Legislative Assembly of Ontario

The House met at 1330.

Prayers.

MEMBERS' STATEMENTS

AGRICULTURAL INDUSTRY

Mr Cleary: Ontario farmers want to know where the NDP government stands on the issue of stable funding for farm organizations and mandatory membership in farm organizations. Earlier this week, the Minister of Agriculture and Food told the Ontario Federation of Agriculture one thing, he told reporters a second thing and he told this House a third thing.

The minister is being as slippery as a newborn calf.

First, he told the Ontario Federation of Agriculture that he supports stable funding for farm organizations. Then he told reporters that he does not support the Ontario Federation of Agriculture as the farm community's lone lobbying voice.

Yesterday, the member for Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry asked the minister to explain his position, but he did not have much luck. All the minister would say is, "We intend to pursue the concept of giving farmers a voice."

As the outgoing president of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture described the new minister, "He's 100% in favour of having children, but he wants to remain a virgin."

The minister told the House yesterday, "Farmers have been trying over the years to get their act together...." The farmers of this province do have their act together. It is the NDP government that does not have its act together.

I urge the minister to clarify this government's position for the farmers of Ontario.

DURHAM ART GALLERY

Mr B. Murdoch: I would like to bring the plight of the Durham Art Gallery to the attention of the Minister of Culture and Communications and the Legislature in general.

This small art gallery is one of the finest of its size anywhere and we in Grey are very proud of it. Operating from the basement of the public library, it has managed to produce a minimum of 12 shows per year, exhibiting national and international work and showcasing our local artists and crafts people. Unfortunately, the gallery is trying to do this as well as educating young people and conducting student tours in an economically depressed rural area with no corporate support.

Now they face a crisis. The library which has donated the space has asked them to leave. Operating costs are up and donations are down. The gallery has not been able to afford an exhibit since the beginning of October and is relying on fund-raising in the form of bake and craft sales and a silent auction to pay off its minor debt.

The membership and general public have been very supportive, but they are not wealthy. Everyone is sympathetic, yet no one can help.

The speech from the throne allotted further funding to the Ontario Arts Council. It is my hope that the minister, who is aware of the situation, could help by granting special status to this very important culture resource in my community.

RIDING OF KITCHENER-WILMOT

Mr Cooper: First, Mr Speaker, I would like to congratulate you on your election. Next, I would like to say a few words about my predecessor, John Sweeney, the former Minister of Community and Social Services and later the Minister of Housing and of Municipal Affairs.

After representing the constituents of Kitchener-Wilmot in the Ontario Legislature for 15 years, Mr Sweeney chose not to run in the last provincial election. I would like to take this opportunity to recognize the hard work and commitment he put into representing the constituents of Kitchener-Wilmot, and I offer to him my best wishes for the future.

Finally, I want to tell the members about firefighters Paul Bagnarol and Robert Innanen of the Kitchener Fire Department. On 27 December 1988 firefighters Bagnarol and Innanen risked their own lives in an attempt to save the life of Captain Charles Kieswetter, who was trapped and overcome by heat and smoke in a house fire.

Firefighters Bagnarol and Innanen were among the recipients of the 1990 Ontario Medal for Firefighters' Bravery. I ask all members of the House to join me in recognizing and congratulating these two courageous men.

TECHNICAL EDUCATION

Mrs Y. O'Neill: I find a very recent survey taken by the Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation distressing. Its results indicate that technical shops are closing across this province one by one, because properly trained staff cannot be found in the specialties of automotive, carpentry, welding, graphic arts, drafting and electronics.

The very necessary renewal of technological education throughout this province demands a high level of consultation with representatives of labour, business and industry and the colleges of applied arts and technology. It demands focused in-service training and major input from the faculties of education and indeed the technical teachers themselves.

Acting directly upon the Premier's Council's report Competing in the New Global Economy, the previous government began such a task by beginning broad and serious discussions and by offering incentives to school boards in the categories of construction, manufacturing, service and transportation.

I, along with the OSSTF, urge this government to plan co-operatively with and fund adequately the faculties of education, as we rescue technical education and restore stability to the supply of skilled labour that is this province's such great need.

Ministerial guidelines must be developed, and it is essential that school boards across this province be given every assistance possible in this basic area of study, and thus ensure that our young people, our most precious resource, will be technically literate as they enter the world of work in this era of global competitiveness. Ontario's need for skilled labour hangs in the balance.

SKYDOME

Mr Stockwell: On 11 October 1990 the Treasurer made a public statement revealing the financial state of the SkyDome. On 24 October 1990 the Treasurer appointed a negotiating team to negotiate a new agreement between the consortium members and the province of Ontario.

The problem that the taxpayers have with all of this is that they presently have no idea if the existing agreement is fair and just, due to the fact that documentation regarding the profit-and-loss-sharing agreements, which appear to bind the taxpayers to absorb the losses, is not public information. Taking this into consideration, the taxpayers will not be able to assess the success or failure of the committee struck, for the simple reason that no one knows what the original agreement entailed.

There must be a yardstick to measure any new agreements against, and that yardstick is some kind of method to compare the profitability of the private companies and the debt servicing of this government. Maybe the most important issue is how much money the private companies are profiting and how much money the provincial government is in fact losing.

I strongly urge that the very first item of business by the standing committee on public accounts be to direct the Provincial Auditor to do a total review of the costs incurred during the construction of the SkyDome and issue a full public report.

What I would like to know from this government is what happened to the openness in government theme it ran on. Let us start this session by levelling with the taxpayers of Ontario, informing them just how much the private corporations are taking to their banks as a result of doing business at the SkyDome, and just how much money the government is shorting us all.

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NUCLEAR WEAPONS

Mr Frankford: Canadian Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War is an affiliate of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, the winner of the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize. There are more than 7,500 physician members, approximately 20% of all Canadian doctors.

As 1990 draws to a close, the world is on the threshold of either putting an abrupt halt to the engine which drives the arms race, or it is opening the door, which is already ajar in several countries, to the rampant spread of new nuclear weapons.

In January 1991 the United Nations Partial Test Ban Amending Conference will decide if a comprehensive test ban is achievable. In spite of the end of the cold war, underground testing under the guise of modernization allows the nuclear arms race to continue and, in the name of national security, pollutes our environment with radiation.

With on-site inspection possible, verification to prevent cheating is no longer an issue. Although previous American and British governments supported a comprehensive test ban, currently these two countries alone plan to veto an initiative endorsed by the rest of the world.

Failure to amend the partial test ban will put in jeopardy the non-proliferation treaty which will expire in 1995 and which was designed to limit the spread of nuclear weapons capability.

As a supporter of Canadian Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, I urge my fellow members of this House to demand that our Prime Minister fulfil Canada's traditional role as a peacemaker and speak out in support of a comprehensive test ban.

ELLIOT LAKE

Mr Brown: Mr Speaker, I would like to congratulate you on your election to this House and your elevation to this very important post, and on a fine dinner, I might add.

Today, I would also like to thank the new government for sending the parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Energy to Elliot Lake on a kamikaze mission.

As most members should know, Elliot Lake is experiencing the worst of economic times. In August, 60% of the primary workforce was laid off -- 60% of the workforce.

Did the parliamentary assistant arrive to confirm commitments made by the Liberal government? Did he confirm the $10-million diversification fund? Did he confirm the building of a direct road to Blind River? Did he announce a fire college? Did he announce a French-language college? Did he announce a seniors' campus? Did he announce that Ontario Hydro will purchase all its uranium in Elliot Lake? Did he arrive with any good news?

No, he arrived to confirm that his government does not believe in the environmental assessment process. He arrived to confirm that his government had bravely and courageously taken giant steps to prejudice that process which will review Hydro's 25-year plan. He arrived to ensure the people of Elliot Lake oblivion.

These same people may be excused for thinking that Brian Charlton was Brian Mulroney.

ZEBRA MUSSELS

Mr McLean: My statement is for the Minister of Natural Resources. It concerns a tiny shellfish that has been causing serious problems in European waters for years and is now thriving in the waters of Ontario.

The minister is no doubt aware that the zebra mussel was first introduced into Lake St Clair in 1988 by a ship discharging ballast water that was originally picked up in a European port. Zebra mussels damage boats and fishing equipment. Large concentrations of zebra mussels have been found attached inside industrial power plant and industrial water intake pipes. They reduce the amount of food available to the young of many fish species and they decrease the survival rate of fish eggs.

The time has come to introduce a program aimed at ridding our waters of the zebra mussel. It must be done now, because experts tell me it would be easier to prevent or control the initial attachment of the larvae than to try to dislodge the zebra mussel once it is established. Develop a program now before tourism, our fisheries and our water systems and electrical generating plants are damaged beyond repair.

Why has the minister not made a statement in this Legislature? What does he intend to do? Does he not think that this is one of the important items in Ontario?

CHARLES TATHAM

Mr Sutherland: Mr Speaker, I too want to congratulate you on your re-election to this House and your election as the Speaker. I was remiss in not doing that in my previous time speaking.

I want to make a statement today about the previous member for the riding of Oxford, Charlie Tatham. As many of the members know, Charlie was the member from 1987 until the recent election. In talking with many members of this House, I know that Charlie was a very well-liked individual and highly respected by members of all three parties in this House.

Mr Tatham started his career of public service many years ago. He was the mayor of Woodstock in 1957. He continued to be active in municipal politics for many years, right until the time of his election to this House. He served in many different areas within the riding of Oxford. He was also the warden for the county of Oxford at one time.

As a member of this House, he was also very active. He was the Premier's representative on the Ontario-Quebec high-speed rail committee. He also chaired a committee that toured around the province and looked at the restructuring of county governments, as Mr Tatham was very active when Oxford country restructured its government in 1975.

I just want to make mention of him and, on behalf of the people of Oxford, thank Mr Tatham for his many years of public service both to the people of Oxford and to this province.

STATEMENT BY THE MINISTRY

RENT REGULATION

Hon Mr Cooke: Today we begin a new era in providing real protection for tenants in this province.

Since 1975, Ontario has coped with several different rent review systems. Each has had little commitment to protecting tenants. The current Residential Rent Regulation Act has been condemned by both tenants and landlords as being too complex and too costly.

More important, the system has failed in protecting tenants from high rent increases. During the past three years, more than 330,000 tenant families have faced increases above the rent review guideline. In some cases, tenants have been required to pay rent increases of more than 100%. For many, this has been tantamount to ordering them to leave their homes. Clearly, the existing process must be replaced with rent control that provides tenants with protection from high rent increases.

As well, we have to devise a process that is much less complex and intimidating. It must be easier for people to understand and use and simpler to administer than the current process.

It is the intention of this government to develop such a system through extensive consultation with tenants, landlords and other interested parties. In the meantime, we are introducing a two-year moratorium to protect tenants from high rent increases. It will apply to rent increases taking effect from 1 October 1990, the day this government took office, and will continue until the new rent control legislation is in place.

I am tabling the necessary amendments to the Residential Rent Regulation Act today to put in place those measures required to implement the moratorium. I would note, however, that most of the Residential Rent Regulation Act and its associated regulations will remain unchanged by this amending legislation. For example, the current administrative and hearings procedure will continue, as will tenants' rights to seek rent rebates. As well, the rent registry and the Residential Rental Standards Board will remain in place.

Under the moratorium, the majority of rent increases will be limited to the amount of the annual guideline set by the ministry each year. Members will recall that this guideline is based on the average cost increases that a typical landlord would experience in operating a well-managed rental property.

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In 1990 the guideline is 4.6% and in 1991 it is 5.4%. Landlords will be allowed to seek moderate rent increases above these guidelines to help cover some operating increases which are clearly beyond their control. These would be significant increases in municipal taxes, heating, hydro, water, cable and insurance and higher costs arising from changes in interest rates when existing mortgages -- and I emphasize existing mortgages -- are renewed.

Under the moratorium, tenants will no longer be required to pay rent increases to finance luxury renovations or the flipping of apartment buildings. As well, tenants will not face rent increases arising from capital expenditures. In addition, tenants will not have to pay previously approved rent increases that were to be phased in over a period of years. The proposed legislation cancels all phased-in rent increases taking effect in a building on 1 October 1990 or later. Once the moratorium legislation is passed, landlords will be required to repay tenants any amounts of moneys owed since 1 October 1990.

The moratorium will not apply to rent increases that were effective before 1 October 1990. In allowing these applications to continue under the old rules, we are conceding that we cannot retroactively correct all the inequities of the past legislation. However, there is a possibility that these older applications may result in some tenants owing retroactive rent increases to their landlords. If this proves to be the case, we intend to protect tenants by instituting measures to allow them to repay retroactive rent increases over a one-year period instead of the current situation where they have to pay them up front.

The moratorium legislation will enable us to protect tenants over the two-year period while we turn our full attention to public consultations on a permanent rent control system. This consultation process, along with the development and passage of permanent legislation, will be completed within the two-year period. We encourage everyone in Ontario to take part in the consultations across the province on this important issue.

As well, I would like to indicate to the members of the House that I hope they will play an active role in the consultation process. It is my intention to involve them fully in the development of the new rent control legislation. We face a considerable challenge in the months ahead and I look forward to receiving the advice and assistance of all my colleagues.

RESPONSES

RENT REGULATION

Ms Poole: I would like to respond to the statement by the Minister of Housing. If the minister thinks he is going to appease anyone by his statement today, he is sadly mistaken. We had expected at the very least that this minister would have the courage to announce a specific outline of his government's rent control policy.

We in the opposition must ask a question: Why has the minister delayed introducing his permanent rent control policy? Could it be that he has finally realized that the rent control policy they promised in An Agenda for People is simply unworkable? Could it be that the minister has finally seen the light that there is no simple solution to the myriad of complexities in the rental housing market?

The minister has quite a dilemma. When he was opposition critic, he had a very simple proposal to solve the rental problems in the province, and the operative word is "simple." His solution was to have one guideline rent increase per year with no exemptions, and in fact the NDP, in the election campaign, adopted the minister's proposal. The Premier himself -- the one right across the way with the glowing halo -- promised: "New Democrats would bring in rent control. That means one increase a year based on inflation. There would be no extra bonuses to landlords for capital or financing costs."

Why could the minister and the Premier not fulfil this promise and bring in permanent legislation today? There are really only two reasons: Either their plan was flawed, their policy too simplistic to be workable -- in other words, they had not done their homework and their research -- or, on the other hand, they knew at the time that their plan was unworkable and unrealistic but they figured: "Hey, it'll win us a few votes. We'll get the tenants on our side."

What a choice. They had to admit they were either opportunistic or incompetent. They were not options for this new, truthful government of integrity. Instead, they chose the option to announce a freeze and give people a chance to forget what the NDP's policy on rent control really was.

Has the minister realized the ramifications of the freeze he has announced? Does he actually believe there will be any capital work done in any building in the province when landlords have no idea how they can pay for the work? Has he considered what will happen to work that is half-completed?

I have here a memorandum from a landlord who faxed me this morning saying: "We are in the process of refurbishing 109 Jameson. If the NDP legislation is retroactive, we will stop the work in its present condition, as we will lose too much money by completing it."

What is the minister going to do about the situation? The tenants cannot live in a state of frozen chaos and construction for the next two years while he makes up his mind. Has the minister considered what uncertainty this freeze has created and what it will do to the rental housing market? Does he have any plan for dealing with the bankruptcies and the insolvencies that are inevitable? Does he realize that the uncertainty may force the banks to become the province's largest landlord? I ask the minister, do bankers fix toilets? I predict we are going to have to find out.

At first glance, this seems to be great news for the tenants of the province, rents frozen for the next two years. However, this irresponsible act will become a nightmare for tenants as their aging apartment buildings start to crumble around them. The minister has taken the first step towards his new title, Minister of Slums.

Mr Curling: I want to ask the minister, where is the fairness in this? He said he wanted to be fair to landlords and tenants. It seems to me it is a one-sided patchwork, broad statement here. I ask the minister to ask his colleague the Treasurer; he sat on Bill 51 and he realizes that the contribution of landlords and tenants on that bill was just tremendous. We have never seen such consultation. Now he is saying he is going to go out for consultation. I say to the minister that he has no policy. It is a patchwork situation that he has here. He complained that we had a patchwork. I say to him to bring his housing policy out and then we will see whether he has rent control or rent review. He should be fair to both landlords and tenants.

Mr Tilson: I would like to respond to the minister's statement. I must confess I am a new member to the Legislature. This morning I found a press release by the Fair Rental Policy Organization of Ontario crossing my desk. I found an advertisement by the ministry on where it is going with respect to housing. All of this came out before the minister had even released his statement. To me, it is clearly a ministry that is out of control.

I will say that I thought the Liberals were in bad shape with their policy. This policy is an absolute disaster. It is unbelievable where we are going with this proposal by the minister. Already we are in the throes of a recession. We are going to have to absorb a flight of capital, bankruptcies and unemployment in the construction trades. There is certainly not going to be any incentive to maintain our existing rental stock and, over time, units will be lost due to deterioration. Small landlords are going to remove their units from the market, thereby accelerating the vacancy problem. If tenants think things are bad now, wait until they cannot find anything, wait until they are living in slums.

The rental housing industry has indicated that $1.68 billion in planned renovation work by 1992 will not proceed, resulting in the loss of 52,000 person-years of employment. The minister is not clear in his statement as to where he is going in that direction. There is certainly not going to be any private sector investment in rental housing. The province will have to build every new unit because no one else is going to do it, something the provincial Treasury, facing a $2.5-billion deficit, cannot afford.

If they proceed with the 20,000 units a year that they promised during the election, it is going to cost $380 million in operating subsidies over two years, and this does not even include the capital costs. The Liberals spent $3 billion to construct only 30,000 units.

This policy will do nothing to help the 360,000 tenant households that already spend in excess of 30% of their income in rent. By the time this two-year moratorium has run its course, I think landlords will be broke, there will be tenants without accommodation and many others will be living in slum accommodation.

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Mr Stockwell: I have read An Agenda for People a number of times. I am not certain why it was written, at this point in time. It is a break-a-promise-a-day routine around this House from now on. Joe DiMaggio's consecutive hitting streak is in jeopardy with this particular government; 56 days seems very likely. Where in An Agenda for People did they mention a moratorium? Where did they mention consultation -- two years of consultation?

They mentioned bonusing. Yes, they did, they mentioned bonusing. They were very clear: There will be no bonusing. They summarized their approach to rent controls with, "It's simple, it's fair and it avoids bureaucracy."

I do not know what happened between the date that this was printed and the date the announcement was made, but either they have forgotten quite a bit or it really was not their intention to implement this and it was simply used as a vote-getting promise and now that they are in government today they would simply choose to forget the Agenda for People, because quite conceivably, quite apparently, the people can simply choose to forget this.

Mr Grandmaître: On a point of privilege, Mr Speaker: If the Minister of Housing thinks his announcement or his statement is so important, he should have had it printed in French, in the two official languages of this province.

Hon Mr Cooke: If I could explain to the member, and I certainly apologize for the fact that the statement is not available at this particular moment in both languages, the fact of the matter is that this statement was scheduled for tomorrow. The Fair Rental Policy Organization of Ontario put out a press release this morning that does not adequately represent the position that the government has announced today. To avoid confusion for landlords and tenants across this province, we thought it was appropriate that the statement be made now, today, to avoid that confusion for landlords and tenants. As a result, the statement was not ready in both languages. It will be ready very shortly, but I sincerely apologize for that fact now.

The Speaker: I appreciate the member's point of order and would draw members' attention to the fact that while it has been a recent practice of this assembly to present ministers' statements in both of our official languages, it is not a requirement, but it is normally extended as a courtesy. I do appreciate the point you raised.

VISITOR

The Speaker: I wish at the same time to recognize, and members may wish to welcome, a former member of this assembly who is seated in the members' gallery, René Fontaine from Cochrane North.

Before beginning oral questions I wish to commend the members, who have been most diligent in directing both their questions and their replies to the Speaker. It is most helpful as we conduct our business in an orderly way and I appreciate the efforts that have been extended both yesterday and again today.

ORAL QUESTIONS

LAYOFFS

Mr Nixon: I have a question of the Minister of Labour having to do with the startling and continuing escalation in the rate of layoffs. The honourable minister is no doubt as familiar as anyone with the statistics in this regard, but when his own ministry indicated that there would be 5,000 more layoffs in the province in November, it certainly is a clear point in which the government has to express to this House and the people of the province, not just those laid off or facing it, specifically what its programs will be.

I would simply ask the minister if he can indicate to the House clearly what he is going to do which is going to begin within the next very short period of time and which should be under way now to alleviate the concern that is felt by all members of this House in response to the needs of the people in our constituencies.

Hon Mr Mackenzie: The member has raised an issue that is probably of the most concern to members of this government. We had, up until the end of October, a 77% increase in permanent layoffs and closures in Ontario. We are going to address this with labour adjustment and retraining programs, with changes that allow for longer notice periods. We are in the process right now of working on the various steps we will be taking to try to alleviate the problem.

Mr Nixon: The honourable minister has had his responsibility for eight weeks, not a long period of time, but about halfway through that period the Premier and himself and his colleagues announced that there would be a wage protection fund retroactive to 1 October, the day this government took office, and that the people who were laid off because of bankruptcies therefore would be protected. It was not clear, and certainly was not made clear in the speech from the throne, whether this would include pay only or severance, notice, vacation; when in fact it would be in place; how it would be funded, and some indication of what the cost might be in view of the layoffs and bankruptcy rates, which have gone up 80% year over year.

Now, the statement was made by the Premier at the time he was approving the move of Victor Rice and Varity Corp out of the province to Buffalo. It was attempting to soften the blow. But surely the time has come when this government should bring forward specific plans and, I would suggest, legislation. I would ask the honourable minister when he and his colleagues are going to present such legislation to this House.

Hon Mr Mackenzie: I can assure the member that the wage protection part of our package -- and that is only part of the package to deal with the layoffs that we have in Ontario today -- will be before this House very shortly. We are consulting with a number of parties now. There is a fair difference in the cost of such a program. The initial statement listed only wages and vacation pay. We have to take a look at severance and termination and what we can put into the package and how we can fund it or finance it, and that is what we are in the process of working on right now.

Mr Nixon: I have some sympathy for the honourable member, who used to be so aggressive on this side of the House, calling for action, if not immediately, then probably yesterday. I am not so sure I like the new persona of the honourable member. While I was prepared to be somewhat critical of him, it was not on a basis of inaction. Unfortunately, he seems to have fallen into the grip of the molasses-in-January principle that the Premier has imposed on all of his colleagues.

I would like to ask the honourable minister, since he has the main responsibility in this regard, for example, how the announcement of the $700-million special fund in the speech from the throne is going to be allocated, since the Treasurer indicated that it would not be any significant call on the consolidated revenue fund until the next budgetary period. Then how are we supposed to talk to the people in our constituencies to say that help is on the way in a reasonable period of time? Would he not feel that his own response is similar when he says that they are having a little trouble remembering whether their original statement had to do with just pay or whether it had to do with severance and notice and vacation?

Surely he can inform the House now, since the Minister of Housing is presenting special legislation today, that we are going to see this legislation and have ample time to consider it so that when the throne debate is completed in a few days, we can go on to the consideration of this immediately important initiative.

Hon Mr Mackenzie: I think the leader of the official opposition knows that the $700 million he refers to is capital projects, part of a package to deal with the unemployment in the province, and there will be announcements on that very shortly.

The part of the package that I am working on as Minister of Labour -- the labour adjustments, the severance, the notice, the justification, the wage protection plan -- is something that the leader of the official opposition knows I was raising in this House for almost five years and got absolutely nowhere with. I want the leader of the official opposition to know that in the two months I have had charge of my ministry, we are probably closer to bringing in all of the components of that package than we got in five years of going after the Liberals.

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DEVELOPMENTALLY DISABLED

Mrs McLeod: My question is to the Minister of Community and Social Services. The minister may not be fully aware of the anxiety and the concern that exists across this province because of her decision to freeze plans to move developmentally disabled people out of institutions and into the community.

Will the minister please tell us why she has placed a freeze on these plans for deinstitutionalization and particularly why this freeze on transfers applies only to moves out of government-operated institutions while the movement of residents out of privately owned nursing homes can continue?

Hon Mrs Akande: Actually, there has not been a freeze placed on that movement; there has been a temporary hold placed on that. The reason for such a move is simply to give us an opportunity to provide a better process in which everyone is involved and is satisfied. There were some concerns, even expressed by those people whose families were to be moved, about the process that was in use, so this is an attempt to provide a better process.

Mrs McLeod: I would like to remind the minister that the people who are most directly affected by this decision are people who will indeed be trapped in institutions if there is not a will on the part of this government to move forward with the plans for deinstitutionalization. I would also remind the minister that members of her caucus in the past have been critical of the previous government for not moving quickly enough. Her response on a matter of process leads me to the supplementary question.

We know there was no consultation with the Ontario Association for Community Living prior to the minister's decision to freeze the program being made. We know that other advocacy groups such as the Advocacy Resource Centre for the Handicapped and People First were not even aware of her decision until we contacted them because we were concerned.

We do know that the union wanted exactly the freeze that the minister has imposed. In fact, we have a copy of a letter to the Ontario Association for Community Living with the first formal communication regarding this temporary hold dated 15 November.

We also have a copy of a message to union members that was posted at the Oxford Regional Centre and, if I may ask the indulgence of the House for one moment, I think it is important that they be aware of this.

The message states:

"I was informed in a phone call received at 5:15 pm from head office that effective immediately, the multi-year plan has been put on hold.

"Only those residents who already have their bags packed will leave the facility.

"Fred Upshaw, president of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, in a meeting with the Minister of Community and Social Services and the fight at local levels were instrumental in achieving the hold on this plan."

That message is dated 6 November. Will the minister please tell this House and concerned people around this province why she did not consult with advocacy groups or individuals or families before stepping in and why, as a member of a government committed to consultation, she would not have taken the time for this very basic communication?

Hon Mrs Akande: I am happy to answer that question. As a matter of fact, I have been in contact by telephone with Mr Zwerver, who is the Canadian president or chairperson of the Ontario Association for Community Living, and we have discussed this hold. This government remains committed to community-based services.

The intent of the temporary hold is simply to provide an opportunity to look at the process. We are not discussing whether, we are discussing how to include all people, including the groups that the member mentions in a discussion of that process. I might state, however, that I am not responsible for the communication that is written by others. I simply accept responsibility for communications which bear my signature.

Mrs McLeod: I am pleased to hear of the minister's continued sense of commitment. I confess that I was somewhat surprised by the communication that was sent to all members of the House. While I appreciated the information, my surprise rested in the fact that the information provided by the ministry was clearly supportive of continuing the program and really failed to offer any more reason for this temporary hold in exactly the terms the minister has used today, which is in some way to look at a more effective process.

This plan was developed over a long period of time. The process was very clearly in place. It was proceeding in a way which I understand had been considered quite satisfactory by all the groups and individuals that have been involved. But I do want to say that I do not question the minister's concern. I know that she has expressed outside this House her own belief in the importance of having disabled people become part of the mainstream of our community.

I do want to give the minister an opportunity to reassure people across the province who are concerned. Will the minister please tell us what comes next for people in government-operated institutions? Will she make a commitment to moving developmentally disabled individuals out of the government-operated institutions, and when will this temporary hold be lifted?

Hon Mrs Akande: I am very glad that the member recognizes this government's commitment to community-based services and certainly I share that with her.

We are indeed anxious to move people out of large institutions into their communities. We will do so with the support of all those involved. While the member speaks highly of the process which her government implemented, I am afraid that I have received some questions about it and therefore felt it was my responsibility to assume a more thorough study. So we have done. May I assure the member that we will indeed bring this to the House as soon as we have done that as quickly as possible.

Mr Jackson: My question is to the Premier and it as well has to do with the multi-year plan that has just been referenced in the previous question. I would like to furnish the Premier with a copy of the memo previously referred to. I have a copy which I would like him to look at.

I also wish to direct his attention to the fact that on 20 November he made a statement through the Lieutenant Governor in this House. He gave two brief statements in support of community living. I will quote from the throne speech:

"We will work towards our communities becoming supportive environments where all people, including those who are vulnerable, can meet their full potential, participate in community life and make their contribution to society. In doing so, we recognize that saying yes to their concerns will mean saying no to others whose claims are presented more loudly."

I would like the Premier to address the House on the fact that his Minister of Community and Social Services undertook a private meeting with the head of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union and apparently, on the face of the memo, arrived at a decision and a deal to put the multi-year plan on hold. There was not the consultation nor the exchange of information with the key partners in this act.

I would like the Premier to advise this House whether he was aware that this special deal had been made as he was drafting the throne speech some two weeks later.

Hon Mr Rae: First of all, I thank the member for the question. Let me say to the member that I am not aware of any such deal of any kind. I do not think that is a fair characterization of what has happened.

If I can refer the member to it, I am also in receipt, as is the whole House, of a jury verdict in the Cedar Glen inquest. The member will recall that the circumstances there were of an ex-psychiatric patient from the Queen Street Mental Health Centre who was discharged to the Cedar Glen boarding home on 1 May 1985 and was admitted to Orillia Soldiers' Memorial Hospital on 1 November 1987 after an altercation with another resident of the home resulting in a fall. Mr Kendall was admitted dirty, malnourished, overmedicated, disoriented due to a drug reaction and developing pneumonia.

I just want to say to the member, the bottom line for all of us has to be to ensure that the quality of community support is there for everyone who is a resident of a provincial institution who is being admitted into the community. That has to be the bottom line. If I can say so, we dealt with this question for the past 15 or 16 years in this House, which is when the process of deinstitutionalization began.

As I understand it, what the minister is saying, and I think it is a fair comment, is to make sure that the quality of community care is there and let's make sure that enough is being done to protect the interests of the residents, of people who are either in a psychiatric institution who are being discharged or who are in a residential facility for the developmentally handicapped who are being discharged.

It seems to me that we are entitled to say that we have a responsibility as a government to ensure that the community support is there. But let me say to the member that the creation of caring communities in the communities of this province is a priority for our government and is something to which we are committed as a government and to which I am committed as Premier of the province.

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Mr Jackson: The question to the Premier was for him to conduct an inquiry into the relationship he has within his own cabinet in terms of consultation. The hallmarks that he had for his position politically when he sat on this side of the House we now expect him to be consistent and continue while he is on that side of the House.

I refresh the Premier with his positions: that he would be open and honest and that he would be forthcoming and consultative with the key players. What I raised and brought to the Premier's attention was the fact that the head of one of the most powerful unions of this province had a private audience with the minister responsible. There were no vulnerable adults represented in that room.

The fact is that the Premier was not aware that these kinds of arrangements were being made, and I will continue to refer to them as a deal because, as the minister admitted herself, her contact with the association directly only occurred this week.

I would ask the Premier again: Are these the kinds of activities that he condones for his cabinet ministers with respect to consultation, particularly after he told the people of Ontario the importance he placed on ensuring that vulnerable adults had access to the decision-making powers of this province?

Hon Mr Rae: The member has asked me to repeat or to state what my commitments are and what our commitments are as a government, and I will say this to the member: I expect the Ontario Association for Community Living to be consulted. I expect those representing vulnerable people to be consulted. I expect those who have experience in the community to be consulted. I expect ARCH to be consulted. I expect advocates on behalf of the disabled to be consulted. I expect the people who are working in institutions to be consulted. I expect everyone to be consulted, and that is what will be done.

I expect a decision from this government that is going to ensure that every resident, everyone who is physically disabled or who is vulnerable, has an appropriate level of care and that, wherever possible, that care is provided in the community. That is the policy of our government. That is what we are committed to and that is exactly what the minister is committed to as well.

Mr Jackson: We agree with the standard the Premier just set out and we are gravely concerned at the minister's actions, which appear to have contradicted the very standard the Premier has set.

What I have handed over to the Premier, thanks to the page, is an announcement that his own minister made subsequent to her arrangement or deal with the Ontario Public Service Employees Union to put a hold on the program.

On 6 November she announced $168,000 funding from her ministry for the Oakville Association for the Mentally Retarded. It got a considerable amount of press coverage in the local community. Why I have sent the Premier that press release is so he is aware that the deal had been made and she was announcing plans for expansion.

What I am now going to advise the Premier is that three days later her ministry advised the association not only that their funds would not be forthcoming but also -- I am sorry to be technical -- that condition 6 as established for any continuance of this program by the government was that necessary staff be hired or be in the process of being hired to care for these deinstitutionalized vulnerable adults. The fact is that the Ministry of Community and Social Services advised the local association to pull the ad notice for hiring of those staff after it had played in the local media for three days.

I again reiterate that these are serious matters. It could be a simple breakdown of communications, but I fear more directly that there is more at play here. I ask the Premier again if he will investigate the actions of his minister, not only with respect to her private meetings with the union but also with respect to her convoluted approach to the association in Oakville in terms of its funding commitment and then withdrawal of support.

Where is the commitment? The Premier will only determine that if he is prepared to investigate the minister's actions.

Hon Mr Rae: I appreciate the information that I have received from the member. Obviously, now that he has raised it with me, I will review it with the minister. That is a perfectly reasonable request for him to make and it is something which will obviously be discussed.

But let me just say to the member once again that, ever since Walter Williston's report in 1974, this House has been debating and dealing with the question of deinstitutionalization and that the concern has been expressed by a number of us on a number of occasions. I can well recall, going back to the early 1980s, when the then Leader of the Opposition, who went on to become Premier, Mr Peterson, launched a campaign on behalf of the Liberal Party at that time with respect to the multi-year plans, expressing concern about the impact that those plans would have on residents and the impact that they would have on a number of institutions.

We are going to continue to discuss this question. I hope we can do it in a balanced way. What I want to say to the member is this: We are committed to providing the highest possible standard of care. The news yesterday with respect to the Brantwood situation was profoundly disturbing to me, as I am sure it is to all members. The reports that we have had from inquests over the years with respect to what has happened in private boarding homes and in unregulated institutions is of profound concern to me, as I am sure it is to the member. It is of profound concern to this government. We do not have a monopoly on this concern; we share it with all the members.

We are going to do what we can, and I can assure the member that is what we are committed to doing as a government; and that is precisely what we are committed to doing, not to saying yes to any established interest that is out there. The people who come first, the people whose interests come first, are the residents, the people who are themselves disabled and vulnerable. Those are the people whose interests we must advance as a Legislature. That is what we are committed to doing and that is exactly what we are going to do.

RENT REGULATION

Mr Tilson: I have a question for the Premier. Yesterday he received a letter from Fairwin Investments Ltd. Over the past eight years, foreign investors have injected $300 million into Ontario real estate, primarily apartment buildings. They had planned to invest an additional $500 million over the next five years but will not proceed under a system of rent controls -- at least according to that letter.

Today the Minister of Housing has indicated that the government will continue with a system of strict rent controls during this moratorium period, and, as a result, almost $1 billion in capital will most likely be moved out of this province.

I would like to ask the Premier if his government has done an economic impact analysis of his decision to proceed with rent controls.

Hon Mr Rae: First of all, I would say to the member that I am not aware of such a letter, although no doubt it has arrived. I have not seen it, but I would like to refer the question to the Minister of Housing, if I can.

Hon Mr Cooke: I guess how I would like to respond to that is that we did. When we were looking at the policy options that were open to this government to provide real protection for tenants, we did look at the impact on the economy.

We also looked at the impact that the current rent review system has on tenants across this province, and the fact of the matter is that we have had no protection or not adequate protection for tenants in this province. As a result, 33% of the tenants of this province pay over 30% of their monthly income on rent. As a result, people have been economically evicted from their apartments in this province and, because this party believes that housing is a basic and fundamental right for the people of this province, it is our obligation as a government to properly protect the tenants of this province so that this right can be achieved.

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Mr Tilson: I hope the minister will make this analysis available to this House, because I think the policy he announced today is certainly going to have a grave impact. Today the minister announced that there would be a moratorium for the next two years. Landlords across this province have borrowed money in the past number of years to undertake renovation and repair work. Considering his statement today and given the number of outstanding loans, has his government assessed the number of bankruptcies that will result from his decision? Will he announce that today?

Hon Mr Cooke: I am certainly prepared -- and we will as we go through this process -- to share every bit of information we have that helped us make this decision. But I want to reiterate to the member that on the government side we have to look at the balance between what is necessary to protect the affordable housing that currently exists in this province and, on the other hand, what is rightful and appropriate for landlords in this province.

I have looked at that and I think on balance we have to come down with proper and complete rent control in order to protect tenants, along with the escape clauses, which we have outlined to members, with energy costs and municipal taxes.

I would simply like to ask the member: The alternative he has suggested, the alternative his party suggested, is what they have in British Columbia. In British Columbia they have no rent control, and as a result Vancouver's average rents now are the highest in the entire country. We in Ontario do not want to see that happen. We want to protect tenants in this province.

Mr Tilson: I honestly believe the minister forgets where he is. We ask the questions over here and he gives the policy.

I will say that the Ministry of Housing has reported that $10 billion in renovation and repair work is needed to maintain Ontario's existing rental stock. If his government proceeds with this system of rent controls, as he has indicated today, with no provision for capital costs, landlords have indicated that they will not proceed with $533 million worth of renovation and repair work this year alone. By 1992, $1.68 billion of planned work will be in jeopardy. Unemployment rates in the low-rise construction trades have already reached 60%.

I would like to ask the minister if he has done an analysis of how many construction and related jobs will be lost as a result of his decision to proceed with strict rent controls during this moratorium period.

Hon Mr Cooke: I would like to point out to the member that I am not sure what analysis he has done or any other organization has done to come up with the $500 million figure. With the figures we have looked at in our ministry, the largest amount of capital spent in one year, passed through the system, under the current rent review system -- that is certainly the comparable figure -- has been $122 million. Now, during a recession and during the Mulroney high interest rate time, is he going to tell me that the landlords of this province are planning on spending $500 million through the rent review system?

I would suggest to the member that what will have the most significant impact on whether landlords will be spending money on renovations and capital in this province will not be anything that we do in this government, but it will be the high interest rate policies of his federal government.

Ms Poole: My question is for the Minister of Housing. It is estimated that some $10 billion in capital repair work needs to be done on our aging housing stock. The rental freeze he has announced today is effectively going to ensure that none of that capital work will be done over the next two years.

I would like to paint a scenario for the minister, and I would assure him that this is a very real one, particularly with high-rise buildings.

An underground parking garage needs to be retrofitted because of salt corrosion. It will cost $500,000 to do this work. The landlord goes to the bank to secure the financing. The bank says: "I'm sorry. You're already leveraged to the maximum, and because you have no revenues coming in to compensate, we cannot do this. You have no collateral." The landlord cannot borrow the money. The landlord does not have the money. The garage will collapse and so will the building from the salt corrosion. What is the minister going to do about this?

Hon Mr Cooke: I guess what I would like to say to the member is that over the next period of time we certainly intend to put out a consultation paper and discuss with her and with other people in this province how we should proceed in the long term. But in the meantime we have to take a look at some of the very high rent increases that have occurred in this province. I would suggest to the member she take a look at, for example, 44 Walmer Road where there was a 21% increase. or in her area, the Balliol Street area, a 29% increase, or if she wants to look at Main Street, a 192% increase.

The member, as an advocate for tenants in this province. must understand as well that our government is preoccupied and concerned with protecting the tenants and the affordable housing stock of this province. That is our primary concern and we are willing to work with her and with the landlords and tenants of this province in devising a long-term system that will also protect tenants and provide for the capital needs of the system as well.

Ms Poole: This minister is not concerned with protecting the tenants. He is concerned with protecting his own government's skin. He says the tenants need protection. I agree with him, but this is not the way, to say that for the next two years, while he consults, nothing will be done on capital.

I am going to ask the minister for an answer to the question I posed to him in my statement today when I responded to his announcement. What is he going to do about the situation where the work is halfway done and where the landlord knows there is no compensation for him for completing the work? I have a landlord right now who is saying that he is going to walk away from it. What is he going to do about the buildings where that capital work is half done?

Hon Mr Cooke: The very nature of the moratorium means that there are going to be some difficulties with it. I am not here to tell the member that anybody can bring in a moratorium and simply say that there are not going to be any difficulties, but I am prepared to tell her that under the current legislation 330,000 tenants experienced rent increases that were incredibly difficult to deal with. We have to provide proper protection for tenants. I am prepared, and it will be seen as we work through the system of consultation -- we said in the statement that it is a maximum of two years -- to go through that process and come up with the long-term proposals as quickly as possible. We will not deviate from the principle that the current rent review system is inadequate and does not provide protection for tenants. The proposal we have before members and the long-term proposal will provide that kind of protection as long as we are here.

PROTECTION OF IN-CARE RESIDENTS

Mrs Marland: My question is for the minister responsible for disabled persons. Yesterday we heard the horrific stories -- pardon me, not stories -- the horrific facts that are contained in this report dealing with people in residential care who have both physical and mental disabilities. I am personally familiar with these families in my riding, and in fact among my own personal friends. I know on a firsthand basis the agony these families go through when they first have to make the decision that they themselves can no longer care for these people in their own homes. So then they make the decision that they will entrust that care to people in outside facilities. Now they learn that people in those same facilities are choking to death because they have been fed too quickly, are starving to death because of inadequate nutrition, and in some cases are seriously injured.

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Based on what the minister must have read, along with the rest of us -- I give her one example from the Globe and Mail today where a report by two paediatricians states, "Severe malnutrition, dehydration and the failure of staff to recognize symptoms of serious illness contributed to the deaths" of those 15 residents at Brantford -- I ask her on behalf of these families who have their loved ones in these facilities because they cannot even feed themselves and need total human care to survive, which is their own basic right, what can we tell these families who have heard these horrid, chilling facts? What is going to happen to their loved ones?

Hon Ms Ziemba: I am going to excuse myself. I do have a bad cold so my voice might sound a bit garbled.

I want to thank the honourable member for bringing this to our attention because I share those concerns as well. It is one of the reasons why I entered politics and why I wanted to be elected. For far too long there has not been anything done to make sure that people who live in institutions and who need and require that care have advocacy and guardianship.

We mentioned in our throne speech that for the last 15 years there have been reports gathering dust on the shelves which have not been answered and have not been actually addressed. We are going to address that quickly and expediently. I promise the member we will bring that to this House at the very quickest possible moment we can.

Mrs Marland: We pay people in this province to take care of our loved ones in these facilities. That is their job. It is our responsibility that these people are well cared for. I do not think that on top of that we need to start looking for advocates. The people who work there should be advocates for the rights of those people, and the government, no matter who it is, has to start today to make sure that their rights for health protection and safety in those institutions are protected.

These are government-funded facilities. We are not talking about intruding into private homes. We are talking about government-funded facilities where staff are paid to give that kind of care. I ask the minister again, what can I tell the parents, the relatives and the loved ones of these residents today that she is going to do to make a difference?

I am not interested in an advocacy commission that will issue yet another report 12 months from now which, as the minister has just identified, will gather dust. I am asking her what has happened today that is different from what happened yesterday as a result of this report, and what assurances can these families have who have heard this horror story, these chilling facts? I beg of the minister to tell us what the difference is going to be tomorrow, not 12 months from now.

Hon Ms Ziemba: I do want to reassure the families, and I want to reassure the member and all the other members in this House. We all share the same common concerns and I think all of us have constituents who have people in institutions who are not being adequately cared for.

Obviously, we have just got the report. We will be communicating with the Ministry of Community and Social Services and also the Ministry of Health to make sure that this does not happen again. We will be doing that immediately and we will be doing all the various things that have to be done to make sure that people are adequately cared for in institutions and in private homes as well. So we will be bringing forth all those various aspects.

WORKERS' COMPENSATION BOARD

Mr Huget: My question is for the Minister of Labour. The minister is no doubt aware of the hardships being experienced by injured workers in this province because of excessive delays by the Workers' Compensation Board in processing claims. Many claims go for months before decisions are made and workers who once earned a good income are being forced to turn to welfare to feed their families while they wait on the system.

What steps is the minister taking to speed up the adjudication of workers' compensation claims so that injured workers do not have to suffer further injury or face poverty along with the pain and suffering caused by their workplace injuries?

Hon Mr Mackenzie: I want to thank the member for his question because it is one that I think concerns every member on all sides of this House. All our constituency offices are filled with frustrated WCB claimants who feel real and legitimate complaints about the length of time taken to process their claims.

The excessive delays being experienced now are not the fault of the adjudicators of the board. I want to make that clear, and it is not just my opinion. I have talked to the office of the worker adviser and the office of the employer adviser. The employees of the WCB are doing the best they can under a very high stress situation.

We are telling the WCB that we are not satisfied with the service levels to claimants. In fact, I will be having a meeting with the chairman of the board on this tomorrow morning and I will be asking him to come up with ideas on how service can be improved quickly. There is now a vacancy in the office of the president of the Workers' Compensation Board and we are conducting a public search for a new president. One of the most important criteria we will have in selecting the new top management of the board will be the individual's demonstrated commitment towards better customer service. I agree with my colleague that injured workers need speedier adjustment of their claims in Ontario.

Mr Huget: I thank the minister for his commitment and I hope we will soon start to see some real progress in this area.

May I ask if the minister is aware of the many specific complaints about the difficulty of reaching adjudicators by telephone? Many of my constituents come to me in my offices in frustration after trying to call the board for hours, sometimes days, with no success. When they do get through, they often encounter an answering machine on which they leave a message, and I am told that many of these calls are never returned. Is there something that can be done quickly to relieve this situation so that injured workers and their representatives will be able to at least talk with their adjudicator?

Hon Mr Mackenzie: I think all of us have heard of the delays and of the phone calls and the promises by an answering machine to call back that just do not come about. This is one of the issues that is on the table for our discussions tomorrow morning with the chairman of the board. This is one of the issues that the new management of the board, the new president when we bring one in for the board, will be asked to look at specifically, and that is the level of customer service at the board. We have had a long period of time when they have been going through policy changes. That will now change. We are now looking at the adjudication and that will be the emphasis of the management team at the board.

MINIMUM WAGE

Mr Offer: My question is to the Minister of Labour. The minister continues to be unclear on his government's proposal to increase the minimum wage. An Agenda for People and the throne speech stated that the minimum wage would be 60% of the average industrial wage. In opposition the member was very clear. He introduced three bills into this House which called for immediate implementation of 65% of the average industrial wage at that time.

The minister is playing with the workers of this province who are expecting this increase and with employers who are facing tough economic times, and as well with potential investors in this province. They deserve answers. Will the minimum wage in 1994 be 60% of the average industrial wage in 1994?

Hon Mr Mackenzie: I thought I had answered that twice for the member yesterday. I have said very clearly that the minimum wage will be 60% of the average wage in the province of Ontario, and that is what it will be when we finish with our new plan.

Mr Offer: My question was very specific: Would the minimum wage in this province be 60% of the average industrial wage in 1994? Very clearly, the minister in response omitted the words "average industrial wage in 1994." Now I want to know: Will the minimum wage in this province in 1994 be 60% of the average industrial wage in 1994?

There are people who have to plan. There are workers who are expecting this particular response. There are employers who are facing tough economic times. There are potential investors who are looking to this province who want to know very clearly what the position of this government is and what the minimum wage in this province will be in 1994. A response that just refers to 60% of the average industrial wage is not clear enough. We want to know, will it be the average industrial wage in 1994? The question is posed to the minister specifically; I expect a very specific response.

Hon Mr Mackenzie: I do not know how I could get any more specific. It will be 60% of the average wage in the province of Ontario, and obviously it will be 60% of the average wage in Ontario in 1994.

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MARKET VALUE REASSESSMENT

Mr Turnbull: My question is to the Minister of Revenue. Could the minister confirm that her government will not authorize the reassessment of over one million residential and business properties in Metropolitan Toronto as planned by the previous Liberal government and will thereby save the taxpayers of this province up to $20 million?

Hon Ms Wark-Martyn: At this time I cannot make that commitment. I have presently made arrangements to speak with Mayor Eggleton of Toronto and Chairman Tonks and I have also made arrangements to talk with some other members in my own caucus.

Mr Stockwell: How about the Metro chairman?

Hon Ms Wark-Martyn: There are some Metro people coming to meet with me. I am not able to make that commitment at this time.

Mr Turnbull: In light of the stated policy position of the NDP at the 1984 biannual convention, which states very clearly, "The NDP opposes any further introduction of market value reassessment," and based upon the responses during the recent election from the NDP member for High Park-Swansea, the NDP member for Dovercourt, the NDP member for Riverdale and the NDP member for Don Mills on a questionnaire prepared by the Citizens for Property Tax Reform during the last election, will the minister please confirm her government's position regarding the imposition of market value reassessment in Metropolitan Toronto?

Hon Ms Wark-Martyn: At this time I am not prepared to make my government's decision on market value assessment in Toronto. As I have said previously, I am meeting with various people to find out about market value assessment in Toronto, how it is going to affect Toronto and what our position is.

Mr Owens: First, I would like to thank the opposition for being concerned about the warm weather outside and turning the heat up a little bit in here today. My question is for the Minister of Transportation --

Interjections.

The Speaker: The enthusiasm displayed by the members is certainly appreciated. What would be even more appreciated is if the enthusiasm could be tempered with listening.

Mr Scott: Are you kidding? Our model is Peter Kormos. I didn't know anything about opposition until I met Peter Kormos.

The Speaker: And I am sure the member for St George-St David would like to learn about opposition from inside the chamber. Now, if we are all nice and calm and quiet --

Mr Mahoney: Impeach, impeach.

The Speaker: I knew that was coming. I just wondered how long. Since we have now captured everyone's attention, perhaps the member for Scarborough Centre could place his question.

ACCESSIBILITY FOR THE DISABLED

Mr Owens: Mr Speaker, as you are so fond of saying, before I was so rudely interrupted, I have a question for the Minister of Transportation.

In light of the fact that we have just come out of the Year of the Disabled, myself and my constituents in Scarborough Centre are quite concerned that this group was not mentioned in the minister's statement on transportation policies for the future. I am wondering if the minister can explain to myself and my constituents how this policy will impact on the disabled.

Hon Mr Philip: As members of the Toronto Transit Commission are well aware, it was contained in the proposals that were going towards them regarding the improvements in the GO system.

I am committed to the TTC's Choices for the Future report and I have been working with the TTC to make all new stations accessible and to have the retrofitting of selected other stations. We are committed to the easier access program and, as members have seen in the news, I have launched with various transit authorities new initiatives in that field. This year my ministry is spending some $32 million on providing door-to-door access for disabled persons and elderly people.

Mr Owens: I would like to ask the Minister of Transportation again to be more specific about the plans his ministry has to encourage the use of public transportation by the elderly and persons with disabilities.

Hon Mr Philip: We have a five-year plan that deals with a number of specific areas: First, increased availability of special transit services -- I have just told the member how much money we are spending on it this year; expanded eligibility for the use of special transit services; improved accessibility to conventional transit services; a program for the disabled in small and rural communities; an accessible taxi cab program; senior citizens' fare reciprocity; and a long-term commitment to improving the GO system so that GO stations and the GO service will be accessible to disabled and elderly people.

WASTE MANAGEMENT

Mr Mahoney: My question is to the Premier. The Minister of the Environment, after little more than a week in this Legislature, has certainly left her mark. However, in the minds of many citizens and political leaders, at least in Mississauga and I am sure in the rest of Ontario, the mark is indeed a black one.

This four-page fax that I have received from Mayor Hazel McCallion is a resolution passed unanimously by Mississauga council last Monday night. It is only one single indicator of the concern raised by the minister's derailing the processing of site 6B in Brampton.

The mayor and council will be looking for a meeting with the minister within one week from today and, with the Premier's desire to consult, I am sure that meeting will take place.

My question is: Does the Premier accept the minister's dismissal of efforts to find an interim site such as 6B, thereby allowing expansion of the Britannia sanitary landfill site by way of her emergency powers, a situation that means no public consultation and little, if any, accountability?

Hon Mr Rae: Let me say first of all that I am sure the Minister of the Environment looks forward to a meeting with Mayor McCallion --

Mr Mahoney: I doubt that.

Hon Mr Rae: No, I am sure she does. Certainly, I have enjoyed all my encounters with the mayor and I am sure the minister will as well, in terms of a good session, a good discussion. It will be a good, frank exchange.

The member said something about no accountability. I cannot imagine a more accountable process than the one we are undergoing now, that we will be undergoing as a government over the next few years and in which the issue of waste reduction and getting at the garbage problem is going to be a priority for all of us. When the member says that this somehow is an unaccountable process, I can only say to him that I am accountable to him and to all the members of the House every day in question period. I am accountable to the people of the province, as he is, at election time. We are going to be as accountable as anything over the next while.

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The member asked me if I agree with the announcement that was made by the Minister of the Environment. Obviously I agree with the announcement of the Minister of the Environment, because it focuses attention in a way that I think needed to be done on the urgency of the situation and of the need for us, after such a long time, to get on with the business of reducing the amount of garbage that goes into the waste stream. That is the objective and purpose of the minister's announcement, and that is the reason it has been done.

Mr Mahoney: I guess I got the answer that he agrees, but I also am interested in the fact that it is becoming very clear to the mayor and council in my city, Mississauga, and to myself and other concerned citizens that the minister's conserver action plan is at best in the conceptual stages. The minister was asked yesterday and was not forthcoming with an answer, but perhaps the Premier can tell this House: What are the time lines, what are the costs, what are the targets for waste reduction, what percentage of waste will be diverted in the first year of the program and when will the first year of the program start?

The people want answers about this announcement, and they are not getting any from the minister. Will the Premier give them?

Hon Mr Rae: To the member, in as non-partisan a way as I can, when we took office on 1 October we found that the Liberal government had made an announcement with respect to a 25% objective on the reduction of waste by 1992. The statement was made by the previous Minister of the Environment and by the Premier at that time that any municipality that did not reach the 25% level would not be able to join in on the Solid Waste Interim Steering Committee program and take advantage of the other "plans" of the Liberal government at that time. What we found was that, generally speaking, most municipalities were nowhere near the 25% mark. Some were closer than others, but there was no sense of direction, of central leadership, coming from the Minister of the Environment to reach that target. That is why we have said we have to not only reach but exceed that target. That is the objective of our government. I can only say to the member that those announcements will be made shortly and soon. They will be decisive and clear and they will, we hope, lead the province and lead the way in terms of reducing the amount of garbage that goes into the stream. That is the objective; that is what we are trying to do.

ONTARIO PROVINCIAL POLICE

Mr Carr: My question is for the Solicitor General. As the minister is well aware, yesterday the Provincial Auditor delivered his final accounting of the activities of the previous government. In his report I was very disturbed to notice that there is a severe inadequacy in the Ontario Provincial Police staffing levels. This is having a direct effect on the efforts to reduce crime in the province, as demonstrated by the fact that the number of crimes solved during the summer months is lower than during the rest of the year.

What plans do the Solicitor General and his government have in place to ensure that there is an adequate number of OPP officers on duty to prevent and solve crimes in our communities?

Hon Mr Farnan: The member will note that the auditor in many respects congratulated the OPP in many areas on the fine work it is doing, as are police personnel across this province. The member is drawing his question from the document that was produced yesterday. If the member had gone two pages farther he would have found the answer on page 178. Basically, it is a problem, but a problem, I might add, that has been addressed and is being addressed.

We have a memorandum of understanding and there is a collective bargaining process. Police officers, like other persons in society, are entitled to vacations. It is not an unreasonable expectation for police personnel to have some of that vacation time during the summer when their families are at home. There is a policy in place where only one member in six will take leave at that particular time. We are trying to encourage that, where possible, there will be policing at all times to the greatest effect, whether it is on the weekend or during the summer period. The OPP officers and the police across this province provide effective services throughout the year, 12 months of the year, winter and summer.

The Speaker: Although time has expired for question period, due to the lengthy response by the Solicitor General, if the member for Oakville South has a supplementary, I will allow him to place it.

Mr Carr: Thank you very much, Mr Speaker.

The Provincial Auditor gave the government the solution to the problem in his report. Mr Archer determined that 33% of the officers' available hours were spent on administration. This is not acceptable. Mr Archer also determined that on average only 15% of the officers' time was actually spent on patrol; this is not acceptable. The auditor pointed out that each 1% reduction in the administration work rate would save 75,000 hours a year that the OPP could use in other areas. Yet the OPP pointed out that funds required for one method of reducing administration hours are "currently not available."

Over the past five years, the number of violent crimes in this province has increased by 37%, yet police are spending more and more of their time filling out paper. What is the Solicitor General going to do to ensure that the fine police officers in this province do not have to waste their time on paperwork when they should be out on the streets? I say to the Solicitor General, let's get the police back on the streets where they are needed.

Hon Mr Farnan: I point out to the member that in fact there is something of a contradiction in the auditor's report. On the one hand, the auditor is saying, for example, that there must be more enforcement in terms of speeding. Of course, the members will realize that this causes more paperwork, more court time, etc. On the other hand, they are saying we should reduce this amount of time for administration, and I am sure the OPP is taking every effort to reduce paper time. In fact, I would suggest to the House that the initiative taken in terms of Ontario municipal and provincial police automation co-operative, the computer system we are putting in, is a direct effort to reduce administration time and to increase the enforcement component.

Let me also say that in an ideal world our police services could provide all the services, but in reality, our police services at all times must make choices between different areas in which they must work. I believe they do this extremely well, sensitive to the needs of the community, in touch with the community and implementing and enforcing the law as the community requires.

PETITIONS

CAPITAL FUNDING FOR SCHOOLS

Mrs Sullivan: I have three petitions from 135 people, residents of Halton Centre, relating to a request for capital funding for the construction of an elementary school in the Iroquois Ridge in Oakville. I concur with the view of these people that a school is needed in that area and I am pleased to affix my signature to the petition.

GASOLINE PRICES

Mr Wood: I have two petitions on gas pricing in northern Ontario. One of them is concerned with the prices since the Gulf crisis; the other one is concerned with the price of gas over the last 15 to 20 years being different in northern Ontario from southern Ontario. I affixed my name to the petitions. There are some 650 names on the petitions.

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INTRODUCTION OF BILLS

RESIDENTIAL RENT REGULATION AMENDMENT ACT, 1990

Hon Mr Cooke moved first reading of Bill 4, An Act to amend the Residential Rent Regulation Act, 1986.

Motion agreed to.

INTERLOCK PEOPLE LTD ACT, 1990

Mrs Cunningham, on behalf of Mr Cousens, moved first reading of Bill Prl7, An Act to revive The Interlock People Ltd.

Motion agreed to.

ORDERS OF THE DAY

COMMITTEE SIZE

Miss Martel moved resolution 2:

That, notwithstanding standing order 108(a) and for the duration of the 35th Parliament, no standing or select committee shall consist of more than 12 members.

Motion agreed to.

COMMITTEE MEMBERSHIP

Miss Martel moved resolution 3:

That the membership of the standing committees for this session be as follows:

Standing committee on administration of justice: Messrs Carr, Chiarelli, Fletcher, Harnick, Mrs Mathyssen, Messrs Mills, Morrow, Poirier, Sorbara, White, F. Wilson and Winninger.

Standing committee on estimates: Messrs Carr, Daigeler, Hansen, Mrs Haslam, Messrs Jackson, Lessard, Mrs Marland, Mr McGuinty, Mrs McLeod, Mr Perruzza, Ms Ward and Mr G. Wilson.

Standing committee on finance and economic affairs: Messrs Christopherson, Hansen, Jamison, Kwinter, G. Phillips, Sterling, Stockwell, Mrs Sullivan, Messrs Sutherland, B. Ward, Ms M. Ward and Mr Wiseman.

Standing committee on general government: Messrs Abel, Bisson, Brown, Drainville, Duignan, Ms Harrington, Messrs Mammoliti, Mancini, B. Murdoch, Mrs Y. O'Neill, Messrs Scott and Turnbull.

Standing committee on government agencies: Messrs Bradley, Frankford, Grandmaître, Mrs Haslam, Messrs Hayes, McGuinty, McLean, Runciman, Silipo, Stockwell, Waters and Wiseman.

Standing committee on the Legislative Assembly: Messrs Cooper, Duignan, Frankford, Mrs MacKinnon, Mrs Marland, Mrs Mathyssen, Messrs McClelland, Morin, Ms S. Murdock, Messrs H. O'Neil, Owens and Villeneuve.

Standing committee on the Ombudsman: Messrs Curling, Duignan, Mrs Fawcett, Messrs Henderson, Huget, Mrs Mathyssen, Messrs Mammoliti, Morrow, B. Murdoch, Wessenger, White and Mrs Witmer.

Standing committee on public accounts: Messrs Bradley, Callahan, Charlton, Conway, Cooper, Cousens, Hayes, Johnson, Mrs MacKinnon, Mr O'Connor, Ms Poole and Mr Tilson.

Standing committee on regulations and private bills: Messrs Abel, Ferguson, Fletcher, Johnson, Jordan, Mrs MacKinnon, Messrs Miclash, O'Connor, Ruprecht, Sola, Sutherland and J. Wilson.

Standing committee on resources development: Messrs Arnott, Charlton, Ms Churley, Messrs Cleary, Dadamo, Huget, Jordan, Klopp, Offer, Ramsay, Waters and Wood.

Standing committee on social development: Mr Beer, Mrs Caplan, Mr Cordiano, Ms Haeck, Messrs Hope, Malkowski, Martin, Mrs McLeod, Messrs Owens, Silipo, J. Wilson and Mrs Witmer.

Motion agreed to.

COMMITTEE SCHEDULE

Miss Martel moved resolution 4:

That the following schedule for committee meetings be established for this session:

The standing committee on administration of justice may meet on Monday and Tuesday afternoons following routine proceedings; the standing committee on estimates may meet on Tuesday afternoons and Wednesday afternoons following routine proceedings; the standing committee on finance and economic affairs may meet on Thursday mornings and Thursday afternoons following routine proceedings; the standing committee on general government may meet on Thursday mornings and Thursday afternoons following routine proceedings; the standing committee on government agencies may meet on Wednesday mornings; the standing committee on the Legislative Assembly may meet on Wednesday afternoons following routine proceedings; the standing committee on the Ombudsman may meet on Wednesday mornings; the standing committee on public accounts may meet on Thursday mornings; the standing committee on regulations and private bills may meet on Wednesday mornings; the standing committee on resources development may meet on Monday and Wednesday afternoons following routine proceedings, and the standing committee on social development may meet on Monday and Tuesday afternoons following routine proceedings; and that no standing or select committee may meet except in accordance with this schedule or as ordered by the House.

Motion agreed to.

THRONE SPEECH DEBATE / DÉBAT SUR LE DISCOURS DU TRÔNE

Resuming the adjourned debate on the amendment to the amendment to the motion for an address in reply to the speech of His Honour the Lieutenant Governor at the opening of the session.

Mrs Marland: The throne speech of the New Democratic government has great significance to the people of Ontario since it sets out the first believable agenda of Ontario's first socialist government. I say the first believable agenda because the government is already breaking promises contained in An Agenda for People, which the NDP developed for the election campaign.

However, if we think of the throne speech as being our map to NDP policy, this map would certainly cause us to lose our way. I assume that the vague philosophies and objectives set out in the speech will be translated into concrete action in the near future. In the meantime, though, there are many parts of the throne speech which worry me.

First, as the Progressive Conservative spokesperson for the greater Toronto area and the MPP for a riding in the GTA, I am worried that the GTA now means "geographic territory absent" from the throne speech. The four million people who live in the GTA had hoped that the appointment of a minister responsible for the greater Toronto area signalled an understanding by the NDP government that a new approach was needed to managing the growth of the greater Toronto area. Yet the words "greater Toronto area" never appear in this throne speech.

In fact, a backgrounder provided by the GTA minister estimates that the greater Toronto area's population will increase by approximately 50% over the next 35 years. Yet even today the GTA is splitting at the seams. Our highways and public transit systems are clogged beyond capacity. We have an affordable housing crisis of epidemic proportions. New development is consuming prime agricultural land while older, more central areas decay. There is no co-ordinated plan for waterfront development and our growth is not environmentally sustainable. Surely the special and serious problems facing the GTA deserve more than a no-mention.

So far, the post-throne-speech announcements regarding the GTA have been no more reassuring than the speech itself. Consider waste management. The Minister of the Environment, who has responsibility for the GTA, has proposed a cure that may be worse than the ailment. Granted, the minister's objectives of greater reduction, reuse and recycling in order to divert materials from landfill sites, combined with a more appropriate environmental assessment process, are shared by us all, but I would like to tell her that some of those things are already being done in the landfill site that serves my riding -- namely, Britannia -- where they have not accepted cardboard and wood for some time.

The minister is not being realistic. She has not released any details regarding a 3Rs program and she has decided to continue the previous government's policy of more discussion on how to change the environmental assessment process, despite recommendations received four years ago from the Canadian Institute for Environmental Law and Policy.

Without action on the 3Rs and the EA process, we will not have a new landfill site ready in 1993 when all the current GTA sites will be full. Three GTA sites -- Keele Valley in Vaughan, Brock West in Pickering and Britannia in Mississauga -- will be asked to take more garbage than they were designed to hold. That is an environmental risk as well as being grossly unfair to those communities. In the event of an emergency, two proposed sites in Brampton and Pickering may even be opened to take garbage without an environmental assessment whatsoever.

This is not waste management for the GTA; it is waste mismanagement. Frankly, we expected far more from this new minister.

Another concern about the new GTA waste management plan is who will pay for the bill for hauling garbage from the five regional municipalities to one long-term site. Frank Bean, chairman of the region of Peel, estimates that the current annual bill of $30 million to dump garbage at Peel's Britannia site in Mississauga could escalate to $130 million per year to haul garbage outside of Peel.

The previous Liberal government financed many of its new programs by offloading the costs on to the municipalities and their property taxpayers. I certainly hope the GTA's waste management announcement does not signal that the NDP government will continue the Liberal tradition.

This year, taxpayers in my riding of Mississauga South faced increases of 9.4% for the regional portion of their tax bill, 7.7% for the municipal portion and staggering increases of 17.2% for the Peel Board of Education taxes and 16.5% for the separate board taxes. The property taxpayers cannot afford to pay such increases year after year. They cannot afford to pay the extra costs of hauling garbage outside the region of Peel.

During the election campaign, the NDP promised a new provincial-municipal partnership. But how can we believe this promise when there is no mention of it in the throne speech and one of the government's first major announcements leaves us wondering whether another expensive provincial initiative will be financed on the backs of the property taxpayers?

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Another crucial greater Toronto area issue is the need to repair and replace aging infrastructure. The throne speech promises that $700 million will be spent on repairing and maintaining public sector facilities, yet according to the figures released by the minister responsible for the greater Toronto area, over the next 35 years the GTA infrastructure will require spending of from $74 billion to $79 billion in 1990 dollars. That amounts to more than $2 billion per year for just the GTA infrastructure, so how is only $700 million going to do the job? And is that $700 million going to be spent in the GTA? As I said before, the words "greater Toronto area" are never mentioned in this throne speech.

The GTA is not my only worry. As the Progressive Conservative spokesperson for disabled persons, I am concerned about two issues of concern to disabled persons: employment equity and advocacy. These were not addressed in the throne speech. I trust that the government will also give its immediate attention to issues beyond advocacy and employment equity. Certainly we had some very horrific examples in the last two days of why there is such an urgent need to those issues pertaining to people with disabilities.

I am pleased that the government has promised action on the advocacy report that has "been gathering dust for far too long." However, on behalf of disabled persons across this province, I hope the action comes sooner rather than later.

May I take this opportunity to remind the new government that last November the minister responsible for disabled persons tabled the annual report of the Ontario Advisory Council for Disabled Persons. In that annual report, the phrases "waiting," "under review" and "currently reviewing" describe the status of reports such as Independent Living: The Time is Now, about attendant care, and The Freedom to Move is Life Itself, about transportation. More than a year later, we still have made little progress on the recommendations of these very valuable, very comprehensive reports.

In addition, we discovered last spring that the previous Liberal government actually cancelled -- and I emphasize this because we could not believe it -- its supportive community living program and the Ontario home renewal program for disabled persons. It is pretty hard to believe, but it is not hard to understand why that government is no longer in office.

I have received calls both from constituents and from residents of Metropolitan Toronto concerning problems with booking rides on the Transhelp and the Wheel-Trans services for persons with disabilities. These services are unable to meet the demand for transportation, to the point where some clients have missed important doctors' appointments when their rides have fallen through at the last minute. As these services rely upon subsidies from the provincial government, this is a matter the new government must address. Of course, we are not only talking about appointments with physicians, hospitals and physiotherapy; we are talking about the basic need for people with disabilities to commute to their places of employment.

Having covered some of the key issues regarding disabled persons, I will turn to my concerns as the Progressive Conservative spokesperson for Culture and Communications. The throne speech says: "We recognize the importance of the arts to the economy and to the quality of our lives. We will augment our support of artists and arts organizations through the Ontario Arts Council."

Again, the NDP government is short on details. Again, we must wait and see.

The new government knows that, given its recent decision to reverse the previous Liberal government's funding commitment to the ballet opera house, there are serious concerns in the cultural community for the future of arts funding in Ontario. We all know, however, that difficult decisions must be made in recessionary times, when it is crucial to set priorities based on human need. However, I hope the new government will not catch the Liberal government's habit of introducing legislation like Bill 114 and Bill 119, which weakened the dedication of lottery profits to the arts, culture, recreation and sports.

Returning to the concerns of my riding of Mississauga South, one of my biggest worries is the state of our education system. Earlier, I spoke of the need for more capital spending to repair and maintain infrastructure in the GTA.

In Mississauga, the capital spending needs of our schools are particularly acute. One of the worst situations in my riding is at St James elementary school. Last April I presented petitions from the students, their parents and the staff of St James school regarding the school's desperate need for capital funding. I would like to read one letter in this House from only one of these students. This letter has a little drawing on it done by that student. The letter says:

"Dear Sir or Madam:

"I am writing you this letter because we need a gym because we don't have a gym." "Don't" is spelled d-o-t. "I don't think it is not fair, because if we had a gym, then I could skip." "Could" is spelled c-o-d.

This letter is obviously written -- in fact, it is -- by a grade 1 student, Anna, and this grade 1 student is saying to this new government, "It isn't fair that I attend a school whose basic standards of facility are way below anything we would expect in any school in this province in 1990."

The St James students, like many students in both Peel school boards, stand a good chance of going through the elementary years with all of their classes in portables. What is different at St James is that this school does not even have a gymnasium. As we enter the winter months that make physical education next to impossible -- not to mention that the school has no place to hold its public events, school concerts, Christmas celebrations -- how we can anticipate what that means for yet another year to these students is very real.

As I have said, many of the letters from the children at St James that were sent to me were also sent to the former Premier and the former Minister of Education. It is hard to make these children understand why, after all their letters, they are spending yet another school year without a gymnasium or proper accommodation.

During the election campaign the New Democratic candidates promised to raise the provincial share of education costs to 60% funding for elementary and secondary schools over the next five years. Yet the throne speech, which we are responding to today -- and this, I find, is the biggest irony of all -- made no mention of education funding.

Again, what are we to believe? What do I tell the children at St James school or the parents of children in other schools who are existing in substandard accommodation?

Granted, this government faces the difficult task of repairing the damage done by the previous Liberal administration. It is a considerable handicap to discover a $2.5-billion deficit, when it was estimated by the previous government that there would be a $30-million surplus in the provincial budget. But as the speech from the throne says, "Ontario's realities -- the environment, the economy, our social services, and the challenges facing Canada itself -- require leadership."

So far, I am not confident that the New Democratic Party is able to provide that leadership which this province so desperately needs.

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Mr Henderson: It is indeed always a pleasure to hear the erudite words of the member for Mississauga South, speaking in her eloquent way of the Tory platform, such as it may be.

I have a question, however. In her reference to the ballet opera house, the member managed to talk about that without telling us where she stands and what her view is. May I, therefore, ask the member for Mississauga South: Do she and her party, or do they not, support the building of the ballet opera house, and do they or do they not support the awarding of government funds in the order of $55 million or so to make it possible? Do they support that or do they not?

Mrs Marland: Had the member for Etobicoke-Humber listened very carefully to my words, my words were chosen very carefully and were written very precisely because the question, the very question he is asking me today, is purely academic. What we are saying in our caucus and what I am saying in my response to the throne speech is that difficult funding decisions have to be made in recessionary times and it is crucial to set priorities based on human need.

I would respectfully suggest that the member for Etobicoke-Humber knows full well he is a member of a government that was totally incapable of setting priorities in terms of human needs. This member was a member of a government which thought it was all right to send cancer patients to Nova Scotia and Thunder Bay and elsewhere, patients who travelled outside of this province at a very traumatic time in their lives.

Also, obviously he was a member of a government that did not know what was going on or even understand what was happening with a major investment on behalf of the taxpayers of this province through the domed stadium corporation for change in design and so forth.

So I, in turn, would say to the member of Etobicoke-Humber, if he is so good at asking the questions now, where was he in giving the answers when his party was the government?

Hon Mrs Carter: I am proud to address this House as the member for Peterborough riding, and I am proud to be the minister responsible for the energy policy of Ontario's first NDP government. Before I discuss energy policy, I want to make some personal comments and some remarks about my riding.

I was a teenager in 1945 when the atomic bombs were dropped on Japan. I was shocked that one nation could inflict such devastation on another and concerned about the long-term effects, both on the Japanese and on us all.

My children were all born in Berkshire, England, because Berkshire is the home of the atomic energy research establishment in Britain. I had encouraged my husband to work on nuclear energy research, which we thought at that time might help atone for the horror of the bomb.

Most of our neighbours and friends during those years, 1956 to 1962, were young nuclear researchers. We lived in the world of nuclear energy. I visited the reactors and met some of the leading scientists. At the same time, atomic bomb tests were proceeding and the politicians in power seemed to have no concept of what this might mean for human health.

As a mother of young children, I campaigned vigorously to end the tests. In 1963, the partial nuclear test ban removed one threat to the environment. An accident at the reactor at Sellafield in northwest England led me to realize that nuclear power was less benign than I had hoped. There was a close connection between weapons and power, and power reactors were being used to make plutonium for weapons.

This started me thinking very seriously about broader energy issues. I decided to learn more about non-nuclear methods of generating electricity. I found that the approved method of dealing with sulphur dioxide emissions from coal plants was to build taller chimney stacks to disperse them over a wider area. This is now known to be a main cause of acid rain.

I learned that large-scale electricity generation creates large-scale problems. I was gradually greened and became a proponent of energy efficiency and renewable energy. My home has had a solar water heater for years and my family has cut our personal energy use dramatically through conservation measures.

When we decided to come to Ontario, we were influenced by the fact that a large proportion of Ontario's energy was at that time generated by water power. That, of course, is why it is called hydro. We moved to Peterborough, the home of the large Canadian General Electric factory which has played such a large part in making power production equipment for Canada. In the 1950s, CGE was the magnet which drew thousands of people to Peterborough and it was long recognized as the city's main employer.

However, times have changed and Peterborough has been hit badly by the decline in industrial jobs which the federal government has accelerated with its free trade deal. Education, health and other services provide an employment base, but as in many other places, Peterborough's manufacturing base has been eroded.

My constituents are worried about jobs and taxes, about affordable housing, about health services and child care and about the environment. Last summer, beaches were closed more often than they were open. Our urban forest of maple trees is dying. The health and safety of workers is not as well protected as it should be. Waste disposal problems are acute, particularly in the townships. Environmental problems are no abstraction to my constituents. They lower our quality of life and discourage tourists.

Farmers in my riding, as elsewhere, find it hard to make a living and are forced to raise money through lot severances, a process which threatens to undermine the integrity of farming areas and reduce our ability to produce food.

As Minister of Energy, I see energy very much as an environmental issue. The nuclear moratorium is an important part of our policy, but the key component is an unprecedented program to promote energy efficiency. We are committed to maintaining energy supplies, but we cannot do this by accepting projections of future demand as given and then scrambling to meet them. That is a road to financial and environmental disaster.

We are not asking people to suffer. We are asking them to realize that a kilowatt saved is a kilowatt earned. It costs less and it does not pollute. The technology of doing more with less energywise is moving ahead rapidly and opens up wonderful possibilities. Efficient end use of energy can reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and other pollutants and save money at the same time. It is also an important economic tool, giving Ontario great competitiveness in the global market.

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The nuclear moratorium and the government's new energy directions are real steps towards a society based on sustainable development. The $240 million that Ontario Hydro intended to spend for development of new nuclear plants will now be spent on conservation. The engineers and technical personnel involved will be reassigned. Ontario Hydro's agreement with AECL will be renegotiated so that there will be no specific financial support for new nuclear development.

I am asking Ontario Hydro to increase and accelerate its efforts in demand management, energy conservation and parallel generation. Ontario Hydro will also give priority to the early environmental assessment of hydroelectric projects at new and existing sites and of transmission facilities to bring electricity from Manitoba.

We will ensure that northern and native communities are consulted and that they benefit from Hydro's ongoing activities and any proposed developments which receive environmental approval. Projects with minimal impacts can be undertaken first. The Adam Beck facilities at Niagara Falls will be rebuilt. If more power is needed quickly, natural gas combustion turbine units can be brought into use.

By reducing demand for power, the recession has given us breathing space in which to make conservation work. The Environmental Assessment Board hearings on Hydro's plan will continue in order to allow public input and to assess environmental and financial costs of all major future supply and demand.

I am happy to say that Ontario Hydro's chairman, Bob Franklin, has responded very positively to our request that Ontario Hydro more actively pursue demand management, conservation, parallel generation and the encouragement of customers to use fuels other than electricity where this is appropriate. Hydro's light replacement program has already saved 53 megawatts of electricity, enough to run a small town.

Members may be interested to hear some quotations from Mr Franklin's recent speeches. This is what he said:

"Baths and bungalows should be heated by natural gas wherever possible. Electricity is too valuable and too costly to heat dishwater. We can live just as well as we do now using less electricity if we use it more wisely. If a builder installs 15 kilowatts of electric heat in a house in Ontario, Hydro has to spend over $50,000 to build the capacity to keep that house warm. This is not a cheap heating system."

This is Bob Franklin talking:

"Energy conservation is also a way to create jobs. Much of the effort to increase energy efficiency is labour-intensive. Conservation happens close to the point of consumption. It tends to be widely dispersed. The economic activity is not concentrated in one area."

In fact, improving energy efficiency will have widespread benefits for Ontario's economy. A Swedish study shows that a doubling of electricity end use efficiency can simultaneously displace the nuclear half of present supply, support a 54% larger gross national product, cut carbon dioxide emission by a third and reduce electricity costs by $1 billion a year.

Compared with conventional low-energy studies, an efficiency scenario uses many times less energy, costs much less, stretches oil and gas supplies for centuries, dispenses with reliance on either the Middle East or the atom and by 2030 attains an atmospheric carbon dioxide level barely above today's. In short, it is much cheaper and cleaner today to save fuel than to burn it to get the same job done.

Because Canada has been using energy extravagantly, there are rich gains to be made through efficiency. Reduced costs will improve the export position of our industries. New manufacturers of energy-efficient appliances and equipment will provide jobs in Ontario and further help our exports to compete.

My ministry will take a leadership role in energy efficiency. Our current range of programs for business consumers and industry will be expanded. Regulations are being issued under the Energy Efficiency Act to ensure that appliances in the stores are energy-efficient. More innovative programs to replace existing appliances are being studied by my parliamentary assistant. We are working closely with other ministries, such as Housing, Transportation, Government Services, Environment and Industry, Trade and Technology, to make sure that all have energy efficiency as part of their mandate.

These new energy directions are designed to reduce the environmental impact and enhance efficiency of use of all fuels in all sectors, not just electricity. The announcement by my colleague the Minister of Transportation earlier this week serves as an example of the breadth of the government's commitment to enhance efficiency of energy use and reduction in associated environmental emissions.

The $5-billion commitment to efficient transit systems, subways, light rail transit, busways and ride sharing will result in enormous savings in gasoline use, much lower emissions of carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, volatile organic compounds and carbon monoxide, reductions in global warming, in ozone, in the gases that are threatening the health of our people, including our children, and the health of our planet. For example, a ministry study shows that subways consume less than 2% of the energy used by an automobile on a passenger-kilometre basis. Real savings from real commitments.

I want to emphasize that we have three major reasons for our energy policies. One is environmental: reduced fuel use is the best answer to the problems of global warming and of acid rain. One is social: not only will there be more jobs, but they will be healthy jobs, permanent jobs and jobs that will be generated evenly over the province where people live. The third is financial: we cannot afford to keep building power stations at $25 billion each.

Hydro rates are rising faster than inflation. Ontario Hydro's massive long-term debt, now about $26 billion, with annual interest rates exceeding $3 billion, has been incurred mostly to pay for its current nuclear program. The increases of close to 9% for each of the next three years are directly related to the completion of the Darlington station. Future nuclear power programs are already effectively dead in Germany, the United States and other countries. Mrs Thatcher could not privatize nuclear power because the banks would not carry the risk of decommissioning or nuclear waste disposal. The British energy minister reported that nuclear cost estimates by the industry bore no relationship to actual costs.

Ontario's Candu reactors are different from those elsewhere, but their initial high performance has been falling off. In 1983, seven of the eight reactors at Pickering A and Bruce A were in the world top 10 for lifetime performance. Following pressure tube failures in 1983 and 1986, the older reactors are being retubed and their lifetime performance has dropped.

Ontario now has four of its newer reactors, at Pickering B and Bruce B, in the top 10, but currently as many as five of the older reactors are not working. That is why the government, as part of our commitment to maintaining the reliability of our electricity system, has directed Ontario Hydro to invest in measures that will improve the operating efficiency and safety of existing reactors.

In closing, I want to stress again that demand reduction through the efficient end use of energy is the main new energy direction for Ontario. The thousands of families all across Ontario who flock to buy new compact fluorescent lightbulbs are the wave of the future. The overall effect of millions of people making such changes will not only save energy and protect the environment but will help to contain energy costs.

The answer to Ontario's future energy needs is not building more nuclear plants but making a strong effort to promote efficiency, parallel generation and the development of renewable energy alternatives. Other governments have talked about changing energy directions. This government will do it.

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Mr Conway: I would like to make a brief comment. We have just heard a stunning speech from the Minister of Energy, one that I shall certainly review very carefully over the next 12 hours, and I am sure my colleagues and other members in the House will want to take this up at question time tomorrow.

It is, as far as I can judge, a speech at some very considerable variance with what the leader of the government has indicated. It is a stunning comment about job losses to be anticipated in my constituency. By my reckoning, the Minister of Energy has just told hundreds of people in my constituency that they will be out of work before the spring. I am sure that in Niagara Falls and in Cambridge and in Bruce and in Elliot Lake, thousands more will be very interested in reading carefully what the honourable lady from Peterborough has just announced.

I want to go on the record as expressing grave concern about her comments. As far as I can judge -- believe you me, I will be reading this speech the moment the blues are available -- I detect a very considerable difference between what the minister is saying this afternoon and what the Premier has said, both in the House and outside. If I were to be sitting on that Environmental Assessment Board, to which panel will be referred many of the central questions in the new government's energy policy, I cannot imagine and I do not know how I could accept the invitation in light of the minister's just completed remarks, which seem to make very clear what government policy will be.

Again, I think I heard the honourable lady say some things at fundamental variance with what the Premier has said, both in the House and outside. I repeat that as the winter of 1990-91 stares before us with rising unemployment, the honourable lady's speech is a clear signal to hundreds of people whom I represent that they will be out of work, if she has her way, within weeks, if not sooner.

Mr Elston: I likewise am quite concerned by the release of government policy today during a reply to the throne speech, which I find a very novel way to announce a whole series of layoffs for the province of Ontario. This type of speech made at this time is designed to avoid the spotlight of the press. Since the members of the press have left to fill their deadlines for the stories that must be put in the papers for tomorrow, they have missed this very important announcement.

Here, at a time when this province is suffering from layoffs and loss of jobs at a rate that we have not seen in the most recent of times, this minister chose this time to announce another series of major layoffs in this province, throwing the economies of places like Bruce county into a tailspin.

For a number of people, just prior to Christmas, at a time when things are difficult enough, this will be seen to be a very serious blemish on the economy of that great part of this province. I express very severe reservations about what she has said and, like my colleague the member for Renfrew North, I will spend a great deal of time analysing exactly what she said, because it comes just a mere two days after my friend the member for Hamilton Mountain visited the people of Bruce county to say: "Don't worry. The NDP are a bunch of nice guys and we're saving you all from the world. We will protect you. We will build you up."

It tells me that the minister does not know what her parliamentary assistant is saying, that she does not know what the Premier is saying, that none of those people are together on this issue. She has chosen at a most inopportune time to announce a series of major layoffs in the county of Bruce and other areas around the province. I cannot believe she has done this without consulting the unions at the stations in Bruce. I cannot believe she would allow this to occur at a time when the Canadian Auto Workers are busy trying to recruit for union members at the Bruce plant.

Mr Scott: The honourable member who spoke so eloquently today will want to remember what happens to members of the NDP who speak out of line on energy matters. But leaving that aside for one moment. can I simply say that I believe her comments are sincerely held, but she has to understand that she represents the government of Ontario when she makes those statements. What she has told us today is what she would conclude if she were sitting on the Environmental Assessment Board. She has answered the questions that the government has put to the Environmental Assessment Board and told the board what the reaction of the government will be to its recommendations. In those circumstances there are, it seems to me, two practical alternatives: either the Environmental Assessment Board hearing the matter should be disbanded or the minister should resign.

Mrs Sullivan: I too am pleased to respond to the member's comments. I am also extremely concerned that in her remarks as a private member making her initial statement to the House on the throne speech, she has spoken as a minister. In fact, in her remarks she has usurped the authority of the Environmental Assessment Board, which is reviewing the demand-supply plan that Ontario Hydro has put together.

In her remarks the minister indicated that she does not believe Ontario can afford to build plants. I say we cannot afford not to have adequate electricity supplies for our businesses, for our industries, for our institutions, for our commercial operations and indeed for our residents who live in all of our communities.

The plan that has been put forward by Ontario Hydro for review at the Environmental Assessment Board is a balanced plan with various scenarios, including significant amounts of conservation. We have also seen in the past from the previous government substantial, innovative approaches in relation to energy efficiency, including a new Energy Efficiency Act for appliances and energy audits that are assisting businesses and industries and commercial operations to come to terms with reducing their dependence on energy.

Since the minister has been leaping into other areas, I wonder if she is interested in leaping into those areas further. By example, will she insist on a changed approach to buyback rates? Will she extend and insist on extending environmental assessments to the private power projects she envisages? Will she insist that the Little Jackfish environmental assessment application, which is before the minister for review and has been there for two years, come forward?

Hon Mrs Carter: I am quite surprised by the intensity of this response to my speech, because in fact it is totally congruent with the throne speech. There is nothing whatever different there. There will be no loss of jobs. We are not phasing out the existing nuclear power stations. We are completing Darlington. Existing jobs are involved with the existing power stations, and Bob Franklin has said that the small number of people within Ontario Hydro who are working on the projected new power stations will be reassigned. In other words, there is no job loss.

On the other hand, the policies we are pursuing will, as I stated in my speech, create jobs. They will create far more jobs per dollar of expenditure than is the case with nuclear power. They will also, as I said, be permanent jobs, and jobs that happen in places where people live.

We never said we were going to wait for the results from the Environmental Assessment Board. It is a key part of our policy that we are pursuing our policies at the same time as the board hearings are proceeding. If any members can find any point of divergence between my speech and what has previously been said, then I should be very interested to hear what it is.

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Mrs McLeod: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: I would appreciate it if there could be some clarification whether there are any rules of order that apply to a minister of the crown making a major policy statement in the House in the context of a speech from the throne response. I would appreciate that clarification, because I think it puts members of the House who have a particular long-standing interest in the major issues that were raised in the speech at a disadvantage in not being able to attend to hear that statement. I would also recognize that it puts at a disadvantage all of those people who would be affected by the indications of new policy directions that the minister has made today.

The Acting Speaker (Mr Villeneuve): The Chair will take the request under consideration and will be providing you with an answer in due course.

Mr McGuinty: Mr Speaker, it is an honour for me to rise in this House today to address you and my fellow members as the elected representative for Ottawa South. I am most grateful to the people of Ottawa South for placing their confidence in me and I pledge myself to do the utmost at my command to bring their concerns to bear in this House.

Over the years this chamber has witnessed the contributions made to this province by our predecessors. I am proud to follow in this tradition. There can be no doubt that politics has its problems, but these are problems inherent in the players, not in the play. Politics remains for me an honourable profession.

We would do well to keep in mind that this Parliament, like all parliaments before it, will settle nothing finally.

Our successes will only be temporary successes when examined under the light of history. Today's solutions will not solve all of tomorrow's problems. But this does not mean that we struggle here in vain to improve the lot of the people of Ontario. On the contrary, we in our turn are laying a foundation upon which our successors and their successors will build. The strength of the foundation we construct will be directly related to the breadth and depth of the vision shown by the members of this Parliament. This relationship dictates that in all of our work here we must look to the next generation, not merely the next election.

I would like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to my predecessor, the former member for Ottawa South, Dalton McGuinty Sr, my father. Although he served here for only a brief period, from September 1987 until his death in March of this year, my father clearly left his mark on this House and on Ottawa South. He spared no efforts with the resources at his command, his intellect, his eloquence, his wit, his courage, to lead his constituents, his fellow Liberals and this House along a path which he felt deeply to be the right path. On behalf of the people of Ottawa South, I wish to express our heartfelt appreciation for the dedicated service rendered to us by Dalton McGuinty Sr.

On my own behalf, I pledge myself to continue in my father's tradition of dedicated and honourable service to the people of Ottawa South.

I believe there is, implicit in each member's election to this Parliament, a mandate for leadership. I believe also that if we sit in this House merely as human barometers of public opinion, that is not leadership. Leadership requires that we enlist the people of Ontario to our causes, causes espoused by us because of their unremitting merit.

In the words of that great parliamentarian, Edmund Burke, "Your representative owes you, not his industry alone, but his judgement; and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion."

In exercising that judgement, we must beware of influences which would divorce us from our conscience in order that we achieve a kind of schizophrenic duality. A conscience is a good thing in this House. To my mind, there is no better anchor than a conscience when we are buffeted by the winds of political expediency.

In the preamble to its speech from the throne, this new government stated that it would "open Queen's Park to those who have never before had an effective voice in the corridors of power."

Two disturbing implications arise logically from this statement. The first implication is that only this government can effectively represent some nameless group or groups. That is an unfair criticism of every past Ontario government which has made a sincere effort to represent the interests of all the people of this province.

The second implication is more ominous. It leads us to conclude that the way this government intends to represent groups, allegedly hitherto without an effective voice, is to favour the interests of such groups over the interests of the rest of the people of Ontario.

I caution this government to consider its fundamental responsibility as a government to remain responsive to all of the people of Ontario. Governments should give priority to the needs of those groups which, on the basis of objective assessment, deserve priority. A government should keep no friends. Any friends it made before it formed the government ought to be held at arm's length or they will constitute an impediment to a fair and just government.

À titre de critique pour mon parti en matière d'énergie, je constate, à ma grande déception, que le gouvernement n'a pas défini clairement ses intentions en matière d'énergie nucléaire dans son discours du trône. Les Ontariens et les Ontariennes ne savent toujours pas si le gouvernement actuel prévoit interdire la construction de nouvelles centrales nucléaires. Nous ne savons rien non plus sur ce que le gouvernement entend faire pour s'attaquer au problème du réchauffement de la planète, ce qui constitue peut-être le plus grave problème environnemental au monde à l'heure actuelle.

Nous n'avons toujours rien entendu sur la taxe sur les émissions de bioxyde de carbone, les normes sur les émissions des véhicules, les normes sur les émissions de bioxyde de carbone, la recherche sur les nouveaux types de carburants, les modifications au code du bâtiment ou la réforme des règlements portant sur le gaz naturel. Il s'agit là de dossiers chéris par le Nouveau Parti démocratique avant qu'il ne prenne le pouvoir.

I take great pride in being a Liberal member in this Parliament, for liberalism is the outlook best qualified to deal with our world. Liberalism is imbued with a spirit of progress and reform, vision and imagination. It will not shrink from the challenges of a changing world, but will welcome them. Liberalism has implicit faith in the power of men and women to do what is good and possible to meet the challenges of the future, with bigger government or bigger business or bigger unions not the answer to all our problems.

It was in the spirit of liberalism that Hubert Humphrey observed some 20 years ago, "The true moral test of government is how it treats those in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the aged; and those who are in the shadow of life, the sick, the needy, the handicapped."

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The New Democratic Party does not have a monopoly on social consciousness. I beseech all members of this House to guard vigilantly against the loss of their idealism. If any present here have lost their idealism, then they must regain it. For what matters in every age are the ideals which inspire our efforts and the integrity of these efforts.

Our tools for use in this House in our struggle to achieve our ideals are our ideas. Ideas are powerful tools and they must be developed and used carefully. Our ideas will endure beyond the life of this Parliament and indeed beyond our own lives. They are the vehicle through which we can make a real and lasting contribution.

I would like to conclude with the words of advice written by my father, in a letter he sent while the member for Ottawa South, to all members of the last Parliament. His words are in paraphrase of St Francis of Assisi:

"Let us remember that when we leave this earth we can take with us nothing that we have received -- fleeting symbols of honour, trappings of power -- but only what we have given: a full heart enriched by honest service, love, sacrifice and courage."

Mr White: I want to thank the member opposite for his excellent and eloquent statements and his exhortations to us to remember our idealism. Certainly, his sincerity was clear within his comments. His ideals, I am sure, will remain intact for some time to come.

The issue he brought forth about the fact that many governments in the past have had a sincere effort to represent the peoples of Ontario is undoubtedly true. There have been occasions, however, when the sincerity of some members has waxed and waned. Some governments wax and wane.

The issues of idealism and integrity come back again and again to the fore. Certainly, the issues around integrity and honesty were very clearly brought out in the first points of the throne speech, the issues that related to conflict of interest and whistle-blowing legislation, so we have not only a commitment to our own ideals as social democrats but also a commitment that is so open that we are welcoming civil servants to speak at any point when they see any derogation of our duties.

The issue of sincerity comes time and time again to the fore. Certainly, the sincerity of the member opposite is evident. However, I have heard recently other members whose commitment to ideals seems to be limited to the colour of their ties.

Mr Beer: For many of us in the House, as we sat here listening to our friend and colleague speaking, I think there is no question but that we heard the old and familiar voice of his father, Dalton McGuinty Sr. We recall the number of times we sat in this House and listened to his father as he addressed so many issues, and always, I think, brought to those issues a certain sense of ethics, a sense of integrity, indeed a sense very much of the religion from which he came and which was so important to him.

As we sat and listened to his son today, I think we could all share in the pride that I know his father would feel. Indeed, I am sure his father is here with us in this room at this time, because it is that kind of presence that we all do feel, and we are glad to see that his son is now representing the same riding and I know will do so with the same dignity and integrity that his father served Ottawa South.

J'aimerais aussi dire que c'est pour moi un grand plaisir d'accueillir un autre anglophone -- ou est-ce que je devrais dire peut-être un Canadien d'origine irlandaise ? -- qui parle si bien le français. Je pense qu'il est très important de constater que, de plus en plus dans cette Chambre, nous pouvons en effet discuter des grandes questions de l'heure en français et en anglais. Donc, je suis très content d'accueillir notre nouveau député d'Ottawa-Sud.

Mrs Cunningham: It gives me a great deal of pleasure and some pride to rise on behalf of the members of our caucus this afternoon, many of whom knew the father of the member for Ottawa South, and to say that in his speech this afternoon we were reminded that, on many an occasion, we shared the eloquence, the sincerity, the honesty and the great sense of humour in both this House and in the committee work his father gave on behalf of the citizens he served. If it is true that, even after many of us leave, there will be some legacy, I think he is especially privileged to know that his son was able to speak the way he did this afternoon. We share our congratulations. We are expecting much more and we think that some days the Liberals are very lucky, and this is one of them. I know you, Mr Speaker, share our congratulations.

Mr Chiarelli: I want to make a few brief comments, starting with some reference to the member's father, who was part of our caucus from Ottawa-Carleton, somebody we all respected very much. But as many members know, Dalton Sr was very tall and towered over most of us. I used to joke with him all the time that if we cut him in half we could make two good Italians out of him.

In any case, with respect to the member for Ottawa South, I do want to say that he has been an excellent addition to our Ottawa-Carleton caucus. With respect to our whole caucus, we have only the one new member because of the obvious results of the election, and I do want to say that probably if we had had a choice, we could not have picked a better member.

Mr McGuinty: I would simply like to thank my fellow members on all sides of the House for their gracious comments and wish them all the best in the days to come. I am sure that from time to time we will be caught up in the issues at hand, but I think it is crucial that we reflect upon those principles which guide us as we address the issues before us.

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Mr Tilson: Mr Speaker, I begin my remarks by offering my congratulations to you on your appointment to this assembly. I am sure you will serve us all with distinction in the years to come.

Mr Speaker, if you cast your mind back to your first few months in the House, you will recollect -- fondly, I am sure -- the excitement and invigoration of those early days as a rookie MPP. I am new to this assembly and, like so many new members from all parties, I am still immersed in those feelings. Hopefully one never loses that sense of thrill, awe and enormous responsibility which comes with this job we hold at the behest of our constituents.

None of us here would be here if it were not for our constituents. For any number of reasons, they put us here to do a job. We forget them at our peril. So as we each make our own contributions to the throne speech debate, let us do so in the context of our constituents' needs, interests and expectations.

Permit me to tell members about the constituents of Dufferin-Peel and what they might have expected to see in this throne speech. I represent the town of Caledon, the region of Peel and the county of Dufferin. There are many issues which affect my constituents, but probably none so much as transportation. To be specific, we are concerned with the state of our roads and the absence of attractive commuter transit alternatives in our area.

A major issue for us has been the absence of GO bus service along the Highway 10 corridor to link Orangeville and Caledon with Brampton and Toronto. If you look at a GO Transit service map, you will notice a great triangular void to the northwest of Metropolitan Toronto. That is Ontario's Bermuda Triangle. It is an area to which GO does not venture. That is roughly my riding, though to be fair, there is a modest GO bus service to Bolton and Palgrave which was planned by a previous Conservative government.

We live in one of the fastest-growing areas adjacent to Toronto. My Caledon constituents pay taxes unique to the greater Toronto area and yet for the most part do not enjoy one of the fundamental services to the GTA area, namely, GO.

The former government studied the viability of extending GO bus service to Orangeville through western Caledon and found demand to be marginally sufficient. But after one excuse or another, including the rather feeble one that Orangeville lies outside GO's service area -- it is in fact on the border of the GTA -- we still do not have GO. I am here today in part because the former member did not convince the residents of Dufferin-Peel that she worked sufficiently hard for the realization of GO service.

Recently the chair of GO even picked up on one of the former Liberal government's many excuses, that being that private carriers already serve the area and therefore GO does not need to and should not enter our market. I find it ironic that by telling my constituents that they must make do with a bus service which is in no way comparable to GO, the chair of GO appears to be espousing a policy of privatization of commuter services. Does he, I wonder, accurately reflect government policy?

Several days ago we sat here and listened to the new Minister of Transportation sound exactly like the old Minister of Transportation as he announced his government's transportation initiatives. For the most part, these initiatives sound as if they are cribbed from the Liberals' copybook. They lack the boldness and originality that we desperately need to solve our transportation problems.

Frankly, it did not take long for the stagnant bureaucracy at MTO to hijack and hold hostage the imagination of this new minister. Simply throwing $5 billion-plus at a problem does not necessarily guarantee its solution. Applying new thinking and deploying existing resources in effective fashion might bring about better results.

Another area where my constituents looked to the throne speech for even a glimmer of hope was health care. My community, Orangeville, has long needed a new hospital. This need was recognized locally years ago. In 1987 the former government came through with a capital commitment of $20 million for a new hospital on a new site straddling Dufferin-Peel's border. That was at least a beginning. However, like many other health capital projects announced by the former government, the new Dufferin-area hospital became mired in procedure and squabbling.

In the week prior to my election, my Liberal opponent and the then Minister of Health staged an indoor mock sod-turning ceremony in an attempt to symbolize progress on the new hospital. I am sure that the member for Oriole, if she is listening, remembers her visit to Orangeville on the eve of the election and this event in particular with much fondness. Few in the community, however, were fooled by such theatrics, and what became known locally as "the shovel incident" came to symbolize all that was wrong and downright phony about the former Liberal government.

My constituents are looking to the new NDP government to give the green light to the next stage of the Dufferin-Caledon hospital project. Locally, we have raised money and undertaken the necessary studies to bring the health care delivery into the 1990s and beyond. The hospital is now poised to undertake a so-called functional program for the new facility. It is one more step, but a very essential step, towards the realization of everyone's dreams of better local health care.

Allow me to describe some of the concerns I have in my appointed area of responsibility within this caucus.

As critic for the Ministry of Housing, I am deeply concerned, as I expressed today. with the absence to date of any clear direction from this government in so far as housing and rent control issues are concerned. Today, of course, we simply heard of a moratorium and that was it.

I am told the minister is bright and persuasive. It is obvious, however, that he scripts his message to the particular audience he happens to be addressing. To tenants he says one thing, to landlords another -- although lately he appears. certainly today at least, to be taking an increasingly hard line towards the latter group.

The apartment industry is awash in rumours of what this government intends to do. Tenant groups are clearly disappointed with the fleeting mention of housing in the throne speech. Now I know the minister will probably say that he intends to clear up the uncertainty in due course. I understand he had a press conference afterwards today, and I would be interested in hearing what that had to say, but I must digress to say that I find the coded rhetoric of this place fascinating.

I would implore the minister and his government not to lose sight of the principle of fairness that they set out to address in housing and tenant problems. It is one thing to attempt to fix a system that clearly does not work -- I think we all agree on that -- and it is quite another to change the rules of the game in such a fashion as to cause hardship to any one of the concerned parties. That exactly is what I fear this government has set out to do.

The retroactive application of the rules that were announced today. which themselves might be flawed, will cause great damage to the apartment industry and ultimately to the tenants themselves. and this minister and his government knew that.

Allow me to conclude my remarks by returning to my opening theme of why we are here in the first place. The proper exercise of public trust is especially challenging these days. The gap between what we as politicians promise and what we can actually deliver is sometimes unacceptably wide for many of our constituents. No matter what we stand for, no matter what policies we put forth, our constituents expect us to at least try our best.

As we debate this particular throne speech, we should ask ourselves whether it meets the expectations of those who put us here. Does it convince Ontarians that we are heading into an area of positive change, or is it just more of the same? In that regard, I believe we have reason to be just a little bit disappointed in the content of this throne speech, or rather its lack of content and conviction. We can do better.

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Mr Mammoliti: Madam Speaker, I promise not to be as long-winded as the third party and the opposition today. Thanks again for giving me the opportunity to express my opinions on what I believe is a throne speech very different from those handed down by previous governments.

As a government, we have inherited a messy state of affairs, to say the least. We realized very early in our term that the next four years will be difficult ones indeed. We are in the midst of a hard-hitting recession. Couple this with a huge deficit that an insensitive Liberal government incurred because of its neglect and massive spending, and it becomes obvious that our task will not be an easy one.

As stated in the speech from the throne, my government's first challenge is to earn the trust and the respect of the people of Ontario. We make no promise, nor do we lead anyone to believe that we, as a government, are perfect or infallible. But the accent will be placed on honesty in this government, as it should be. After all, we are accountable to the people of Ontario.

Ontarians all over are well aware that the Liberal government failed miserably in implementing those policies so badly needed for the betterment of Ontario on all fronts. In areas including labour, employment equity, the environment and a fairer tax system, it is high time that legislation meets the needs of all levels of society, not that just a select few pieces be introduced.

If I may make reference to the Houdini analogy so poignantly stated by the member for Etobicoke-Humber two days ago, it perhaps appears, to me anyway, that this member is a bit unaccustomed to sitting on the other side of the House. Let me remind him and his colleagues, to recall the results of September's election. Have you ever seen so many Liberals disappear in one day? Quite the magic trick.

Our throne speech highlighted that we, as a government, plan to govern with a sense of partnership. If I could point out, this is the first government in the history of Ontario whose primary mandate is to establish a partnership in governing with those levels of society that have been neglected historically. Let me say that it is the intention of this government to extend this partnership to all those who sit on the other side of the House.

Yesterday we talked a little bit about a Tory is a Tory is a Tory.

Mr Carr: You talked about that.

Mr Mammoliti: Yes, that is right, and I still believe that, and I will believe it until all of them get up and speak to their leader and tell him to resign. It is their responsibility, and I will not rest until they do that.

Mr Villeneuve: You sound like a Liberal.

Mr Mammoliti: In closing, we have heard the negative opinions of both the Leader of the Opposition and the leader of the third party in response to the throne speech and this government. And yes, we have been insulted. We have been called the L-word. We have been called Liberal. That is an insult, and frankly, I am not going to put up with it. Not only did the member insult the people on this side of the House, the member insulted all the Ontarians all over who voted for us.

Hon Mr Kormos: When we turfed the Liberals out.

Mr Mammoliti: You got it. I would hope, as do the members of this government, that this is not an indication that they are unwilling to accept our invitation to govern within this partnership.

Mr Turnbull: In relation to the last speech, I would remind the member that in point of fact the last Conservative government in this House had a larger share of the popular vote than the present party in government. They had a minority, but they still had a larger share of the popular vote, and the member should consider that in relation to what he has just said.

Mrs Sullivan: I am a little disturbed by some of the comments from the member for Yorkview. They seem to be at odds with remarks that the Premier has made and I want to make it very clear to him that this was not a majority government that was formed by 100% of the population of Ontario voting for the party opposite. It was a majority that was formed by three out of eight voters who supported his party, 38% of the vote, and I hope that this member will recall that through his years in this chamber, as his Premier does and as his Premier has said.

I also want to talk about some of his remarks about things that were left undone. We saw and heard about an aggressive agenda -- An Agenda for People, I think it was called -- and yet what do we see being the action? Freeze, postpone, abstain, moratorium, delay --

Mr Elston: Waffle.

Mrs Sullivan: -- waffle, use emergency powers to expand landfill sites when full environmental assessment processes were promised by the people opposite. I say to the member for Yorkview that they had better remember their promises and they had better be very cautious about the way they talk and think about how many people in this province really wanted them there in the first place.

M. Bisson: Je pense que le commentaire est juste, à un certain point. C'est le système parlementaire qui a mis le gouvernement en place ; c'est un système qui a très bien marché pendant 120 années. D'autres gouvernements ont été dans la même situation. Le résultat est que la plupart du monde de l'Ontario ont voté pour notre parti afin de nous mettre ici pour faire une job. La job qu'ils nous ont donné, c'est de gouverner cette province d'une manière que je pense être un peu différente de ce qui est arrivé dans les dernières années, celles précédant 1987.

L'affaire est qu'on reconnaît qu'on a besoin de donner une atmosphère, par cette Législature-ci, un peu différente aux gens et à la population de la province. C'est important de donner de la confiance, aux gens de la province, en les politiciens qu'ils ont élus à cette Législature.

Aussi, je souhaite, pour la Législature qu'on retrouve à Ottawa, qu'on ait le même système dans lequel les gens peuvent bâtir leur confiance. L'affaire est qu'on a besoin de travailler ensemble dans cette Chambre ; ça veut dire pas seulement d'envoyer des bêtises d'un bord et de l'autre de la Chambre, mais de donner un peu de construction qui ait du bon sens à la question qu'on pose en Chambre aujourd'hui. Alors, je donnerais cet avis-là aux députés ici dans la Chambre avec moi.

Mr Hope: Just a quick comment: I can understand where my colleague comes from, as the previous governments made us choose a position, and the position was to run in the last election. Now we are sitting here and we feel very confident in what we are doing. It is with great respect to the past government. That is why we are here today, but I am sure most of us feel a lot of frustration that we have been faced with over the previous years.

But I am sure that we will listen to the people of the province of Ontario, as most stated, and I think our throne speech addresses a flavour that people need to hear. They have heard promises from previous governments, and the whole issue is, where are we actually coming from? I think the people have clearly seen on this side of the table that we know where we are coming from, that one day we are not carrying our union membership cards and the next day we are capitalists, as we hear from the opposition.

With that, I think the member has clearly pointed out his views, and I really feel good about the member because I am one who was inspired to run in the last election to be here to speak on behalf of the people of my constituency in the province of Ontario.

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The Acting Speaker (Ms Haslam): The member for Yorkview, would you like to respond?

Mr Mammoliti: Only to respond that yesterday we also talked about the average person and how this side of the House is filled with average persons and how we feel it is important to run Ontario with the average person. I too am an average person. I am a landscaper by trade, and yes, I have shovelled the stuff that comes out of the mouths of these people every day in this House quite a bit.

In response to my colleagues opposite, I would like to just say, yes, perhaps they did have a majority at one point and they lost it, needless to say. They lost it because they got sloppy, they got lazy and they took the voter for granted. We will not take the voter for granted. We have made promises and we will stick to them. We will consult -- something that has never been done in Ontario's history. We will consult. We trust. I come from the labour movement and the reason I became an MPP was because I was not consulted either. The Liberal government did not consult with us at all and neither did the Conservatives, for that matter. That is why we have a majority NDP government right now.

Mrs Y. O'Neill: I am pleased to rise today to participate in the debate on the throne speech. There is indeed much to debate. I will try to focus on those issues which are of the greatest concern to me, first as the representative for the people of Ottawa-Rideau and second as critic for Revenue for the official opposition.

As a representative of the people of Ottawa-Carleton in this House, I find it appalling that within this entire speech, 11 pages, there is no other mention of eastern Ontario than to recognize that its industrial and agricultural base is being battered by the recession. "Battered," a worrisome word indeed. I look for commitment to improvement. I find none. We have a problem. The members opposite recognize it, but this government continues to be silent on solutions.

How will this government stimulate the economy of this province, of eastern Ontario, develop new opportunities for the unemployed or those in need of retraining? What are this government's specific plans and priorities? Where is the cabinet committee for eastern Ontario? Has this cabinet even talked about eastern Ontario or mentioned it? The economy of eastern Ontario is more than closely tied to transportation. I must remind this government and this House that the commitment to Highway 416 must be kept, and kept on time. We have waited long enough. I hope I can trust that the Minister of Transportation will keep the promise made in this very House last week, to ensure that the timetables are adhered to. He said Highway 416 will proceed on time. I and my colleagues will be watching very closely.

I trust that a lack of specifics does not preview a disregard for the second-largest region in Ontario. Population-wise this area brings in over half a million people in its central city and many more beyond that, a region which has already had a greater-than-average unemployment rate, I remind this House. How can the citizens of Ottawa-Carleton and eastern Ontario plug in with confidence to the partnerships, to the co-operation and the creativity that are mentioned so often throughout this speech? How can the small businesses of the region I represent in eastern Ontario consider this lack of recognition to be a demonstration of fairness?

Now, may I turn to education? The throne speech speaks of "genuine access to education." This, to be sure, is a noble goal and one we would all approve of, indeed embrace. However, if we are truly going to have improved access to education, we must also ensure that we have quality education to access. This throne speech provides not one financial commitment for a new program or improvement to a program already in place, nor is there any commitment to facilities upgrading or capital expansion. Access is not enough if we have no guarantees that the education available is going to prepare our students to enter the 21st century with the knowledge and skills that they require.

I deeply regret the lack of specific educational priorities or initiatives. I am sure that, like me, many Ontarians hope that the Minister of Education will soon present her plans to this House. I trust that this minister will keep her promise that initiatives introduced will respect all partnerships in education, those that extend to students, parents, trustees, teachers, administrators and members of the business community. Each of these groups has a key role to play at a crucial time, when so many new demands are being placed upon our educational personnel and institutions.

Genuine access to education requires a commitment to education financing. The throne speech is strangely quiet about this very crucial issue, except to say that, "Strong, publicly funded institutions are crucial to lifelong learning." A select committee of this Legislature has studied education exhaustively. The third report of this select committee, released as recently as January 1990, contains 34 recommendations respecting educational finance and was supported by all sides of this House. A 1988 NDP convention policy resolves that, "The Ontario New Democratic Party demand the immediate implementation of NDP policy to fund our education system entirely by progressive provincial income and corporate taxes."

If the proposed Fair Tax Commission, which is to study tax reform, is expected to take over a year to report its findings, how long are we going to have to wait for implementation of any recommendation from the select committee or the commission or those that have been made by individual boards throughout this province? Is that this government's idea of "immediate"?

Will the partners in education have to continue to restate again and again the needs they have so ably placed before the select committee? I suggest study is complete. Decision is the current need, indeed is long overdue.

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The establishment of the Fair Tax Commission is naturally of great interest to me in my role as critic for Revenue. I trust that the commission will have a very balanced membership not only in terms of interest and qualification but also truly representative of every area of this province, every region of this province, and that it will be provided with every support it needs to study an issue of such great importance.

There is mention of input from right across this province. I would suggest that it would be more than advantageous to get input from out of the province as well. We have much to gain from the experience of everyone who is knowledgeable of the many and various alternatives and options that we may consider and may take.

The use of the word "fair" in the title of this commission is fundamental. We welcome the government's commitment to fair taxation. Every taxpayer wants fair taxation, but most expect that to mean lower taxes for individuals and taxes which will continue to support economic development. If fairer taxation means higher taxation, then I am concerned about this government's intentions. If fairer taxation means our small and medium-sized businesses are less competitive, then I am very worried.

I have great trouble with the fact that this commission is expected, like many of the other consultative processes that have been introduced in this House in the last 10 days, to take up to 18 months to report, 18 months of uncertainty in our economy where the tax burden often is a fundamental in decision-making.

A discussion of fairness of taxation policy brings me to comment briefly on this government's choice for its very first bill. Prior to the election, the oft-quoted An Agenda for People made some very firm promises with respect to the federal government's proposed goods and services tax. This is what they said, "Ontario should cut itself loose from the Mulroney tax program" and "Fighting the GST is a major priority of this government." Yet in its very first official legislative act this government entrenches the GST into provincial legislation. Where is the promise to fight the GST?

The speech from the throne is much more informative for what it omits than for what it says. Where is the promise to change the income tax system? Where is the promise of pay equity for women in mostly female jobs like child care? Where is the promise to create jobs for young people? Where is the promise to provide 10.5% mortgages to moderate-income families for 10-year terms? Where is the promise to build 20,000 non-profit housing units each year? Where is the promise of health care? Where is the promise to increase welfare payments and index pensions to inflation?

Instead of commitments to these promises, we get vague assertions that programs will be studied, they will go through consultation processes and will be implemented some time over the government's five-year mandate.

This is simply not good enough. The people of Ontario expect and deserve adequate answers to the questions I have just asked. The people of Ontario deserve to know the specific intentions of this government, the actual costs of their campaign promises, as well as the timetables they plan to follow.

I for one am very disappointed that this government's first speech from the throne presented so little direction or vision to Ontario at a time when, to quote the speech itself, this government must restore "confidence and enthusiasm" in this province if it is "to earn the trust and respect of the people of Ontario."

Mr Mahoney: I would like to compliment the member on that well-thought-out speech and to point out to the members for you, Mr Speaker, that we have had a couple of very eloquent speeches today given by members of our Ottawa caucus, and I believe we have another one coming up.

It shows that the people of the Ottawa-Carleton region at least retained their senses, as did the people in Mississauga and Peel, in returning the incumbents and not getting caught up in this little red blip that seemed --

Mr Villeneuve: It's orange.

Mr Mahoney: Orange or whatever colour it was. It was a funny sort of thing that happened on the 6th. I do not know what it was. Was it a burp maybe? It was a burp in the history of the province that took place.

Mr Sutherland: Tell that to the people of the province.

Mr Mahoney: Oh, Oxford, settle down. You had your chance earlier.

We are hearing from the real articulate members of our caucus today who are telling the government about their concern about things like education. The member for Ottawa-Rideau spent time along with me serving on the select committee on education, along with, as I said yesterday, the best Education minister the New Democrats never had in Richard Johnston. We came up with some really good ideas about education financing, and the throne speech, as has been pointed out by this member, totally ignored that.

It seems it might be -- I do not know, my House leader could help me -- another moratorium on an issue, on capital funding. Is there a freeze on capital funding? The New Democrats seem to have developed a buzzword around delay, and we used the word "waffle."

Mrs Sullivan: Waffle.

Mr Mahoney: Was it "waffle"? I think it is. Do we have a member from Waffle over there in the House? I think we have a number of them.

So we have moratoriums and freezes. What in essence our members are saying and expressing concern about is that this government has ignored education in its throne speech.

Mr Sutherland: I would like to respond to the comments that were made --

Interjections.

The Deputy Speaker: Order. It is his turn.

Mr Sutherland: Thank you, Mr Speaker. I would like to respond to the comments, particularly about the goods and services tax and this government's approach. I hardly think the member and her party can speak with credibility about what our government is doing with the GST when her government and the former Treasurer, now the Leader of the Opposition, were going to charge the GST on top of the provincial sales tax. How dare they claim that our government is not doing anything when our first bill, introduced by the Minister of Revenue, is to revoke that and is to actually give the people of this --

Interjections.

The Deputy Speaker: Will you stop the clock at 52 seconds, please. Order. Make your address to the Chair. Ignore the heckling and address it to me.

Mr Sutherland: The opposition has claimed that this government is not keeping its commitment on fighting the GST. However, this government has already said what it plans to do in battling the GST. The first step was the introduction of the legislation. The other step is joining the legal battle that is now taking place over whether the federal government actually has the jurisdiction to collect the GST. These are two very strong steps which this government has taken to battle that.

I also think that if the opposition members were very concerned about issues regarding education funding and financing, they had plenty of opportunity in the last five years to deal with them and they have not.

Mr Carr: I guess I had originally thought that this House was going to have an NDP government for about four, maybe five years, but with all the criticism of the federal government, it seems that this crew across there are all going to resign and run in the next federal election, because that is all they talk about.

I say to them, this was a provincial election. If they are concerned about what is happening at the federal level, I suggest that next time the federal election rolls around, they run again, that they put their seats here up and they run federally if they are so concerned about what is happening federally.

If not, if they are truly concerned about this province first, then I suggest they start worrying about the agenda here. If they want to run for municipal politics, they should run for municipal politics. If they want to run for provincial, they should worry about provincial. I hope the people who are so critical about the federal government are prepared to put their seats at risk and to run federally if they believe in it so much.

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Mr Martin: I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate the member for Ottawa-Rideau on her re-election to this House and thank her for her advice and words and assure her that her concerns about education have been heard and assure her that her sense of urgency is shared by this side of the House. We will be more than happy to hear from her further and to respect the experience she has had previously in regard to these commissions that she has been on and to see that experience as valuable and as something that we can build on.

Some of the issues raised by the member around the need to fund programs and how we raise those funds were heard, and certainly for us, as for her, the operative word is "fair" and is actually the reason we choose to take some time, now that we are the government, to take a look at just exactly what that means in light of what we are discovering as we go along day to day.

Mrs Y. O'Neill: I take great confidence in the remarks of the parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Education. I hope he will take back to his minister the opportunity that the select committee on education could be reinstated, likely should be reinstated, because we were going to begin studying technical education, indeed the funding of technical education and what I brought to the floor of the House today regarding the supply of teachers to that very important area.

I hope that he will do that and I do trust that there will be input from this side on the financing of education, and indeed members of the entire community represented on the Fair Tax Commission. The question was asked that we had lots of time to fund education. I would certainly like to remind this House that when we came on board in 1985, as has been said already in this session, $72 million was allocated to capital. By the time we left, we were annually putting into that major facility pot $320 million. That was to include renovations, which I also have great concern about, and new facilities.

We certainly did our part to remove the burden from the shoulders of the property tax owner in many, many communities. The 8% increase in operating should also be remembered. The moneys we gave to both the primary and kindergarten areas of education and the primary incentive of lowering the class sizes were all initiatives that did ease the tax burden for the people in the communities in the manner in which they expected to have that fairness of educational opportunity spread right across this province.

The GST will continue to be fought by this side of the House and by the Liberal government. I still find it more than strange --

The Deputy Speaker: Your time has expired.

Mrs Witmer: I am pleased to be able to add my comments to the debate on the response to the speech from the throne.

I would like to begin by taking this opportunity to say that I am very honoured to be able to address this House as a representative of the people of Waterloo North and to take the place vacated by my predecessor, Herb Epp. When Mr Epp decided not to seek re-election in August, this Legislature lost a member who served his constituents as well as this province with honour and distinction. It is my sincere hope that I will be able to meet the high standard that he set. I would also like to publicly express my appreciation to him for the support and the co-operation that he demonstrated during the transition period.

I rise today to join those on this side of the House who have expressed their dissatisfaction with the speech that we heard in the chamber last Tuesday. Although there were very high expectations about this government's first throne speech, this government gave absolutely no clear indication of where it intended to go and how fast it intended to get there. Instead, we received a vague set of promises to look into matters and deal with them later, and today we were hearing about moratoriums.

However, I do want to commend the government for not introducing any startling new initiatives. This may indeed be the beginning of the new consultation process which this government has chosen to speak about so frequently. Since specifics were not forthcoming from the throne speech, then obviously there will be other forums and other opportunities to identify priorities, directions and issues that need our attention.

The most important issue facing this province is the economy and the recession we are experiencing. I do not mean to be trite, but unemployment is becoming a growth industry. I would suggest that if this government is truly to represent the workers of this province, it needs to take action in addressing the economy. The action must be taken now.

It is not acceptable for this government to throw up its hands and say it is the fault of the federal government. There are things that the government of Ontario can be doing to help this province's economy recover. They made a commitment during the election to protect employment and this province's prosperity. I am very concerned that they do not appear to be prepared to face up to their responsibility to do so.

Although it is very important to introduce measures to protect workers who have lost their jobs, this must be balanced with the need to create new jobs and the need to remain competitive on the international market. Unfortunately, during the past five years, through overregulation and excessive taxation, Ontario has lost its ability to compete.

We must now make every effort to balance the provincial budget and become more fiscally responsible. The government of Ontario must act to create an economic environment that encourages job creation and provides an attractive investment climate for business in Ontario to grow and prosper. It must offer incentives to businesses to create new jobs. It must encourage them to locate here or expand their existing operations.

Furthermore, this government must participate in the trilateral discussions that are taking place between Mexico, the United States and Canada with regard to free trade. Ontario has a vested interest in these discussions and any subsequent developments. Ontario needs to be involved and be involved now. Jobs are at stake.

There are a number of issues that were mentioned in the throne speech, and some that were not, which are going to increase the cost of doing business in this province. They include employment and pay equity, the increase of the minimum wage, the wage protection fund and the changes to the maternity and parental leave provisions in the Employment Standards Act. They are issues which will have an impact on the economic situation in this province and our ability to compete. They are issues which will cost money, and we must very carefully consider the time lines for the introduction of these new initiatives.

In the throne speech, the government promised to introduce employment equity legislation after a period of consultation. I am pleased to hear that they intend to consult first, because this is an extremely difficult issue. As we have discovered with pay equity, it is not a simple matter to impose legislated answers to the problems of discrimination in the workplace. I hope that the government is indeed serious about public consultation and that it will not simply be a public relations exercise.

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I would also urge this government not to rely entirely upon legislation to address this issue. Much more can be done to deal with the barriers to employment that face women, visible minorities, native people and people with disabilities. The education system should be fully utilized to provide them with the skills and training they need to become productive employees.

As well, public awareness campaigns are important in changing attitudes and educating people about the important role we can all make in our society. These initiatives can have an impact on employment equity. Although we can legislate change, we must remember that we will never achieve full and complete employment equity until attitudes change as well.

With regard to pay equity, this government has inherited a system which has failed to have a significant impact on the gap between men's and women's wages. It is expensive, it is time consuming and it is has benefited no one more than the pay equity consulting industry.

Although child care workers were mentioned in the throne speech, it did not mention nurses. It is my sincere hope that the promise to make early progress on redressing unequal pay for child care workers is extended to cover nurses as well.

Again, I would stress that before pay and employment equity legislation is introduced, there is a need for extensive consultation. At a time when we should be making every effort to encourage businesses to locate in Ontario to provide much-needed jobs, the imposition of additional taxes and red tape may well be counterproductive and cost the jobs of those such legislation is intended to help.

I would urge the government to think carefully about its proposal to increase the minimum wage. While wages will increase, it will have a devastating effect on our tourism industry. As well, there may be fewer job opportunities for young people and students. I would caution this government to tread carefully and to consult widely on this minimum wage proposal, to ensure that nobody sinks under in these hard economic times as a result of this initiative.

The throne speech also contains a promise to establish a wage protection fund for workers whose employers declare bankruptcy. Although the details of this program have not been revealed, I would strongly urge the government to reject a payroll tax to fund this proposal. Payroll taxes are taxes on job creation and are completely counterproductive to any efforts to maintain and create jobs in this province.

One issue which the throne speech completely failed to mention is reform of the workers' compensation system. It has become increasingly obvious that this system, which was introduced in 1914, no longer meets the needs of Ontario society in 1990. I hope the government intends to tackle the task of scrapping this outdated system and replacing it with a new, modem and efficient mechanism for compensating injured workers.

The issues I have just discussed all have a significant impact on Ontario's ability to recover from the current economic crisis and our ability to compete. Every day we hear of more and more plant closings; in my own community there have been many -- these include Seagram's, Goodrich, Greb and Brox's Old Town Village -- as well as layoffs at Ultimate, Raytheon and Budd. This government has a responsibility to provide leadership and to create an economic and investment climate where business can grow and prosper and where jobs can be not only maintained but created.

There are some other issues which the throne speech did not address. Education received only a fleeting comment. There was no mention of how this government intends to respond to the problems facing our colleges, our universities and our school boards. In my riding there are two universities, Waterloo and Wilfrid Laurier, as well as a campus of Conestoga College and two school boards. These educational institutions are under considerable financial strain and need immediate attention. Are we simply going to continue to download the cost of educating our children to the local taxpayers, as has been done during the past five years?

Another area that needs immediate attention is our health care system. It is totally inadequate. There are waiting lists for surgery and cancer treatment, and I find it unbelievable that the ministry which spends over one third of the total provincial budget would be completely left out of the throne speech.

Finally, I would like to turn my attention to the environment. I am pleased at the government's promise to introduce a Safe Drinking Water Act. My community, in particular Elmira, has faced a very serious problem with the quality of its drinking water. I am pleased that this government is going to show more leadership and that it is going to be working co-operatively with communities and developing long-range plans to ensure that the citizens of this province will have a reliable and safe supply of water to meet their needs. I look forward to seeing action on this commitment in the future.

Mr Speaker, I would like to thank you for giving me the opportunity to share my thoughts with the House today. I sincerely hope that this throne speech does indeed mark the beginning of a new consultation process. I look forward very much to working with all members of this House and the citizens of this province in seeking solutions to the problems we face.

Ms Haslam: Congratulations on the member's victory, being elected, and I welcome her also to the House as a new member, as I am a new member.

Employment equity does rely on attitudes, and I am sure both of us realized that in our job searches and in our employment. I commend the honourable member for Waterloo North for bringing this point forward, and I assure members that her request for consultation will be taken seriously in those areas.

The areas she has mentioned are of concern to me also. Indeed, they were part of the reasons I ran for election. I will be raising some of those same concerns with my voice in my caucus. I am pleased to be here, as she is, and I also look forward to working with all members in the House on all of the issues she raised.

Mr Arnott: I want to congratulate the member for Waterloo North on her eloquent and thoughtful presentation. I might also add that some of the members in this chamber may want to emulate her fine example, her class.

Mr Klopp: I would like to congratulate the member for Waterloo North on her maiden speech. As I stood up and applauded her after hearing her comments, I can only know for sure that her roots come back to Huron county. As I listened to her comments and her sincerity, I could only know for sure that many people back in Zurich and in Exeter have said: "Have you met Elizabeth Witmer yet? We grew up with her and I hope you can work with her and get along with her, because she is a good person." I can only say that after hearing those good comments, I am looking forward to that, and I congratulate her.

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Mr White: I would also like to welcome the member opposite. Her eloquence is very evident. The concerns that she has mentioned I think are shared by many of us. She mentioned the Workers' Compensation Board, extensively. She probably heard this afternoon of some of the actions we will be taking in that regard. That has certainly been a thorn in the side of New Democrats for generations, I would say, not merely decades.

The Safe Drinking Water Act, the environmental bill of rights, those issues which she brought up are certainly issues which we are pursuing and which motivated many of us to run.

I have also attended university in her riding. It is really a truly excellent area to come from and she must feel honoured to be its representative. Again, my congratulations.

Mrs Y. O'Neill: I would also like to add my congratulations and welcome to the member from Kitchener. I feel that I have had the privilege of knowing this particular individual in a capacity of sharing educational concerns and responsibilities with her. She takes to task anything that is presented to her and I am very happy to hear how her speech includes many new interests and possibilities of study and energy that she will be able to apply her talents to. I know she will do that with the class that has been recognized and with the intellect that she has already shown in today's presentation.

Mrs Witmer: I would simply like to thank members very much for the very kind remarks and to mention once again that I look forward to working with all of the members in this House.

Ms Harrington: I rise to respond to the throne speech on behalf of the citizens of Niagara Falls. I thank the previous speaker for her concern for a very basic issue which I believe in also, and that is the economy and jobs, and for her attitude towards working together.

I would like to pay tribute to the former member from Niagara Falls, Vince Kerrio, the former Minister of Energy and the former Minister of Natural Resources.

Regardless of party stripe, we on all sides of the House share much in common: the long hours, the strain on the family and the travelling. In just two months I have had to travel back and forth on the QEW corridor and I learned quickly to take the public transit option. During the 15 years in the House, Mr Kerrio must have taken at least 1,000 such trips.

I did not know Vince Kerrio 15 years ago; in fact, I did not live in Niagara Falls. But I have heard of the legend of 1975, of the man who defeated a cabinet minister by 500 votes. The legend also says this man knocked on every door in the city of Niagara Falls, or at least he was seen on every street in Niagara Falls. Accounts vary. This past summer I did try, but it is a very hard act to follow.

This man truly was a people person. He certainly knew a good portion of the city, and most of the people almost felt that he was part of their family. He has been known as Uncle Vince to many people.

Now Niagara Falls enters the new era along with the rest of Ontario. Niagara Falls is unique in many ways. It is of course a world-renowned address and a city of contrasts. Niagara Falls, for instance, has the highest proportion in the region of people with psychiatric disabilities, with a resultant lack of services and with homelessness.

Niagara Falls's downtown commercial street has recently been renovated by the downtown merchants through the program for renewal, improvement, development and economic revitalization. A formerly decaying Queen Street now has new infrastructure and streetscape, with beautiful lighting and inlaid sidewalks. Yet, with many empty stores, merchants are still hanging on by their fingernails waiting to turn the corner to recovery.

With Niagara Falls, of course one probably first thinks of the beautiful Niagara parks system, the Niagara Escarpment and the Festival of Lights. I would invite the members to come down to Niagara Falls at this particular season and visit with their families. We just turned on the lights this past weekend and it is a beautiful place to be.

Tourism, of course, is a major part of our economy. I must tell the members there is a massive dependence on tourism. The sector employs people largely seasonally, part-time or at minimum wage, and this places a huge burden of instability on our social programs and on our community life.

From the turn of the century, Niagara Falls has also been an industrial base because of the availability of hydro power. Long before this recession, the historical industrial base had a sharp decline. In 1989-90 we lost Sherwood Farms and Gerber, which are both food processors, and had Woodstream and Cyanamid cutdowns. These steady jobs for sometimes unskilled labour are sorely missed in this community. Now increased hydro costs may threaten some of our other industry.

For the social health of this community, Niagara Falls, I believe, needs to balance its industrial sector and its tourism sector with a third side of this triangle -- commercial office space. After many years of feeling distant from Queen's Park, Niagara Falls needs to become more a part of Ontario and our Ontario government.

There are certain problems associated with being so close to the border. So I welcome the move of the Ministry of Tourism and Recreation. I truly believe our community would and will benefit exceptionally from the balance and stability that this third sector will bring. I know the pulse of this city. The industry managers, the labour movement, the social service providers, those struggling to get by, the tourism operators, the local merchants, and even city council, with whom I have spent many happy hours, all would benefit from the revitalizing ripple effect of a more stable economy.

If there is one thing I want to do in my career as an MPP, it is to improve the economic health of our city and help bring these divergent sectors together.

I appreciate the encouragement from across the floor on many of the items that have been mentioned. I appreciate the encouragement to fulfil our agenda. I most sincerely hope that over the next four to five years we will be productive together and will work co-operatively. I look forward to sharing ideas with the many thoughtful and concerned members of this assembly and to learn from the more experienced here.

I must tell the members, though, that I was told quite sincerely by another experienced member that this House was a club. I thought about that: a club. He also described question period as a game. I believe you certainly have to enjoy it here. You have to work together and you have to get along, but I reject totally the notion that this is a club.

Our responsibility often involves difficult decisions, and that is where the setting of priorities comes in. That setting of priorities is what is called leadership, and there can be no doubt that Ontarians are searching for leadership as never before. We must state clearly where we want to go, what we want to achieve and never sway from that course.

Our party, in the throne speech, has made commitments to the people of Ontario and they are firmly based on the principles of fairness and justice. For example, the government's proposal to spend $700 million to try to protect our economy and our people from the repercussions of the recession is one example.

In Niagara Falls, as I am sure in many other places, we have a huge problem with infrastructure. I found our council having to struggle with these decisions of whether we can use our sewage capacity to redevelop a hotel or to put in non-profit housing. These are the kinds of decisions that are being faced. In fact, $50 million is needed to correct the combined sewer system in Niagara Falls, and in the meanwhile overflows are going directly into the Niagara River.

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Similarly, our government's plans to help protect workers by tough legislation on plant closings and pension reforms stem from the same belief that people are not objects to be used up and then thrown away. As the previous member indicated, they do deserve a job and not unemployment. The economy must serve man and not man the economy.

Our government has also committed this House to, and I quote from the throne speech, "deal resolutely with violence against women and children. It is time for society to come face to face with this reality." Those are tough words. Those are strong words. In fact, last Friday morning I was on the local talk show, the infamous talk show, and the host asked me: "How is the government going to do that? You say you are going to effect change with regard to violence against women." I had to stop and think. There is no easy answer, of course. It will require all of us here in this House to work together to confront what is a very difficult, ugly and very sensitive subject.

I would like to give you two examples. A couple of weeks ago in Niagara Falls we held a public forum on women's issues and the speaker was a woman named Maude Barlow. She is involved mainly, I believe, in talking to teachers and students across this province. She described a situation that struck me very much, and I would like to share it with you. She said that she was talking in a community in Ontario, and I hope it was an isolated community. She described a teenage girl who happened to be engaged who said the following things after Ms Barlow's talk. She said: "My father beats my mother. My uncle beats my aunt. My grandfather beats my grandmother. I did not know there was any other way." A desperate, hopeless but a real situation.

Of course, there are all kinds of other situations like this, but what is woman abuse? It is a soul-destroying subordination. It is a loss of control of one's life. It is a loss of dignity. It is a feeling of entrapment and powerlessness. It is the horror of living with the constant fear of violence.

Abuse has many forms. First of all, we think of physical abuse, which is the most obvious, from a slap or a shove to assault with a weapon or murder. Even a minor form of assault must be taken very seriously, because it brings increasing physical force. In fact, each week in Canada two women are killed by their male partner. Another form of abuse is threatening: "If you tell anyone, if you call the police or testify against me in court, I will kill you. I will take your children." Another form of abuse is emotional hurt, publicly or privately putting a person down, such as: "You're a lousy wife. You're a lousy lover." Ridicule of accomplishments effectively erodes a person's self-esteem and self-confidence. Women, too, may be told that they are crazy and need psychiatric care.

Last, I want to tell members that women abuse is child abuse too. Children who witness this obviously feel confused, they feel guilty and they feel frightened. They may often become withdrawn, disobedient or aggressive. Emotional hurt often is worse than physical abuse. Medical problems develop by living under great stress.

Women who use the shelter services are beaten an average of 35 times before seeking help. Many have been in these relationships for many years. Some, until their children become independent, feel they have to stay there. Many are led to believe they cause the abuse, it is their fault. They are ashamed, they feel guilty. Some accept their treatment as normal. Many have been misunderstood when they tried to reach out for help.

In the 18th century, in British common law, a husband could use physical force to keep control. In fact, he could use a switch or a stick that was no broader than the width of his thumb. That is where we get the saying, "the rule of thumb." Even when you think of the comment, "A man's home is his castle," there is cause for concern, I believe.

The only way to get to the root of violence -- and I thought about that this weekend, as I was asked on the talk show -- is to try to change attitudes. That, of course, is the most difficult thing anyone could do, much less politicians. But as a government committed to fairness and committed to trying to keep our commitment to leadership, we must do our part to try to change these attitudes. How? First of all by example; second, by promotion; and third, by legislation.

I ask this House to realize that there are many images around us which contribute to this attitude towards women. We do not have to go back 50 years, we do not have to go back to the 18th century: There are still many cultural forces which subtly or blatantly impact on women's self-image as they are growing up and the attitudes of others towards women. These images and forces range everywhere in our lives, whether in fairy tales, in advertising, in beauty pageants or in pornography.

Next week, 6 December, is the anniversary of the Montreal massacre where, as members know, 14 women engineering students were murdered. I ask that members of this House mark the day solemnly together.

The commitment of this government to its goals must proceed slowly and surely, the goals towards equality and fairness for women, towards equality and fairness for workers, towards a sustainable economy and towards an environment we can pass on to our children with pride. How do we do this? We look at the throne speech: By increasing the minimum wage to 60% of the industrial wage, by introducing pension reforms, by revising rent review, by expanding the supply of affordable housing, by extending child care, by continuing the reform of the Social Assistance Review Committee, by ensuring that support and custody orders are enforced, by expanding public transit, by a real conserving of energy and by dealing with waste in many new ways. The environment, the economy, social services, a new deal for women -- all need tough leadership. I think the way ahead is clear.

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Mr Phillips: I appreciate the thoughtful comments by the member. I would just remind the member that in terms of commitment, there was another commitment made, and I think it is important that none of us forget. That was the Agenda for People. I think that was perhaps the most solemn commitment, because in terms of consultation, we consulted all of the people and they chose to support the Agenda for People. So I realize that the speech from the throne is one of the commitments, but there is a more important commitment perhaps, and that is the Agenda for People.

I would suggest that in terms of integrity and the way I think the people of Ontario will judge integrity, it will be on the basis on which this plan is implemented. I would just say to the members, and particularly to the caucus across the way, that they should keep this document before them all the time, because in four or five years it will be the document that will be pulled out and the integrity of the party opposite will be measured. Certainly as I look at the speech from the throne, I think there is the possibility of some conflict there. I think the party will have to be awfully careful that it does not begin to back off that agenda.

In the member's remarks, which I thought were very thoughtful, she mentioned commitment. I think there are two commitments, and this perhaps is the more important one than the speech from the throne. Certainly the people of Ontario will be watching as we move through the next few months and years for the government's fulfilment of that agenda.

Mr Martin: I would perhaps remind the member for Scarborough-Agincourt that in fact what we are doing here is debating the speech from the throne.

The Acting Speaker (Mr Villeneuve): Yes, and please address your comments to your colleague's presentation.

Mr Martin: I would also like to congratulate the member for a very eloquent and thoughtful and feeling speech. It was certainly well received by me. Because of that, I am very much looking forward to the kinds of things that we will do in this Legislature flowing from the speech from the throne, because we have members like her here to ensure that we do in fact speak to and meet the needs of people in Ontario.

Mrs Y. O'Neill: I certainly would like to congratulate the member for Niagara Falls on the way in which she has so seriously brought family violence and indeed violence against women and children to the floor of this Legislature. I think that has to be done on a very regular basis. We certainly do have to remind ourselves and those we represent about that autocracy as often as possible.

I hope that she will have her request granted and that the House leaders will consider our recognizing 6 December as a day on which we must stop and remember the greatest tragedy that Canada has seen.

Ms Harrington: Thank you very much, to other members of the House. I certainly look forward to working with everyone here, and appreciate their support.

Mr Chiarelli: First of all, Mr Speaker, I would like to congratulate you on your re-election and on your appointment to your responsibilities in the chair. I am sure that you will perform those responsibilities with grace, honour, firmness and your usual dignity.

I also want to take this opportunity to thank the people of Ottawa West for re-electing me to this Legislature. I am honoured and privileged to be able to represent them. Ottawa West is an informed riding. It is a riding with active community people, and I certainly hope I can continue to do a reasonably good job, if not an exceptional job, for the residents of Ottawa West. From Michele Heights to McKellar Heights, Ottawa West is a good place to live and I want to work to keep it that way.

I want to also thank the people of Ottawa and area generally for returning so many Liberals to Queen's Park. I am happy to be sharing my responsibilities with the colleagues that I do have. I think particularly the Ottawa-Carleton caucus performed well over the last three and a half years, and I am looking forward to another four or five years of sharing responsibilities with them.

However, we did lose one seat, that being Ottawa Centre to the Honourable Evelyn Gigantes. She is replacing Richard Patten, who was a minister in the last government, and I do want to publicly compliment Mr Patten for the services that he provided to the riding. He was an honourable, hardworking member. He opened his heart and his talents to the riding, and I wish him success in the future, and I wish him all the more success about four or five years from now when he is renominated and takes on Mrs Gigantes again.

Speaking of Mrs Gigantes, I will say something nice. The House leader aside says, "Say something nice about Evelyn." I will say something nice and perhaps something not so nice. When the dust settled in the Ottawa-Carleton area there was a realization that we had one New Democratic Party member, one minister in government, representing essentially all of Ontario east of Kingston. A lot of people thought that would be a very onerous job, which it certainly is, but the question was, would the minister be able to work with so many Liberals from the area and several Conservatives, and would she co-operate and share some of the responsibilities with us? She is on public record, quoted a number of times in the media, as having said that yes, she will consult with us as much as possible, she will try to share the responsibilities with us. She made that promise personally to some of our members of the Ottawa-Carleton caucus.

Early in October I endeavoured to get in touch with the minister on two occasions by phone, and I received no return phone call. On 16 October 1990 I sent a letter to the minister. It was hand-delivered to her office here at Queen's Park by my executive assistant, and I would like to read that letter for the public record.

"Dear Minister:

"I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate you on your election victory and subsequent appointment to the Health portfolio. As Minister of Health the job promises to be an onerous one, and I wish you every success. Now that the dust has settled I would like to meet with you at the earliest possible opportunity to discuss some specific and some general issues of interest to the people of Ottawa-Carleton. In this regard, I would appreciate it if you would be so kind as to have your staff set up an appointment at your convenience."

That was six weeks ago. I have received no response and no acknowledgement from the minister. Last week I introduced a private member's public bill into this Legislature dealing with regional government reform and the election of the regional chairman at large. I very much would have appreciated the opportunity to discuss this bill with Mrs Gigantes, the regional minister, and I had no opportunity to do so. I proceeded in the absence of consultation because the minister was not available to consult and there was no response to my letter of six weeks ago to give any consultation whatsoever. I am told that the same applies to other members from the area.

I would also like to point out that I have been advised by a number of people from the Ottawa-Carleton area -- individuals, special-interest groups -- that they have no access. Their phone calls are not being returned and their briefs and their letters are not being responded to. We have a new minister and we have a new government, and I would like to give her the benefit of the doubt, the opportunity to come through on her promises to consult and be available to us in Ottawa-Carleton. I would hope that in the future she would follow through on her promises and do something to work co-operatively with the members.

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One of the other issues that I did want to speak to the minister about is the issue that I am going to talk about today. It is a very serious issue, one that I think is non-partisan. It has to do with one factor, one issue, in the Health ministry.

I am referring to the issue of long-term care psychiatric beds in Ottawa-Carleton. I do want to say something that I think the members here will find quite astounding, and that is that the Ottawa-Carleton region, with a population of some 605,000 people, does not have one single long-term care psychiatric bed. I am going to say it again for everybody in this House today: It does not have one long-term psychiatric bed.

I will address the fact that Liberals were in government. I was re-elected to this House, and I was re-elected because I did some things well, I did some things on a mediocre basis and I did some things not so well. I think one of the failures of my first three-year term is a failure partially on my part, but it is a collective failure. It was a failure of the ministry, it was a failure of the previous minister and it was a failure of myself and the representatives from Ottawa-Carleton because we did not effect change when change should have been effected.

I want to refer to some of the work that I did unsuccessfully in my first term and I hope that I am successful and I hope that people in this House and in the ministry and my colleagues will help me to be successful this time around.

I want to refer first to a letter that I sent to the then Minister of Health, the member for Oriole, in May 1988, following on a meeting that was held at the Royal Ottawa Hospital in Ottawa, in my riding, in April 1988. I am going to refer only to a portion of that particular letter:

"However, I am sure that you have observed a sense of disappointment concerning your statement that no beds will be forthcoming for the permanently psychiatrically disabled. I too am disappointed that the ministry does not have any immediate or long-term plans to provide permanent beds in an expanding community of over 600,000 people. We can only say that we see the ministry's position on this problem as a challenge which will some day become an opportunity and I look forward to working with officials of the Royal Ottawa Hospital and the district health council to create circumstances whereby our community can provide the beds we feel are urgently necessary."

Before I go any further, I want to use an analogy to Metropolitan Toronto. What I am talking about is the question of mentally disabled, mentally ill people, if they lived in Metropolitan Toronto, having to go to Trenton, Ontario, to the east for medical treatment and for hospitalization or having to go perhaps to Woodstock in the west, which is totally unacceptable in today's day and age.

I endeavoured to enlist some assistance from medical people in the Ottawa-Carleton area and I did enlist the assistance of Dr Y.D. Lapierre who was the psychiatrist-in-chief, professor and chairman at University of Ottawa school of medicine. He did some research and investigations at my request. After I received that information, which I will refer to in a minute, I wrote a letter to the then Minister of Health, which I will read.

"Re: Ottawa-Carleton area, non-existence of long-term treatment beds for psychiatric patients.

"You will recall that when you recently attended the Royal Ottawa Hospital, senior medical and administrative staff and I expressed strong concern that a metropolitan area in the province of Ontario serving 600,000 residents had no long-term treatment beds for psychiatric patients.

"At my request, Dr Y.D. Lapierre, psychiatrist-in-chief, surveyed Canada to determine if any other similar metropolitan area suffered the same lack of facilities. I enclose Dr Lapierre's letter of 13 June 1988 together with his survey. Dr Lapierre concluded that in the Ottawa-Carleton area 'We are indeed the only centre in the half-million population bracket which does not have a facility for a longer-term treatment for psychiatric patients.'

"As an MPP from the Ottawa-Carleton area, I find this state unacceptable and I am determined to be a catalyst within the community and within our government to create a collective and co-operative solution to this deficiency."

As the minister may be aware, I met with her parliamentary assistant and the executive director of the Royal Ottawa Hospital, George Langill, several weeks ago to discuss possible solutions to this problem. No solutions were forthcoming. I want to refer to Dr Lapierre's letter again and repeat one quote from his letter: "I would suggest that we are indeed the only centre in the half-million population bracket which does not have a facility for longer-term treatment for psychiatric patients."

He refers to a survey. He has a list of cities and the number of long-term psychiatric beds they have. He refers to Calgary with 400, Saskatoon with 200, Regina with 200, Winnipeg with 400, Toronto with 585, Whitby with 435, Hamilton with 450 and Kingston with 410; Ottawa-Carleton: none.

The families of our mentally ill, long-term patients have to travel 90 miles to visit their loved ones, almost as far as Montreal. It is unacceptable in today's day and age. Dr Lapierre's figures and surveys have not been contradicted in any way by the ministry.

That letter, which I sent to the minister in June 1988, was responded to in January 1989. The minister's response refers in the first instance to the situation with short-term or crisis beds, which was not the subject of my letter. In the second instance, the minister's response referred to bed ratio issues with respect to crisis or short-term beds. It did not respond to the issue of long-term psychiatric beds.

The minister said, and I will quote her:

"With regard to the Ottawa-Carleton area, there are several factors that have influenced the situation in Ottawa. The number of psychiatrists is almost double the provincial average, and many long-term patients are being treated in Ottawa-Carleton who could be transferred to Brockville Psychiatric Hospital. The Royal Ottawa Hospital should transfer patients to Brockville for long-term care. These factors have led to the relatively high occupancy rates of hospitals in Ottawa."

A Minister of Health has a very heavy responsibility and relies very heavily on the information that is provided by the officials. In this case, the officials in the ministry failed the minister by not providing the proper information. I once again went to Dr Lapierre. He provided a detailed response, that the information the ministry had provided to the minister was absolutely incorrect about the number of psychiatrists we have in Ottawa-Carleton. In fact, he indicated that other municipalities in Ontario have a higher number of psychiatrists per capita.

With respect to the information that was provided to the minister on Ottawa-Carleton not utilizing the Brockville Psychiatric Hospital, the Royal Ottawa Hospital provided an answer for me. It indicated, and I am quoting --

The Deputy Speaker: Perhaps the member would like to adjourn the debate.

On motion by Mr Chiarelli, the debate was adjourned.

The House adjourned at 1759.