up against a housing market that is designed to exclude them. To help change this, we have a program called Project 3000, which is designed to build rental housing for people who have special needs. This housing is specifically targeted at people who are homeless, people with disabilities, physical, developmental or psychiatric, and people who are fleeing from abusive home situations.

These programs are in addition to a federal-provincial program that is set to provide about 7,000 nonprofit units every year. I have already mentioned the serious problems that we are facing since the federal government has imposed financial caps on this program. I will speak in more detail about the inadequate federal role a little bit later today.

At the Ministry of Housing, we also see the need for long-term planning to build order and a sense of fairness into new and expanding communities. To this end, we announced, along with the Ministry of Municipal Affairs, a draft policy statement on housing and land use last summer. When this statement is implemented in the spring, the policy will dramatically alter the way communities are planned. It calls for a full range of housing types, and at least one quarter of the homes that will be built in new communities must be affordable.

We are implementing this policy statement because we know that unless we plan for the future, our communities will not serve us well in the future. By planning now for affordable housing in every new community we are ensuring that our children will have the homes to strive for as they grow older and start their own young families. It also means the people who work in our communities, selling our cars. teaching our children, driving our buses, working in our stores, can afford to live in those communities.

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The policy statement also requires municipalities to adopt strategies to increase housing supply by making better use of our existing housing stock and our existing land. We know, for instance, that there are many opportunities for creative use of existing housing. We are talking about infill, conversion of underutilized commercial and industrial properties and the conversion of single-family homes to rental accommodation.

All these options offer the potential to create thousands of rental units across the province. These are units that can be created using our existing infrastructure, our roads and sewers which are already there. We can make better use of them by intensifying the residential use around that infrastructure which already exists.

The draft policy statement reflects our commitment to work closely with municipalities to streamline the planning process and reduce the time it takes to approve planning and development applications. We are doing this because we know that in the development business time is money and we are doing it because there is a need for more housing quickly in this province and we want to be sure we are doing our part to speed up the process and to get more homes built.

We are now in the process of consulting with municipalities and interested groups. Our goal is to implement the policy this spring. Speaking of provincial and municipal co-operation, I am delighted that our efforts have secured joint agreements with two municipalities this year. These agreements with Ottawa and with Peterborough represent our mutual commitment to work together for broadly affordable housing.

While similar agreements are being negotiated with other municipalities, I want to stress that our role as a partner is not limited to municipalities. One of the highlights of this year was the agreement between my ministry and the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Toronto to provide broadly affordable housing on church lands. His Eminence Gerald Emmett, Cardinal Carter, and I signed the agreement just before Christmas, marking the first such agreement by the province and a major religious denomination.

The agreement will result in the speedy creation of more than 800 housing units on church lands identified by the archdiocese as suitable for housing. In addition, under our nonprofit programs we will set aside a reserve allocation of units for the archdiocese. We are confident that the archdiocese will be a major contributor to the supply of nonprofit housing in the greater Toronto area.

lam particularly pleased about this agreement, because it illustrates a point that we have been making for some time, that providing adequate, broadly affordable housing is not only the responsibility of governments, but the responsibility of everyone in the community. Partnerships like this one are essential if we are to make progress in meeting the housing challenge.

There are already today more than 50,000 nonprofit housing units in Ontario sponsored by hundreds of nonprofit groups, municipal nonprofit corporations and housing co-operatives. In the last year alone, we have given approval to almost 300 sponsors across Ontario to create some 14,000 homes, and people have moved into some 4,000 new homes. Over the next few years, a total of 55,000 new, affordable, nonprofit units will come on stream, which brings me to the next area I want to discuss.

As a ministry, we do not only concern ourselves with producing housing; our commitment is also to the people who already live in nonprofit housing and in the Ontario Housing Corp. buildings we own. We work with and for the tenants themselves to help improve the quality of their lives. We are responsible for thousands of projects across Ontario and consider the tens of thousands of tenants who live in them a high priority.

Ontario Housing Corp. owns and manages 84,000 housing units which serve 250,000 people all over the province. All of the units that make up Ontario Housing Corp.’s portfolio are rented on a geared-to-income basis. In addition, the OHC is responsible for 13,000 rent supplement units which are administered through agreements with private sector landlords. We take the needs of our tenants very seriously and we emphasize our role in providing leadership for other landlords in the province.

We have been active in establishing an effective landlord-tenant relations program in our own public housing. We have also implemented a race relations policy to foster greater harmony and co-operation in the tenant community. Already, the Metro Toronto Housing Authority, which is responsible for about one third of the Ontario Housing Corp. portfolio, has hired its own race relations director and established a premises harassment policy to protect tenants from any form of harassment. We also have an enriched university bursary program, in which we provide for the children of OHC tenants.

Through a partnership with Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. and the Metropolitan Toronto Housing Co., we help senior citizens to locate affordable housing more quickly through a seniors’ housing registry. This registry offers a one-stop approach to finding permanent and affordable rental housing in the Metro Toronto area.

For many people, the surest form of tenant protection is entering into social housing. Previously, this entry was exclusively available to senior citizens and families. That is no longer the case. Last year, I made the decision to end virtually all restrictions on applications for subsidized housing by announcing that people would now be housed on the basis of need, and on the basis of need alone.

Metro Toronto is the home to OHC’s largest member agency, the Metro Toronto Housing Authority. The members may remember that this year I appointed Jean Augustine as the new chairman of MTHA. She is a very capable individual with a deep commitment to the ministry’s priorities for public housing in Metro and an enormously strong and deep record of social activism on behalf of people who need help. I have every confidence that she will build on the very solid foundations which we have laid.

Being a good landlord to our own tenants is only one of the ways that this ministry strives to provide protection for the huge proportion of tenants who rent accommodation in this province.

Je pense qu’un des éléments les plus cruciaux pour la protection des locataires est un système qui protège à la fois les intérêts des propriétaires et des locataires, et qui offre une protection particulière à ceux qui ne peuvent pas se défendre seuls.

Depuis 1985, le gouvernement a procédé à une révision, tout aussi vaste que détaillée, des lois sur la protection des locataires en Ontario. Ceci a été rendu possible grâce à la pleine participation des locataires et des propriétaires.

M. le Président, permettez-moi de faire mention des améliorations que nous avons apportées dans ce domaine depuis 1985.

The measures that we have brought in to improve the situation of tenants in the province include: measures to ensure that all tenants in Ontario can be charged only one rent increase each year; measures to ensure that all tenants in all private rental units are protected by rent review; the creation of a computerized rent registry to ensure that tenants are not charged illegal rents; the creation of a residential rental standards board to ensure that tenants throughout Ontario receive proper maintenance of their rental units; legislation which outlaws the charging of key money to ensure tenants are not the victims of this unscrupulous practice; changes to the Landlord and Tenant Act to extend protection to include roomers, boarders and lodgers; the creation and recent revision of the Rental Housing Protection Act to protect existing rental housing units, and measures to ensure that tenants are not victimized by the operators of illegal suite hotels.

I want to make clear to members that none of these measures was in place prior to this government’s taking office. We promised to clean up the haphazard and piecemeal approach to tenant protection that we inherited, and we have done just that. The Residential Rent Regulation Act, passed in December 1986, created a new system of rent review which contained many of these fundamental protections for tenants. For the first time, tenants living in buildings built after 1975 received full protection under rent review. We required the landlords of these units, for the very first time, to apply to rent review to justify any rent increases that exceeded the guideline.

Putting this new system in place has been an enormous task, and it continues to tax my ministry’s resources to the limit. The addition of so many buildings to the rent review process created a large backlog. Indeed, almost 60 per cent of the current backlog of some 16,000 applications relates to this sudden increase in eligibility for protection. Yes, it is taking time to resolve these applications, but we believe that is preferable to leaving thousands of tenants unprotected and subject to a rent increase of any amount every month of the year.

Regarding high rent increases, it is true rent increases have been granted to date, applying the rent review legislation, that are averaging about 11.3 per cent. But this should be balanced against the fact that rent rebates granted to tenants by rent review average about 14.3 per cent. Fully 78 per cent of the tenants in Ontario are receiving a rent increase at or below the guideline; a guideline that is decreased for the second year in a row.

For those who go to rent review, we have established a system far superior and far fairer to tenants than anything in the past. For the first time, tenants are being given sufficient time and direction to assist them in fully understanding the landlord’s application and documentation. They have a full opportunity to dispute the proposed increase and to appeal any decision to an independent hearings board.

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In addition, we continue to register the rents of private rental units in Ontario. To date, more than 500,000 units have been registered and the results are available through our computerized rent registry. Tenants are able to find out through their local rent review office the maximum rent which applies to registered units.

Another crucial feature of our rent review legislation was the creation of the Residential Rental Standards Board. This board has been established to ensure that tenants throughout Ontario receive proper maintenance of their rental units. Failure by landlords to meet proper maintenance standards can result in a suspension or forfeiture of rent increases.

Another first for Ontario in tenant protection has been our ban on the practice of charging key money, which has long victimized tenants in Ontario. Using the legislation, we have established an active investigation unit and a total of more than 200 charges are pending before the courts. Already we have obtained numerous convictions which have saved prospective tenants literally thousands of dollars.

Last month I introduced legislation to make the Rental Housing Protection Act permanent, with tough new measures to further protect rental stock and tenants’ rights. This legislation has in the past been most effective in reducing the unwarranted loss of rental housing by requiring municipal approval of the demolition or conversion of such housing.

As members know, the act was originally intended as an interim measure. After wide consultation and analysis, it was clear that the market conditions which prompted the government to implement the act in the first place had not changed to a significant degree. That is why we have added some new measures and kept many of the old to ensure effective protection for three million tenants in Ontario.

Our record on tenant protection shows that this government recognizes and is responsive to the housing needs of those of our citizens who rent accommodation. We have come a long way towards establishing some of the most comprehensive tenant legislation in the nation.

As a government, we are also concerned with those citizens who dream of owning their own homes. To help people to save for their first home, the Ontario home ownership savings plan was introduced this year. Announced in the April budget, the plan will provide an annual tax credit of up to $500 for individuals and $1,000 for families, depending on household income. Benefits for this plan are expected to average $50 million per year and to assist an estimated 150,000 families and individuals who are planning to buy their own homes.

Let me move now to the building industry and our efforts this year to help it become more productive and efficient. As members know, our building industry is the largest and possibly most important industry in the province. It leads in terms of economic impact, employment creation and the multiplier effect associated with capital investment. As the minister responsible for regulating this industry, I am concerned that the building system in Ontario supports the construction of all kinds of housing, including broadly affordable housing, and to this end we have been actively engaged in several initiatives.

Two years ago we launched a comprehensive program of regulatory reform designed to improve the regulatory environment and industry efficiency in three basic ways. First, our move was to begin consolidating and streamlining the hundreds of statutes and regulations that govern the building industry. Draft legislation will soon be ready to correct the major portion of these deficiencies and the remainder of the necessary amendments will be addressed soon after.

The second thrust of the regulatory reform program is to ensure that the regulations we do have make good sense in technical, economic and social terms. To accomplish this ambitious objective, we are developing a comprehensive code assessment framework to evaluate new and existing building requirements on a cost/risk-benefit basis. This analytical framework, which will be unique in the world, is nearing completion and will be available this spring for use in all of Canada and for future application by the National Research Council in Ottawa.

The third regulatory reform is to make extensive changes in the current elaborate regulatory network. We are preparing amendments to the Building Code Act to provide greater flexibility in the administrative procedures through which our regulations are enforced. By working in partnership with communities, municipalities, other levels of government and the private sector, we can begin to implement actions and initiatives that will respond to the housing needs of our fellow citizens.

This partnership-based style of housing delivery requires strong mutual trust. It creates new demands and challenges to all of us in government. We must be prepared to move into a more facilitating and advocating role, empowering our partners and helping them to remove the obstacles from their paths. That is what we have been doing.

A major priority of my ministry this year has been to work towards changing the environment in which housing has traditionally been developed. Our objective has been to involve, influence and persuade other provincial ministries, municipalities, community groups and the private sector to use their energy and resources to remove impediments and enhance opportunities for increasing the supply of broadly affordable housing.

Aside from the new partnerships that have been forged, we have also intervened directly with municipalities when we felt a worthwhile housing project was in danger of unnecessary delay or termination. Since April 1988 we have made over 80 interventions in support of nonprofit housing projects. Our form of intervention has ranged from the provision of expert witnesses to letters of support and council appearances. Let me give just one example.

In September, a housing project in Richmond Hill that would provide 350 affordable housing units -- 175 for families, 85 for singles and 90 for seniors -- was turned down by city council despite my letter of support to the mayor. At the Ontario Municipal Board hearing in October, ministry staff gave evidence regarding our housing policy statement, the need for broadly affordable housing in Richmond Hill and the ministry’s support of the project. The OMB decided in favour of the housing project. That is but one example of initiatives that we have taken to create an atmosphere in this province that supports our goals. We have not entirely achieved that yet.

Far too often, when people try to develop housing in communities or intensify existing neighbourhoods, there exists a curious reaction known by many as NIMBY, not in my backyard. I call it curious because often these are the same people who publicly lament the high cost of housing and the low vacancy rates. They demand solutions, but not in their backyards. What is of more concern is that NIMBY often extends to entire municipalities.

There seem to be some municipalities in this province that feel they have the right to exclude whole groups of people who cannot afford the cost of the housing that they wish to see built. I want to state very clearly that no municipality in this province has that right. We can go on and on talking about housing and the need for solutions, but until everyone in this province assumes the responsibility to find and implement solutions, we cannot resolve the problem. That is the major challenge we face in the future.

In order to meet it, we must get municipalities to accept their responsibilities. We must impart a sense of responsibility to private industry, business corporations, community-based organizations, individual home and property owners, landlords and tenants. I think we have made considerable progress this year with all these groups.

There is one other major player we have not as yet managed to budge, and that is the federal government. While the decision to make federal land available for housing at the Downsview airport site is encouraging, we are still waiting to learn whether the housing that is built there will be priced to meet the need.

I am deeply disappointed that the federal government decided to sell a large block of post office land in Mississauga without receiving a commitment to a single affordable unit. In the midst of an affordable housing shortage, the last thing the government of Canada should be doing is simply selling land to the highest bidder.

The level of federal cost-sharing in social housing has not kept pace with the need. We will be developing 55,000 social housing units over the next three to five years in Ontario, and the federal government’s approximate contribution will cover about a fifth of the total cost.

At no time in Ontario’s history has the federal government played such a limited role in the provision of social housing. We need the federal government to be a full partner if we are to meet our long-term housing roles. I will be meeting with the new federal minister responsible for housing shortly to discuss these outstanding issues and I am hopeful that we can come to an understanding of their crucial importance and find solutions.

The time for action has arrived and the need is critical. It is my sincere hope that a stronger federal government commitment to Ontario’s housing problems will soon be forthcoming. The citizens of Ontario who need affordable housing are Canadians too. They have a right to expect leadership for all their governments, municipal, provincial and federal.

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In closing, let me stress that this government is proud of its achievements in taking control of housing issues and in getting results. As our programs and policies gain momentum this year, those achievements will continue to expand. As I said at the opening, I welcome this opportunity to discuss the performance of my ministry. The key to success in meeting the housing challenge in Ontario is to get everyone involved. We need the collective and co-operative effort of everyone.

It is in this spirit of co-operation and mutual commitment that I approach the debate.

Mr. Harris: I believe the father of the member for Oshawa (Mr. Breaugh) is ill. I think he got word this morning.

Mr. Charlton: The member for Nipissing (Mr. Harris) is correct. The member for Oshawa has been unavoidably taken away from us as a result of an illness of his father. I believe there was an agreement to stand down his opening statement and allow the member for Nipissing to proceed.

Mr. Harris: I was a little late myself and wanted to make sure that somebody spoke on behalf of the member for Oshawa and explain that he will be here, I believe, next week. Obviously, we would accommodate the New Democratic Party in any way, and the member for Oshawa when he comes back, and we extend our best wishes to his father and to his family.

I do want to say a few words before we get into the votes themselves. I hope over the period of the next few weeks there will be a good in-depth look at how this ministry operates and some of the many questions and concerns that we have about how it operates or does not operate.

I will be, over that period of time, looking in a very serious way and seeking answers to a number of questions, particularly on whether we are getting value for money. That is one of the key reasons this estimates process is so important. This is a government that appears to be throwing a fair bit of money, admittedly, at problems. I hear answer after answer in this House such as, “We’ve increased spending in health care this many billions and we’ve put this much money into housing and we’ve put this much money into other areas.”

We understand that. This government is spending a lot of money, double the rate of inflation since it took office. It is the only government in Canada to do that over the past three or four years. Throwing money is obviously not solving the problem because the housing situation is much worse today than it was three and a half years ago. The affordable housing problem is dramatically worse. The availability of apartment accommodation is dramatically worse. The cost of apartment accommodation is dramatically worse. The supply problem, of course, which is the key question, is dramatically worse.

The same is true in health care. Nobody believes the health care system is as good today as it was three and a half years ago, after throwing all this money at it. So we really must, in this estimates process, take a look at whether we are getting value for money. Are the programs being delivered efficiently?

We have questions when we see administration increasing 40 per cent, 50 per cent and 80 per cent in some ministries, and the cost of the rent review system going from $4 million to $40 million. The cost of running this program is up 10 times and yet not a landlord, not a tenant, not anybody I know in the province believes that the system is working. Whether they believed it worked before or not, they do not believe it is working as well today as it was a number of years ago.

I think this estimates process is an important one and I look forward to some dialogue with the minister in a number of specific areas over the next number of days that we have to look at this.

I want to make some general comments, though, before we get into the specifics and say that I am pleased that we finally have this opportunity. I appreciate that it has been a busy government agenda, although nobody knows whether it has any direction or whether the priorities are right. For some reason or other, we have not been able to get to these estimates for a while. I do not blame the minister for that. I am sure she has been ready, willing and able and available for a good period of time. Perhaps collectively we can blame the House leaders, whoever those individuals are.

Mr. Reycraft: As long as it’s not the whips.

Mr. Harris: Maybe the whips, too. The government whip is here today.

However, we are involved in them right now. So I welcome the opportunity to discuss the housing situation in Ontario and to outline on behalf of the Progressive Conservative caucus and our party some of our concerns with the record of this Liberal government and the plans not only of this minister but of this Premier (Mr. Peterson) and Treasurer (Mr. R. F. Nixon) and this government which we think are impacting so negatively on solving some of the housing problems.

I believe the minister referred to the three crucial areas of her ministry, which I think she used as part of the framework of her remarks, particularly last January. One of the three areas for discussion is housing supply.

I said today in the House -- and the minister took exception -- that I felt she used a condescending attitude towards the House. Continually, when we have asked specific questions on issues which we think dramatically affect supply, she has come back with answers as if we did not understand that supply was the problem. Of course supply is the problem. Of course, when there is a limited supply the price goes up. That is standard, straightforward economics as I understand it.

In response to a specific question about lot levies, if I hear a three-minute tirade that, “The member doesn’t seem to understand that supply is the problem,” and I get the same answer time after time after time, I feel as if I am being condescended to by the minister. I do not need that lecture. I am not here to get that.

I have asked many specific questions about infrastructure, about not one major new artery being built in and around to provide greater access, about the problems of transportation, whether it be roads, buses, subways or rapid transit. Nothing has moved in that area in the past three and a half years. There is the odd study, the odd plan that says we are going to have to do something. It is the same with sewers and water; the same with speeding up the approval process.

I have asked questions about why a sales tax, when housing is, as the minister calls it, a top priority. I would say there is none that ranks higher right now. I think health ranks with it; I think a number rank with it. I am not saying there are not other concerns. This government is a disaster in so many areas there are other concerns, but housing surely ranks up there with the top of them.

Why sales tax? Why is that an area the Treasurer feels should be taxed? Why should he specifically place taxes on those areas that were previously exempt -- like concrete, asphalt, mortar, those things that went into the cost of home building -- at a time when the cost of housing is a severe problem?

I have asked those questions. I have asked about the new proposal for a lot levy tax and the minister comes back and says, “That money will be used to provide some of the infrastructure, the things you’ve been talking about.” I understand that. In this case, it is schools. I think that is a silly way to pay for schools. I do not think the new home buyers should finance schools all by themselves. I do not think that is where the money should come from. I think education is a top priority as well and should be financed from as broadly based a source of funds as possible, not isolating one problem area that is a severe problem, the housing affordability.

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When I have asked those questions, I got the three-minute answer that: “The House does not seem to understand. The leader of the official opposition does not understand. The Housing critic for the New Democratic Party and the Housing critic for the Conservative Party do not seem to understand. The problem is supply.” I agree. I do not need to be told the problem is supply. It is why I keep asking questions. How are we going to increase supply?

I know that the home builders across this province -- and editorial after editorial -- have come forward with concrete reasons why this government is increasing the problem of lack of supply in a number of areas where I thought it could move in directions that would help solve the problem.

There are three areas for discussion. The key one is supply, I understand that; two, the minister talked about protection for renters, and three, about the partnership with the municipalities and the building industry. We do not disagree with any of the three priorities. We do not disagree with that.

I think most people, most members of this Legislature, run for public office to try to make their communities, this province and, indeed, this country, better places. I do not know any I have run into in my eight years where somebody ran specifically to make things worse. I do not know that they ran out of a tremendous desire to be able to come into this chamber in question period and see if they could trick and embarrass people. That is not why we run. We run because we want to and think we can make a contribution and make our communities a better place to live; to improve the situation and leave, in my case, for my four-year-old son, and in the minister’s case for her children and for children of her friends, a better place, an opportunity. That is why we are here.

We legitimately raise questions and raise concerns about the directions the government is going in if we disagree. I believe we are entitled to answers. The minister in response to a question indicated today that she thought that we did not want to be partners with her in solving these problems. She talked of the great cooperation that she is receiving from others, the municipalities and the building industry. I am going to refer to that. Perhaps when she hears the response that they are giving, she will understand that perhaps they are being treated the same way we are and that is why she has no partners, or very few willing to work with her in a co-operative way.

She is not alone in this; her cabinet colleagues play a significant role. The Treasurer plays a significant role, and the support this cabinet, this government and this caucus are willing to give to the minister is very suspect.

The minister has spoken at length in January and today about her accomplishments in the Ministry of Housing in light of those three priorities that she mentioned: housing supply, protection for renters and partnership with the municipalities and the building industry. I want to make a brief comment on those.

The minister said, and I quote, “On the supply side, we have made significant inroads.” Is that why house prices are going up $20,000, $30,000, $40,000 and $50,000 each day? I do not think anybody believes significant inroads have been made.

There have been a lot of announcements. There has been a regular stream of announcements that have been made with great fanfare concerning ambitious commitments to build social housing projects. These are then followed a few months later by another press release, many times under a new and catchy name announcing exactly the same project once again. We have seen examples where it came out a second time and was scaled down -- I do not know how the government thought it would get away with reannouncing something that was less than it had committed before -- or it was going to be delayed. That is the type of announcement we have heard.

That part of housing, which the government is virtually directly responsible for and pays for, is only a very small part of the picture in regard to housing supply.

I want it clearly understood that I applaud the work of the community groups. I applaud the work of the church groups across this province for taking the initiative in coming forward and establishing nonprofit housing. I even applaud the ministry for its work in encouraging and facilitating this kind of initiative.

I am proud of the number of churches which have been actively involved in supplying housing in my home town of North Bay. We have St. John’s Anglican Church which has recently completed a nonprofit housing project attached to the church. It revitalized the church at the same time on Main Street in North Bay. Emmanuel United Church brought 60 or 70 units -- I do not have the figure off the top of my head -- that we opened a couple of years ago, right on their property in conjunction with their new church. I applauded and I encouraged others in my community to say that this was worth while, that this was a way they could contribute.

I do not mind saying that I have been critical of some churches -- not all, but some individuals in some churches of practically every denomination -- that have felt that their duty was to lobby government to do everything. I am one of those who said, “I understand a lobby on behalf of causes that you may believe in, but you know, if you spent half as much time lobbying and got involved in helping solve the problems, I think you would go a long way.”

So I applaud those groups in North Bay in my riding which have been involved in housing. I applaud those who have come forward and responded to the minister’s challenge that we all must do more. I believe that is important, but that there is a whole other side to this. This excludes virtually completely the private sector from the affordable housing field. They do not want to be excluded. They say: “We can contribute. We would like to be part of the solution.”

What about the fact that there are no, absolutely no affordable homes available anywhere in the Metropolitan Toronto area? That is a supply problem. The minister says she is proud of the increasing supply. I do not think anybody believes that the supply of affordable housing has increased today. I do not think they believe that. So there is a supply problem.

What about the fact that the vacancy rate in almost every major centre in Ontario is effectively a zero vacancy rate? It is worse in Toronto, we understand -- one or two per cent. I guess it is as high as two per cent in some areas. London appears to be one of the few centres that has a vacancy rate even close to what is generally regarded as a healthy level.

Mr. Reycraft: A month’s free rent.

Mr. Harris: I am sorry. The government whip says what?

Mr. Reycraft: A month’s free rent.

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Mr. Harris: In London, yes. Perhaps everybody is embarrassed by the way the Premier is acting and they all want to move out of London. I do not know if that would increase the supply. I jest, of course. So with the exception, it appears, of London, the supply problem is worse.

Second, the minister talked about protection for renters. She talked about the fine work she has done in protecting renters. She says she has rent review legislation that is fair to both the landlord and to the tenants. The landlords do not believe it is fair; the tenants do not believe it is fair. The only measure of fairness that I can imagine the minister will come up with is that everybody agrees it is not working. It is too complicated.

I saw a big advertisement in the paper today, paid for by the Ministry of Housing through a grant to a landlord group, and headlined, “Are you having problems with some tenants?” That was the question. It said: “Come to this government-sponsored seminar. We will tell you how to deal with those.” Another one was, “Are your rents abnormally low?” That was right at the top of the ad. It asked: “Are your rents too low, Mr. Landlord? We are spending taxpayers’ dollars to tell you how to come down here. We have got a seminar to explain things to you.”

I objected to the tone of it, but I do understand. The legislation is so complex that landlords do not understand it well; tenants do not understand it well. None of the groups thinks that it is working well.

With a supply crisis, perhaps the more important question of protection for the tenant is just getting a roof over his head. So if he could even find a vacant apartment to rent the chances are that it is going to cost him or her far more than he can afford to pay.

Rental accommodation costs in Toronto are now the second highest in the world, surpassed only by Tokyo. We pointed this out in the House a couple of weeks ago. They have gone from somewhere around 14th to second in the time this government has been in office. So the real story of how the minister is protecting tenants is a little different from the tenants’ point of view.

Partnership with the municipalities and the building industry: This was the third thing the minister talked about. She proclaims her ground-breaking successes in forging lines of communication and co-operation with the municipalities and the building industry.

I would agree. She appears to be spending a significant amount of money on consulting and consultants’ reports. But what have been the results? The results have been dismal. We can also look at the process the minister is so proud of. She says she is talking to the municipalities. She is talking to the builders and talking to the landlords. This is under her theme of partnership with the municipalities and the building industry. What do they think of this new level of partnership that has been forged by the Minister of Housing?

Let us look at the example of the consultation on the Rental Housing Protection Act. The minister extended the act a year ago in order to “allow for consultation.” Both the Association of Municipalities of Ontario and various organizations representing the building industry presented extensive briefs to the Ministry of Housing, and for the most part their views were completely ignored. The AMO feared that a new act would result in a further reduction of any semblance of incentive for the private sector to invest in the rental housing supply.

The representatives of the industry made their views clear this morning at a press conference sponsored by a group called the Alliance for Housing, a new coalition made up of the Urban Development Institute of Ontario, the Fair Rental Policy Organization of Ontario and the Ontario Home Builders’ Association. All three have tried to deal individually with the government over the past year and a half and all three have come to the same conclusion. The Liberal government is not willing to listen. The government has not responded to their briefs, has not paid attention at meetings.

They have been given a symbolic audience with the government, and that is all. In the words of Aldo Di Iorio, the president of the Ontario Home Builders’ Association, “The consultative process is a sham.” It is not the New Democratic Party or the Conservative Party or the member for Nipissing; this is the group of which, in January, the minister said clearly, “I’m proud of our consultation with these groups.”

“The consultative process is a sham.” This man heads the organization that builds 80 per cent of the housing in this province. If this is what the municipalities and the building industry think of their new partnership with the Ministry of Housing, I suggest we have some problems.

Housing supply means much more than the number of units of social housing that have been promised for some point down the road. Protection for the renters of the province is not something that can be effected merely by invoking a piece of legislation, but virtually everyone agrees that this particular piece of legislation needs to be scrapped. The historic partnership, of which the minister is so proud, between her government, the municipalities and the industry is not something for which those groups are sharing this minister’s enthusiasm.

What about the possibilities of home ownership for the people of this province? I believe, and I think my colleagues would agree with me, not just those members of my caucus but members on both sides of the chamber, that home ownership is an important goal to which all Ontarians should be able to aspire. Surely we would want all Ontarians to have the opportunity, if they wish, to be able to own their own little plot of land somewhere.

Clearly, that is not the case. This Liberal government either does not accept that idea or it acknowledges that it is no longer possible. It throws up its hands, I guess, and says: “It’s just not possible, so now you’ll have to forget your plot of land. We’ll have to see if we can find you a town house or a condominium somewhere,” which we know are not really available either.

I do not think that is the right response. I applauded the minister and the Premier today in the House and said that I think it is important that they acknowledged the problem. They said: “They’re not available. Single, detached homes are not available.” I thought that was an important first step.

Surely, the second part of that must be, “What do we have to do to change it?” Not, in my view: “It isn’t available, so it isn’t available. You must accept that. That is the reality of Ontario under our government in the 1990s and beyond. That is no longer going to be an option.”

I do not accept that. I do not accept throwing up my hands and saying that it is no longer going to be an option. I think we have to look at ways to make it, once again, an option. I think we have to look at ways to restore that dream of home ownership to the people of this province, particularly in and around Metropolitan Toronto.

I think we have to look at why it happened. We have to look at what mistakes were made or actions that were not taken that should have been taken, and we must try to correct those. I believe -- and my party has made suggestion after suggestion over the past three and a half years, as new prosperity came to this province, as new money rolled in, as spending was being increased, double the rate of inflation, taxes were being increased -- that there are a number of things that government must do.

We all agree, regardless of philosophy, there are some things government must do. There are some things the private sector really cannot do. I do not think anybody would suggest that we turn the road system over to the private sector. It might be a thought; perhaps there are some who would. But I think everybody would accept that the road system is something that only the government can pull together. I do not think we want to see privately owned toll booths and privately owned highways. I do not think anybody in Ontario is advocating that.

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Sewers and water are the infrastructure things that some level of government must be involved in. In the case of roads, sewage plants, sewer systems, the infrastructure, water, historically and traditionally, have been a partnership of the provincial government and the municipalities. The only federal government involvement was in the Great Lakes water cleanup, for those areas they had in there from the sewer and water end.

If you are going to have more people in the province, those are things that government has to increase funding on. I would be the first to say that increases in excess of inflation have to be spent on the infrastructure things when you have more people. You can justify it because there are more people paying the taxes.

But this government did not do that. They did not seem to appreciate or realize that as a million or so more people over the past three and a half years -- I do not know the exact number; maybe the minister knows the number who have moved into Ontario in three and a half years -- but a substantial number of new people have moved in and a substantial number of new people have found jobs in this province who did not have them three and a half years ago.

Next to nothing has been done to put in new sewage capacity, new water capacity, new garbage capacity and new transportation capacity, be it roads, be it urban transit, so we have a problem. Yesterday, I saw in the paper as I was travelling from Ottawa to Kingston and keeping track of what was going on here, that the Premier had said: “You’re right. Affordable housing is no longer available in Metropolitan Toronto. People will have to go farther away. They will have to drive farther and we’ll have to provide roads and transportation.”

This is a terrible admission to make three and a half years after the horse is out of the barn. We have been saying these things. We have been telling the government these things, and we have had the same stock answer come back at us that the problem is supply. We know that.

I do not accept that a government should just say, “Affordable home ownership is no longer possible in Metropolitan Toronto.” I think there are a number of things that could have been done over the past three and a half years. In addition to the infrastructure items I have mentioned, I think the red tape could have been reduced.

The builders, the home owners, the municipalities have been crying for this to speed up the process. Project after project after project has been held up in the Ministry of the Environment, not on environmental grounds but because the blooming application could not get from the bottom of the pile to the top of the pile for months and months on end.

I had projects in North Bay that required Ministry of the Environment approval. I would start calling at the local level. I would start working my way up. I would get up to the deputy minister. I would get everywhere, wherever I could, and I was told: “Mike, I think we can speed this up. I think we can get it done maybe in three or four months. We can get a look at it.” It was the type of engineering drawing that needed a stamp. It took 10 minutes’ worth of work once they got to it, but it is all backed up.

The red tape problem was not treated seriously. The builders, the developers and the municipalities have been telling the minister that if we are going to have an influx of people and if we are going to solve the supply problem, we must be able to get developed land, serviced land that can handle garbage, that can handle traffic, that can handle sewer and water. We must be able to get an adequate supply of it. If we can do that, we can increase the supply and we will not get the dramatic increase in prices that we have seen.

Those are some of the areas that should have been done over the past three and a half years. would have been prouder of the Premier and the minister if, in admitting that home ownership is no longer possible for moderate-income people, they had said: “We admit that is the case today. However, we are going to take a look at the way we have been operating for the past three and a half years, and we are prepared to listen. We are prepared to make the changes that are necessary so that will not be the case next year or the year after or at some point in the future.” That, I believe, would have been the other half of a responsible conclusion to that.

Now we are conceding that only the very wealthy can even begin to contemplate the idea of purchasing a home in and around Metropolitan Toronto, and I do not accept that. That is not good. I accept that is the reality, but I do not accept that should be the goal and we should just simply admit that. We must return affordable housing to the reach, to the dreams of at least average- and moderate-income Ontarians.

I think there is a sinking feeling out there that the door has been closed. Had the minister said: “For today, you can look at a condominium. You can look farther out. Yes, there will be traffic problems, but if we get our act together, hopefully we will solve those. In the meantime, we will continue to look at it and, hopefully, find some solutions. We think we can increase supply,” that response might have left a little bit of hope.

But to just give up and apparently close the door entirely was very difficult to take. If there are people out there who hold a flicker of hope, even the smallest glimmer of hope for the dream of home ownership, even after hearing the numbers and the words of the Minister of Housing yesterday, then they are going to have to look farther and farther field, miles away from Toronto, potentially 30, 50, 75, 100 kilometres away from their place of employment.

Even in these areas, from Burlington up to Barrie, to Oshawa, the outer limits of the Toronto commutershed, if you like, and even beyond its reasonable limits, one would have to look long and hard indeed to find a home that was affordable for most of those who aspire even now to home ownership. Their options are narrowing. The minister knows that. She has said numerous times in the House in response to questions, “Increase the supply of broadly affordable housing.” She has said that repeatedly, but there is not much to show at this point in time for her efforts to ensure that there is a supply of single detached homes.

Members on this side of the House pressed the minister over a month ago to identify the affordable housing in the Metro area she was speaking of at that time. She could not. Members will remember that one of the major papers invested some research and found about 20 in all of the Metro area. Last week, one of those 20 that had sold for $120,000 before Christmas was back on the market for $189,000, so that one was gone.

How did the minister move with great speed to solve this problem? It appears to me she decided to have the problem go away by changing the definition of affordability. That is the quickest way to solve the problem. If this is the level of affordability and there is nothing available, then let’s call the level something else. The minister’s new definition does not cover this particular house, but it will come as a great relief to those Ontarians who are looking to purchase a home that the minister has a new definition of affordability.

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I do not believe this government has taken one single step in three and a half years that would alleviate the crisis in affordable housing in this province. The only new initiative to make particularly single family homes affordable that this government has taken has been to increase the cost.

Land transfer taxes, in the third quarter statement released today by the Treasurer, I think are up another $50 million. I do not have my comparative figures, but I think they are up -- the budget plan was half a billion, and the current outlook is now $560,000,000, up $60 million more than the Treasurer thought. Half a billion dollars -- $560,000,000 -- in land transfer taxes are being sucked out of the housing market.

That is an awesome level of taxation for what, if it is not the top priority, is, I think the minister and I agree, a top priority and equal to other priorities. Those taxes have been increased substantially since this government took office and, let’s face it, it is an inflation index tax because, as the price of the house goes up, the tax collected goes up.

I suspect that when a house jumps $100,000 in price, Treasury officials and the Treasurer sit there in glee because they get so much more from it in taxation. I think that is wrong. I believe it is wrong to try to solve one problem on the back of another. I think it is wrong to substantially increase taxes on new home construction, on repairs to the homes.

The only new initiative we have heard in the last little while since the last budget has been the Treasurer’s proposal for a new lot levy, to add some more lot levies. I pointed out, in the three and a half years since this government has been in office, lot levies have gone up 98 per cent. They have virtually doubled already since this government has been in office. Now the Treasurer thinks it would be a good way to finance new school construction.

That does not make sense to me or to most Ontarians. People who have been paying taxes all their lives, who will continue to pay taxes the rest of their lives before and after the event of buying a new home, should by themselves pay for all the new schools. That does not seem to be fair to them. They do not understand why the property taxes that they paid -- let’s say they paid them for 30 years as a renter; let’s say they paid them for 30 years as a home owner -- now maybe they are going to move across the street into a newly constructed home or maybe they are going to move into a different neighbourhood in their community.

All of a sudden, that is how the government is going to finance the new school that is there. They have lived in the community all their lives; they have paid for the existing schools that were there. They did not cause the new school to have to be built. It seems to me that education should be a cost that is borne over as broadly based a taxation system as possible. It is the responsibility of all of us, whether we have children or not, whether it is a commercial or industrial assessment or business tax. Everybody must be concerned and pay a share of education taxes.

Now to want to transfer and reduce the government share from 75 per cent of capital costs to 60 per cent and tie it into having the local school board have to make up that additional 15 per cent for new school construction by way of a new lot levy does not add up to me at all.

We pointed out in this House that when you increase the inputs into a product, the product costs more. The Premier said: “No, that’s not the case, not necessarily. I think the builders might just eat that additional cost and not pass it on.” That is just absolute silliness. That is like saying that if a car costs $12,000 to build and the inputs all of a sudden cost another $5,000, “Look, it’s going to cost them $5,000 more to build this car, but I think the car builder will be happy to eat that and take $5.000 less profit or go into a loss position.” It does not make sense.

If the Premier is implying that there is a hot housing market and the market forces are causing it, not the cost inputs, and they will come down, then I would argue that the price of that house will not come down that additional $5,000 or $10,000; it will be $5,000 or $10,000 higher. That is what the home builders say. That is what the municipalities say. That is what everybody I talked to says. They said, “If it costs $10,000 more to put the roof on today than it did yesterday, the house is going to cost $10,000 more.”

We see the builders’ association now suggesting that all builders put a clause into their contracts that says, “If some new lot levy proposal comes in some time in the future that affects this house you’re buying” -- right in the agreement of purchase and sale -- “you’ll have to pay that.”

In the midst of the worst housing crisis in our history, when house prices in some areas of this province have jumped more than 150 per cent in less than two years, in the midst of a crisis of unprecedented proportions, this government demonstrates its concern for housing by slapping yet another tax on the construction of new homes. I do not know how the government has the audacity to impose what I think is a barefaced tax grab on new home buyers in this province and then still claim that housing is a top priority. That does not add up to me. I do not believe it adds up to the people of Ontario.

When we asked about it, the minister said that taxes are the responsibility of the Treasurer. I understand that. I have been around this place for a while. I understand that taxation policies are the Treasurer’s. I also understand that various members of the governing party are asked to assume some cabinet responsibilities, to represent that ministry, to speak on behalf of that portfolio, to speak up, in the minister’s case, on behalf of housing. Nobody has heard the minister speak up on behalf of housing interests in the case of additional taxes. The Treasurer put out a green paper, so we would be interested to know when the Minister of Housing is going to speak up on behalf of affordable housing.

I could talk about the Ontario home ownership savings plan that seems not to be working very well. Truly, with the modest amount of money somebody might be able to save by not having to pay tax on the money that is put away, they are falling farther and farther behind. They would be better off not to do that if the idea is to be able to buy a home at some time.

There are not very many options available to a young person or a young couple living and working in the city of Toronto. There are not many options open to them in terms of accommodation.

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I suggest the only alternative then is to rent. Unfortunately, as I pointed out, the rental situation in this province is no better than the situation for home buyers. Logically, the number of persons seeking rental accommodation is increasing, because fewer people can afford to buy a home. Supply is the problem. There are not enough homes on the market. It is increasing because of a steady influx of population. In some weeks, we hear, there are up to 1,000 new residents moving into this metropolitan area.

We hear responses from the government that this is why there is a problem. There are 1,000 new people moving into Toronto every week. We understand that is a problem. If you do not plan for it, it is a problem. The answer at the end of the year is that there are 52,000 new people. What do you expect? It is a problem. If the government does not respond to that challenge, it will be a bigger problem at the end of the year. That is not an answer. That is the situation as it exists.

So when we ask questions, we do not expect to be told for the 50th time that the problem is there is a shortage of supply. The problem is there are people moving into Toronto. We understand that. That is not the answer.

Mr. Fleet: What is your solution? You haven’t got any.

Mr. Harris: If the member for High Park-Swansea (Mr. Fleet) would like to enter into the debate, I do not mind taking a short break. If not, I suggest he go back and review Hansard with my remarks and the number of solutions I have proposed. Those things should have been done over the past three and a half years and should be looked at now.

Mr. Fleet: Lower taxes and spend more money, the usual solution.

Mr. Harris: If the member would like to get into the debate, he should go ahead. If not, I will complete my comments because we have a number of specific questions in a number of areas, as I indicated at the start of my remarks, about how this ministry operates. We want to get into the efficiency of the ministry as well as a number of policy question areas.

I have referred to comments that were made by Mr. Di Iorio yesterday morning.

Hon. Ms. Hošek: Today.

Mr. Harris: Sorry; this morning. It was an indictment of a government that responds that we must work together. I understand that. We must work together. Our question is, why are they not working together? If they are attempting to, why is it not working?

Mr. Di Iorio says: “We are working with a government that will not accept its responsibilities to the people of Ontario. The government will not respond to our briefs. It will not pay attention to us in their meeting rooms. As all of you know only too well, this government governs by reading the newspapers and listening to radio and television. What matters at Queen’s Park is getting the issue of the day out of the way, off the air and off the front page.”

This is from the president of the association that builds 80 per cent of the homes in this province. Clearly, there is not co-operation at this time with those people whom we need as active participants, partners and players.

I do not want to refer to any more of it. I think the minister gets the message and the impression that the other players who must be brought to the table, who must be involved and who must work in a co-operative partnership way must be treated differently by this government if they are going to be part of the solution. In fact, the government is not going to be able to, unless it is planning to double the whole budget and say, “The government will build every house that has to be built in this province.” I do not think the government has that many billions of dollars or the ability to get them.

I will conclude my opening remarks right now and say we look forward, some of my colleagues and myself, to raising a number of issues on how this ministry functions, how it operates, how it spends its money, how it apparently wastes some, and whether the directions in the policy areas this government is going in are indeed part of the problem or whether they are part of the solution.

I conclude on this note: If the minister truly wants help, I say we are available to help. We do want to see the problem solved. I do not come here day after day and stand here in this chamber saying that my role and my objective are to point out how everything the government does does not work. That is not my first choice. As an opposition member now, I must accept my responsibility to point out when things are not working. But there are processes available. There are inputs that I think this government must learn to listen to and learn to access.

I indicate to the minister that in this area of her responsibility, as I have indicated to other ministers in critic roles I have had and in any capacity I have, that we are available to help and to be part of the solutions as well, if we are given the opportunity to do so.

The Acting Chairman (Ms. Poole): I would like to thank the member for Nipissing for his comments. Normally we would go to the member for Oshawa for his opening comments at this time. Since he has not returned, perhaps we will go to the minister for her response to the member for Nipissing.

Hon. Ms. Hošek: I am pleased to say we have addressed the issues the member for Nipissing has been raising in his gently meandering talk. I am glad we agree that the supply of housing is indeed crucial and critical. I am also glad to tell the member that in some of the issues we have been addressing and some of the initiatives we have taken, the initiatives we have taken about supply are addressing the needs of the people of the province who really need it.

The first example of increasing supply is the increased commitment of this government, an unprecedented commitment by any provincial government ever before, to unilaterally, on our own with our resources from the province, fund the building of 30,000 nonprofit units all over the province to make sure that perhaps 90,000 people will be housed in the buildings we are building and the integrated communities in which we are investing, to make sure that people in the province have more housing choices. I think the people who have been moving into our nonprofit housing and who will be moving into that housing believe we are doing a very great deal.

I know that when I visited Thunder Bay a number of weeks ago and talked with the people in the women’s community there, they told me our programs in northwestern Ontario have made a very significant difference in what happens to the lives of people in that community. They told me that as a result of the increased supply of nonprofit housing in that area, battered women who in the past would have had to return to battering and abusive situations now have choices they would not otherwise have had.

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I meet people every day who as a result of the commitments of this government and the work we have done have a place to live they would otherwise not have. I do not think those people would agree with the member opposite when he says we have not made a difference.

There are real people living lives in this community who have roofs over their heads and decent places to live in which to raise their children as a result of the work we are doing, together with the community groups across this province. There will be more. I think we have much to be pleased with in the unprecedented commitment this provincial government has made to increasing the supply of nonprofit housing.

The other way in which we will increase supply -- the member opposite so kindly suggests that he agrees with me that supply is the major issue -- is in our use of government land. The government of Ontario has land, and when it is surplus to our uses we are prepared to, and have said very explicitly that we will, use it for the purpose of housing the people in this province who need help with housing.

Earlier today when the member was responding to something I said in question period, he said there was only one piece of land he could think of and that was the piece of Downsview land the federal government had released. Let me assure the member, if he was not around for the announcements on the work we have been doing, that there have been eight pieces of land released by the provincial government.

Mr. Harris: I said the provincial land that was for $4,000 a foot; that’s what I said.

Hon. Ms. Hošek: If the member opposite would like to comment again, I would be glad to hear him, but the provincial government has released eight pieces of land so far for the purposes of meeting people’s housing needs.

There will be more pieces released. The member opposite knows, for example, that the piece of land in Etobicoke-Lakeshore, the Lakeshore Psychiatric Hospital site, is under active discussion right now for the purpose of building nonprofit housing and community housing that will meet people’s needs.

There are many other such pieces. More are coming. I am extremely pleased about that. I think it is an unprecedented commitment from this level of government in using the resources we have as intelligently and creatively as we can for the benefit of people who need help with housing.

Since the member has already offered his help because he is so committed to the same goals, let me point out to him that there is a lot of federal land in the greater Toronto area and all over Ontario. I invite him to add his bit in convincing the federal government to use its lands in an analogous way to increase housing options for the people of this province.

The cost of land is the single most important factor in the cost of housing in this province. The differential cost of land, depending on location, is the single biggest thing that makes a difference in housing. He knows that; he nods his head sagely. I know that. Everyone in this room knows that.

We in the province are prepared to use our land to make a difference. We are inviting the federal government to do the same thing. The member opposite, in his kind willingness to help us, is invited to speak to his colleagues on the federal scene and urge them to use their lands, which after all are public lands belonging to all the taxpayers of Canada including the taxpayers of Ontario, for that purpose.

The member speaks again and again about the whole question of lot levies. He says it is a silly way to finance schools. I will not comment on the views expressed by his colleague the member for Markham (Mr. Cousens), who has come into the room since the member made that comment. In December, his colleague the member for Markham said he thought lot levies might be a very good way of making a difference.

What I want to say is that the whole question of lot levies, whether they are education lot levies or other forms of lot levies, has to deal with the question of funding growth, and funding growth is a very serious issue in this province, as the member opposite has acknowledged.

Let me say how pleased I am to hear him say repeatedly today that the problem is one of supply and to acknowledge it is also a problem of demand, because 100,000 people came into this province last year, and 110,000 people came the year before. Our economic growth means many more people are coming every year. They will continue to do so as long as we have the luck and foresight to be a place of economic growth. That will place its own burdens on all of us and that is part of what we have to respond to.

Funding for that growth is a very real challenge. As the member knows, the green paper that was released a while back laid out some options for consideration. We have asked for comment from everyone concerned, including the building industry. We hope to receive thoughtful answers. We know that new development must have quality services because all of us are accustomed to quality services. We do not want new housing built with inferior services.

We are engaged in an exercise to determine what the appropriate level of service is for new development and what portions of the costs should be borne by various forms of financing. That is what we are discussing right now. When the various interest groups have made their proposals by the end of this month, we will know better what those views are.

The member opposite has made some comments about partnerships. Let me say that I think I have been quite clear that no one group can solve the housing situation in this province. We all have to work together. Every municipality must plan for the realities we face, must plan for the economic region in which it is located and for its own population. In every economic region there are people of various income levels contributing to the growth of the economy.

There are municipalities in this province right now that seem to believe they can build a wall around themselves and only allow people to live there who have a great deal of money to buy very large, very expensive homes. That is a very short-sighted way to proceed because we need homes for the people who work in this community. We need homes for the people who make our province strong. It is no longer possible for any municipality to say, “That’s not my problem,” because all economic areas have to find a way to build the housing that is appropriate to the economic needs of the region and for the people who live and work there.

In our land use policy, we are saying to municipalities: “We will work with you. Plan together with us. Make sure you have some goals that are realistic about the actual needs of your community. You can no longer pretend that the large house on the large lot will deal with all the needs that are out there. Where are the teachers going to live? Where are the people who drive the buses going to live? Where are the people working in the factories going to live? Where are the people serving food in the restaurants going to live if we do not have homes of various sizes and of various qualities, diverse choices for everyone?”

So every municipality must have a plan. They have a responsibility, as do we, to provide affordable housing. This level of government has not shirked its responsibility. This government has admitted its responsibility and made enormous efforts to give people choices in housing. What we are asking municipalities to do is to join us in that process. That is what the land use policy statement is about. It means that from now on municipalities have to make sure that a quarter of new housing is affordable. It means municipalities have to make sure we use the land we have better.

The member opposite said earlier that he was concerned people should continue to have the dream of home ownership. It seems to me we can indeed make sure people have homes to live in, homes of various sorts, homes of various sizes to deal with the different family sizes, the different tastes, the different lifestyles, the different values of the people in this province. In order to make that possible, we have to use the land we already have in our developed communities more intelligently. We have to allow mature communities to intensify, to create housing within the housing that is already there, to use infill, to use land better.

We are asking the municipalities to be our partners in this process. Ottawa and Peterborough have become our partners in a formal way. Other municipalities are working with us, as is the Catholic archdiocese, and we expect the other levels of government will do their share. That is all we are asking for. We will do our share and we expect other levels of government to do their share.

The member opposite referred to increasing home prices, which is just another indicator of what we have been talking about for months and months.

Ms. Bryden: On a point of order, Mr Chairman: It seems to me the minister is repeating a great deal of the material that was in her introductory speech, and estimates really are for questions to be asked on specific points. I think we should give the opposition an opportunity to ask some questions.

Hon. Ms. Hošek: I am in a quandary, sir, because the member for Nipissing, who is my critic, made a speech in which he raised a number of issues. I am trying to respond somewhat systematically to the questions he raised. He, however, has left the House.

Mr. Cousens: On a point of order, Mr. Chairman: Our House leader has been here and is willing to participate. I am here to fill in for him. He may not be here but I have been following it in detail, and I have to say that the point of order raised by the member for Beaches-Woodbine (Ms. Bryden) is most accurate. The repetition that is going on here is just wasting time in the House.

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Hon. Ms. Hošek: I was under the impression that when a member made a speech, it was open to me to respond to him. That is what I am doing and I am following the issues the member himself raised. If the member for Markham is concerned that the things I am saying have been heard before in the House, perhaps he should notice that the questions have been asked before in the House and the issues have been raised before in the House.

I am merely trying to respond, as well as I know how, to the issues that were raised by the member for Nipissing. I am happy to abide by the chair’s ruling on whether I should do that or not.

Ms. Bryden: In most estimates, there is usually a preagreement that the opening statements take so much time and then there is a certain amount of time for the minister’s response. But it is flexible, I agree. We have very limited time, and just at the moment I think there should be some time for opposition questions that have been prepared.

The Deputy Chairman: We have approximately 11 hours remaining in estimates for the Ministry of Housing. We were not able to follow the ordinary practice, which would be the opening statement by the opposition, because of the absence of the member for Oshawa, so the minister was asked to respond to the opening statement by the critic for the third party, which is what she indicates she is attempting to do. So we are somewhat out of order in terms of rotation, but I think it is appropriate in view of the absence of the member for Oshawa.

However, through the remaining hours I will abide by the standing orders, which require me to apportion the time between the government and the critics. I hope we can do that fairly, but we are in a difficult situation, as I say, because of the absence of the member for Oshawa. Could the minister please respond to the questions raised by the critic for the third party?

Hon. Ms. Hošek: Thank you. I am glad to hear that the member for Markham is here to listen to the things that the member for Nipissing raised. I hope he will convey to him my very best wishes and my understanding that, since he is really committed to helping the government in its agenda to increase the supply of housing for the people of this province, he will pass on to him my responses to all the issues that were raised by the member for Nipissing.

The member for Nipissing referred to increasing home prices, which seem to me to be just another indicator of something we have been talking about for a long time. The demand for housing in this city and in this province is the greatest we have ever seen. I do not minimize that, nor do I minimize the impact on us of a massive in-migration of people. The majority of in-migration in the province has come to Metropolitan Toronto. All of us recognize that and there are costs to pay for that.

It distresses me greatly that this means the lives of people of moderate and low income are even harder than they already were. That is the reason this government has made its commitment to make as much of a difference as it possibly can, and that is why we call out to other levels of government for their commitment as well.

We have said we can make a lot of difference in this province by better using the land, the houses and the buildings we already have through intensification. The member for Nipissing, who was here a while ago, made a bit of a to-do about the cost of infrastructure. Let me point out to him, in his absence, that the roads and the sewers we have already invested in are, in many communities, completely underused because of changing settlement patterns. That is one of the reasons we have put so much emphasis on intensifying what we already have, on infill, on rebuilding and redevelopment; because the province and the taxpayers of the province have already invested billions of dollars in roads and sewers that are already here, which we could be using much more intelligently, to give people many more choices than they now have. That is one of the things we are doing.

In the private sector, let me point out that the Toronto Real Estate Board, which is clearly a private sector organization, has made an agreement with us to work with us on identifying appropriate projects for intensification and helping them to happen, as a model to the community of what can be done and what can be done by the private sector in a way that will give it its appropriate profit and still give us a product and a set of choices in housing that we do not currently have enough of.

The other thing we are doing in this area is that we have a group of people responsible for the greater Toronto area and for the planning of infrastructure: of roads, of sewers, of highways, all the infrastructure needed to cope with the massive growth which the member for Nipissing, when he was here, so clearly pointed out. Yes, we are facing massive growth, but we are trying to plan an integrated way of dealing with that growth, integrating the needs for sewers, for roads, for housing and for all those services. Let me point out also that we are spending a great deal of money on transportation and in the Ministry of the Environment for sewers.

One other example we have managed that I think we are very proud of, one of the things we have done that I am extremely pleased with and that I think the rest of the community is very pleased with, is, working together with the city of Toronto, we have taken on the responsibility, together with them, of developing up to 7,000 housing units east of the St. Lawrence Market area, in an area that is now radically underused, to house people of all incomes in a mixed-income community, a community called St. Lawrence Square.

That project is the biggest such project ever undertaken by any government in Canada. I am extremely pleased about the fact that we are working together with the municipality of Toronto on that. When it is completed, many people will have homes. I can tell the members opposite, and in particular the member for Markham, who was my critic once, that there is already, in one of the buildings in that area, a group of people who were formerly homeless who are building their own accommodation right now, who are making homes for themselves in the St. Lawrence Square community.

We have also worked actively in our consultations with mayors and regional chairs on finding ways to work together to increase the supply of housing out there through intensification and through more intelligent use of the land we have, and planning for the future, because I agree with the member for Nipissing, planning is crucial in order to make a difference here. This government has done something really unusual and ground-breaking. What we have said is that from now on a social need must also be addressed through the planning process; not merely physical needs, but a social need, the need for housing products that are at a level that people can afford to live in them.

We have said that from now on at least one quarter -- and I consider that to be the floor, not the ceiling -- of the new housing built in all communities in this province must be at a level that is affordable to the vast majority of people in this province. That is a new direction, and I consider it to be a ground-breaking one; the first time in any jurisdiction I know of that a social goal has been put into the planning process, and one which I think is going to make an enormous difference.

The member opposite made much of a to-do about the fact that the private sector is somehow excluded from all we are doing. That is simply wrong. He is not being accurate. Thirty thousand units in this province are going to be built. Who are they going to be built by?

The government of Ontario does not have its own building crew. The people who build housing in this province for the nonprofit sector are indeed the private sector who work in partnership with the nonprofit sector and who will make perfectly reasonable returns on their work in the building of the 30,000 additional homes being funded entirely by the province. They will all be built by the private sector. In fact, I am approached all the time by people in the private sector who are so delighted that we are doing this building and who want to be part of the process. They want to build.

The other thing the private sector people have said to me very clearly is that they can build affordable homes all over this province. They say they can do it. They say they can do it within their own economic needs. They can build affordable housing in this province, but what they require is an active partnership with municipalities so that they can move more quickly, streamline the approvals process, make sure they can use land in more creative ways and work together with the rules of the municipal system and with the provincial government to make sure there is more housing out there for people who need it.

I am the first person to admit that not enough of that housing exists. If it did exist, we would not need our land use policy statement. If it did exist --

Mr. Allen: Every report that has ever been done tells us that the private sector has never done as well and never provided for all of the population.

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Hon. Ms. Hošek: I am sure the member for Hamilton West (Mr. Allen) has wonderful ideas to add to this. I am looking forward to his comments later.

We know the people in the private sector know they can build homes that people will be glad to live in and can afford to buy, if we change the framework and the rules under which they operate, and that is the goal of my ministry.

The other things the member for Nipissing mentioned when he was here to indicate his grave concern for the renters of the province --

Mr. Cousens: Don’t be sarcastic. He really meant it. He is really trying and you are just so sarcastic. It is really offensive.

Hon. Ms. Hošek: The member for Markham is commenting on my talk, and I feel that I am indicating very clearly my very great pleasure in the member for Nipissing’s commitment to these areas.

Mr. Cousens: I think you are sarcastic. You are offensive. Don’t be sarcastic.

Hon. Ms. Hošek: It seems to me that since there are three million renters in the province who are protected by rent review, they will be pleased to know that the member for Nipissing is concerned about their views and their concerns as well.

We have offered some very real protections to the tenants of this province by covering all buildings, by making sure that rent increases must be justified, by protecting people against their buildings being turned into suite hotels, by creating a rent registry where over 500,000 rental units are on the system and information about the legal rents for those apartments is available to the public by the creation of the Residential Rental Standards Board, as a result of which hundreds of landlords have complied with work orders which have been outstanding for a long time.

The level of maintenance in this province has been improved by the fact that we have a standards board which has said that buildings must be maintained appropriately. The tenants who live in those buildings where improvements have been made and have better standards of maintenance thank this government for the difference it has made.

We have also indicated protections for people against having to deal with key money.

Ms. Bryden: On a point of order, Mr. Chairman: The other parties have had two hours in the past three hours and it seems to me that the last hour should be reserved for the official opposition, which has not had one opportunity to say anything in this afternoon’s debate. I think the minister has to make her comments much shorter and I also think she should really yield the floor at this stage. She can make her comments in replying to questions rather than repeating most of her previous speech.

Mr. Fleet: Rising on the same point of order, Mr. Chairman, my understanding was that the chair had already ruled on this point and I would not think it appropriate to raise the same point. As I understand it, it is exactly what you ruled on just a few minutes ago. We ought to proceed as you had ruled previously.

The Deputy Chairman: Could I ask the minister to be concise in her response to the speech by the member for Nipissing?

Hon. Ms. Hošek: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The member for Nipissing raised the issue of the Rental Housing Protection Act, which protects tenants against illegal evictions, conversions and demolitions. That new act was introduced at the end of January. It offers new and tougher protections for tenants against illegal activities, it covers vacant buildings and it gives fines or jail terms for offenders. I think it is much stronger legislation for protecting tenants.

He made a comment about consultation. I am very pleased with the level of consultation in my ministry. We talk to people in the private market, to landlords, to tenants and to people active in social housing all the time. I would make a distinction, however, between consultation and total agreement.

It is indeed true that we consulted with landlords and with builders on the question of the Rental Housing Protection Act. We heard their concerns. We listened to them very carefully. We happened not to agree with them, which is what happens when you have a consultation. There are moments in which governments have to make hard choices. We made our hard choice, but that does not undermine the significance and the meaningfulness of our consultation process. We listen to all the people who are involved in these issues. We do not always agree with them.

It seems to me that the Rental Housing Protection Act does very much in providing protections to the tenants of this province. I believe that the tenants of this province agree with me, because when the new version of the act was tabled in the House, various members of tenants’ organizations indicated that they were extremely pleased with the level of protection this legislation would offer them.

As I said, we made some hard choices. I think they are going to protect tenants very significantly. I am glad we did that. I understand very clearly that the landlords in the province are not pleased with the legislation.

We have talked a great deal to the home builders, who are a very important part of the housing industry in this province. They do the work of physical construction. It seems to me that people in the housing industry know very clearly that they were consulted often and significantly as we were designing our Homes Now, the project of building 30,000 new homes, and as we talked about the Rental Housing Protection Act. We are in the midst, right now, of consulting about how to implement our land use policy and on the green paper dealing with financing growth.

If the member for Nipissing feels otherwise, I am extremely sorry, but if he is saying that our agenda is not identical to the agenda of the home builders, then I have to say that is exactly right. We share a lot of concerns with the home builders of the province, but our agenda is not identical to theirs. We have other concerns that are perhaps different from theirs. In the areas in which we overlap we are able to take a great deal of advice; in other areas we have to proceed on our own judgement and understanding of what would be best for the people of the province.

We are working very closely with the people in the home building industry on some of our initiatives. One very obvious one is a joint project of the Association of Municipalities of Ontario and the home builders in the community. It was an initiative announced by the Premier. What we are doing is working together with AMO, the building industry and the province on recommendations to streamline the planning and approvals process. I hope I can comment more specifically about those initiatives, but it is an initiative I am extremely pleased with. Instead of its being a conversation about what we might be able to do together some day, what we have done is to work together to come up with very specific things we can do to fix the planning and approvals process so that it is more reasonable, more rational, more in line with the realities of building faster and better.

In order to do this, the province will have to make some changes, municipalities will have to make some changes and builders will have to make some changes. That is what I think a partnership is all about, doing what we can do in all our roles to make a difference in the project we are engaged in together.

When the member for Nipissing was here he spoke about affordable home ownership and affordable housing. I know he is speaking about various types of housing -- rental units, town homes, condominiums, semi-detached houses, detached houses, nonprofit houses, co-ops -- the range and the mix that he is encouraging in his own municipal council in North Bay. There he is in North Bay encouraging this mix of different kinds of housing, as do we, because the people in the province have many different needs and many different wishes. We want to make sure that those are met by having a variety of choices available.

Let me conclude my remarks on the words of the third party’s housing critic by saying that I appreciate his support, as he has so very kindly extended it, and thanking him for reinforcing what this government has been saying and working on all along, that we have to continue to increase the supply of housing. He has said that and I am very pleased to hear him say that we must continue to form more partnerships with those who can help us -- church groups, community groups, municipalities, the federal government, with which I understand he must have a special relationship.

I am very glad to make the point again that we must continue to protect the three million renters in this province and that we must continue to provide leadership and support so that we can continue to open doors for those people who need help with housing, who are the people I consider most when we make decisions in the Ministry of Housing and in the government as a whole.

The Deputy Chairman: Before proceeding further, let me indicate that I am given to understand the opposition Housing critic will be here on Monday, at which time he will have his speech responded to by the minister. Therefore, I would like now to proceed to questions and comments by other members, on the understanding that we are coming back to the opposition critic.

Before doing so, I would also like to have a determination by the committee on how it would like to proceed. Is it the wish of the committee to proceed on a vote-by-vote basis, that is from vote 1901 to 1904 inclusive, or would you rather have a wide-ranging discussion on all of the votes simultaneously? Could I have an indication from each of the parties in that regard?

Hon. Ms. Hošek: Of course, we will do as the critics wish.

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Ms. Bryden: I think we would prefer a wide-ranging discussion, in view of the shortness of time for these estimates.

Mr. Cousens: I agree that we should have a wide-ranging discussion and then get down to the votes at the very last.

The Deputy Chairman: Therefore, could I now have questions and comments from the other members.

Ms. Bryden: I say we need lots of time for a wide-ranging discussion because we have not really discussed the issue of what the government is going to do about the housing crisis in this province, and in the major urban centres in particular.

As we know, Metropolitan Toronto has a vacancy rate of 0.2 per cent. In yesterday’s paper, it was pointed out that the average sale price of new detached homes in the whole Metro Toronto area had risen to $352,635 in December 1988. That is covering the 24 municipalities in the greater Metro region. For all types of houses, it is up to a total of $237,114 as of December 1988. In effect, most of the residents of the city of Toronto and many in the outlying municipalities have been priced out of the market. Those who do not own homes have practically no hope of ever gaining that home ownership we are talking about.

It is a very serious problem, and I still would like to ask the minister to tell us at some time why the provincial government, which got out of the business of building houses in 1975 under the previous government, has not decided to get back into the business of building houses, because it is a well-known, well-researched fact that the private sector does not produce affordable housing, especially when there is a shortage.

They want to put their bucks where the bucks get a big bang. While they may say they are interested in providing affordable housing, it turns out that what they provide is immediately bid up because they are two- or three-bathroom places with two- or three-car garages and so on. There just is no affordable housing coming from the private sector, and it will not come from the private sector because of the nature of the industry. It is going to put its investment where it can make the most money.

In the meantime, the number of the homeless is growing in the cities. There are 10,000 to 20,000 in Toronto. They are hardly being considered at all, because they are considered outside the housing demand market. They are considered good enough to house in emergency shelters, but that does not get them homes.

Boarding homes are being closed down because the price of houses is going up so much. Therefore, there are more and more homeless people. I sent a note to the minister in the last week about a boarding house operator who rents two houses in my riding. She pays $1,000 for each and provides affordable housing for 12 singles in those two homes.

But now the fire marshal has said that she must upgrade her fire doors. She already has fire doors which she put in three years ago. She is agreeable to meeting the standards if they will give her some time and some assistance through the home ownership renovation plan, but she cannot get any assistance because she is not the owner of the houses. So she is going to have to close down those 12 units for boarding home people.

I would like to ask the minister if she can tell me how we can keep those 12 housing units in existence. The woman is quite willing to carry on if she can get her fire doors paid for somehow. They are going to cost $4,000, so she needs at least some financial assistance or loans.

These are the sorts of unsolved problems that are adding to our housing crisis. Therefore, it seems to me that we want more answers from the minister about what actions she is going to take.

The one thing she has put a lot of stress on is that she has made eight sites of provincial land available for housing. They have been released, and five of them are in Metro, but we have not heard what kind of deals are going to be made on these sites, whether they are with the city or with the churches. We welcome all these moves to involve the city or to involve Cardinal Carter. We have not heard of Conrad Black being involved yet. Apparently he is just thinking about the poor at this moment, but a great many of the poor are unhoused.

These sites have been announced affecting large tracts of provincial land, but we have had no details on the mix of housing that will go into those lands. We have no details on the type of ownership that will be provided, whether it will be mainly private, whether some of it will be co-operative, whether some of it will be special housing for singles or special housing for handicapped groups.

We have no details on any of those. We do not know what the down payments will be, what amenities will be provided for people in areas that are largely underserviced in some cases. We have no details on the size of the subsidies that will be given, either on the land or the amenities, and to whom those subsidies will go.

We have seen some of the federal housing deals, when Ottawa gave a tract of land to the city for some housing. This was part of the Downsview airport. We find the land is being used to provide houses for $600,000 and over. That is hardly affordable housing. We hope the deals that are worked out for each of these five tracts will be much more dedicated to providing affordable housing according to the minister’s definition, in which housing does not take more than 30 per cent of a person’s income, unless she is going to change the definition.

We have also seen what happened in the case where the federal government gave a special low interest rate for townhouses. There is one project right in my own riding. It was found that the low interest rate ended after about seven years. At that time, the home owner was faced with either a tremendous increase in his interest rate, probably a doubling of it, or he had the option of selling the house.

Because seven years had gone by, the price had risen greatly in that period, and many of them just sold out at the higher price and made a nice capital gain. The new owner was left with a home that was not really a bargain in any way, with a very high interest rate, but he had to find housing of some kind, so he bought this in preference to buying some other private detached house or townhouse that was available.

That means the subsidy is really just a one-time subsidy. The minister has to prevent that kind of sale of houses that have received special subsidies for five or 10 years, because she is then not turning over her stock of affordable housing. There have to be safeguards built into the housing that is put into these tracts of land.

Mr. Elliot: Mr. Chairman, on a point of order: It is my understanding that you set time aside for the critic from the official opposition to make his comments when he comes back, next time we come at these estimates. Because of that and the promise that the minister would reply to that, I believe we are into the rotation.

I think the member who is speaking has made some very good points in her comments so far. But since we are in committee of the whole House, I think what we should be doing here is focusing on one question at a time, because we are specifically in the rotation.

I would like to know what the answer is to the retrofit question, for example, where the two apartment buildings need fire doors, because I have a similar type of problem in my area.

I think if we focus on one question at a time and give other people in the chamber a chance to get in on the action here, it would be better than having a comment that looks like it may take the rest of the time that is available today. In fact, we may not get back to these questions for an answer at another time.

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Ms. Bryden: On the point of order, Mr. Chairman: I am just coming to my main question, but I thought I would give the background about these housing deals because they are what concern me particularly and what is going to be in them. But I could phrase my question more precisely, if you like, at this point.

The Deputy Chairman: The member for Beaches-Woodbine has the floor to make comments or questions. I interpret what she is doing as commenting and, now she indicates, leading to a question, which is within the rules.

Ms. Bryden: With regard to these proposals or these deals that are going to have to be developed possibly by two and maybe three levels of government, that is, municipal and provincial and possibly federal, if they are also going to assist, I think we have to make sure that these deals are not done behind closed doors.

The proposals as to how the land will be used and what sort of subsidies there will be -- and all the other things I have asked questions about -- must be made public and the residents of the municipality must be given an opportunity to discuss them and to be consulted about the kind of housing they want in the community.

There is no doubt that these land uses are going to require a great deal of municipal spending as well on services, recreational facilities and that sort of thing. There must be public consultation, public meetings and publication of the proposals so that we get the best possible use of these parcels of land that have been made available.

I will say that this has not been done in the past by most levels of government. When they did make land available, it was usually made available either to a nonprofit group or to a private developer and the details were settled mainly behind closed doors.

I would like to ask the minister if she is prepared to set up this sort of working out of the deals that will be necessary for providing housing on these eight provincial sites. Will she consider as part of her proposals for those sites some new public housing built by the province of Ontario? I think that is the only way we are going to increase the supply of public housing, notwithstanding what is being done by nonprofit groups.

I will also ask her what she is going to do for these nonprofit groups that cannot afford any parcels of land that so far have been offered to them in Metropolitan Toronto. They have projects approved and ready to go, but they cannot find the land at a good price, especially the way it is going up so fast. That is the holdup on nonprofit housing, I understand. That is part of the whole question of how we are going to get more affordable housing through these various deals.

I also hope that she will either address the boarding house question that I raised or at least undertake to look into it. The deadline for starting the new fire doors is March 1.

Hon. Ms. Hošek: I thank the member opposite for her comments and her questions. Let me begin with the end and then move back to the beginning of her comments.

Regarding the question she asked about the use of government land, I think she will be very pleased by what I have to say, but I have said it before. We have quite a lot of provincial government surplus land and we will be releasing sites on a site-by-site basis.

Our plans go like this. As a site gets released and as we announce publicly that this is a site for discussion for building affordable homes on, and we are going to be using our government land for that purpose, one thing that governs our decision-making is our stated commitment that at least 35 per cent of the units on a specific piece of land will be affordable. We already have a benchmark figure, which is at the very least there, that 35 per cent of the units built on our provincial land will be affordable.

What that means in practice is some mix of nonprofit housing plus market housing of the affordable price range. So regarding our land that is provincially owned, which we are releasing into the building process, 35 per cent of the units built on that land will be affordable. Depending on the particular location and the realities of that particular piece of land, it will be some mix that will get to at least 35 per cent affordable. The member need have no concern that this will not be met. It will be met.

If there is any piece of government land which is surplus and which is not used in this way, if it is sold, the money that will be received for that will go into the housing development fund, to fund other housing-related issues and to improve the situation of housing in the province.

I understand the member’s concern about an open process. We have made a commitment that the lands that we are releasing will go through a normal development process. The member knows that a normal development process involves a public meeting, involves public discussions with the community groups who live in the area of the piece of land and with other interested people, about what is going on that land, how it will be built and how it fits with the existing community.

In regard to the two concerns which the member has raised in talking about land -- that the land be used for the benefit of the people of the province and, in particular, that it be used for the benefit of people who need help with their housing -- our commitment is that at least 35 per cent of the units built on our land will be affordable in some mix which will involve nonprofit housing plus housing that people can get on their own but which is for moderate-income people, and also the planning process will be open.

That is what is going on right now on the Lakeshore Psychiatric Hospital site. It will be happening and is happening on other sites. More will be happening of this sort, and I think the member should be pleased about that because we want this process to be a planning process.

Let me remind the member of the crucial goal here: that is to build communities of mixed income. We believe it is healthier for people to live in communities of mixed income rather than segregating groups by income, whatever that income is. We believe it is healthier to build a mix of housing, types and incomes. That is the reason we have taken this approach on government land.

That leads me to an answer to her first concern. She raised, in her comments, the problem -- or what she said is the problem -- of the fact that the provincial government no longer builds public housing. That was a very conscious and rational decision. The public housing that was built in this province was built for only one income in the community, and that was for people of low income.

The government made a decision that when we built housing in the future -- and this is provincial housing, in the sense that the province offers the guarantee for the building process and it is the province’s money, or the province and the federal government together which subsidize the cost of rental in nonprofit housing -- what we do when we build nonprofit housing is we build mixed-income communities. Each project, each mixed-income community that we are building under nonprofit housing has people of different incomes in it.

It has people on it who need lots of help with subsidy and we provide that; it has people in it who need less help with subsidy and we provide that, and it has people who need no help with subsidy at all, who are perfectly able to write their monthly rent cheque. What we then do is build a community with mixed income. That is the goal. The commitment to maintaining this mixed-income philosophy is very crucial because we want to build communities where people can live together in harmony, and we can have this mixed-income way of doing it.

In regard to the member’s concern about the boarding home, I can tell her that I will look into the specific issue that she mentioned and give her a response. But we do have a low-rise rehabilitation program, which is available for rooming houses as well as apartment buildings and other buildings, to upgrade the standards of those buildings. If the member wants details about the low-rise rehabilitation program, I can give that to her.

The low-rise rehabilitation program is administered by the municipality. What happens is that we give resources to municipalities that are willing to work with us to upgrade and maintain the quality of our low-rise stock. Then the municipalities have the grants available because of our giving those resources to individual projects that need to be upgraded in order to be up to standard.

Among the concerns we are trying to meet are the building code and safety requirements. This sounds as if the rooming house might indeed fit into this category. That is the kind of thing the low-rise rehabilitation program is meant to do: to make sure that the plumbing, wiring, windows and basic services are in good shape. Safety, of course, is one of the issues.

The other issue that the member raised is the whole question of boarding homes. Let me say that one of the things our Homes Now program has, which I think makes it very innovative, is that we are saying that we want people to have homes. We want them built but we are also willing to consider very seriously buying existing housing and converting it to the nonprofit mode so that people have more housing choices.

Among those options are nonprofit groups buying homes or houses or buildings or apartment buildings, turning them into rooming homes and having that as a choice for people who are single and do not need a large space in which to live.

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We are trying to be very flexible about the actual needs out there, because the people out there are very different from each other and have very different needs. The Homes Now program is meant to do that.

The other issue the member raised was the nonprofit groups and the need for land for nonprofit groups. Let me tell the member for Beaches-Woodbine that one of the things we do to recognize the cost of land is that the maximum unit price for the building, which we do on the nonprofits all over the province, is adjusted to reflect differential land costs all over the province. It is adjusted regularly to deal with the increasing costs. We have also instituted, in the time I have been Minister of Housing, a land loan guarantee fund that has enabled many, many nonprofit groups, when they find a piece of land, to get their hands on it, nail it down and hang on to it until they are ready to get into the building process.

Our loan guarantee fund has enabled large numbers of nonprofit groups to have land and to keep it, to hang on to it, and not be penalized for how hard it is to get land, until the building process can begin. It has made a significant difference. If there is a nonprofit group in the member’s riding that is interested and has this problem, please invite it to get in touch with us. We will tell them all about the land loan guarantee fund. That is one of the ways in which we are trying to deal with the shortage-of-land question, especially in the major metropolitan areas.

The final thing I want to say is that government lands are another way of dealing with the need for land of nonprofit groups. We have made our commitment to make sure at least 35 per cent of the units built on our land are affordable. We fully expect that with many of these parcels of land in which we are engaged in in the development process, there will be some nonprofit groups involved. Some of the building will be nonprofit building and that will help with that particular project.

Ms. Bryden: With regard to the boarding home, I think the operator, who is not the owner of the two houses in which she provides the boarding home, has inquired both at the ministry and at city hall and has been told an operator is not eligible for these funds. It would have to be the owner who would have to undertake the building and accept the loan. The owner is just not interested. He could rent those houses at $1,000 a month to anybody else and possibly hold them for a speculator some time later, but the boarding home would be gone. Perhaps she would look into that angle of whether the legislation could extend to an operator, who is a successful operator.

With regard to the minister’s general reply that she is aiming at mixed housing and a mix of incomes and so on, I do not think she is quite correct that the previous public housing buildings built under the previous government were entirely for the poor or for low incomes. They had a range of income groups they would accept in order to achieve some mix, but of course, as the shortage of housing has increased, the housing authority has had to put more and more of the people who need subsidy into the limited stock of provincial housing, so any attempt to have a range of income has disappeared because there is no new subsidized housing available at the provincial level.

Then she mentions she is aiming at a mix of 35 per cent of affordable housing. In view of the great housing shortage, particularly in the metropolitan area and these 24 municipalities, I am not sure that is a high enough target to aim at, and then to be servicing a market that is not in desperate need of affordable housing to the extent of 65 per cent.

Also, we can obtain more diversification by providing housing for different kinds of groups, not necessarily income groups. We could have some units for people with special handicaps, such as the blind or the deaf. We could have units for people who want to set up a group for one particular ethnic group, which would probably be of mixed incomes. But to say that the private sector can develop the other 65 per cent on some terms that may or may not be set by a public meeting or by the consultation process I am recommending is rather sweeping.

I think the minister is going to find, first, that there will not be enough safeguards against the second owner of any of those houses selling and making a profit. We have to have those safeguards. Second, I must admit I am somewhat disillusioned about the public participation process that has grown up under the Planning Act, particularly in the city of Toronto.

I have had a great deal to do with engaging in that participation process over the last 20 years and I must say that I and a lot of other people feel it has become a sham. The notices to the public are inadequate.

They had a big meeting in Toronto this week on the new official plan, which has to be reviewed every 15 years. They gave us six or seven days notice of this meeting to study a huge report on what the review was going to cover, with no specific recommendations before us. They spent three hours hearing delegations talking about this, but it was not focused because there were no recommendations, no proposals of anything that could be sorted out and discussed in that one night.

Really, even if they had given adequate notice, the feeling over the past two or three years in the city of Toronto is that the public participation process is a hoax in that people are allowed to come to make their statement in a three-hour meeting such as the one last week, but the people who are sitting at the table around the council chamber are not listening. They have made their plans ahead of time. Their planning departments have made up their minds ahead of time. If they are asked to make new studies, they make them, but what the residents are asking for seldom appears in the new studies and what comes out is a plan that bears little relationship to what the community meetings demanded.

I think that is true of the 1976 official plan for Toronto, where they got much too high allowances for land use. Then the bonus system came in and that was never really discussed. We have to overcome this alienation of the people from the planning process. While the Planning Act was revised in 1975, it was not revised enough to make sure you would have genuine public consultation and genuine public participation in the decision-making process. I think that is a real challenge facing the minister.

I have just one other thing. I understand the land loan guarantee funds run out rapidly. Whether they are sufficient to meet all the needs, I do not know, but there must be some means of getting suitable land as soon as possible for housing groups, particularly a lot of church groups that are ready to go on nonprofit housing, and not delay it further because the fund has run out for this year. Could the minister comment on those points.

Hon. Ms. Hošek: As to the issue in the riding of the member for Beaches-Woodbine, of course I will take a look at it, but I should tell her that our low-rise rehabilitation program requires matching funds from the owner of the building. That, I think, is a perfectly reasonable way to proceed. The other concern is basically that the owner of the building does have rights about what can be done to a building he or she owns. That really is a serious issue. But I will take a look at that.

As to the issue of housing people with special needs in mixed-income communities, I think the member will be cheered to hear that we indeed do that. One of the target groups we are always aiming at is people with special needs, particularly people with either physical or mental disabilities. A proportion of our housing goes to people with special needs. When nonprofit groups come forward with their plans, we pay particular attention to the ones that are offering to house people with special needs in an integrated community, so that, for example, some of the nonprofit projects that are most successful and most pleasing are ones in which a group comes forward and says: “We want to build 100 units. We want 10 of them to be for people who need wheelchair access.”

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We do this as a matter of course now. We even have a special Project 3000: 3,000 units specifically for people with special needs. We are now in the process of trying to integrate special needs people into the communities we are building. I take the member’s point, but I should cheer her by telling her we already do that and are prepared to continue.

Ms. Bryden: But there’s still a 35 per cent ceiling. Why not raise the ceiling?

Hon. Ms. Hošek: I do not know which ceiling the member is referring to. If she is talking about 35 per cent affordable housing on government land, that is a floor, not a ceiling. At the site that is being proposed right now, the Lakeshore Psychiatric Hospital site, we are looking at much more than that; 35 per cent is our minimum, not our maximum of affordable housing on any given site.

If I may continue to respond to the questions the member has asked, another element of the mix she is concerned about of course is ethnicity. I am sure the member knows that a very active part of the nonprofit production in this province is undertaken by people of various cultural communities. One of the first things many cultural communities wish to do is build seniors’ housing for people in their communities who no longer wish to maintain their own homes and would like to live in that kind of situation.

There are also various forms of nonprofit housing being built by very large numbers of groups of various cultural communities in this province. That is already going on -- that is exactly the kind of mix I am committed to -- and will continue to go on. I think that is just fine and a very healthy way to make sure we get mixed communities in this province. I agree with the member. I thought she would be cheered to know we are indeed doing this and will continue to do it.

With regard to the other question about the planning process, I hope she will refer more specific questions to the Minister of Municipal Affairs (Mr. Eakins) who is responsible for the planning process. But I cannot resist pointing out to the member that if she is concerned about public participation in the planning process in the city of Toronto, several members of her party were elected to Toronto city council, I assume that if she is concerned that the planning process be genuine, open and responsive to the community, she will raise her concerns with them as well as in this House.

I think municipal people are elected to be responsive to the people in their communities. The planning process is there to indicate the way in which we do that work. The quality of attention paid is very much the responsibility of municipal councils, I believe that concern to which the member is referring had better be raised as well with members of municipal councils.

We have a planning process that requires openness, consultation and discussion. I believe that is a healthy way to proceed and we intend to do that with our own process on government lands.

Ms. Bryden: There are things in the provincial Planning Act that inhibit the planning process. For example, the amount of time a demolition can be delayed is very low and does not give time for community groups to act in cases like that. We tried to amend the Planning Act when it went through in 1975 to improve that, but it has not been done. It is still the minister’s responsibility to enhance the demolition laws to prevent sudden conversions to either condominiums or nonhousing uses. That is a weakness the province has to cure.

Hon. Ms. Hošek: I can respond to the member only by saying that the Planning Act is the responsibility of my colleague the Minister of Municipal Affairs, but I should point out that the Rental Housing Protection Act, which I introduced into this House not very long ago, is meant to protect buildings against exactly what the member is talking about, either conversion or demolition and taking them out of rental use.

It seems to me the protections we are going to have in this new act are going to make a significant difference. They already have in the version that has been enacted for the past two years. So some of the concerns the member has raised do come under the Rental Housing Protection Act. As to amendments to the Planning Act, I am always pleased to hear about them, but it seems to me those had best be addressed to the Minister of Municipal Affairs.

Mr. Cousens: I want to ask some questions on vote 1903, item 2, having to do with nonprofit housing. The number of units being created through Project 3000; Homes Now; where the minister is having $2 billion of Canada pension plan funds available to source mortgage financing; the announcement of that program from the April budget which was made on October 25, where the Ministry of Housing’s press release stated the government would achieve the 30,000 goal in three to five years; then there is the assisted housing policy committed to $72.6 million to build 20,000 nonprofit units by 1988; the promised $103 million to fund 3,600 units of nonprofit housing --

What I am really asking the minister is how many nonprofit housing units were completed in 1988. How many units does this represent in total? How many of the 20,000 units promised in the December 1985 assured housing initiative were completed by the 1988 deadline?

Does the minister want me to pose the several questions I have and then she can give her answer?

How many of the 6,700 federally-provincially financed units were completed in 1988? Fewer than 4,000 of the 30,000 units promised under Homes Now have been approved since the program was announced in the April budget. At this rate, the most optimistic prediction is 20,000 units in five years, with no guarantee that they will all be completed by 1993. Will the minister explain how she intends to meet the 30,000 new rental units target?

Hon. Ms. Hošek: Of the 30,000 units announced in Homes Now, about 3,000 were announced in a bulk allocation. About 300 beyond that have also been committed. The honourable member will be hearing more about the rest of those units relatively shortly. Those are in the process of being allocated right now.

Of the other units that have been committed, I can give him more explicit answers in the next day or so -- I guess it will probably have to be next week -- but there have been significant numbers of nonprofit units built in 1988. I do not have an exact number for him this instant, but I should point out to him that one of things that has been happening is that as a result of our land loan guarantee fund and the whole gearing up of the nonprofit sector, the process of building has been increasing. It has been a cumulative process and it has been going more quickly in the past year than in the year before. I will get the member the exact numbers as soon as I have them, which may have to be the next day.

Mr. Cousens: Would the minister consider renaming this program Homes Later? It is called Homes Now and it is not as fast as I thought it might be.

Hon. Ms. Hošek: I would be very glad to respond to that suggestion. I am happy to keep our program named Homes Now, because I remember very clearly that when we introduced some of our housing initiatives last year and I had the pleasure of having the member for Markham as my critic, he said that the Peterson government was premature and moving too quickly. I am very pleased to say that this government is committed to making change happen as quickly as possible. We are speeding up our achievement. I would like those homes built as quickly as possible and as soon as possible. I am happy with the name we have. I hope the member opposite has changed his mind about the so-called prematureness of our previous actions.

Mr. Cousens: There are so many things that are happening. One can take anything one wants out of context and put any kind of meaning one wants into it. I would like to ask the minister how many nonprofit groups have applied for mortgage financing through this program?

Hon. Ms. Hošek: I will be glad to give that specific answer to the member in the next day or so.

Mr. Cousens: Could the minister please explain why she underspent her 1987-88 budget allocation by $6 million when, as she has repeatedly informed us, there is a crisis in affordable housing?

Hon. Ms. Hošek: I am pleased to tell the member opposite that this government has spent more on housing than any government in the past. In fact, the previous government was spending about $180 million on social housing when they were on this side of the House. We are spending $360 million today, so we have doubled our spending on social housing in this province.

I think the member opposite should know that if we were to compare records, the previous government would really not stand up very well. This government has doubled spending on social housing since we have been here. I consider that to be a major achievement. The kinds of projects that we have been doing have gone very far --

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Mr. Cousens: I did not ask for this. The question was, why did she underspend her 1987-88 budget by $6 million? She has not answered that and she is going off on a tangent. Can you bring her back to order?

The Deputy Chairman: The minister will respond as she sees fit. If the member is not satisfied with the answer, he has the right to ask another question.

Hon. Ms. Hošek: I am pleased to answer the member’s question as to why we did not get to spend all of the money that we had assigned. It seems to me very appropriate that this government has assigned a lot of resources to housing because we took the area so seriously and continue to take it so seriously. We have been willing to spend a lot more money than the previous government was willing to spend.

One of the things that happened in that year was that there were some delays experienced by some nonprofit groups in finding sites and getting started in the building process. I mentioned earlier in my answer to the member that is one of the reasons we are now speeding up the process of getting housing built, because the program has speeded up and nonprofit groups aye really working in very high gear.

As a result of those delays in getting sites, we indicated that we wanted to meet the problems that nonprofit groups were meeting. That is why we instituted the land loan guarantee fund which I also talked about with the member for Beaches-Woodbine. The very fact of that land loan guarantee fund has made it possible for more groups to get their housing built on time and to use our resources better. The land use policy on our use of government lands has been one of the ways in which we have addressed trying to make more land available to nonprofit groups to help them in the building process.

One of the other problems that we face we have tried to address in our new Homes Now program. In the shared program -- the one shared between the federal government and the province, the one in which we are committed to building 6,700 units a year together, although the federal government seems to be interested in putting financial caps on that program -- is designed in a very tight way. It is designed with an entry date, a date by which projects have to say yes, they are ready to go, and a date by which, if they have not gotten started, the whole process has to start all over again and they lose their funding.

That program was designed jointly with the federal government. We have tried repeatedly to get the federal government to streamline that program and to make it more flexible in order that the exigencies of the calendar year will not stop good projects from going ahead just because they did not get to a particular point in the race to get finished by a particular date.

When we designed our own program, the Homes Now program, which is a unilateral provincial program, we tried to meet those objections which were given to us by nonprofit groups by designing a much more open, more responsive, more flexible program which does not have a starting date and a closing date by which we have to fill in all the little forms and get everything done, so that the groups that are in the building process do not have their funding yanked, but can continue to build in the year in which they are planning to build.

What we have done is we have learned from the problems that we had under the federal-provincial program and designed our own program to be much more responsive. The member opposite shakes his head. Let me just --

Mr. Cousens: You didn’t answer my question. You’ve gone off on another tangent. You’re not answering the question. You’re looking at the clock so you can run it out. Mr. Chairman, she’s looking at the clock. It’s more words and no action.

Hon. Ms. Hošek: Does the member wish to ask me another question?

The Deputy Chairman: Would the member for Markham --

Mr. Cousens: I was trying to get the answer as to why she underspent by $6 million. Maybe I can add a supplementary and another one because she is rambling and not answering.

What was the total amount of the subsidies the minister paid nonprofit corporations in 1988 to enable them to charge rents geared to the incomes of tenants?

Hon. Ms. Hošek: I can get that number for the member tomorrow.

I am surprised that he reacts to my answers the way he does. I thought I was giving him the fullest answer I knew how. I understand the member’s interest in housing is deep and long-standing. He wants detail and information, and I am trying to give it to him.

Mr. Cousens: Again, on vote 1903, on tenant support services activity, I want to know how many people were served by this program in 1988.

Hon. Ms. Hošek: The member continues to be fascinated by numbers. I promise to have the numbers for him the next time we meet.

The Deputy Chairman: If I might suggest, questions requiring that kind of detail perhaps should be given in writing so that they can be looked up by the staff. I do not know how a minister can respond to a question of that nature.

Mr. Cousens: In fact, that is why the minister has staff there to assist her. Some of these are technical. I pointed to item 4. Here is a program that the ministry is spending money on. I think it is important for us to have some idea of how many people are helped by it, and I am surprised the minister is not able to give us an answer on that now. It is a program the minister is proud of. She put it in her estimates. Maybe she can just tell us how many people were served.

We are willing to wait until next week, because I know the minister may have to go back and do more research. If she does, we will still want the answers. I would rather have a good answer than a poor one.

Hon. Ms. Hošek: I am delighted to give the member a general answer. Tenant support services, our line in the ministry budget, refers to the services that we give to the tenants of Ontario Housing Corp. housing. We have 84,000 units, and we estimate that the number of tenants in those units is about 250,000. What I cannot do for the member is tell him which of those 250,000 people actually actively used the tenant support services in the past year, but they are available to 250,000 people.

Mr. Cousens: I guess that really points out that the minister ought to have some kind of understanding of just how well that program is working. That is really the kind of question I am asking. Has the minister done some surveys to see just how many tenants are using the service, how happy they are with it? That is the kind of thing that comes out of the question “Just how many?”

Hon. Ms. Hošek: I would be pleased to tell the member for Markham, which does not have much Ontario Housing Corp. housing at this point, that we did a survey of our tenants. It was a tenant satisfaction survey. I will be pleased to report the results of that survey to the member, but we, of course, keep in touch with our tenants regularly.

We have a newsletter for them in some of the areas and we also have done a survey of tenant satisfaction on all areas of the buildings which they occupy, the physical structure, the community supports and all the services that are available to them. So, we have a very finely detailed study about what our tenants like about what we are doing and what they would like to see improved. We do that because we want to know what they want and we want to keep them as well served as we possibly can.

It seems to me very appropriate that, as the ministry which is responsible for housing 250,000 citizens of this province, we take soundings occasionally to discover how well we are doing and how we can do better.

Mr. Cousens: I think it is good that the minister is going to share copies of those surveys and the results she has had. Will that be something she will table with us as soon as possible? I think that would be very helpful. I am glad she is doing that. I am just wondering just how many of these surveys she is doing. That information would be valuable information, I am sure.

Hon. Ms. Hošek: We are prepared to release the information that is ready at this point.

On motion by Hon. Ms. Hošek, the committee of the whole House reported progress.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Hon. Mr. Fulton: Pursuant to standing order 13, I would like to indicate the business of the House for the coming week.

On Monday, February 20, we will be dealing with the Ministry of Housing estimates.

On Tuesday, February 21, we will deal with second reading of Bills 192, 197, 134, 135, 169 and 128. The votes will be stacked to Wednesday at 5:45 p.m.

On Wednesday, February 22, we will continue the adjourned debate on second reading of Bill 147.

On Thursday, February 23, in the morning we will deal with private members’ business, ballot items 64 and 65. In the afternoon we will continue with the Ministry of Housing estimates.

The House adjourned at 6:01 p.m.