The House met at 1334.
Prayers.
MEMBERS' STATEMENTS
TOMMY HASS
Mr Sean G. Conway (Renfrew North): I want to pay tribute today to a 17-year-old boy in my constituency. The young lad's name is Tommy Hass. He lives in the Eganville area and this is, in a way, a horrifying story. Two young lads walking home from a lake not too many weeks ago were attacked by two pit bulls. One young lad from the area, Rob Breen, was hospitalized with 250 stitches and was very nearly killed in this attack. It is a scandalous story about how anyone could harbour these kinds of killer animals in their midst.
But the real story is that the young lad who was attacked had a friend, a 17-year-old young lad named Tommy Hass, who stayed as these malicious beasts were attacking his friend. Young Tommy went and got some lead pipe and battered one of these beasts into some kind of submission. He stood his ground and fought to protect, I believe, the life of his young friend.
I just simply want to say on my behalf, and I know on behalf of all the members of this Legislature, how proud we are of any young Ontarian who would do this in honour of and in support of his friend, and I hope it gives pause as well to people in this province and elsewhere who would think about keeping these kinds of pit bulls or any other kind of animal whose instinct and training seems to be to kill. If this had been young Rob Breen's younger brother or sister, he or she may very well have been killed. May I say as well that we wish Robbie a full and speedy recovery.
COMMUNITY HEALTH SERVICES
Mrs Elizabeth Witmer (Waterloo North): I would like to draw the government's attention to the very serious funding crisis facing the Waterloo Regional Health Unit.
As a result of the provincial government's failure to provide adequate funding to cover the cost of mandated programs and increases in operating expenditures, the health unit is being forced to consider significant cutbacks in staff and programs. These cutbacks are to be announced tomorrow.
The policy of shifting responsibility for the cost of community health services to the municipality, the so-called disentanglement of funding responsibility, is creating a funding crisis for community health units across the province.
I am shocked and appalled by the Ministry of Health's abdication of its responsibility to ensure that community health services are maintained.
The lack of provincial funding will unfortunately hurt the people who rely on these services: the working poor, the elderly, the unemployed and children. These are the people who will be made to suffer as a result of this government's funding policies.
I would urge the government to take immediate action to ensure that the essential community health services in Waterloo region are not eliminated as a result of a lack of provincial support for mandated programs.
GAMBLING
Mr Dennis Drainville (Victoria-Haliburton): I rise in the House today to speak about an issue that deeply concerns and troubles me. That issue is the government's decision to introduce casino gambling in Ontario.
I am proud of the New Democratic Party, I am proud of our government's progressive taxation policies and I am proud of the work that my party has traditionally done on behalf of poor and lower-income citizens of Ontario. I am also proud of the leadership that my government has given in the areas relating to social policy and workers' rights.
So it is with deep regret that I rise to speak against the government's position on the introduction of casino gambling. Casino gambling is based on the principle of greed. More than this, the profits that will go to the government are based on the certainty that the majority of casino gamblers will lose. Those who gamble are often poor or on modest incomes. It is they who will be further economically deprived by the inevitable losses they will incur.
In my view, the establishment of gambling casinos will only devalue the government's present efforts to help low-income people. My conscience will not let me support the process by which the government is establishing casinos in the province. I will not be supporting this regressive move and I fully intend to be voting against the government if legislation is brought into this House. I hope that more of my colleagues will listen to their own consciences on this issue.
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MUNICIPAL BOUNDARIES
Mr Ron Eddy (Brant-Haldimand): The two days of hearings that the Minister of Municipal Affairs held in London last week brought home the message that the citizens of Middlesex as well as of the city of London are very much opposed to Bill 75, which will give 64,000 acres of county land to the city, including the entire town of Westminster and thousands of acres of prime agricultural farm land.
In July of this year, the minister met with the county of Middlesex to discuss the county's alternative package, which would annex 24,000 acres to the city of London. This is more than the city requested when the annexation proceedings began in 1988 and represents twice the amount of land that would serve the city until the year 2026.
This is a reasonable compromise that would meet the needs of the city of London and leave the county with a sustainable assessment base, and is supported by the county's 22 constituent municipalities.
At the recent AMO conference, the minister said that the process used in this annexation was unique and that similar legislation would not be presented again. Later in the same speech, however, the minister stated that the sole arbitration process to solve annexation issues is his government's policy. This blatant contradiction has Ontario's municipalities worried, with good reason.
Middlesex Warden Frank Gare met yesterday with London's mayor to discuss the county's alternative package. It is evident that the city and the county are open to discussion on this matter, but the ministry's position is not at all helpful. Why will the minister not respond to the county's alternative package?
HYDRO PROJECT
Mr Jim Wilson (Simcoe West): My statement is directed to the Minister of Energy with responsibility for Ontario Hydro. At a public meeting last week, 400 residents packed the Beeton arena to voice their anger at and displeasure with Hydro's plans to build a 250-acre transformer station on prime agricultural land.
My constituents are concerned, because at no point has Ontario Hydro established a need for the creation of massive transmission corridors from Sudbury to Toronto. People are losing confidence in Hydro's ability to plan effectively, especially in light of a recent report from the Ontario Energy Board which criticized Hydro's inability to predict future growth and the woeful performance of the Darlington reactors. Residents in my riding are worried that their health and safety will be jeopardized by the construction of this Hydro project. As well, they have legitimate concerns about the impact this transformer station will have on farming activities and rural life in the area.
It seems ironic that at the same time the NDP government wants to give some $20 million to tender fruit growers in Niagara region in order to preserve farm land. This same government is prepared to turn a blind eye to Hydro's designs on prime farm land in New Tecumseth.
I would strongly urge the Minister of Energy to support the resolution passed by the town of New Tecumseth, which calls on Hydro to take no further action on this ill-conceived project.
PROPERTY ASSESSMENT
Mr Anthony Perruzza (Downsview): As you know, in Metropolitan Toronto we have an unfair and outdated property tax system that penalizes and rewards people based on where they live. If you live in the city of Toronto, generally you will be rewarded by the current property tax system. On the other hand, if you live in a newly developed suburb, generally you will be penalized by having to pay a much higher rate of tax for the same value of property.
For example, if you live on Eldorado Court, on Kennerly, on Exbury, on Sentinel, on Calvington, on Tavistock, on Dubray, on Downsview Avenue, on Hallsport, on Roding, on Northover, on Giltspur, on Arleta or on Spenvalley, you are paying far higher property taxes than you should otherwise be paying. This is not right; this is not fair.
Even as I speak today, Metro council is debating whether it will proceed to reform this unfair, unequal and antiquated system of taxation. It is my hope that Metro councillors will approach this debate with an unbiased attitude and look at achieving a fair and equitable property tax system for all in Metro.
LANDFILL
Mr Charles Beer (York North): Once again today, the people of Durham, Peel and York region had to come down to this place to remind the government that what is now going on in terms of finding a dump site is a sham. It is a process that is deeply flawed.
The people who are there during the summer, the people who live on the farms, the people whose land will be affected, now have learned that they're going to have to wait even longer and that they are being left out there and hanging. They don't know what is going to happen, so the lives of all the people who live around those 57 sites are simply left in limbo.
Today, as the representatives of all the different groups got up, people were saying that the process is flawed and that the end result simply makes no sense. In 1992, we don't start an environmental policy by saying we're going to build a dump that is again bigger than the one that is at Keele Valley.
I want to make clear to the minister and to this government that the people of all of these areas are united. We'll continue to fight this until we can make sure that this misguided policy is put where it deserves to be, that is, off the legislative agenda, and that it will not become a reality. We've got to think of the people, the people who are out there today, the people who live in those communities. They do not want this megadump placed where they live, where they farm, where they have their communities. We've got to make sure that the government listens to that message and that in the end there is no megadump.
ROBERT MARLAND
Mr Ernie L. Eves (Parry Sound): I'm pleased to tell the House that Olympic gold medallist Robert Marland, the son of Mississauga South MPP, Margaret Marland, is in the gallery today.
I brought this with me today because I'm sure it's as close as I'll ever get to receiving one.
Rob was a member of Canada's Olympic rowing team in Spain this past summer. Many of us watched the television replay of the exciting men's eight race. We shared the joy of victory, and we listened with pride as our national anthem was played at the medal ceremony.
We remember Rob's emphasis, in his interview after the race, on the achievement of the team rather than the individual. He also said that although it was his gold medal, he won it for Canada, his wife and his family. Robert, you make us all very proud to know that individuals like you represent Canada.
For Rob, winning an Olympic gold medal was the result of hard work and sacrifice. He has rowed for 11 years, seven of them with the Canadian team. Rob and his wife, Jane Forsyth, gave up excellent jobs in banking and teaching to move to Victoria so that he could train full-time for two years.
Rowing, unlike many sports, does not bring its winners fame and fortune. But as we see with Rob, it gives them drive, dedication and a sense of achievement that will serve them well throughout their lives.
I know that Robert's family deserves much credit for his victory. Ken and Margaret Marland have provided the support and encouragement that are vital if an athlete is to become an Olympic gold medallist. Congratulations, Robert. Congratulations, Margaret. Your victory made the summer of 1992 a very special one for all Canadians.
BRITISH PENSIONS
Mr Gordon Mills (Durham East): On July 16, my private member's resolution called upon Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and her government to address the grave injustices to British old age pensioners living in Ontario. On the morning of July 16, every seat available to the public in this Legislature was occupied. Those without a seat watched the debate on television in an adjoining room. The concerns of the British old age pensioners were evident by their attendance here that day.
Since that debate, I have been asked by a member of the government of British Columbia to pass along all the detail relating to the resolution in order that a similar resolution can be introduced in their Legislature in BC. I've also received inquiries from the House of Commons in Ottawa about the bill.
Today I wish to advise all the pensioners who came to Queen's Park on July 16 that we are making some headway. I've been advised by the secretary to the Governor General of Canada that my resolution and supporting documentation have been forwarded to Sir Robert Fellowes, the principal secretary for Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth, for her information. I look forward to hearing positive news from London, England, in the near future and so do all the other old-age pensioners living in Ontario.
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VISITORS
The Speaker (Hon David Warner): We have a number of very special visitors in our gallery today, and I would ask the members of the assembly to welcome them to our midst today. We have the Honourable Kenneth McKinnon, the commissioner of the Yukon; the Honourable Vance Amory, the Premier of Nevis; Dr Bernard Yankee, the high commissioner of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States; and a delegation of legislative council members from Hong Kong. Would you please welcome our special visitors.
We also have seated in the gallery a former member of the assembly, Mrs Margaret Renwick. Welcome to our assembly.
LEGISLATIVE PAGES
The Speaker (Hon David Warner): I would also like all members to join me in welcoming our 10th group of pages to serve the 35th Parliament of the Ontario Legislature: Gwen Broda, Don Mills; Raigan Burns, Etobicoke West; Lindsay Core, Lambton; Timothy Dawson, York East; Michael Derzko, York Mills; Noah Deszca, Waterloo North; Jeremy Dupuis, Essex South; Peter Fraser, York South; Haley Freedman, Hamilton West; Brittany Gullick, Peterborough; Lorraine Hudson from Prince Edward-Lennox-South Hastings; Arleigh Johnson, Simcoe West; Joshua Kyrzakos, Mississauga West; Karen Lepper, Eglinton; Clare McLean-Wilson, Grey; David Mollison, Halton Centre; Marie Morin-Strom, Nipissing; Nathan Pfrimmer from Muskoka-Georgian Bay; Lawrence Philadelphia, Cambridge; Andrew Price, Ottawa-Rideau; Lesley Robert, Durham West; Natalie Sarjeant, Mississauga North; Grant Scholes, Scarborough Centre, and Gladys Yam from Scarborough North. Please welcome our pages to our assembly.
SPECIAL REPORT BY OMBUDSMAN
The Speaker (Hon David Warner): I also beg to inform the House that on Monday, the 17th day of August, 1992, a special report by the Ombudsman was tabled with the Clerk's office to the Legislative Assembly.
STATEMENTS BY THE MINISTRY AND RESPONSES
CONSTITUTIONAL REFORM / RÉFORME CONSTITUTIONNELLE
Hon Bob Rae (Premier and Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs): I rise to simply table the following documents in English and in French: Consensus Report on the Constitution, Charlottetown, August 28, 1992, Final Text; and Political Accords, a companion to the consensus document.
Interjection.
Hon Mr Rae: People say, "Where is the text?" This is the text we have. We'd like to just table that.
The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Statements by ministers? Responses? It is time for oral questions and --
Hon Mr Rae: If the House would permit, I don't have a written statement, but I'm certainly prepared to make a brief comment on the accord. If that would be in the interests of the House or the House would be interested in having that for a few moments, I'm certainly quite prepared to do that and to encourage further public discussion.
Mrs Lyn McLeod (Leader of the Opposition): It's my understanding that there would be a request for unanimous consent for all three party leaders to speak to the constitutional proposals in the House this afternoon.
Hon Mr Rae: Okay, that's fine.
The Speaker: Agreed? Agreed.
Hon Mr Rae: I take this opportunity, then, and I want to start by saying to my colleagues that I feel we've made substantial progress since I last had the opportunity to report to the House after the meeting of July 7.
As I pointed out to the House at that time, the agreement we had reached then was an agreement between nine premiers, the federal government; and the aboriginal leadership was represented, as well as the territorial leaders. What we have now is, in my view, a truly remarkable achievement, and that is the additional agreement of the government of Quebec to the Charlottetown accord, which, while it has some of the features and bases itself to some extent on the agreement of July 7, in fact represents a very substantial advance over where we are.
Many things will be said, and we'll have an opportunity later on, I think very soon, to have a fuller debate and discussion in this House with respect to the Constitution. I look forward to that discussion. I look forward to a full debate with the leaders, and not only with the leaders but with members of the House also being able to participate. Of course, in the event that we are successful in achieving a substantial Yes vote across the country, we will then have yet another opportunity to be debating a resolution which will be based on the Charlottetown accord negotiated on August 28, 1992.
I've had occasion over the last while -- and I'm sorry the member for Renfrew North isn't here, because of all the members in the House he could be the one to correct me most quickly.
Interjection.
Hon Mr Rae: The member for York North won't do too badly either if he listens carefully and hears me making mistakes.
Members will no doubt recall that, prior to the remarkable events of 1867, there was a dramatic moment in the Legislative Assembly of the two Canadas that were together at that point, Upper and Lower Canada, when rivals suddenly came together and formed what became known as the Great Coalition. I don't have to go over all the debates that took place between 1841 and 1862-63, but there were some of the most bitter, divisive, difficult issues, in which governments came and went very quickly, in which personal antagonisms were built up over a long period of time and were based on a very different sense of interest. The vision of Canada that was held by George Brown was very different from the vision of Canada that was held by George-Étienne Cartier and very different in turn from Taché, very different from Galt, very different from Sir John A. Macdonald.
After governments came and went and fell, there was a critical moment when George Brown, who was the leader, I suppose, of the Reform-Liberal forces in Upper Canada, in Canada West, as it was then called, initiated a process of discussion in which all the parties that were then represented would come together to form one government and, in so doing, they would strive to create a federation. That was the critical moment, which then proceeded to drive the discussions in Charlottetown in 1864, in Quebec in 1865 and of course in London, England, itself in 1866 and 1867; a critical moment in which the leadership of the Canada as it then was came together and said, "There are issues which transcend party, there are issues which transcend differences, and there is a moment and a time for us to think of the common good and to put all our political and partisan differences behind us and unite together in the creation of the federation called Canada."
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It was that spirit which drove this country towards Confederation 125 years ago and, I believe, in its own way, the spirit of Charlottetown of 1992, with the incredible moments in which people of very different points of view -- I mean, let no one pretend that the vision of Canada in its pure form that is held by Premier Wells in his views, by me in my views, by Premier Bourassa in his views, by Ovide Mercredi in his views, taken in their abstract are the same; they're not.
What drove people to come together was a constant determination and effort to keep our eyes on the prize, to keep our eyes on the objective, and the objective is a home in which we can all live, a home which will have enough variety and diversity in it that all of us can feel at home and at the same time make it something that is ours.
Le gouvernement du Québec : le premier ministre Bourassa lui-même a répondu. Il a toujours agi avec une énorme dignité et avec une remarquable sagesse. Oui, il a fait un énorme travail remarquable, fort pour sa province, le Québec. Il a gagné dans ce sens, peut-être plus qu'aucun autre premier ministre dans l'histoire de la province de Québec, une reconnaissance de la spécificité distincte du Québec ; plus de contrôle sur certains programmes qui n'ont pas toujours été reconnus, dans le sens le plus clair, dans le domaine exclusivement provincial ; reconnaissance dans la clause Canada, à travers la constitution, que nous devons trouver un nouveau fédéralisme qui est à la fois flexible et qui offre la stabilité à l'oeuvre économique et à l'oeuvre historique du Québec. M. Bourassa nous a appris, à tous les Canadiens, qu'on peut être bon Québécois et bon Canadien à la fois.
It's up to all of us now to try to do something which in itself is quite difficult; that is, to try to get the Canadian public, through this referendum process which is now under way, to in a sense share in the give and take that led to the Charlottetown accord. A federation by its very nature depends on people being willing to set their own absolute number one priorities alongside others and learn that everyone has to give a little and learn that there has to be a sense of give and take, that there has to be a sense of flexibility.
It's important for us as we talk to Canadians and Ontarians and as we engage them in a very constructive and positive dialogue, which I encourage all members to do, to point out to everyone what's in the accord, why the Canada clause is such an improvement, in my view, over what was in Meech Lake because it includes so many at the same time as it deals with the issues that were raised by Meech Lake, why the social charter represents an enormous advance for all of us, why the economic union represents an enormous advance for all of us, why for us as a nation to recognize the inherent right to self-government allows us to say as Canadians that we're helping to set the way, set the pace, set the path.
There will be ample time today for there to be criticisms and comments and partisan attacks and assaults. We all expect that on the opening day of the House; certainly I do. I'm ready, eager and willing to participate in it.
Hon Ruth A. Grier (Minister of the Environment and Minister Responsible for the Greater Toronto Area): We all are.
Hon Mr Rae: As are we all. But I want to say that none of that should obscure the central fact of what has taken place and what is taking place in Canada. We are a meeting place where people from different lands have made their home. We are a meeting place where no one ethnic group has dominance. We are a meeting place where we have learned over the years the price that is paid by linguistic or religious intolerance or bigotry. We are a meeting place that knows something of the need to create common institutions that allow each part of the country to see the very real advantages to what we are pulling together.
I believe very profoundly that what Canada at its best can truly be is a light and beacon to the world, that we are doing things that other countries have not been able to do. Oh yes, I know there are times and places when we say, "We're not so good as other countries at this," or, "We're not so good as others at that." But if you look at what we are doing here, if you look at what's happening in Europe and compare what's happening here, with our abilities to allow people to come from all over the world and create a new society and create a climate of tolerance and understanding, what other country is making the advances we are making with respect to the relationship between, if you like, those who came and settled 300 or 400 years ago and those who have been here for thousands of years? These issues are shared by a number of countries around the world, and we have a chance to make some real progress and some real advances.
In my approach to this accord, I must confess that I am proud of what we have done. I am proud of the effort that's been put into this by this province. I'm proud of the work that's been done by the select committee, by the contribution that's been made by the public servants, by the contribution that's been made by members of the opposition and members of the government. I'm very proud of the people of this province who, in my view, have consistently taken a positive, fundamentally optimistic, creative, imaginative and yes, at moments, a courageous position.
I believe profoundly that this is the basis for unity in the country. It is the basis for a new passion for Canada, a new passion for what it is we are creating here on the northern half of the North American continent. I think we have to try to convey something of that passion, something of the give and take, something of the imagination that went into the forging of this document.
There's always going to be room for cynicism in a society, there's always going to be room for people to say, "You could have done this," or, "You could have done that," or, "You shouldn't have done this," or, "You shouldn't have done that." The task for all of us now, I believe, regardless of party, is to remember that at its moments of greatness, indeed at the very forging of the country itself, it was a determination by practical but also creative and imaginative women and men who said, "No, we're going to set aside the demands for perfection on the spot and we're going to build a practical home, a real home, a living home for Canada." That's what happened 125 years ago and that's exactly what we can do in 1992. Thank you very much.
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Mrs McLeod: I appreciate an opportunity to offer a perspective on this issue, an opportunity which for a moment I thought was about to vanish.
Hansard will record that I have been very brief in my responses to the periodic reports that the Premier has brought to this House on the progress of the negotiations. I was brief in anticipation of the time when the completed accord might in fact be tabled in this House. It's my intention to be somewhat fuller in my response to those proposals today.
I appreciate the commitment the Premier has made that there will shortly be an opportunity for other members of my caucus and other members of this assembly to offer their views, their perspectives on these proposals as well, because I believe the manner in which these constitutional proposals have been and are being considered by the members of this assembly, free from partisanship and indeed open to all points of view, underlines the critical importance of this accord to all Ontarians.
I have always believed that there are some issues which must be dealt with beyond partisanship. To my colleagues on all sides of this chamber I say, let us make sure this issue is one of those. The stakes are too high and the consequences are too far-reaching and too long-lasting for consideration of political gain or loss to be a factor in our response.
Let me stress, however, that non-partisanship is not the same as unquestioning acceptance. There are legitimate concerns about the accord and these need to be expressed. The people of this province are entitled to all the information that is available, presented to them in the fullest and fairest way.
Let me begin the expression of my own perspective by saying that as an Ontarian I'm proud of the fact that once again this province has played a bridging role. Through three separate constitutional negotiating rounds, under three premiers of all three political parties, Ontario has offered reason rather than rancour. We have been willing to set aside a preoccupation with our own interest to hear and understand the perspectives, the concerns, the needs of other regions and communities of people.
But the job is not finished; it has just begun. Before Ontarians cast their ballots on October 26, all of us who support the constitutional renewal owe it to everyone in this province to provide them with the answers to their questions. I believe it is vital that those of us who support this agreement articulate the reasons for our support firmly and positively. It is not enough to say, "Let's just get it over with."
Ce n'est pas assez de dire, «Finissons-en». La question est trop importante pour être simplement mise de côté. Nous devons, au contraire, souligner les avantages que l'entente procure au Canada et à l'Ontario.
For me, there are two significant and positive reasons for supporting the accord. The first advantage is one that we have been enjoying for 10 years: a patriated Constitution in the hands of Canadians with a Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It is not new, but in a way it is a fundamental element of this package. The reason that all provinces and the federal government began this constitutional round was to carry forward the work that was only begun 10 years ago and to make sure that this time all parts of the country are included.
This agreement shouldn't be viewed in isolation. Let us remember, if Quebec had not been represented by a separatist government in 1981, if that province had been represented by a government that was willing to negotiate, does anyone believe that the Constitution that emerged would have been exactly the same, word for word? Surely it would have been quite different in some ways.
This constitutional package reflects those differences, differences that would have been incorporated 10 years ago if Quebec had been represented then by a government willing to work for Canada. Now that all provinces have governments prepared to work for Canada, doesn't it make sense to finish the job we started back then? That, in my mind, is one positive reason to vote Yes: to complete a process of change which Ontarians have always supported.
There is another important reason. You can see it every day on the currency markets and in the stock exchanges and you can hear it in the business centres of the world. In the current economic environment, Canadians must have confidence in their national institutions. Canadians must feel secure about our country's stability so that we can focus our energies on rebuilding the economy. In a volatile world, stability is not just a valuable asset; it is essential to our economic life.
Honnêtement, je pense que les négociations constitutionnelles n'auraient pas dû dominer à tel point la scène nationale ou provinciale. Nous aurions pu continuer à progresser simultanément sur plusieurs fronts, et plus particulièrement sur celui de la reconstruction de notre économie. Mais je ne vais pas chicaner à ce sujet maintenant. Ce dont il faut se souvenir, c'est que notre niveau de vie dépend beaucoup de la façon dont nous allons résoudre nos disputes constitutionnelles.
I had a brief opportunity this summer to visit New York and Washington to meet with some of the decision-makers in international investment and in the business world, and the question that was most often asked was, "What is happening in your national unity debate?" Those same people, the people who every day make decisions that affect investment in our country, are going to be watching for the results on October 26. They will be joined by people in London, Frankfurt and Tokyo, in every other major financial and political centre in the world. We must demonstrate that Canada is ready to stop arguing over issues left over from the 19th century and start dealing with the challenges of the 21st century.
We may feel that this has been a long, anguished debate of uniquely Canadian nature, a debate that no one else can understand. That is probably true. But whether people outside Canada understand what we are doing or not, the world is certainly going to watch the outcome. On October 26, we have our chance to say, "We're ready for the world," and we have to grasp it. We have to stop arguing about what we were or thought we wanted to be and embrace a new vision of what we can be.
A Yes vote on October 26 will be seen as a sign of political maturity and economic security. It will be seen as a positive step into the future. A Yes vote means governments will have no excuse for not dealing with economic priorities that demand attention, priorities that have been too long ignored. To me, these are two strong reasons for supporting the constitutional package. It will finish the job we began years ago and it will give us a chance to start a job we should have begun years ago: the job of building an economy for the 21st century.
I believe this accord does provide a sound basis for our future governance. It is obvious that in drafting this constitutional package the lesson of Meech Lake was well understood. The lesson at Meech was that this round of negotiations had to be a Canada round. Canadians in every part of the country had to be given the chance to see their clear stake in the outcome. The provisions in this accord reflect each province's readiness to respect the others' concerns. The Canada clause puts us all at the table as equals.
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Senate reform demonstrates that this was a round for all Canadians. It addressed western Canada's fear of being frozen out of national decision-making. But at the same time, Senate reform was accompanied by an increased representation for our province in the House of Commons, more accurately reflecting our population and giving the people of Ontario a fairer say in that decision-making body.
Native self-government demonstrates that this was a round for all Canadians. It would be unthinkable if an agreement reached in 1992 had not recognized the determination of native peoples to step out from under the Indian Act and determine their own future.
These are some of the specific provisions that we can indeed be proud of. But just as it is the duty of all of us who support the constitutional amendments to put forward our reasons, it is also incumbent upon us to respect the concerns of those who are opposed. Those concerns spring from conscience, and that is why we will be having a free vote when a resolution does come before this House.
In this assembly and outside, legitimate concerns and questions will be raised. For those of us on the Yes side, it is not just a matter of silencing the objections or even simply rebutting them. Our responsibility is to answer them. The ball is in our court and we cannot lob it; we have to aim it. We have to put forward a unified, coordinated message that expresses the positive reasons for voting Yes.
My party is ready to work with the Office of the Premier and the leader of the Conservative Party to ensure that the Yes campaign in this province is one that we can all be proud of, a campaign that impugns no one's motives and responds to everyone's questions. But we also have to recognize that not all of the i's have been dotted or all of the t's crossed. There are details left to be determined. The important thing is that they can be determined in an atmosphere of calm rather than one of crisis. Our work will be more productive because it can be undertaken in a stable environment.
One of the details which I would like to see subjected to thorough study and debate is the process for electing this province's senators. As I mentioned, Senate reform is one of the positive changes that this package offers and we have a responsibility to make sure that it could work here in Ontario.
I've already indicated my strong personal objection to the use of quotas to achieve equity in the Senate. Quotas, in my mind, do not advance the principle of equity; they violate it. They carry an implicit assumption that as women we are unable to compete on the basis of our skills and experience, and I categorically reject that assumption. As a woman, I argue that we don't need guaranteed access; we need open access. That is true of women and of all minorities. Provide truly equal opportunity and we can make the most of it.
I reject guaranteed quotas for women in a Senate to be elected as well, because it would block access for others. I believe, for example, that any method of choosing senators should ensure fair representation of the regions of the province, but any method of selection that included quotas would make balanced regional representation difficult if not impossible.
It would be naïve for me to suggest that there would be no problems facing women who would seek election to a Senate. There would be unfair disadvantages in fund-raising, in networking and public perceptions, but instead of trying to fix quotas, we should try to fix the problems.
I would suggest, for example, that one innovation we might want to consider would be a form of preferential voting in which people would indicate their preferences among the candidates from first to last, with victory going to the candidate most acceptable to the majority. This method worked to elect a woman president of Ireland. Maybe we should examine whether it would work here. I believe that the select committee on Ontario in Confederation should be reconstituted to look at creative approaches to Senate elections.
The campaign we have just entered may be one of the most crucial that any of us has taken part in. We must deal with all the specific constitutional proposals, but we cannot lose sight of the package as a whole. We have always known that Canada is more than the sum of its parts, and so is this constitutional accord. It provides a reasonable working basis for governing ourselves, and that is the start we need, but from there it takes the will to make it work. You can't stand for ever on a corner waiting for a bus marked "Perfection."
I'm convinced that the likely alternative to this constitutional package would not be a tighter or more centralized form of federalism but a much looser and more decentralized one. The alternative, whether it should be separation or sovereignty association or some alternative as yet unthought of or undefined, could well be one in which many issues and many people would be lost in the process, and that would be a tragedy, because one thing we have evolved in this country perhaps better than anyone in the world is a system of government that respects people and their needs.
Canada is a unique nation because it was founded on a unique commitment. The English and French founders of this country could have engaged in civil war or they could have tried assimilation. Instead, they decided to learn how to live together, side by side, as one nation, respecting their differences. We have learned to do that as a people. Indeed, we've translated that into an understanding of differences among people around the world. We have learned to coexist.
The special qualities that allowed us to grow as one nation are something to be proud of, something to maintain and not to cut short. A Yes vote, I believe, will allow that to continue and to flourish. I believe that we need to recommit ourselves unequivocally to this country and what it stands for. This commitment may be seen to be based on intangibles, but these intangibles offer a great many tangible advantages. A lot of investment is here, a lot of jobs are here, a lot of people are here because Canadians and Ontarians have a reputation for being able to work together.
This constitutional accord that is before us, in my view, reflects the capacity for understanding, for tolerance, for compromise, that truly is our essence as Canadians. Reaching an agreement that binds together a nation as diverse and as complex as Canada is indeed in itself a significant achievement. We should endorse it and we should step with pride and confidence into our future.
Mr Michael D. Harris (Nipissing): I believe that for far too many years Canada has been engaged in an intensive process of constitutional self-examination, and I also believe that once again we have arrived at a moment in time when we have an opportunity to finally complete a round.
For many in this country, the process of repatriation has never been completed. I believe that is a significant aspect of the agreement at Charlottetown and a significant difference between what some of us may want in the future out of our Constitution as opposed to what is there.
This process started in earnest in the 1970s. Repatriation technically took place in the 1981-82 round, but it has never been completed. The Charlottetown accord, to me, is the cumulative result of the most intensive and extensive process of self-discovery ever conducted by a country.
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To vote Yes in the October 26 referendum, in my view, will substantially bring to a close what can only be described as an era of national uncertainty. Certainly there will be continuing discussions and negotiations, first of all to bring into effect that which we have agreed to and that which we may wish to pursue in the future. This is not the end of constitutional discussion but this, I believe, will bring an immediate end to a sense of uncertainty both within and outside of Canada over whether we can move forward, all Canadians, and arrive at a consensus on anything.
In the October 26 referendum, a Yes or a No vote is the right of every citizen. That hasn't been talked about very much today and I want to talk about it. If politicians do not believe that what they propose can stand up to public scrutiny, they should not then pronounce it finished, nor should they attempt to bully others into agreement. I have great confidence in the Canadian people; I've great confidence in Ontarians. I believe that if 5 or 10 or 15 years, perhaps some of us will wish 20 years from now, we get into further constitutional discussions, we should look at the amending formula and a process of allowing Canadians an opportunity, with or without their politicians, to participate in that review.
For my part, I will vote Yes in the referendum. Quite frankly, you all know, and it's a matter of record, that this is not the deal I would've sought to negotiate. My caucus knows that; the Premier knows that. The Premier and I have different political philosophies which come into play in the constitutional discussions as well. We often disagree, but I respect that this is not entirely the deal that the Premier, could he sit down and write one himself, or his cabinet or his caucus or his party, would've wanted either. Neither is it the deal that any single participant to these discussions sought.
But this is a deal which was unanimously agreed to and, as such, is something that I believe we can all live with and work with. I will vote Yes because I believe it is the best deal possible at this particular point in history. If I were to vote No, I would be saying with that vote that it's possible to negotiate something else with unanimity, something more to my liking, something better that will not only be better from my point of view, but will also be better if unanimously agreed to across the country.
I am absolutely convinced, from my involvement inside and outside, looking and listening and talking to Canadians, actively, certainly, since 1981 when I was first elected, that there is not a better deal waiting out there, with unanimity to be had, anywhere in this country. There may be logical reasons why some will vote differently than I plan to vote, but I do not believe that anybody with any experience in discussions across this country can say there is a better deal and that this is the reason why they are voting No.
There are some aspects, I've said, that I as an individual do not particularly like. Those are a matter of record, and I want to comment briefly. I believe this must be examined as a whole; I believe very strongly in that. When we are dealing with a Yes or a No vote, we're not dealing with the negotiations of individual aspects; we're now dealing with the package as a whole.
Second is something that isn't talked about very much and that I want to reiterate today. I think of aspects that I encouraged the Premier to talk about: property rights; the economic union; the dropping of interprovincial trade barriers, which leads to the lowering to consumers in this country of $6 to $10 billion in prices and which increases our companies that want to compete outside of Canada by $6 to $10 billion. I believe these economic discussions are crucial for us, and we achieved no gain in this round in the Constitution to that.
However, I believe very strongly that where there is a will, we will accomplish these. We will drop the interprovincial trade barriers and we will forge a new economic union, whether it's in the Constitution or it's not. I believe, for those who look at individual aspects and say, "Explain to me what's in this for me," "There's a country in this for you. If you were looking for something in the Constitution individually, you were looking to the wrong place. That's not what a constitution is for."
For those who seem concerned about social programs or national social programs, I say to you, and I believe this 100%, that if there is the money and if there is the will today, 5 years from now, 10 years from now, 25 years from now to have a program, we'll have it. If there is not the will, we won't -- I don't care if it's in the Constitution or not.
When we look at individual aspects that may concern us -- there has to be at least one that would concern every Canadian and he or she would say, "Well, that's not my first choice" -- I ask people to put it into perspective. I ask them to consider, as I have always mentioned in these discussions, other countries which have marvellous constitutions but no will to uphold them or enforce them, or they don't have the money to do so, and they do not.
I've asked them to consider countries like Great Britain where the last written word was in the 13th century, the Magna Carta. Never yet have I found people from Britain who didn't have disagreements, somebody from Scotland or Ireland or Wales, but they always knew what it meant to be British, they always knew what it meant to be Scottish. They didn't have to write anything down. They didn't have to have a written document to have a sense of country and what it meant.
I believe that if Canadians and Ontarians will look at this package as a whole as opposed to each individual item, and if they are looking at individual items that they will put it into the context of how important is a constitution anyway to achieve that individual objective that they're looking for, you will find that it is people themselves, the will and the determination of the people elected and non-elected at any given point in time, that will determine social programs, barriers interprovincially and economic union. If there is a will for natives to have more say over their lives, we will give them that whether it is in the document or it is not.
If this then is examined as a whole, if we look at the individual aspects that way, I agree with the leader of the Liberal Party that it's most important that we give both the straight facts and how important each aspect of it is to Ontarians to help them make up their minds. They have a decision to make; we've given it to them. I think that's as it should be. They need the information. They also need to know what isn't there.
I was distressed to learn a number in British Columbia have a sense they want to vote No because they disagree, as I do and as the leader of the Liberal Party does, with achieving gender equality by a quota. That's not in this deal. If you disagree with that, if you disagree with the Premier's stand on that, take some comfort that I don't think by the time the vote comes he'll be Premier.
Take some comfort that it's not written in the Constitution. Take some comfort that it will be the Legislature of the day when the vote finally takes place for the election of senators. That can change with the political party of the day and with the will of Ontarians of the day. There is nothing in this Constitution that suggests that is how we will elect our senators. I do say that the first vote for senators, in my view, will take place after the next provincial election. We can deal with issues like that at that time. Let's be honest and upfront and straight and make sure Ontarians understand what's not in the deal and not confuse the issues with those.
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As a whole, this package will bring us further forward than any previous negotiation ever envisioned. It is a much more far-reaching document than Meech Lake. It truly represents the interests of all provinces, of the territories and of the peoples of Canada. It does not meet all the needs of any one group in our society but it does, as a unanimous document, attempt to meet some of the needs of all Canada.
It has been said that it was the Canada round. This agreement has a number of benefits and improves upon our existing Constitution in many, many ways.
It includes the Canada clause, which says who we are as a people; it includes a social and economic union that says what we expect from our nation and its leaders; it brings Quebec into the fold, and it reforms the Senate, replacing a mothballed, decrepit institution more fitting for a museum than a government with an elected chamber responsible to the people. It clarifies the relationship between federal and provincial governments. That's what a Constitution is to do: set out a framework for how we'll operate, federally and provincially, who has what jurisdiction, who has what powers.
It recognizes that our aboriginal people did not automatically relinquish their rights as a people when the Europeans landed. The most practical advantages to all citizens of this agreement is that it will help bring the uncertainty to a halt. The political efforts of a generation have been spent now to reach constitutional agreement, and these are efforts which would have been, I believe we would all agree, better spent working on our economic growth, on education, on jobs, on our future, on our social wellbeing.
With this agreement it once again becomes possible for our political leaders to turn their attention where it is needed: the day-to-day operation of this country. The larger benefit, as Professor Peter Russell has pointed out, is that it "consolidate(s) the will of Canadians to continue together under constitutional arrangements that recognize and accommodate the fact that they are a truly federal people marked by deep diversity."
Hopefully, we can stop our self-examination and get on with being a country and get on with securing a future for all Canadians. That is why the referendum vote, which I have fought for since 1990, is indeed important. During the Meech Lake debate, Clyde Wells of Newfoundland stated, "The Constitution belongs to the people of Canada -- the ultimate source of sovereignty in the nation," the people of Canada. It's their Constitution. Finally, the people have the right to accept or reject their Constitution.
When the Fathers of Confederation put forward the BNA Act, it was a document not of the people but of the British Parliament. In 1982, when Canada's Constitution was patriated and the Charter of Rights was added, consent was not sought from the Canadian people or the provincial legislatures. The final ratifier, as in 1867, was the British Parliament.
Through this vote on October 26 if it's endorsed, and I believe it will be, the Constitution of Canada will truly then become a document of the people, not of any one political party or politician. I think that is very important as well for Canadians to understand, that they now have an obligation. They are not voting for Lyn McLeod, Mike Harris or Bob Rae, or Brian Mulroney, Jean Chrétien or Audrey McLaughlin. They are voting for this, their Constitution. That is an obligation of the people of this province. We must encourage them to pick up that obligation and make the most informed decision they can.
I believe the Charlottetown agreement is the best next step available to Ontario in Confederation. Not just for Canada -- I think it's also the next best step available to Ontario in Confederation. It goes without saying that I believe it is the best step for Canada.
Whether or not we choose to take that step forward is now up to the people of this province. It is up to our fellow citizens all across Canada, because now we all have an equal and a direct say. Every Canadian, every Ontarian eligible to vote has an equal and direct say in where we as a country and Canadians as a people go from here.
So, Mr Premier, and to the leader of the Liberal Party and to all Ontarians, I want to say that, for me, a Yes vote is a step forward, and I say that we can and we should take that step forward together as a country.
The Speaker: The Leader of the Opposition.
Mrs McLeod: Mr Speaker, may I ask unanimous consent of the House to recognize the contribution of the former member for St George-St David?
The Speaker: Agreed? Agreed.
IAN G. SCOTT
Mrs Lyn McLeod (Leader of the Opposition): Politics takes unexpected turns at times, as I think we all know. Ian Scott did not expect to come into government when he ran in 1985, and I certainly did not expect, as I watched a new government take office at that time, that I would be rising in the House one day to recognize the contribution to that new government of one of its newest stars. But, Mr Speaker, Ian Scott came to epitomize for me almost the spirit of that new government, and I know you will understand a certain bias if I describe the essence of that government as being one of intelligence, progressiveness, readiness for change, bringing a commitment to human rights, to civil rights, concerned about people.
I believe Ian Scott was exactly the kind of person we want to attract into politics: a person who was ready to set aside a successful career in order to make his contribution to public life, a person who was constantly engaging the depths and the demands of the most complex public policies, but a person too who cared genuinely about his constituents, a person whose interests ranged from the concerns of Cabbagetown to the other realities of Rosedale.
Perhaps this is what I most appreciated about Ian Scott when I joined the government in the cabinet in 1987. Mr Scott's record of achievements on major issues is well known, but very few people saw the kind of attention Ian gave to virtually every issue that came before the cabinet. There was absolutely nothing that was too minor to escape Ian Scott's questioning. There is no doubt that the former member for St George-St David believed absolutely in the responsibility of cabinet, and he was prepared to scrutinize and to debate every issue, sometimes just to be sure that a debate had indeed taken place. Ian Scott, I think it can truly be said, was indeed our caucus's best critic, even when he was in the government.
Some people, seeing the hard work of the former member for St George-St David, seeing the responsibilities he was asked to assume when in government, seeing the breadth of the initiatives he introduced, have tended to call Ian Scott the minister of everything. Most would probably think of him primarily in his role as Attorney General or as a constitutional adviser, but I think of Ian Scott most often as minister of native affairs, responsible for the first land claims settled in Ontario in 150 years.
The former member for St George-St David was perhaps the best kind of politician: an idealist without illusions, with a capacity for vision as well as for practical management, and bringing always to it all a constant sense of humour. We are grateful for his contribution, we are truly sorry to see him go, and we will not let him get very far away.
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Mr Ernie L. Eves (Parry Sound): I am pleased to respond on behalf of our party. I for one am not surprised that Ian is not here this afternoon. Ian is the type of individual who never sought publicity or notoriety, but it always seemed to find him, one way or another.
I have some different recollections, perhaps, from the leader of the official opposition of Mr Scott, both in and outside of government. As I recall, Mr Scott was initially a member of a rather prestigious NDP law firm, named Cameron, Brewin and Scott, which did a lot of work in labour law in the province of Ontario. Somewhere along the way, he had a conversion to the modified socialist party in the province of Ontario, and seemed to be successful in at least his political endeavour in that regard.
My first contact with Mr Scott actually was as a practising small-town lawyer in Parry Sound. I had negotiated a contract. I wouldn't exactly call it a labour contract, but it was a contract for the commissioner of the Ontario Junior A hockey league. During the course of those negotiations, we had insisted that we receive independent contracts with each of the 12 owners of the teams. Matters being what they were, this individual ran into some difficulty and dispute with the owners, who wanted to retire him rather not so gracefully, and we had to act upon suing the individuals who had guaranteed his contract, including the illustrious Mr Ballard from time to time. We sought a lawyer who was renowned in defending people's rights and knew something about employment standards and labour practices: We sought out Mr Scott, who brought the case to a most gratifying conclusion for all concerned, including himself, I might add.
Ian served as the Attorney General for the province of Ontario for some five years, and he was the minister responsible for native affairs. I don't think there is any member of this chamber who will deny that Mr Scott was indeed one of the great attorneys general in the province's history and did a lot for aboriginal rights. Mr Scott was also responsible for introducing and taking some landmark steps with respect to pay equity, freedom of information and protection of privacy, and family law reform. The Ottawa Citizen -- although I'm not so sure the member for Carleton would agree that anything the Ottawa Citizen had to say was a compliment -- called him "the workhorse of the Ontario government."
Unbeknownst to me, Ian also had a great academic, or teaching, career. He taught in the faculty of law at the University of Toronto for more than 15 years. He even took a year's leave of absence and became a full-time faculty member of the faculty of law at Queen's University. He's been the Goodman lecturer at the faculty of law at the University of Toronto. He's been the Cunningham lecturer in business and law at Queen's University. He served as counsel to the Berger commission and to the Grange commission. He is an elected fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers and the International Academy of Trial Lawyers. As the leader of the opposition has pointed out, he was also very involved in community activities. He's been a director of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, the Canadian Environmental Law Foundation, and the United Way of Metropolitan Toronto. He was the founding president of the John Howard Society of Metropolitan Toronto.
Some of us will miss Mr Scott more than others. I won't miss him a bit on occasions, but we will always miss his wit.
Hon Bob Rae (Premier and Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs): Ian Scott has been a friend of mine for nearly 20 years. I know that my colleagues who have only met Mr Scott since we formed the government would find it hard to believe, but Ian was my teacher in law school. He was a very firm supporter of mine when I first ran for Parliament. I have the cheque stubs to prove it, and I more than occasionally threaten to remind him of that.
He comes from a very distinguished political family. I think it would be his great-great-grandfather, Richard Scott, who was one of the leaders of Confederation and was the person who moved the legislation which established public support for separate schools in the province of Ontario, Upper Canada at that time.
Ian's contribution to the province and to Canada is truly remarkable. When I was at law school, he was just going from being the counsel to the Berger commission to being counsel to the Lysyk commission. He was somebody who had an enormous feeling for the whole country. Of course, he worked very hard in a very distinguished firm, the firm of Cameron, Brewin and Scott, which at that time was a very eclectic firm; it had people from all political persuasions, and was a very lively law firm. I articled with a rival firm.
I've heard Ian Scott argue in court. I've heard him argue before the Supreme Court of Canada on constitutional cases. He is a brilliant advocate, one of the great advocates in the appellate courts in the country, and would be so regarded by anyone in the profession.
As a teacher, I just mention, he was tough, he was critical, he was iconoclastic and he helped me learn something of labour law. So when we get to talking about labour law, I'll be glad to tell you some of the views of Mr Scott, which perhaps he shared with you privately, with respect to how really dramatic the legislation is that we're bringing in.
He cared deeply. Perhaps I'm projecting a bit, but in terms of when he decided to retire from politics, I think the thing he felt most strongly about was saying goodbye to his riding, which I think is, for all of us, perhaps the hardest thing to do. I know when I ceased being the member of Parliament for Broadview-Greenwood, I felt I was losing part of my body in not still being the member there. I think Ian's feeling for his constituency, for all of its parts, really is quite genuine and is something he was able to represent very effectively.
We got to know Ian politically, many of us, through the negotiations on the accord in 1985, where he was one of the negotiators on behalf of the Liberal Party. Those were exciting times, for some a little less exciting than for others, but for us it was exciting. I can remember that the Premier-elect or the Premier chosen, as it were, Mr Peterson -- there was a brief time there when we did get consulted regularly -- asked me directly who I thought should be the Attorney General. I told him very directly, "There's only one candidate, and that's Ian Scott." I say that without offence to any of those on the other benches who might have aspired to the position.
Ian was and is a relentless partisan. People talk about how he might have been a CCF or whatever. He is a very determined Liberal who felt very strongly about the role and obligation of the Liberal Party. I think it is fair to say he also felt very strongly about the role and obligations of a member of government and the role and obligations of a member of the opposition.
As a member of the opposition, he was tough, relentless. I would use a number of other adjectives, but I see the member from Scarborough has now taken his seat; there's an extraordinary change in the volume level from the seat which Mr Scott used to occupy.
I'm sorry he's leaving partisan politics because I think he had a feel for it and had a lot to contribute to it. I think he was, if I may say so, a bit frustrated to be out of government and felt he'd had his time as the Attorney General for five years, where the accord allowed him to do a lot of things he wanted to do and where I think he was most suited to being able to do them.
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As I've said on other occasions, Mr Scott has had some very harsh things to say about me in the House. I'm sure there would perhaps be times and moments when I might have had some harsh things to say about him. Such is partisan politics and such is partisan life.
But Ian, while he was in political life, played it to the full, and I think all of us who have both worked with him and, yes, worked against him, been the object of his rapier wit as well as his abrasive incisiveness, recognize very much that he was in his good days a gentleman, but always a player, and somebody whom I think we have learned -- I certainly have learned -- to respect. I've learned a lot from Ian Scott, as a student, as a politician and as a colleague.
I just would say to honourable members that I think it's perhaps important as we enter into yet another session that we reflect on the fact that there is life beyond: before, during and after politics. The way in which Ian left office, writing me a personal, very kind note saying all sorts of things which he would never dare say publicly, and certainly never say in this House, both about me and about our government, allows me the opportunity to reflect on some of the things that are said here and how they have to be put in a certain degree of perspective.
The Speaker (Hon David Warner): I too will miss the honourable member for St George-St David. Your kind and thoughtful comments will be forwarded to Mr Scott.
ORAL QUESTIONS
UNEMPLOYMENT
Mrs Lyn McLeod (Leader of the Opposition): We must now turn to the one question that could lead this session of the Legislature, because it is the one question above all others that people across this province are asking. It's the question that's based on the fact that Ontario's unemployment rate now stands at 11.3% and that 609,000 people in this province are out of work. It's the question based on the fact that as the St Catharines Standard says today, 547 people a day are losing their jobs in this province.
In light of these facts, will the Premier now acknowledge that he has no real job creation policies and that his policies in fact are putting more people out of work? Will he acknowledge that his government is offering no help and virtually no hope to the people who are out of work in this province?
Hon Bob Rae (Premier and Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs): I can say without hesitation that this government is doing everything it can. We are mobilizing through the Jobs Ontario fund, through the Jobs Ontario Capital fund, through the youth training funds, through the work that we're doing with the private sector. We are working very hard to deal with what is a very difficult situation. The recovery in the American economy, the European economy and the world economy has not happened to the extent and to the degree that was anticipated and hoped for. That is a reality.
The member spoke earlier about how we live in an international society. That's exactly right. When practically 35% of our GDP depends on our trade with the United States, and when we see the economic conditions that exist in the United States, it is literally impossible for this province to avoid the impact of that kind of recession around the world. We've gone through a difficult structural time. I want to say to the member that she knows that perfectly well.
The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Will the Premier conclude his response, please.
Hon Mr Rae: She also knows that companies are in fact making decisions to invest in this province, that we are continuing to attract the massive proportion of investment in this province compared to other parts of Canada and that we are doing whatever can be done to deal with the impact of this recession in this province. She knows that perfectly well.
Mrs McLeod: I have to say, with a real degree of sadness, that it seems to me that the only jobs that have been created by the Premier's job creation programs are for the PR firms on Bloor Street. I'm asking the Premier to respond to the realities of people across this province. During the course of this summer, 33,000 more Ontarians lost their jobs. Stelco, as he well knows, has just laid off 1,000 people. Today we have learned that TRW Vehicle Safety Systems will lay off 194 people in Penetanguishene and General Motors will lay off 400 people from jobs in its Windsor plant. It is becoming a daily occurrence.
This government said in its spring budget that it would create 125,000 more jobs. Mr Premier, your predictions were wrong. Your answers don't respond to the realities of thousands of people in this province out of work. How can you possibly keep talking about the success of your job creation programs when more and more people are losing their jobs?
Hon Mr Rae: Let's look at the real world. You cited two examples. Among others, you cited GM and Stelco. If you talk to people at GM and Stelco, what do they say? They're not looking simply to an Ontario market; they're looking to a North American or world market. That's the reality.
Mrs Elinor Caplan (Oriole): They're losing their jobs. They're saying: "Am I going to have work? Am I going to have a job tomorrow?"
The Speaker: Order.
Hon Mr Rae: There is a structural change going on that we are affected by, as are others.
You then say, "What's happening?" GM's a good example. They are in fact investing more here than they are elsewhere. Ford is investing nearly $2 billion here, in contrast to what's being done elsewhere. Chrysler production of the mini-van and of the new cars is happening right here in Ontario. The Leader of the Opposition may want to make a profession of preaching doom and gloom, but I can say to the honourable member that in a difficult time and in a difficult world, this province and certainly this government are doing whatever we can to keep people working, to put people back to work: $4 billion of capital investment being put into the economy by this province, by this government. The member knows that. Those are the facts she's not telling people, those are the facts she's not releasing in her questions and those are the facts she ought to be sharing with the people of the province of Ontario.
Mrs McLeod: If this Premier were really ready to talk to and listen to business, he would hear business say to him, "We are investing in this province in spite of your government's policies." I suggest to the Premier that although he has not created any new jobs, he has certainly kept very busy looking at at least 63 new ways of taking money from Ontarians, from making farmers pay for licensing fees for their tractors to having northerners pay their motor vehicle licence fees again. It's hard to believe that this government hasn't realized that more taxes mean more lost jobs. Premier, can you simply tell us here today how 63 new taxes are going to put out-of-work Ontarians back to work?
Hon Mr Rae: Now we have the truly goofy economics coming from the side opposite. They say: "We want you to spend more money. Spend more money on job creation. Certainly do that." Then the second thing they say is, "Get your deficit down." That's the other thing they're saying. Then they say, "But whatever you do, don't raise any taxes and don't raise any revenues." That is the party that left this province with an $8.2-billion structural deficit. That's the Liberal Party. That's the price we paid for those years of Liberal misrule. You have a nerve talking to us about fiscal responsibility.
Interjections.
The Speaker: Order.
Interjections.
The Speaker: New question, the Leader of the Opposition.
Mrs McLeod: When you have no defence, you try to mount a phoney attack. It has absolutely no ring of truth and the Premier himself can't keep a straight face when he uses the line. That's an issue we will continue to return to on virtually a daily basis during the course of this Legislature until we start to see people in this province getting back to work.
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LANDFILL
Mrs Lyn McLeod (Leader of the Opposition): Today it's important for me to turn to another issue which is of tremendous concern to a group of people I spoke to outside the Legislature over the noonhour. These are the people who are very concerned about the minister for garbage's handling of the landfill site issue.
I ask the Premier to address this question because, with all the concerns these people have been trying to make the government hear, we now hear that the Interim Waste Authority has announced that the short list of the potential landfill sites is going to be delayed until the end of November. It's important the Premier understand that at the same time that announcement was being made the minister was publicly stating that the short list would be released at the end of September. Premier, who is in charge here? What do you say to all those people who now have to put their lives on hold for another two months while they wait for some kind of decision?
Hon Bob Rae (Premier and Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs): I'm going to refer that question to the Minister of the Environment.
Hon Ruth A. Grier (Minister of the Environment and Minister Responsible for the Greater Toronto Area): I'm happy to answer the question and to inform the Leader of the Opposition that this government is in charge of a waste management plan for the entire province that has an emphasis on waste reduction -- this happens to be Waste Reduction Week; let me draw it to everyone's attention -- a plan for waste reduction and waste management that is working across this province.
With respect to the decision of the Interim Waste Authority to delay the announcement of the short list of sites for the greater Toronto area, I have to say to that member that as I'm sure she's aware, the response to the first list, the long list, that was put out was enormous. There was a great deal of concern and very genuine and sincere worry on the part of the people whose property was identified by the Interim Waste Authority as a potential landfill site or who lived in the vicinity of that property.
When I met with those groups, they asked for more time and they also asked for a very careful evaluation of their comments. That evaluation of their comments is taking longer than I had hoped and longer than the Interim Waste Authority had anticipated, but I agree with its decision that it's important that what people have said be taken into account. It's critically important that the job be done fairly and correctly.
Mrs McLeod: If this minister was in fact in charge, if anybody is in charge in this absolutely atrocious situation, she would surely be ready to acknowledge that the release of the short list was delayed because the criteria that were used in the selection process were not evenly applied to each site. Minister, will you acknowledge that the site selection process has been badly botched, that you now have to repeat a sizeable piece of work at an additional cost of some $7 million, all for a policy that didn't make any sense to begin with?
Hon Mrs Grier: I certainly am not prepared to confirm that. The Interim Waste Authority's criteria have been well debated, challenged and discussed, and that is what the environmental assessment process requires. I remind the member that our government is putting new landfill sites under the Environmental Assessment Act. The previous government was opening new sites without an environmental assessment. It perhaps takes longer, but it does mean that when the final decision is argued before the Environmental Assessment Board, a fair and open hearing, all of those issues will be canvassed and a fair environmental decision will be made.
Mrs McLeod: This minister has consistently tried to distance herself from a mess she herself has created. Let me assure this minister that the people who are outside the Legislature today are here to protest the way in which you personally have handled the landfill site issue. You cannot distance yourself from the incompetent way in which the Interim Waste Authority, which you yourself set up and which you appointed three assistant deputy ministers to be part of, has handled the issue.
Minister, I ask you very directly, how can you explain to these people why your Interim Waste Authority took aerial photographs of farm land in the winter and then told farmers this was not productive farm land and could be used for dump sites? And can you further explain, Minister, why you would even be considering sites that have already been ruled out as environmentally inappropriate?
Hon Mrs Grier: For a member of the previous government to say that the problem with waste in the greater Toronto area began with this government is completely insupportable.
The history of decisions with respect to waste, not just in the greater Toronto area but across the province, beginning with the government of the party that is now in third place in this House, continued by the party opposite, is a legacy of political interference short --
Interjections.
Hon Mrs Grier: Mr Speaker, I would like to address briefly the issue of the use of agricultural land, which I know is the issue that the people who were here today are very concerned about, as indeed are people throughout the province. I want to say I'm very proud of the record of this government in dealing in a holistic way with the issue of how to protect agricultural land. My colleague the Minister of Agriculture and Food has done more than any of his predecessors to do that. My colleague the Minister of Municipal Affairs is dealing with the issue of how to stop the sprawl over agricultural land and with the question of the weight to be established for agricultural land, protected environmentally sensitive lands, access to transportation, proximity to development. All of these issues will be weighed, will be argued, will be evaluated for a very fair and open hearing on this particular issue at the end of the day.
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LABOUR LEGISLATION
Mr Michael D. Harris (Nipissing): My question is to the Premier on his job-killing labour legislation. Premier, let's face it: Regardless of the posturing by the Minister of Labour, you know you have no intention of making any significant changes to Bill 40. Your public hearings, in fact, have been a sham. Even your own NDP committee chairman admits there will not be substantial changes. That is what he publicly told the groups appearing before it this summer.
Everyone who is in a position to create jobs in this province is telling you that this legislation will kill jobs and will kill investment.
Premier, you've had the summer to do your homework. I would ask you if you have finally done an impact study. If so, will you share it with this House today?
Hon Bob Rae (Premier and Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs): First of all, I just want to say that the whole assumption in the member's question -- his description of the legislation, first of all, even his description of the process in which we as a government have consistently shown, through the consultation process, a willingness to listen, a willingness to change the legislation from what was originally put forward in discussion papers to what was then put out by the government in the next discussion paper, and today the minister is announcing in the committee a number of changes which we are in fact going to be making to the legislation, which relate to concerns that have been raised both by business and labour, as well as a number of technical amendments. So it's very hard to credit the kind of questions which are being put forward by the honourable member when they're based on such really very faulty assumptions.
If he's referring to the studies that have been cited in the various advertisements that have been out, the so-called 295,000 figure which has been thrown about by various corporate lobbyists out there, I want the member to know that's based on a survey done prior to the introduction of the legislation in which questions were asked about proposals which were never in the law put forward by this government. That is what we are having to deal with in terms of the kind of misinformation about this law that's being spread about by the friends of the member from North Bay.
Mr Harris: Because it was paid for by a previous government, that means you should cover it up and not release it; is that what you're trying to tell us? Premier, by your own admission, I say to you, you should be ashamed of yourself to come back to this Legislature today without an impact study of your own. You do impact studies on everything from bicycle trails to wildlife to ants to a fish in Lake Nipissing, and you will not do an impact study on the most important issue facing Ontarians today.
Premier, I have 1,300 letters here addressed to you, individual letters. A page is right here. I'm going to ask if he will take those over. Tell your Mom you'll be on TV tonight, Josh. Some 1,300 letters. One of the letters I have right here says:
"Dear Mr Rae:
"Enjoy your last two years in office. Please don't tighten the noose much more, or there will be no companies to pay the unions and there will be no taxes to pay you."
Premier, will you listen to what Ontarians are telling you? Will you scrap this plan before we lose any more investment and jobs in this province?
Hon Mr Rae: I am of course saddened but I'm not surprised that the leader of the third party would be voicing the rhetoric of pessimism and fear, which I think, frankly --
Interjections.
The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Order.
Hon Mr Rae: Having spent some time in opposition, I can tell the honourable member that if there's one sure way to continue to be seen as a source of negativity, of pessimism, of simply criticism and not of any constructive advice, it's to persist in the way in which the member is going.
We are listening to people, we are reforming, we are adding to the legislation, we're making it better all the time. I don't happen to think legislation that permits people to organize and permits people to express themselves in the workplace is something that any employer or any business should fear or should worry about or should see as a threat. It's not any of those things; it's a positive, effective way to encourage more participation, more democracy, a better deal for women, a better deal for minorities, a better deal for people who've been left outside of our economy for far too long. That's what this legislation represents.
Mr Harris: The majority of those 1,300 letters come from Ontarians who either do not have a job or who are concerned about losing their jobs.
Premier, the fact of the matter is that the wealth creators, the investors, those who can create a job -- their opinions are what is important. You and Bob White are not investing five cents of your own money to create a job. What you think does not influence who will invest the money and who will create jobs in this province, and you'd better soon understand that.
You won't listen to those who came to the public hearings. You won't listen to the wealth creators. You won't listen to the investors. You won't listen to business people. Maybe you'll listen to a leading business publication outside of Canada. Forbes magazine has just told the world that Ontario is not a good place to invest. I didn't tell them; Forbes magazine is telling them. They're saying in a recent article that it's "A Lose-Lose Situation." Forbes magazine, to be circulated worldwide this week and next week, is saying: "The economy in Canada's most industrialized province is in bad shape. A new labour law promises to make things worse." Premier, in this article they're saying it is not a good idea to do business with this province because of your disastrous policies and the labour legislation. This is a magazine that goes to all the wealth creators and potential investors around the world.
We are at a crisis point. Premier, I ask you this: What more will it take for you to listen and realize that you are killing jobs and killing investment every day you persist with this disastrous policy in this province?
Hon Mr Rae: I'm afraid I don't agree with the honourable member. He asks, "What are you doing for the wealth creators?" In my view, everyone who works for a living in this province is a wealth creator. That may well be where the member and I have a difference. I say it's the obligation of government to listen to everyone, not just to those who have the money to put the ads in the newspapers, not just to the people who have the money to put the ads on the billboards. Our obligation is to listen to all the people and our obligation is to provide a degree of balance in the workplace. George Drew understood that. Leslie Frost understood that. John Robarts understood that and Bill Davis understood that. You've taken the Tory party in this province so far to the right that it doesn't even know which way to turn and so far away from the sense of creating a balance in this province. There's no threat to jobs in this legislation; everybody knows it.
Mr Harris: Premier, I want to say to you, as a preface to my second question, that you are no George Drew, you are no Leslie Frost, you are no John Robarts and you are no Bill Davis. You are destroying this province. They built this province. Those were builders. Those were premiers who brought people together.
The Speaker: Would the leader place his second question.
Mr Harris: You are a destroyer, a job destroyer and a wealth destroyer and you are destroying this --
The Speaker: Order.
Interjections.
The Speaker: Would the leader of the third party place his second question, please.
Mr Harris: The Premier says he has an obligation to listen to all the people. Premier, I've been travelling around this province for the last two months; I've been listening to the people. I can tell you this: The people's agenda in this province is jobs, yet your priorities have nothing to do with jobs for the people and have everything to do with giving greater powers to the unions and to the NDP. Premier, you campaigned on the Agenda for People and I've been out there listening to them and their agenda is jobs. Can you explain to me why this agenda for the people over two years has shifted to an agenda for the unions and an agenda for the NDP?
Hon Mr Rae: I have been reliably informed by the various ministries that in the last year and a half more than 100 companies have announced more than $5 billion of new investment in Ontario.
Interjections.
Hon Mr Rae: They don't like the good news. They don't want to hear it.
The Speaker: Would the Premier take his seat, please.
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Interjections.
Mr Murray J. Elston (Bruce): Mr Speaker, are you tired of sitting?
The Speaker: I need the exercise. Premier.
Hon Mr Rae: The other aspect of our agenda that again I think we want to stress is that this year, in the face of a very difficult fiscal climate, which we're all aware of, this government has increased its funds for training by some 24%. We're now spending nearly $1 billion as a government on training. We're spending more on training and opportunity for workers, for working people, than any government in the history of the province.
This is the contribution. This is what we are trying to do. We're trying to direct investment into the future. We're trying to direct investment by getting people to get together. We've had labour, management, business people, government people, university people working creatively together on the Premier's councils. We have them working creatively together sector by sector, example by example.
Mr Chris Stockwell (Etobicoke West): Do you get it? There's food banks in universities, Bob. It's not good out there.
The Speaker: Order, the member for Etobicoke West.
Hon Mr Rae: I can only say to the member, the kind of exaggerated rhetoric he is allowing himself to participate in today doesn't add to the credibility of the discussion at all, not at all.
Mr Harris: I want to get back to An Agenda for People. Surely the Premier would agree with me, if he has done any travelling this summer, or if his cabinet has or his caucus colleagues have gone to their ridings, that the agenda the people are asking for is an agenda for jobs.
Your labour bill gives greater powers to the unions. You talked about training. Your whole training initiative is to give more power to the unions to decide where the training dollars will be spent. You're planning to force farmers to join a union. You gave the NDP greater control at Ontario Hydro. You want to expand the public service union. You placed your NDP friend David Agnew in charge of the civil service. Not one of these creates a single job. It has to do with the NDP agenda, and, Premier, I suggest to you in the strongest terms that is not an agenda for the people. They are concerned about their jobs.
I suggest to you as well, Premier, that you should have come into this House today with an economic plan to get Ontario back to work. That's what Ontarians told me they wanted me to come and fight for. That's the agenda they are asking for.
Premier, if you don't have a plan, I suggest you should move aside so that we can get somebody in charge in this province who will bring forward an agenda for people, an agenda for jobs, a plan to get Ontario back to work. Do you have a plan, and if so, why aren't we seeing it today?
Hon Mr Rae: When I move aside, the Deputy Premier will be taking over on the days I'm not here.
Again, you look at what this government has done in terms of its budget. You look at the proposals that are contained there on training. You look at the proposals that are contained there with respect to the future. You look at the proposals that are contained in the studies that are presented by the Minister of Industry, Trade and Technology with respect to industrial policy.
We have been more successful in the last year in bringing people together from all walks of life on the Premier's Council, in recognizing the need for all of us to invest in the future. That's exactly what we're doing. Those are the plans that are under way and those are the things that we're trying to do.
I say again to the honourable member, I don't think anything is gained by running the province down and by running our current situation down the way you are doing, the way you have consistently done in the House today. I don't think that contributes one iota to the creation of a single job in Ontario.
Mr Harris: Let's be very clear. I would never run Ontario down. I would never run her people down, past, present or future, which I think is brighter than many people give us credit for.
Run you down? You betcha that's what I'm doing. Run your policies down? You betcha that's what I'm doing, because you have presided over this province during a time when we have seen more job losses, more people on welfare, more food banks, more need for food banks, 500 full-time jobs disappearing every working day -- today we heard over 500: 200 in Penetanguishene, 400 in Windsor -- nearly 300,000 more people without work today than when you took over two years ago, over 60% more people receiving welfare than when you took over, yet you come back here today with no plan to get Ontario back to work.
The only plan you have, the only agenda, is a self-serving plan to increase unionization, to increase the NDP coffers, to increase the control of the NDP and the unions in how affairs are going to be run in this province, and every day you've done that so far, we've lost 500 jobs on average. Every day.
Premier, don't you understand that the first priority for the people, their agenda, the agenda for the people that they are asking for, is jobs? They can debate later whether it's a union job or not --
The Speaker: Could the leader complete his supplementary, please.
Mr Harris: They want a job so they can argue about it. It's jobs. When are you going to give them an agenda for the people instead of an agenda for the NDP?
Hon Mr Rae: Where the member and I differ is that I think that's exactly what we're trying to do.
Mr Steven Offer (Mississauga North): I have a question to the Minister of Labour. Mr Minister, you will be aware that during our hearings on Bill 40, a great many individuals, groups and associations came before the committee with some serious and significant concerns with how the bill will affect the way in which they are able to carry out their responsibilities in this province.
Over and over we heard that workers should have the right, the freedom, to choose whether they want or do not want to be part of a union, that they should be able to do this free of coercion, free of intimidation, and that the way in which this can be accomplished is through a secret ballot vote with full protections in the Labour Relations Act.
My question to you, Mr Minister, is whether you will be bringing forward amendments on Bill 40 which will incorporate those concerns and which will give to the workers of this province the right and freedom to choose in a secret ballot whether they do or do not want to be part of a union.
Hon Bob Mackenzie (Minister of Labour): I'm surprised that the member doesn't realize that for some 30 or 40 years now we've had a system that gives workers the right to apply for a decertification or to object to a certification -- that is not being changed other than the change in the petition procedure time -- and that we are bringing in amendments to the bill. They'll be in the House and committee this afternoon and the member will see what the amendments are at that point in time.
The Speaker: Supplementary?
Mr Offer: I am not satisfied with the response by the Minister of Labour, because that minister did not spend one minute in the committee over the hearings to listen to the people and the concerns that were brought forward.
So my question to you by way of supplementary, Mr Minister: Would you please tell the members of this Legislature and those watching the proceedings why you are against giving workers in this province the right to choose whether they wish or do not wish to be part of a union, free from intimidation, free from coercion? Please tell us why you are opposed to giving to the workers of this province the very basic democratic right that all take as a given.
Hon Mr Mackenzie: The member should know that I'm not opposed to it. I think they already have the right to decide if they don't want a union, and you have a process that you have to go through and a certification process that you have to go through. That's still there, and I can't understand why the member is raising an issue that's probably one of the lower priority issues raised before the committee.
Interjections.
The Speaker: New question, the member for Markham.
Mr Harris: Freedom and democracy.
The Speaker: Order.
INTERIM WASTE AUTHORITY SPENDING
Mr W. Donald Cousens (Markham): My question is for the Minister of the Environment. Ontario is in a recession and the Treasurer has told all government ministries to cut costs, yet the Interim Waste Authority has been spending indiscriminately, all in the name of getting selected communities to like the idea of having a megadump. I'll tell you, people don't like a megadump and they don't like the megadump process. We like it even less when the Interim Waste Authority wastes our money.
The Interim Waste Authority spent $100,000 on a TV broadcast that was never aired. The Interim Waste Authority spent money on printing a short list that was never released. They allocated $750,000 on participatory funding, which is nothing short of blood money. They have spent millions of dollars on consultants who cannot get it together. For what? Bad service, delays and no answers. How can you defend such shameless spending?
1540
Hon Ruth A. Grier (Minister of the Environment and Minister Responsible for the Greater Toronto Area): By responding to the question, let me categorically state that the preamble to it is grossly inaccurate in many ways, but there is no doubt that finding a landfill, finding a disposal site, is expensive. It's expensive if it is to be done in a way that involves the people affected as much as possible, which is why we were prepared to offer participant funding, something that is not normally done and that is different from intervenor funding, which comes legally at the time of a hearing, which is why we believe that it is important that there be offices located in the communities.
As the member has known, the citizens have taken full advantage of the information that has been made available and participated in it. It is not a cheap process, but it is very important that it be a fair and an open process and a process that leads to a good environmental decision at the end of the day.
Mr Cousens: Garbage is all your response is and you are truly the minister of garbage. Today is Zero Garbage Day and you, Madam Minister, are in violation of it.
Time and again I have asked for a cost analysis on the dump selection process and so far you have not provided the cost to property owners, the cost to farmers, the cost to communities, the cost to construct the sites, the cost of expropriation and the cost behind the delay. I ask again, how much more money are you going to sink into this sham, the IWA, and how much is this delay going to cost?
Hon Mrs Grier: I can't respond to how much the delay in the release of the short list is going to add to the cost, but I can certainly confirm, as the member has been told on many, many occasions from the committee hearings into Bill 143 to debates ever since, that the estimated budget for the Interim Waste Authority for 1992-93 is $17 million. That is a great deal of money, but it is also the kind of money that is required to do a full environmental assessment throughout the GTA. But I do want to respond to his accusation --
Mr Cousens: It's not a full environmental assessment. Come on. You know it's not a full EA. You know it's not true.
The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Order, the member for Markham.
Mr Cousens: It is not.
The Speaker: The member for Markham, come to order.
Hon Mrs Grier: This week is Waste Reduction Week and I want to say to the member --
The Speaker: Would the minister take her seat, please.
Interjections.
The Speaker: Minister.
Hon Mrs Grier: I want to add to the point of costs that of course the cost of construction and preparation and going through the process will be recovered by the tipping fees. The member knows from the figures he is well familiar with that there is a lot of money to be made from garbage and that in the case of the site search by the Interim Waste Authority, that money, that revenue from tipping fees, will not only cover the cost of the site and the construction of the site, but also pay for very aggressive 3Rs activities within the GTA.
When he says that in Waste Reduction Week we are not dealing with the 3Rs, he does his citizens of the GTA and the municipalities of the GTA a real disservice because the progress that has been made and the targets that are being achieved throughout the greater Toronto area are something to be proud of in Waste Reduction Week, not to criticize.
WASTE REDUCTION
Mr Larry O'Connor (Durham-York): A lot of members here didn't realize that Monday, though we were scheduled to sit, there was a rally out front. Similar to the rally we had out front today, there was a rally Monday. Constituents from Georgina were here and while they were out front they gave me a petition that I'll present at the appropriate time.
Interjections.
The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Order.
Mr O'Connor: When they were out there, one of the organizers, the president of GAG, as it's called, Georgina Against Garbage, asked a question about our consumptive lifestyle and when we are going to do something.
Interjections.
The Speaker: The member for Durham-York will have the opportunity to place a question, and I would ask that he first identify the minister to whom he is addressing his question.
Mr O'Connor: My question is for the Minister of the Environment. I was presented with this petition on Monday at the rally, the demonstration that took place out front. They talked about waste reduction, they were very concerned about it, and when they came down they brought excessive packaging. In the address by the president of GAG, as it's called, Georgina Against Garbage, he talked about the consumptive lifestyle and that the bottom line of we do has got to be waste reduction. Minister, this is Waste Reduction Week, and I hope you can answer this plea from my constituents.
Hon Ruth A. Grier (Minister of the Environment and Minister Responsible for the Greater Toronto Area): I'm glad to answer the question and to deal, as I had in my previous answer, with the fact that this is Waste Reduction Week, and to say that I very much appreciate the emphasis that those people, who are very concerned about the search for a waste disposal site, are putting on what is the most important component of our waste management program, which is waste reduction.
I'm delighted to be able to tell the member that he can tell his constituents that the government of Ontario has a waste reduction plan. It's a plan that's fair, that's environmental, and that's showing results.
In 1992, more than 75% of the households in this province are participating in the blue box program, 55 municipalities across the province are now composting leaf and yard wastes, and almost 500,000 homes have backyard composters, 50% of old newspaper is being recycled, and 40% of the scrap tires that are disposed of are being recycled. Those are very real results from our waste reduction programs.
Mr O'Connor: That sounds really great, but it seems the onus is always on the consumer, or rather the conserver. In fact, the group is so responsible that when it left it gave me the fine paper off the side of the trucks because it doesn't have the capability of recycling it up in its municipality, so I'm going to recycle that here.
But what they really want to know, Minister, because they brought a lot of excessive packaging down with them, is when you are going to act on the initiative that the people who produce this excessive packaging -- when are you going to get them to show that they've got a role in this as far as product stewardship goes?
Hon Mrs Grier: The member and his constituents are perfectly correct: The responsibility and the activity with respect to waste reduction has primarily, up until now, been the responsibility of individuals and of home owners. I'm glad to be able to tell him that as a result of the Waste Management Act, the regulations are well along in being prepared, and the consultation is completed with respect to regulations that will require industries, commercial institutions and institutions of all kinds to make their contribution to waste reduction.
We're seeing, for example, from the oil companies the kind of partnership agreements, such as the one I announced last week, whereby the purveyors of motor oil are now going to be taking back that oil for recycling; a very real willingness on the part of industry to do its part and to make sure that not only do we reduce the amount of waste we create, but we certainly reduce the amount of waste that's going for disposal.
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SKILLS TRAINING
Mr David Ramsay (Timiskaming): I have a question for the Minister of Skills Development today. As my leader earlier pointed out in the first round of questioning to the Premier, we all are aware that the Ontario economy is in very sad shape; in fact, the consequences are very tragic for the workers of Ontario.
Every time this government is criticized for its lack of economic leadership, training is put forward as one of the remedies required to rebuild the economy. I agree with that. Training is very important.
When asked what it is going to do about retraining the workers of Ontario, the government touts the Ontario Training and Adjustment Board as the remedy, as the solution for this training problem in Ontario. But it has been nearly one year since this minister announced the beginning of OTAB, and we still don't have OTAB established, let alone up and running, helping the workers of Ontario. Minister, when will you start getting on with the job of retraining the workers of Ontario?
Hon Richard Allen (Minister of Skills Development): There are some fairly straightforward answers to that question. Just very recently a $34-million training agreement with the Ford Motor Co was put in place which levered a several-billion-dollar investment in that industry. With regard to a range of other programs we have in place, we've been working with laid-off apprentices, a $6-million program. We've got trades updating, free programs going on all across the province to upgrade the skills of technologists and people training technologists.
With regard to the OTAB question, members opposite seem to think this is a kind of mechanical operation, where somehow you wave a wand and one day you have it suddenly in existence. This is a very interesting process which, through the course of these last eight months, has seen the following happen: For the first time, a province-wide business trainers reference group has been established to tackle the agenda from the business point of view; labour likewise; trainer education community likewise; visible minorities likewise; disabled community likewise; women likewise.
The whole network is now at a very interesting stage of development, where the nominations are coming to me for an interim governing structure. We'll be into the legislation this fall, and we'll be getting on with the formal structure of OTAB. But in the meantime, this government has not in any respect relaxed its efforts to promote the training of its citizens and its workers all across Ontario.
Mr Ramsay: As the minister is well aware, there are 609,000 Ontarians who are out of work today in Ontario. You know, if you're not on social assistance, you don't qualify for Jobs Ontario Training fund, and that's a real problem with this government right now because there are a lot of people out there who aren't yet, fortunately, on social assistance who don't qualify for these training programs. Every three days we have a plant layoff here, and unfortunately 400 more people laid off today in Windsor. That's a shame.
When is the minister going to admit that OTAB is not working, that the plan you had to establish this partnership is not working because you're not getting the nominations for the establishment of that board of directors of OTAB because the goals aren't clear to the partners you've brought on side? When are you going to start to rethink this whole process and get down to work and get training available for the workers of Ontario?
Hon Mr Allen: I like the way the member wiped out all the social assistance recipients, as though we didn't have to worry about putting them to work. I like that.
The Jobs Ontario Training fund is working in every community across this province through community brokers, who are now linking existing jobs and existing employments with social assistance recipients and giving them jobs. In Guelph, for example, 231 jobs in one plant alone: people who weren't working are working now with the Linamar industry there.
Again, I repeat: There's nothing broken about the OTAB process. There's a very good discussion happening.
Interjection.
The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Order, the member for Oriole.
Hon Mr Allen: There are two or three disagreements, and they're being worked on. That's understandable. People who have never worked before on the training agenda will have some disagreement about how to get it in place. But the whole process is very much in sequence. It's very much on target. The legislation is coming. We're discussing it this very week with the stakeholders I just mentioned in the previous part of my answer to the member's question.
ONTARIO HYDRO PRESIDENT
Mr Leo Jordan (Lanark-Renfrew): My question is for the Minister of Energy. The people of Ontario were completely shocked this morning to learn of the resignation of Mr Holt, or the leaving of Mr Holt, as president of Ontario Hydro.
The people of Ontario, and especially the Association of Major Power Consumers in Ontario, are looking for some direction, some certainty of supply and certainty of cost, but here we've gone through three ministers of Energy, we're looking at the third chairman of the utility, and now the president of this large corporation is leaving.
I have here a letter of six pages to the Premier explaining to the premier that Mr Al Holt was the most qualified of all the applicants inside and outside of Ontario Hydro.
My question to the minister is, did your ministry give any direction? Did you have any input to the board regarding Mr Holt leaving the corporation at this time?
Hon Brian A. Charlton (Minister of Energy): The answer to the question is, very simply, no.
Mr Jordan: I wonder if the minister is aware that Mr Holt is leaving. The first thing this minister has to understand is that he supported Bill 118 and that he has to accept the accountability and the responsibility that goes with that bill, including issuing directives to Ontario Hydro.
Why else would Mr Holt, a 36-year veteran of Hydro, suddenly decide to leave? On September 18, Mr Holt spoke to the 25-year club of Ontario Hydro and explained to them the changes that he had in mind to make it a more businesslike corporation. He said, at that time, that he would be back next year to tell us, hopefully, about a better picture for Ontario Hydro.
Again I ask the minister to tell this House what communication he had with the board of directors and why the board of directors has changed so much since a year ago, when it sent this letter to the Premier.
Hon Mr Charlton: The member refers to directive power and he refers to Bill 118 and the amendments, to the process that started last year and the bill we passed earlier this year in June.
He should know, because he was part of the process of seeing that legislation through this House and through committee, that the directive power that's set out in that legislation is a directive power that requires the government to act through OIC, order in council.
Section 6 of the Power Corporation Act, which Bill 118 amended, very clearly sets out the responsibility of the Ontario Hydro board to deal with the question of the president of Ontario Hydro. The decisions that are being made now are decisions that are decisions vested in the board of Ontario Hydro. This minister and this government have not directed any of those actions.
Interjection.
The Speaker (Hon David Warner): The member for Etobicoke West, come to order. The member for Durham East with a new question.
STUDENT BUSING
Mr Gordon Mills (Durham East): My question is for the Minister of Education. In my riding of Durham East, I have a very fine school, Durham Knox Christian School. Those folks who send their children to that school pay the full shot, sometimes as much as $10,000 a year. They also pay the full taxes on their tax bills to support the public school system. In addition to that, they pay about $80,000 a year to transport their children to their school along the very same route that the public school buses go, and those buses are half empty all the time.
My question is, is there any way we can influence the local boards of education whereby they can relieve the financial burden on my constituents in so far as school transport is concerned and let them hop on the bus and get off of the bus while they're en route to the public school?
Hon Tony Silipo (Minister of Education): The solution that's being suggested perhaps sounds simple at first blush, but I think the underlying point we need to remember is that of course the school the member mentioned is a private school and that any form of assistance with respect to busing of students to private schools would be a form of public funding for private schools. That is something we as a government do not support. Obviously, we believe it's important for us to continue to provide funding for public schools. Parents have the choice in whether they send their children to publicly funded schools or private schools, but once they make the decision to send their children to private schools, then they are responsible for all of the funding that's associated with that decision.
Mr Mills: I appreciate that answer, Mr Minister. What I suppose I'm going to ask is, do you see in the future any possibility that we can look into it or offer any changes to the act? Is there anything on the horizon that these people can put out their hand and hope for?
Hon Mr Silipo: If there is anything on the horizon, I'm certainly not aware of it. I think I would just say no, that there is no intent on our part to change our policy, which has been there for years and which we certainly continue to believe is appropriate.
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AGRICULTURAL LAND
Mr Charles Beer (York North): My question is to the Minister of Agriculture and Food. Minister, you will be aware that today there was a large demonstration outside this building by a whole group of citizens, many of whom are farmers in the regions of Durham, York and Peel. You will also be aware that the Ontario Federation of Agriculture has come out in support of those groups fighting against the imposition of an unnecessary megadump in York region. Indeed, the president of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture, Roger George, spoke today in support.
Minister, would you please tell the House, Mr George and the residents of York, Durham and Peel what specifically you're doing to ensure that not one acre of good farm land is turned over to a megadump?
Hon Elmer Buchanan (Minister of Agriculture and Food): Certainly, I'm aware of the concern of the farmers in the three regions the member has mentioned. Over the last summer we have conducted a review of how we might protect farm land. As I've answered the question previously in this House, currently we have the Food Land Guidelines, which in fact are just that: guidelines. They very often end up being challenged on one side or the other at Ontario Municipal Board hearings.
The prospect of having a megadump in one's backyard or at a neighbouring farm is obviously something that concerns farmers in all parts of the regions that have been named. What I have personally been doing is making the case that farm land is a valuable resource in this province. The Interim Waste Authority has a process in place where it is going to identify sites. It's unfortunate, I believe, that it's taking some time to come to the short list. It's causing a lot of aggravation for farmers and other people in those regions, but I am assured by the Minister of the Environment that there will be hearings and that every effort will be made to make sure that those farm lands that are viable and very productive can be protected in the future.
MOTIONS
PRIVATE MEMBERS' PUBLIC BUSINESS
Hon David S. Cooke (Government House Leader): I move that, notwithstanding any standing order or previous order of the House, the following changes be made to the order of precedence for private members' public business: (1) Mr Christopherson be deleted from the order of precedence for private members' public business and all members of the New Democratic Party caucus listed thereafter be advanced by one place in their turn, and (2) Mr Scott be deleted from the order of precedence for private members' public business and all members of the Liberal Party caucus listed thereafter be advanced by one place in their turn.
The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry? Carried.
PETITIONS
SCHOOL FACILITIES
Mr Frank Miclash (Kenora): I have a petition to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario. It reads:
"We, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario as follows:
"To oppose the building of a secondary high school in the Kenora school district."
That's signed by approximately 700 people in the Kenora riding.
LANDFILL
Mr W. Donald Cousens (Markham): This is one of a group of thousands that I'll be tabling over the next several days from the people of Georgina, and on their behalf I present this petition from the People of Georgina against Garbage and representing many of the people in York region. For your information, Mr Speaker, I have affixed my name to this petition and agree with it wholeheartedly.
"To the Lieutenant Governor in Council:
"We absolutely reject the notion of the establishment of a garbage dump for Metropolitan Toronto's waste in Georgina and York region.
"We, the residents of Georgina and York region, request that our elected representatives and our provincial Minister of the Environment:
"(1) Repeal Bill 143 in its entirety;
"(2) Consider all alternatives to site selection in York region;
"(3) Directly consult with all of the residents of Georgina and York region with regard to their wishes, possibly by referendum; and
"(4) Immediately cease the process of site selection in York region for a garbage dump."
I present this and trust the government will take it under serious consideration, which it hasn't till now.
The Acting Speaker (Mr Noble Villeneuve): I trust the honourable member has signed the petition.
RETAIL STORE HOURS
Mr Ron Hansen (Lincoln): I have a petition to the members of the provincial Parliament:
"Amendments to the Retail Business Holidays Act promise wide-open Sunday shopping and elimination of Sunday as a legal holiday.
"I, the undersigned, hereby register my opposition in the strongest of terms to Bill 38, which will eliminate Sunday from the definition of a legal holiday in the Retail Business Holidays Act.
"I believe in the need for keeping Sunday as a holiday for family time, quality of life and religious freedom. The elimination of such a day will be detrimental to the fabric of the society in Ontario and will cause increased hardship on many families.
"The amendments included in Bill 38, dated June 3, 1992, to delete all Sundays except Easter" -- that's 51 per year -- "from the definition of a legal holiday and reclassify them as working days should be defeated."
I have the signature of 200 families on this petition and I affix my signature to this petition.
STANDING ORDERS REFORM
Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines): This petition is addressed to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:
"Whereas Premier Rae of the province of Ontario has forced upon the Ontario Legislature a change in the rules governing the procedures to be followed in the House; and
"Whereas Premier Rae has removed from members of the opposition the ability to properly debate and discuss legislation and policy in the Legislature by limiting the length of time a member may speak to only 30 minutes; and
"Whereas Premier Rae, who once defended the democratic rights of the opposition and utilized the former rules to full advantage in his former capacity as leader of the official opposition, has now empowered his ministers to determine unilaterally the amount of time to be allocated to debate bills they initiate; and
"Whereas Premier Rae has reduced the number of days that the Legislative Assembly will be in session, thereby ensuring fewer question periods and less access for the news media to provincial cabinet ministers; and
"Whereas Premier Rae has diminished the role of the neutral, elected Speaker by removing from that person the power to determine the question of whether a debate has been sufficient on any matter before the House; and
"Whereas Premier Rae has concentrated power in the Office of the Premier and severely diminished the role of elected members of the Legislative Assembly, who are accountable to the people who elect them,
"We, the undersigned, call upon Premier Rae to withdraw the rules changes imposed upon the Legislature by his majority government and restore the rules of procedure in effect previous to June 22, 1992."
I affix my name to this particular petition in agreement with it.
LANDFILL
Mr David Tilson (Dufferin-Peel): I have a petition of 556 names from my riding of Dufferin-Peel, mainly from the town of Caledon, and it's addressed to the Legislature of Ontario:
"Whereas the Interim Waste Authority has released a list of 57 potential sites in the greater Toronto area as possible candidates for landfill;
"Whereas the decision to prohibit the regions of the greater Toronto area from searching for landfill sites beyond their boundaries is contrary to the intent of the Environmental Assessment Act, subsection 5(3);
"Whereas Bill 143 closes off a number of viable waste disposal options, refusing, for example, to allow a willing host community such as Kirkland Lake to be considered as a possible solution to the greater Toronto area garbage issue,
"We, the undersigned, petition the Legislature of Ontario as follows:
"That the Legislature of Ontario repeal Bill 143 in its entirety and allow a more democratic process for the consideration of future disposal options for the greater Toronto area waste, particularly the consideration of sites beyond the boundaries of the greater Toronto area where a willing host community exists who is interested in developing new disposal systems for greater Toronto area waste."
I have affixed my signature to this petition.
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GAMBLING
Mr Dennis Drainville (Victoria-Haliburton): To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:
"Whereas the New Democratic Party government has traditionally had a commitment to family life and quality of life for all the citizens of Ontario; and
"Whereas families are made more emotionally and economically vulnerable by the operation of various gaming and gambling ventures; and
"Whereas the New Democratic Party government has had a historical concern for the poor in society, who are particularly at risk each time the practice of gambling is expanded; and
"Whereas the New Democratic Party has in the past vociferously opposed the raising of moneys for the state through gambling; and
"Whereas the citizens of Ontario have not been consulted regarding the introduction of legalized gambling casinos despite the fact that such a decision is a significant change of government policy and was never part of the mandate given to the government by the people of Ontario;
"Therefore, we, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario as follows:
"That the government immediately cease all moves to establish gambling casinos by regulation and that appropriate legislation be introduced into the assembly, along with a process which includes significant opportunities for public consultation and full public hearings" --
Mr Peter Kormos (Welland-Thorold): When did caucus approve casinos? When did the party approve casinos?
Mr Drainville: -- "as a means of allowing the citizens of Ontario to express themselves on this new and questionable initiative."
Mr Kormos: What kind of democracy is that?
Mr Drainville: I thank the member for Welland-Thorold and I thank you, Mr Speaker.
Mr Hans Daigeler (Nepean): I have a petition, signed by 55 of my constituents, which is somewhat along the lines of the petition that was just presented. The petition reads as follows:
"We, the following of City View United Church, Nepean, are opposed to the legalization and opening of gambling casinos by the province of Ontario. For economic, social and moral reasons, we cannot support this action. Genuine social benefit is not well served through a submersed, regressive taxation subject to the whims of chance, as gambling is,
"We ask you, therefore, to reject this motion in consideration of the maintenance of cultural, civic and moral values."
I'm pleased to present this petition on behalf of my constituents.
DRIVERS' LICENCES
Mr David Tilson (Dufferin-Peel): I have a petition of 253 names in my riding of Dufferin-Peel. It is addressed to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:
"Whereas the recent death and injury of five youths within the riding of Dufferin-Peel has deeply disturbed the residents; and
"Whereas these deaths might have been prevented if legislation concerning graduated licensing had been in place; and
"Whereas we would like to prevent further deaths and injuries to our new drivers and young people,
"We would like to petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to bring forward legislation to introduce graduated licences within the province of Ontario."
I have affixed my signature to that petition.
LANDFILL
Mr Larry O'Connor (Durham-York): This petition was presented to the constituents in my area at the fall fair in Sutton, and they signed each one individually. I'm not going to read each one individually, but I'll read the one and then I'll affix my name to the box of these and pass them down to the table officers. Should they be ruled not in order, then at that point I'll present them in person to the Minister of the Environment.
The petition reads:
"I, the undersigned, absolutely reject the alternative of a Metropolitan Toronto-York alternative megadump and insist that you reconsider all alternatives."
When I say I beg leaf, I'm a little tongue in cheek, because they're shaped like leaves.
Mr Charles Beer (York North): I want to also present a petition today against the megadump, and it will be one of many that we'll be presenting during this fall session. It reads as follows:
"To the Legislature of Ontario:
"Whereas the Interim Waste Authority has released a list of 57 potential sites in the greater Toronto area as possible candidates for landfill;
"Whereas the decision to prohibit the regions of the greater Toronto area from searching for landfill sites beyond their boundaries is contrary to the intent of the Environmental Assessment Act, subsection 5(3);
"Whereas a willing host community such as Kirkland Lake will not be allowed a proper hearing to consider the Adams mine site as a possible solution to the greater Toronto area garbage issue,
"We, the undersigned, petition the Legislature of Ontario as follows:
"That the Legislature of Ontario repeal Bill 143 in its entirety and allow a more democratic process for the consideration of future disposal options for greater Toronto area waste, particularly the consideration of sites beyond the boundaries of the greater Toronto area where a willing host community exists which is interested in developing new disposal systems for greater Toronto area waste."
I have affixed my signature to this petition in support.
PENSION FUNDS
Mr David Tilson (Dufferin-Peel): I have a petition of 62 names from my riding of Dufferin-Peel. It's addressed to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario.
"Whereas we, the undersigned members of the Ontario municipal employees retirement system, do not want our pension funds invested in the Ontario investment fund; and
"Whereas we cannot jeopardize our retirement income by allowing the government to decide where our hard-earned capital should be invested; and
"Whereas it is very tempting to dip into our piggy bank without using the democratic process; and
"Whereas this is not how you protect the welfare of the worker;
"We, the undersigned, respectfully petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to listen to our concerns, and hands off our petition funds."
I have affixed my signature in support of this petition.
LABOUR LEGISLATION
Mr Kimble Sutherland (Oxford): I have a petition here from some constituents of my riding and a few other ridings who would like to see a moratorium on proposed changes to labour legislation.
RETAIL STORE HOURS
Mr Steven Offer (Mississauga North): I have a petition which reads as follows:
"We, the undersigned, hereby register our opposition, in the strongest of terms, to Bill 38, which will eliminate Sunday from the definition of 'legal holiday' in the Retail Business Holiday Act.
"We believe in the need of keeping Sunday as a holiday for family time, quality of life and religious freedom. The elimination of such a day will be detrimental to the fabric of society in Ontario and cause increased hardship on many families.
"The amendment included in Bill 38, dated June 3, 1992, to delete all Sundays except Easter, 51 per year, from the definition of 'legal holiday' and reclassify them as working days should be defeated."
I have signed my name to this petition, and it has been signed by a number of individuals with the Salvation Army of the Meadowvale corps.
MUNICIPAL BOUNDARIES
Mrs Irene Mathyssen (Middlesex): I have a petition addressed to the Legislature of Ontario from 84 residents of the Chippewa, Oneida and Muncey reserves, first nations people in the county of Middlesex, who petition the Legislature of Ontario to set aside the arbitrator's report regarding the annexation of Middlesex county by London, because it does not reflect the expressed wishes of the majority who participated in the arbitration hearings, it awards too extensive an annexation to the city of London and will jeopardize the viability of the county and rural way of life. I have signed my name to this petition.
STANDING ORDERS REFORM
Mr Joseph Cordiano (Lawrence): I have a petition with respect to the rules governing the procedures in the House. It reads as follows:
"Whereas Premier Bob Rae of the province of Ontario has forced upon the Ontario Legislature a change in the rules governing the procedures to be followed in the House; and
"Whereas Premier Bob Rae has removed from members of the opposition the ability to properly debate and discuss legislation and policy in the Legislature by limiting the length of time a member may speak to only 30 minutes; and
"Whereas Premier Bob Rae, who once defended the democratic rights of the opposition and utilized the former rules to full advantage in his former capacity as leader of the official opposition, has now empowered his ministers to determine unilaterally the amount of time to be allocated to debate bills that they initiate; and
"Whereas Premier Bob Rae has reduced the number of days that the Legislative Assembly will be in session, thereby ensuring fewer question periods and less access for the news media to provincial cabinet ministers; and
"Whereas Premier Bob Rae has diminished the role of the neutral, elected Speaker by removing from that person the power to determine the question of whether a debate has been sufficient on any matter before the House; and
"Whereas Premier Bob Rae has concentrated his power in the Office of the Premier and severely diminished the role of elected members of the Legislative Assembly who are accountable to the people who elect them;
"We, the undersigned, call upon the Premier to withdraw the rule changes imposed upon the Legislature by his majority government and restore the rules of procedure in effect previous to June 22, 1992."
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REPORTS BY COMMITTEES
STANDING COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC ACCOUNTS
Mr Mancini from the standing committee on public accounts presented the committee's report.
STANDING COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC ACCOUNTS
Mr Mancini from the standing committee on public accounts presented a special report and moved the adoption of its recommendation.
The Acting Speaker (Mr Noble Villeneuve): Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry? Carried.
Does the honourable member for Essex South have a few remarks on both his reports?
Mr Remo Mancini (Essex South): Just a few short comments on the second one. Members of the Legislature will know that by order of the House dated April 22, 1992, the standing committee on public accounts was asked to find a replacement for the now retired Provincial Auditor. This is the first time that an all-party committee has been given the authority for such a task, and it falls within the general changes to the rules, general changes that were approved by an all-party committee in the mid-1980s that certain officers of the House be appointed by all-party committees. As a matter of fact, our present Clerk was chosen by the former standing committee on procedural affairs and has served the House well since that time.
I think it's important for me to take a moment to discuss the procedure that was used for the replacement of the auditor, as it's a high-profile and very important government position that affects greatly the workings of the Legislature, the workings of the ministries and the type of information that the general public receives.
We decided as a committee that we would advertise for the position across Canada. We decided as a committee that we would interview as many as possible of the qualified individuals who applied for the job. Through this process, we asked for the assistance of the Legislature's human resources branch, and Ellen Schoenberger, the director, assisted us through these important deliberations. We then decided, after full interviews with a great number of people, in my view, on the individual who was selected. I should say it was done by careful debate and by secret ballot.
I want to commend the members of the Legislature for the way they participated in this important work, and I want to wish the best of luck to the new Provincial Auditor. As Chair of the standing committee on public accounts, along with all my colleagues who are the members of the committee, we look forward to working with this individual.
I move the adjournment of the debate.
The Acting Speaker: Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry? Carried.
STANDING COMMITTEE ON SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT
Mr Beer from the standing committee on social development presented the following report and moved its adoption:
Your committee begs to report the following bill, as amended:
Bill 112, An Act to revise the Building Code Act
The Acting Speaker (Mr Noble Villeneuve): Shall the report be received and adopted? Agreed? Agreed.
Shall the bill be ordered for third reading? So ordered.
STANDING COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT AGENCIES
Mr Runciman from the standing committee on government agencies presented a report and moved the adoption of its recommendations.
The Acting Speaker (Mr Noble Villeneuve): Does the honourable member for Leeds-Grenville have a brief statement?
Mr Robert W. Runciman (Leeds-Grenville): Just a few words, Mr Speaker. This report is unusual in respect to the reports the committee's been making for the last year or so, because it deals with our original mandate, that is, a review of agencies, boards and commissions in the province. Regrettably, we're not doing that as much as we have in the past, but this report deals with three agencies: TVO, the Eastern Ontario Development Corp and the community advisory board of the Brockville Psychiatric Hospital.
It also includes responses from ABCs to previous committee recommendations. I want to make reference to the fact that it also includes a dissenting opinion in respect to TVO written by the Chair of the committee.
The Acting Speaker Does Mr Runciman want to move the adjournment of the debate?
Mr Runciman: So moved.
The Acting Speaker Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry? Carried.
ORDERS OF THE DAY
INSURANCE STATUTE LAW AMENDMENT ACT, 1992 / LOI DE 1992 MODIFIANT LES LOIS CONCERNANT LES ASSURANCES
Mr Charlton moved second reading of the following bill:
Bill 164, An Act to amend the Insurance Act and certain other Acts in respect of Automobile Insurance and other Insurance Matters / Loi modifiant la Loi sur les assurances et certaines autres lois en ce qui concerne l'assurance-automobile et d'autres questions d'assurance
The Acting Speaker (Mr Noble Villeneuve): Would the honourable minister have some opening statements on his bill?
Hon Brian A. Charlton (Minister of Financial Institutions): Yes, Mr Speaker, I do have some opening comments.
It's a pleasure for me to finally have the opportunity to move second reading and to proceed with the debate on Bill 164, because this piece of legislation deals with a significant list of long-outstanding issues that perhaps have been left undealt with for far too long.
The former Liberal administration chose, after having identified a crisis in the middle of the 1980s, to proceed to deal with one item that flowed out of that crisis: That was the profitability of the insurance industry. There was in fact a profitability problem in the 1980s around the private-sector delivery of auto insurance.
Having said that, in addition to the profitability problem, there were also significant problems of affordability, of accessibility, of people's ability to get insurance in the regular market, even, in many cases, where their driving record in fact happened to be fairly respectable.
There was also, though, a serious problem with fairness and the adequacy of protection for the drivers in this province. We've attempted in this legislation to deal -- and I think we've done it effectively -- with all of those problems. Moreover, the legislation proceeds to prescribe, I think, major and immediate improvements to those parts of the problem that most directly impact on drivers, victims of accidents in this province.
In addition, this legislation also contains a number of enabling sections that will allow us to move forward with significant and comprehensive reforms in a number of other areas that I'll talk about during the course of my comments today.
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This government promised Ontario motorists a fairer, more accessible, more comprehensive auto insurance package in this province. Last September we also announced that unfortunately we would be having to do that in the private delivery system. This package that I've brought forward today, that I'm moving forward with second reading on today, is a package of reform proposals that deals with all of those issues in a private sector delivery system.
There have been a number of very positive events over the course of the last two years, events which again the former administration neglected to do anything about. I think they're important to set the stage for this debate, because they reflect this government's commitment to not just play legislative games but to reform the entire delivery system.
First of all, we've had basically frozen auto insurance rates for the last two years. There have been no increases in rates anywhere in this province. But also we've had about 60% of the insurers in this province deliver premium reductions to their policyholders, to the drivers of this province. Why is that happening? Partly because in the last round, the Liberal administration only chose to deal with the profitability question and delivered excessive profits to the insurance industry in this province with the Ontario motorist protection plan package, Bill 68. Those profits we saw in the form of about $1 billion reported over six quarters about a year ago.
Secondly, we've concluded a plan with the insurance industry to remove all the drivers who are in fact good drivers, reasonable drivers, who have found themselves unfortunately, inappropriately and sometimes for lengthy periods of time stuck in the Facility Association fund, paying extremely high insurance rates, drivers who never should have been assigned to that fund in the first place, drivers who were put into the Facility Association fund because the government in the last administration had failed to deal with a number of the other issues besides just the profitability question associated with auto insurance in Ontario.
Thirdly, since October 1990, OMPP accident benefits have been subject to an extremely intensive analysis by groups on all sides of this issue: by the government itself, by the legal community, by other members of the Legislature who are involved in certain groups out there in the community, by victims' rights groups across this province and by, obviously, the insurance industry itself.
That intensive analysis has put us through probably one of the most wide-ranging and intense consultation processes that has ever occurred around a piece of legislation in this province. Each and every one of the sectors involved and the groups that have indicated interest have met with us, many of them numerous times, both around the issues at stake and around the specifics of this legislation and the regulations which are attached to this legislation, at least in draft form at this point.
That process of review has concluded that the OMPP no-fault benefit schedule is significantly deficient, that it leaves out significant numbers of people, individuals, groups and classes of people almost totally from effective coverage and representation.
Out of that review, we've designed an affordable package of reforms that address those deficiencies; I'll speak in more detail about that as I move through my comments. Indeed, improvement of the inadequate accident benefits is one of the major goals of this legislation, but it is only one of the major goals of this legislation.
We feel the reforms are necessary, but some in the insurance industry would tell us that they are not, that we could just leave the existing system in place. I fundamentally disagree with that conclusion. The present system is inadequate: It doesn't serve all of the people who drive in this province and it doesn't serve some of those people very well at all.
In modern society, and especially in rural and northern communities across this province, driving has become a necessity for many. Not only has driving become a necessity, but members will recall that in the late 1970s we also made insurance compulsory in this province. As you're well aware, there was a time when people could choose either to insure themselves or to take the risk of the consequences of not being insured. In the late 1970s, government stepped in and said that that was no longer acceptable, that in order for people to drive on the roads in this province insurance was compulsory, that people had to provide basic protection for themselves and for others whom they might encounter unfortunately in an accident anywhere in this province.
Throughout the 1980s, claims costs in this province soared. Out of that flowed most of the other problems we had to deal with in this legislative package. Out of that soaring of claims costs flowed the profitability problem for the insurance industry. It also created the premium crunch that we saw imposed on the drivers in this province in 1984, 1985 and 1986, with 70% increases over three years.
Mr Charles Harnick (Willowdale): Sort of like your Hydro rates; they're going up and up.
The Acting Speaker: Order, please. The Minister of Financial Institutions has the floor.
Hon Mr Charlton: We also saw, as a reaction to that by the former Conservative administration and subsequently by the Liberal administration, panic. We certainly saw no initiatives on the part of either of those administrations to stop some of the industry reactions to that where the industry determined to start dumping people holus-bolus into the Facility Association without regard for the fairness of what they were doing. The Facility Association was in fact an industry fund set up to deal with only the worst drivers in this province. It used to represent 2% of the market. It's actually down slightly now, but at its peak about a year ago it represented about 8% of the market. That was an inappropriate response on the part of the industry and it was an inappropriate lack of response on the part of two administrations not to deal with what was happening.
We had an adversarial system where some people were winners but far too many were losers and we saw significant growth in the underlying cost pressures, especially in the rehabilitation area, that nobody, certainly not the governments of this province of the day, was prepared to deal with. Again, that was reflected in the Conservative administration in the early 1980s and in the Liberal administration for the last half of that decade.
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The OMPP, Bill 68, was not the right fix to deal with those problems of the 1980s. Bill 68, which created OMPP, was an inadequate package of no-fault reforms that delivered inadequate benefits and ignored whole groups of people. It also started the debate around this question of the right to sue because it severely limited court access for those who had serious injuries.
Insurers enjoyed a huge turnaround in profits as a result of OMPP, but the gaps in the service and the benefits remain. The problems with the current OMPP system, aside from the use of the term "inadequate benefits," are inadequacies that are reflected in the lives of individual, ordinary Ontarians every day of their lives. The income replacement benefits far too often are inadequate to replace the economic loss that's suffered by accident victims. There was no recognition of the special circumstances, like students, care givers, the unemployed, and the seriously inadequate recognition of the needs of small business people in those accident benefits in the OMPP. The benefits were totally unindexed, so for those who were seriously and long-term disabled as a result of an auto accident, eventual degradation and hardship were certainties. The lifetime caps that were imposed in OMPP on both long-term care and rehabilitation and supplementary medical were a second insult hurtled at those who were seriously injured and long-term disabled as a result of their accidents.
There are many other problems with the Liberal OMPP package. It was a package that was unjustifiably expensive for the drivers of this province because it didn't deliver the protection; it simply delivered huge profits to the insurance industry.
Interjections.
The Acting Speaker (Mr Dennis Drainville): Order. The honourable minister has the floor.
Hon Mr Charlton: I guess one of the most significant failures of the Liberal OMPP package was the failure to address the problems around supplementary medical care, rehabilitation and long-term care. The Liberal answer was to impose caps of $500,000 or 10 years, whichever came first, on those items rather than start the process of dealing with the underlying problems that existed in the rehab sector.
Mr Harnick: Raise it to $750,000. Raise it to $1 million. Take off the 10 years. Then you'll solve that problem.
Hon Mr Charlton: We've solved that problem in this legislation already.
We also still have a system because the Liberals chose only to deal with the profitability question, which is discriminatory in terms of classification, in terms of the way drivers get rated for their insurance. Classifications are not based on people's individual driving records; they're based on age, sex and marital status and other age classification criteria that are extremely discriminatory. In addition to that, we have 151 insurance companies in this province, each of which has its own individual and dissimilar classification system, so that the consumers of this province --
Interjections.
The Acting Speaker: First of all, I'd like to say to the House that the honourable Minister of Financial Institutions has the floor. I'd ask the honourable member for Etobicoke West, if he's going to make interjections, which he shouldn't be doing to begin with, to do them from his desk. I'd ask the honourable members to please allow the honourable minister to make his statements to the House. The honourable Minister of Financial Institutions.
Hon Mr Charlton: Thank you, Mr Speaker. In addition, the 151 insurers in this province each have very separate, very individual and very different classification systems. So we do not only have a discriminatory classification system in this province, but there are 151 variations of that discrimination.
We also see, in the Liberal legislation, serious restrictions on the ability of individuals to recover for pain and suffering, and the threshold that was imposed on the right to sue for pain and suffering in the Liberal legislation restricted that to only catastrophic injuries. All psychological injuries, as you recall, were disallowed in that piece of legislation.
Certainly, any of the individuals who have been injured seriously enough to perhaps qualify to pass through the threshold in the Liberal legislation have found themselves in a very troubling and very slow process to resolution simply because the threshold is so vague that nobody's sure how and what the courts will rule pass through it.
The courts are also very costly and often deny compensation. Lengthy legal battles are a process that some people see as a right but others see as a road to compensation. Unfortunately, it's not a process that guarantees compensation, although it gobbles up huge sums of money. Administrative costs of the court system take dollars away from the benefits that should be delivered to accident victims in this province.
One of the other major problems we've found is that the system as it's currently structured, and the system even prior to the introduction of OMPP, is a system that totally fails to address any significant emphasis to the question of road safety. The system doesn't promote the industry to invest in safety, which is the largest potential restraint on future costs.
The new plan combines the best features, in my view, of structured automatic accident benefits and the court-assessed compensation for pain and suffering. It's a unique model that's designed to serve the best interests of the people in the province of Ontario.
The new plan draws on the best of both systems and will deliver, in spite of some of the protests from across the way, fair and adequate compensation to everyone who drives on the roads in Ontario. We may have slightly different definitions of what "fair and adequate" is, because fair and adequate, in my book, is not delivering huge settlements to some and none to others.
This package also delivers to all drivers in this province an affordable package that is reflected by a benefit system unequalled anywhere else in this country.
Mr Harnick: It's the only jurisdiction in North America that takes away economic rights, so don't say that. You should be ashamed.
The Acting Speaker: Order, order.
Mr Chris Stockwell (Etobicoke West): After your election campaign you say --
The Acting Speaker: The honourable member for Willowdale and the honourable member for Etobicoke West, I've indicated that the honourable minister has the floor. Now, there will be questions and comments and there will be representatives from both parties who will be allowed to speak in the House. There's no need for interjections at this point. So I'd ask the honourable members to please allow the minister to make his statement, and then you can ask questions or make comments.
Mr Stockwell: We're just trying to remind him of the promises he made in the 1990 election.
The Acting Speaker: You're out of order. The honourable member will please take his seat.
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Hon Mr Charlton: The measure of this debate, and I think it'll become clearer as we move towards the end of it, isn't going to be whether members across the way can yell at me that I've taken something away or I can yell at them that we've created a benefit that didn't exist under either of the other systems, because we can both find those examples. The measure of this legislation, the measure of its fairness, its worth and its value will be measured at the end of the day by the number of people it serves, not by the rhetoric of this minister or of the opposition members, but by the number of people it serves in Ontario, and that's how I'm prepared to have this legislation measured and either applauded or criticized.
The member likes to talk about taking away economic rights. This legislation delivers an economic right to every driver in Ontario, all of whom didn't have economic rights either under the current legislation imposed by the Liberals or under the old system that preceded, the full right-to-sue system. Even when they did have rights, they didn't always get effectively delivered either, as we well know. The right to sue, and we openly admit that, for economic loss is being replaced by a comprehensive system of automatic no-fault accident benefits for economic loss.
Those who would claim that we have removed the right to pursue future economic loss are not telling the whole story about this piece of legislation. They like to talk about the university student who's going to end up under this legislation with the average wage indexed for the rest of his life, because they always like to use the top example and forget to talk about the bottom example.
How many of you in this House know a grade 8 dropout who has become very successful in private business, who has made a significant amount of money in his or her life? If that individual, having dropped out in grade 8, were severely, permanently injured in an accident, does the right-to-sue system deliver that individual full future economic loss? Balderdash. That individual gets ignored by the very élitist, paper-oriented tort system.
Mr Harnick: Are you serious? Only élitists go to lawyers? You should come to my office.
Hon Mr Charlton: No, I didn't say only élitists go to lawyers. The élitist system delivers, as you yourselves have claimed, huge settlements to the medical student who gets injured and little or nothing to the dropout.
Mr Harnick: What about the union guy who's going to lose his overtime? What are you going to do for that guy?
The Acting Speaker: Order.
Hon Mr Charlton: This package delivers equally to the people in this province and ensures that nobody gets left out without benefits.
As we went through the amendments to the benefits package, we raised the ceiling that was imposed by the Liberal legislation from $600 a week unindexed to $1,000 a week indexed.
Mr Murray J. Elston (Bruce): And we've got to pay for it.
Hon Mr Charlton: And we've got to pay for it and the system will pay for it.
Mr Harnick: Tell us about net gross now, Brian.
The Acting Speaker: Order.
Hon Mr Charlton: And the system will pay for it because the system that the Liberals imposed was so overpriced that it can already pay for it. Mr Speaker, can you imagine a system which imposed on somebody a benefit unindexed for life when that 24-, 25- or 26-year-old was permanently disabled?
This legislation also removes the caps for those same long-term disabled, the caps on long-term care, the caps on rehabilitation and the caps on supplementary medical services.
A serious commitment also has to be pursued by this government, and will be pursued by this government, to start to set the standards for an appropriate fair and useful long-term care and rehabilitation system in this province. It's in our best interests to do that; it's in the insurance industry's best interests to do that; it's in the Minister of Health's best interests to do that, but the previous administrations in this province ignored those issues and simply passed legislation and said: "Go away. Don't bug us any more."
You have to deal with the question of rehabilitation and long-term care, but you also have to deal with ensuring that the capability of delivering that in this province in an adequate way is out there.
Death benefits: We doubled the base death benefit and also tied death benefits to income, so that instead of the situation where everybody under the Liberal legislation got $25,000 and that's it, we now have a situation where everybody gets $50,000 and up to $200,000 based on their income. But in addition to that, by the changes we've made in the right to sue around pain and suffering, we've substantially enhanced people's ability, when they're left behind by a deceased husband or wife, to seek compensation for pain and suffering that flows from that.
Everybody will benefit from the improvements we've set out in this legislation. All accident victims will receive benefits and they'll receive them virtually immediately. They'll not have to experience the costs and delays of the legal system.
Some of my colleagues across the way like to laud the right to sue as the best resolution mechanism, and I learned differently and I admit I learned differently. I admit my mistakes and proceed to do what I believe is the right thing.
Mr Harnick: Oh, is that what you told the electorate?
The Acting Speaker: Order, order.
Mr Harnick: Why don't you do what you promised when you ran in the election?
Hon Mr Charlton: Because I found it didn't work very well.
Mr Harnick: Oh, it doesn't matter if you keep your promises or not.
The Acting Speaker: The honourable member for Willowdale will come to order. I know the honourable member for Willowdale feels this is a different kind of debate where he can join in any minute he wants to, but that's not what it is. The honourable Minister of Financial Institutions has an opportunity now to put his views on the record. You too will have your opportunity. I'd ask you to come to order and remain in order. I'd ask the honourable minister to continue.
Hon Mr Charlton: Thank you, Mr Speaker, and I will try and refrain from commenting on the interjections from the other side.
Just let me repeat that every driver in this province will benefit from the changes we're making in this legislation. Nobody will be left outside of the system. Seriously injured people will benefit because of the indexation we've provided in this package, the removal of the caps in terms of rehab and attendant care and those other things that put roadblocks in the way of lifetime access to services for those long-term disabled.
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This legislation will also deliver full income protection to over 90% of the people in this province.
We've also delivered benefits to injured students through lump sum payments and lifetime indexed weekly incomes if they should become permanently disabled, things that were totally ignored in Bill 68, the OMPP system.
We've also delivered similar benefits, but based on past employment, to homemakers and the unemployed. We've also got another group, small business people, who weren't very well dealt with in the Liberal legislation. We've put in place for them a process by which they'll be allowed to predetermine with their insurer an appropriate income replacement level should they become disabled.
The reforms in this bill, Bill 164, also significantly broaden the access to the courts for those situations with which, in my view, the courts are best suited to deal, and that's pain and suffering compensation for those innocent victims of accidents those on the other side so often like to talk about.
Pain and suffering is an individual, intangible, difficult-to-define set of things a person suffers as a result of an accident. Pain and suffering and assessment of pain and suffering certainly aren't easily suitable to a fixed schedule of accident benefits. You can know how much an individual earned, because he's got a pay stub from his former employer and you can also contact his or her former employer, but it's not quite so easy to assess pain and suffering.
The courts are well established to deal with pain and suffering settlements. They have been for a long time.
Mr Harnick: Now you trust the courts. A minute ago, you said you couldn't trust them.
Hon Mr Charlton: This wasn't a question of trusting courts. It was a question of trusting the way you deliver benefits to some and not to others.
At the same time, ill-advised court action must be discouraged in the interests of an affordable, efficient insurance system. I recall during the course of our consultations talking to people who in fact were able to utilize the courts to eventually get an adequate settlement, after two, three, four years of litigation, who in the interim lost their homes. The no-fault system delivers their income-loss benefits up front.
The ability to litigate for pain and suffering isn't something that's required to support the ongoing family obligations of the injured person in terms of his income loss, in terms of his medical and rehabilitation needs and in terms of the family, the mortgage obligations, the children at home and the other things that require the upfront delivery of benefits.
Yes, we'd opposed a threshold on that right to sue. In fact, it was a threshold that was suggested by the legal community itself as we talked about the appropriateness of verbal thresholds, monetary thresholds and even a deductible, which is what we put in place, a $15,000 deductible threshold.
Mr Harnick: What cases will be eliminated with a $15,000 threshold?
The Acting Speaker: Order.
Hon Mr Charlton: The changes we've made in the threshold will allow access to the right to sue for pain and suffering to basically triple. It will deliver the right to sue for pain and suffering to all of those individuals who have been severely injured in a significant and long-lasting way.
Our reform program will also ensure major improvements for Ontario drivers, not only because of the benefit changes that I've just described but because of a number of other series of planned reforms that deal with questions of market stability in terms of insurance in this province. It does that for a number of reasons.
The first and I guess the primary of those is that it uses the dollars in the system much more efficiently and delivers them to the people who expect and need the delivery of those dollars.
Today I will be making available to my colleagues across the way, and to the interested larger public out there, the findings of our actuaries, William M. Mercer Ltd. This report is the most comprehensive look at the costs for Ontario auto insurance ever done. We commissioned this study as a tool to help us balance fair compensation benefits with affordability. We undertook this study so we could understand the cost pressures and identify those areas where real change is needed.
The report confirms what I've said all along. These reforms will not only be fairer; they will also be affordable. Our reforms are affordable because we have reallocated costs in the system to produce an effective and efficient system; that is, significant benefit enhancements can be introduced because of the innovative combination of accident benefits for economic loss and the ability to sue for pain and suffering.
Some of the members across the way again are correct. The insurance industry will attempt to see the costs of this package as somewhat higher than we will portray them. Having said that, you will note that I started out my comments by saying that this is the most comprehensive look at the costs of auto insurance ever done in the province of Ontario. We have been in significant discussions with the industry, and throughout those discussions their costings have been gradually been coming down. It won't be too far down the road before we reach some good understanding of the future costs in the system.
But in any event, I have said from the outset, publicly out there to the media and the larger general public and here in this House, that although we believe this package is affordable and that we can implement it without cost increase, I am prepared -- although I don't want to see increases given in advance like the last government made the mistake of doing, because they weren't necessary, those 8% increases that were attached to Bill 68. The $1 billion of profit that the industry rolled in was handed to them by the legislative process here in Ontario, and that's unfortunate. I don't want to see those kinds of costs rolled out in advance based on estimates of the cost of this system, but I am prepared to sit down realistically with the insurance industry in this province and, when we've determined what the real costs of this package are, to deal with them. That's how confident I am in our numbers and the approach that our actuaries have taken to costing this initiative.
Our reforms are affordable because we've done the things that I've talked about to try to find the balance between fairness, efficient use of dollars and affordability. We expect that price stability can also be achieved through our commitment to develop guidelines and standards for rehabilitation, an area left unaddressed by the last government and one of the serious underlying cost pressures that have caused significant problems, especially during the 1980s, when that whole rehabilitation sector was developing out there uncontrolled.
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As I've said, we also expect to add a price stability in the longer term through a significantly greater emphasis on road safety. I'll make a few more comments on road safety in a few moments.
The system has to be overhauled in its entirety. A piece of accident benefits legislation by itself isn't enough. I've mentioned rehabilitation standards. We have to proceed in consultation with other colleague ministries, the industry itself and victims' groups out there to start the process of developing rehabilitation standards in this province.
We've also got to do a much better job of designing and implementing much more effective consumer advocacy mechanisms in this province. One of the things the Liberal legislation did was take away the right to sue for most people, in effect taking away their normal advocate -- in most cases, their lawyer. They put in place the adjudicative mechanisms at the Ontario Insurance Commission, the mediation mechanism and the arbitration mechanism, but they forgot to effectively put in place a cost-effective and affordable advocacy mechanism for those individuals. We're going to have to deal with that question and deal with it in a fairly upfront way.
We're also going to have to work to improve the dispute resolution mechanisms at the OIC and we're going to have to work to put in place new rules to protect claimants in disputes. One of the things we've done in this legislation, for example, is remove the ability of insurers to just automatically cut people off from a benefit without access to that dispute resolution mechanism. People who in the past have had their access to the courts taken away from them have had no protection added on the other side in terms of the insurer's ability to stop their benefits.
Mr Elston: Don't talk to me, Brian.
Hon Mr Charlton: Why shouldn't I talk to you?
Mr Elston: You should be concentrating on convincing somebody else, because your story is really full of a whole bunch of holes.
The Acting Speaker: Order, please.
Mr Elston: Your understanding of this whole issue is really not very good.
Hon Mr Charlton: The member across the way would suggest that my understanding of this is not very good. I would suggest that his understanding, based on the legislation he proceeded with, is what was probably more full of holes than anything else.
As we move through the changes in this legislation, I'd also like to take a few moments to address the classification system and the discriminatory nature of that classification system as based on age, sex and marital status, a classification system that the Liberals in 1987 said they would proceed to reform. In fact, if I recall correctly, they actually proceeded with the legislative changes or at least the study, then backed out of the whole system.
I understand it's a difficult problem and I understand it's not going to be an easy one to resolve. Having said that, we intend to proceed to resolve it in a staged, understandable and useful way. We intend to move as quickly as we can to a uniform classification system across this province and then to eliminate the discrimination in that system.
We have to promote clear definitions and common rating factors across this province and we have to end up with a system that deals with drivers based on their experience and their record, not on a system which convicts the guilty and the innocent because they happen to be the same age.
We've also got to deal with the question of accessibility. I've talked earlier about the Facility Association. Our commitment is to ensure that over the course of the next year or year and a half, fully 50% of the people, well over 100,000 people, will be moved out of the Facility Association fund and into the regular market at reasonable rates for their auto insurance in this province. We've worked closely with the industry to accomplish that. The new approach was approved in June, and our goal is to ensure that every good driver is removed from the FA. We're also going to put in place a "take all comers" system in this province to ensure that all good drivers have access to insurance in the regular market.
We've also got to proceed to deal with the other questions that are dealt with in this legislation. This legislation gives the Ontario Insurance Commission the powers to regulate market conduct and to ensure that we don't have unnecessary disruptions in the marketplace. This legislation will also give us the power to impose penalties on companies that don't live with the rules in this province, a power that we've never had in this province before.
Road safety: I mentioned earlier that I wanted to comment on this a little bit further. Accidents in this province cost $4 billion a year. Our reform strategy will link automobile insurance with road safety, because we all have to work not only to deliver good benefits to accident victims but to reduce the number of accident victims we produce in this province.
The Minister of Transportation, my colleague who normally sits in front of me here, tabled a bill to establish the Ontario Road Safety Corp on June 3 of this year. New incentives for safe driving measures will be ongoing and will become a permanent part of this government's initiatives to deal with auto insurance and road safety questions in this province.
New safety education and driver improvement programs will be put in place. Public education and safety campaigns will be stepped up significantly, and eventually we will see, hopefully, the merging of the information that the Ministry of Transportation and the insurance industry now have around the performance of individual drivers in this province, hence giving us the ability to deal in a more individual way with the performance of those drivers rather than the classification of those drivers.
In the process of creating the road safety corporation we will build new partnerships with a number of organizations around this province and ensure that we have not only industry and victim input but a community input into the kinds of programs we set up to start dealing with road safety.
In conclusion, this reform package strikes, I believe, the right balance between fair and reasonable benefits for accident victims and affordability. It will be done within the private sector delivery system.
There are still major gaps in the OMPP system in spite of the industry's protestations that it's a fine system. This legislation will deal with those inequities in the OMPP package. We've consulted with representatives of the industry, lawyers, consumers and advocates for accident victims, and that consultation process has delivered to us invaluable input. In fact, that input has helped us to design this very unique package of reforms.
Just in winding up, I'd like to say to my colleagues in the House that -- and I started to say this earlier in response to one of the interjections from across the way, but it's more appropriate to say it in a more full way as the windup to my comments here today. The measure of the old system, the current system and the new system is a measure that never gets resolved by this guy and that woman who got served a little bit better or a little bit worse in any one of the systems. The real measure is, at the end of the day, in a societal way, which system has best served all of the people of this province? Which system has left the fewest number of victims in a heap outside the system? Which system has delivered the most benefits to the most people in the most compassionate and fair way?
That's the measure by which I want to see this legislation measured by the people of this province, not by the rhetoric of the specific-interest advocate groups in this province.
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The Acting Speaker: Questions and/or comments?
Mr Harnick: It's very interesting that we hear this long apology from the Minister of Financial Institutions when he deals with auto insurance. These were the people who made promises during an election to (a) give us public auto insurance -- we know where that promise went -- and (b), after 17 hours of Peter Kormos standing in this chamber pleading for the rights of innocent accident victims and for the right to have access to courts to claim for their actual damages, and the fact that this whole party supported him, including the Premier -- it shocks me, after an election campaign where Mr Charlton himself was out campaigning to restore the rights for innocent accident victims, that he comes here today in this long-winded apology and says: "We don't have to keep the promises we made. We discovered another method after the election."
If you wonder why the public is cynical about this government and maybe about all politicians, there is the perfect example: "It's not incumbent upon us to keep our promises. We're entitled to change our minds later on." Well, I'll tell you something. You made promises and on the strength of those promises you got votes. Now, unfortunately, people have to wait for two more years to throw you out. You haven't told the public the truth and you should be ashamed. Because of that, every bit of this auto insurance package is suspect, every bit of it, because it's not what you promised when you got elected. People voted for you because you made certain promises, and this was one of the major planks in your Agenda for People, this and public auto insurance. The fact is, you never intended to keep your promise. You misled the public, and you should be ashamed. For that reason, no one will ever trust you in terms of what this package has in it.
The Acting Speaker: Thank you, honourable member. Questions and/or comments? If there are none, then the honourable minister has two minutes to respond.
Hon Mr Charlton: I think I've taken plenty of time, Mr Speaker.
The Acting Speaker: Resuming the debate, the honourable member for Essex South.
Mr Remo Mancini (Essex South): I'm pleased to have the opportunity to join my colleagues in the Legislature to debate Bill 164. Before I get to the actual sections and subsections of Bill 164, I think it would be appropriate to set out for the Legislature, because many of the members are new and were not here prior to September 1990, and I also want to remind the public who may be tuned in and watching about what the situation was in the mid- and late 1980s that led the former Liberal government of the day to introduce and pass the Ontario motorist protection plan that has been in place for approximately two years and is still serving the public at this very moment.
During the late 1980s, the issue of automobile insurance was front and centre as a political issue. Increases in premiums had aroused the public. Moving Ontario motorists from regular insurance coverage into the Facility Association at very high rates had made many people angry. The unavailability of insurance for some Ontarians came as a shock. This led, as I said earlier, to the main political issue of the day: automobile insurance rates, availability and generally how the industry would be managed by the government and the industry itself.
During this time, it was made clear to us and to the 10 million residents of Ontario that the decades-old position of the socialist NDP was and had been up to that time very clear. They said time and again that if given the responsibility to govern, the socialist NDP would nationalize automobile insurance and we would have government-owned car insurance. By the statements made not just by the Premier or by Peter Kormos or by single members of the caucus, but by the caucus and the NDP as a whole, we were led to believe that the nationalization of the industry would lead to affordable insurance, stability in the marketplace and, for most people, would mean a reduction in premiums. They said this had been done before in Manitoba, in Saskatchewan and in British Columbia. A little bit later on in my discussion we will discuss what's happened in some of those provinces that have embarked on this course.
During this period of turmoil in the late 1980s, the former Liberal government promised to bring greater fairness and stability to the marketplace and the best possible protection for consumers at the best possible price. It amazes me to this day that the New Democratic Party still fails to understand how the insurance industry works. It's really quite simple. It's misunderstood by many people, mainly because of the actions of the New Democratic Party, what it has had to say over the many past years and how it has distorted the facts.
The principle of insurance is simple indeed: A group of people get together and buy protection from a certain company. For this protection, they pay premiums, hoping, I'm sure, that they never have to collect on the protection they've bought. These premiums, I say to my socialist colleagues across the floor, create a pool of capital. From this pool of capital, people are employed. That's one thing that the government across the floor fails to mention and fails to talk about on every issue, that pools of capital create employment. From this pool of capital, business is allowed to operate; business is allowed to pay taxes. Profits, which has been and continues to be a dirty word to the NDP government, are reinvested, most of them right here in our own province. This reinvestment of profit and capital strengthens the engine of growth.
I fail to understand why, even at this late stage under the leadership of the NDP, they have steadfastly refused in any way whatsoever to understand and to explain the merits of profit and what it has done and what it can do. Profit allows employers to stay in business, and employers need employees to do the work. It's very simple, not complicated.
I sometimes wonder where, how and who taught this government across the floor basic arithmetic, because when you sit here and listen to its speeches and listen to the many things that it has said over the years and have watched the things that it has done over the past two years, you have to wonder where it learned its basic arithmetic. If this current recession-depression has not reminded and taught us all the importance of profit, especially the government across the way, then I don't believe anything will.
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Finally, from this pool of capital that I spoke about earlier, the consumers who bought the protection receive benefits when needed. That is what the pool of capital is used for. That's why the pool of capital is created.
Before 1989 and before no-fault insurance and before the Ontario motorist protection plan, one of the constant complaints that was made by the general public and by many organizations, some affiliated with the insurance industry, some not affiliated with the insurance industry, was the cost of litigation, the cost not only in direct payment to lawyers but the cost of clogging up our courts, the cost of the uncertainty as to what awards would be given, how high the awards would be, whether or not the industry had properly planned for such high awards, and whether or not they could plan for the future. In short, huge sums of capital were being taken from this pool for the purpose of litigation.
Before we can fully discuss Bill 164, as I said earlier, we have to better understand the main points of the Ontario motorist protection plan, the plan that we are now living under, that has served us, and I believe well, for the past two years. We have to understand that since June 22, 1990, most of us, if we were honest in this Legislature, and I believe for the most part we are, if we were asked to rise on an individual basis and enunciate the number of phone calls or letters that each of us has received in our constituency office or our home, or the number of times that each of us has been stopped by constituents with regard to insurance problems, premiums, availability, payouts and all of those things, I would have to say that most of us would have very little to say.
The Ontario motorist protection plan, which was passed on June 22, 1990, was not something that was dreamed up overnight and rammed through the Legislature, as the government is doing with Bill 64. We did not change the rules of the Legislature, I say to my honourable colleagues across the floor, to limit the debate of the members. As a matter of fact, the members across the floor will recall that many months of lengthy debate took place in which they vigorously participated and they now just as vigorously prevent us from participating, limiting myself, as the critic for the official opposition, to one hour and 30 minutes and limiting the rest of my colleagues to 30 minutes each. That's if the minister allows the rest of my colleagues to speak, because under the new rules the minister can say, "We've had enough debate," after only one or two of my colleagues have spoken. They rigorously participated and were allowed to do so and take part in the democratic process when the Ontario motorist protection plan was being passed, and they do just the opposite now.
Some people have speculated that the rule changes were not just aimed at the members of the official opposition and the third party, but that the rule changes were aimed at their own members who might not agree with the government. To think that over 100 years of tradition, that over 100 years of being able to speak as an opposition party or the third party, to think that all that was changed, practically overnight, by a party that once vigorously participated in the debates on all important bills that were brought to the Legislature.
The Ontario motorist protection plan, which has served us well up till this point, contains a number of important provisions. Number one, it allows individuals to sue for loss of income, something the party opposite never liked to talk about and pretended did not exist. It did not allow for suits involving pain and suffering or psychological damages. Instead, a series of benefits was established.
Weekly benefits were established. Under our plan, weekly benefits were 80% of gross wages or $600 a week for life. We allowed $500,000 for rehabilitation and long-term care, and something just as important and something the party opposite never liked to talk about is that we created a threshold level for accident victims who sustained serious and permanent physical injury. If they were able to prove that they had sustained serious and/or permanent physical injury, then they broke through the threshold and they again had access to the courts, and, I say, if they used up $500,000 worth of medical care, that in itself would have pushed them through the threshold.
Our legislation has withstood the test of time. Our legislation that had been passed by the Liberal government has been accepted and has worked well.
While we were putting in place the legislation I've just described, what were the members of the socialist New Democratic Party doing? They were doing I guess what they thought their job was. They were putting forward their ideas on insurance policy and they were participating in the debates in the Legislature.
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I have chosen just three, four or five newspaper clippings to remind everyone what the documentation of the time happened to be. The Kitchener-Waterloo Record, on April 14, 1990, in a headline stated: "No Fault Insurance Foe Breaks Legislature's Filibuster Records."
The North Bay Nugget said on May 24, 1990: "Insurance Scheme Unfair To Victims, NDP Critic Says." The NDP critic was Peter Kormos. The article goes on say: "Mr Kormos says that an innocent auto accident victim will have to be 'dead or damn close to it' to receive any substantial benefits under Ontario's new no-fault insurance scheme. This is the verdict of MPP Peter Kormos, Welland-Thorold, who led a 17-hour filibuster against Bill 68 earlier this month at Queen's Park."
This afternoon we hear from the minister that all of these things that the NDP had said and done in opposition were just plain wrong; it had made a mistake. But when they travelled the province during the 1990 calendar year, up and down the concession roads from small villages to big towns and big cities, make no mistake about it, they knew what they were doing: They were selling socialized auto insurance. They were painting a picture that was not true then and is certainly not true today. Now we are being asked to believe, at this late stage, that all of those things that they said were just one big, happy mistake. They didn't realize and they didn't tell the public that it was going to cost megadollars to create an industry. They didn't realize and they didn't tell the general public that thousands of full-time and thousands of part-time jobs would be flushed down the tubes because of their plan. No, it was just one big, happy mistake; how can they be blamed?
One would have thought that they had not studied the matter, but no, that can't be true because they told us they did study the matter at great length. One would have thought that they didn't have anyone else's prior experience to count on, but no, that's not true either because they had the experience of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and British Columbia to rely on. One would have thought that the NDP socialist party and now government was bankrupt of any intellectual capacity, but no, that can't be right either because they boast many highly educated and well-trained people as members who make up their party.
So how is it possible that the minister could come here today and say that all of those things that they said, all of those promises that they made of insurance for everybody with lower premiums was one big, happy mistake? I say to my colleagues, how are we now expected to believe that it was all one big, happy mistake?
During those days leading up to the passage of that legislation, obstruction, filibustering and cheap promises by the NDP were the order of the day. As a matter of fact, when you look at the results of the 1990 election, it was not only the order of the day; it carried the day. So that's the way things were then. What did the socialist NDP do after they won the election, after they made these promises, which they now deem to be just one big, happy mistake? What was the situation after they won? Let's turn to the daily newspapers to see how they documented the situation of the day after September 1990.
War broke out within the NDP caucus, or the perception of a war. On September 6, 1991, the Toronto Star told its reading public, and I quote its headline:
"Kormos Walks Out Over Car Insurance.
"Furious Peter Kormos is boycotting the Ontario New Democrats' retreat here," -- up in Honey Harbour -- "accusing them of giving auto insurance companies a direct pipeline into the Premier's office. Peter Kormos lashed out as Premier Bob Rae confirmed his government is reconsidering his campaign promise of setting up government-run auto insurance. Rescuing the economy, the recession and creating jobs was now the order of the day."
"Kormos Bitter About Auto Insurance Reversal" -- St Catharines Standard, September 1991.
"Peter Kormos feels like he's in mourning when he should be celebrating yesterday's one-year anniversary of the surprise NDP victory in Ontario. Yesterday's decision by Premier Rae to ditch the idea of public auto insurance, a cornerstone of the NDP platform for years, had Mr Kormos struggling to come up with words to describe how he felt.
"'I'm disappointed. It's almost a sense of mourning,' he said. 'I can't think of a policy that was more central to the NDP platform in this province.'"
The Kitchener-Waterloo Record: "Rae Drops Public Auto Plan.
"Ontario Premier Bob Rae shelved plans for a full takeover of the public auto insurance industry Friday, reversing his election pledge of a year ago because of the province's deep recession.
"'We have decided we will not be proceeding with public auto insurance, and we will not be proceeding for two simple reasons,' he told his caucus at Honey Harbour. 'It will cost too much money and cost too many jobs.'"
Where was that Rhodes-educated scholar before September 1990? Where were all the ladies and gentlemen sitting across the floor from me before September 1990? We are being asked to believe today that not a single one of them -- not one of their advisers, not one of their paid staff, not a single member of the entire New Democratic Party of Ontario -- knew that nationalizing the automobile insurance business would cost money and jobs. This is astounding; that's what it is. It's beyond unbelievable.
Hon Elmer Buchanan (Minister of Agriculture and Food): Read us some more of those.
Mr Mancini: Yes, I'm going to read many of them, because you need to be reminded. Your honesty is in question, your capacity to govern is in question and your capacity to figure out things before you promise them is in question. I say to the minister of agriculture that there are many things he should be concerned about at this time, many things he should be turning his attention to, like the broken promises he made to the farmers in Essex county, but we can't talk about that right now.
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The Toronto Star said on Saturday, September 7 -- and this says it all as far as I'm concerned -- "NDP Adds to Litany of Broken Promises." I didn't write that. I didn't make up that headline. You did it yourselves. You, ladies and gentlemen sitting across the floor on the government benches, wrote the headline yourselves, "NDP Adds to Litany of Broken Promises.
You know, there's one thing you didn't want to admit before September 1990, and you're having a torturous time admitting it now. I know you don't want to believe it, but you know it's true. If you want to buy a form of protection, hoping of course that you never have to use it, you have to pay premiums, and if you want to increase the protection and receive more from the pool of money that's been established, you have to put more in. It's not very complicated arithmetic.
Even the Minister of Tourism and Recreation knows that if we have fewer tourists coming to Ontario, as is the case now -- and he's not doing anything about it -- we will have fewer tourist dollars spreading throughout our economy and there will be repercussions because of that, as has already happened. It's the same arithmetic whether it's tourism, insurance or agriculture, I say to the minister of agriculture.
So we're at this stage and the party is in turmoil. Peter Kormos is huffing and puffing and not going to meetings and threatening not to come to the chamber and making all kinds of threats. But I will say this on behalf of Peter Kormos, that with all this huffing and puffing, with all these insinuated threats, over these past two years I've not known him to vote against the government once, on anything. As a matter of fact, I don't even think he voted against the government on the rule changes which took our rights away, which now prevent us from speaking on behalf of the people of this province, when he enjoyed all those rights for 17 hours in one stretch and when all of you enjoyed those rights for months at a time.
Anyway, we now have Peter Kormos huffing and puffing and there's all this turmoil within the party as far as the caucus goes. But now outside of the caucus we have huffing and puffing. The St Catharines Standard, September 10, 1991, said it all -- "Swart Says Rae Wrong," referring to Mel Swart, the former member for Welland-Thorold, who served in this chamber, along with myself and many others, until his retirement in 1987, I believe. He served from 1975 to 1987 and championed, day in and day out, government-owned automobile insurance and was acclaimed by the party and by people outside of the party as an expert on automobile insurance.
We're now being asked to believe that Mel Swart, the former member for Welland-Thorold, who spent the better part of 15 years in this Legislature becoming an expert on automobile insurance, did not know that it would cost anywhere from $1.5 billion to $2 billion to nationalize the industry and start up a crown corporation. We're being asked to believe that he did not know that 6,000 full-time jobs would have been lost and 8,000 part-time jobs would have been lost. I say Mel Swart knew that. I say Mel Swart knew that would happen, and he was ready to put that cost behind his socialist agenda.
Mr Kimble Sutherland (Oxford): -- the legislation?
Mr Mancini: Yes, I am, and all these things I'm saying are part and parcel of where we are today. You should be listening carefully because you were part of the group that walked up and down concession roads and told people from your heart of hearts that you would nationalize the industry and bring stability and cheaper rates. You stole a lot of votes by saying that and you defeated a lot of good people from this chamber by doing that and you won the hearts of many thousands of Ontarians by saying that. Now your minister comes before the chamber and says to us, and we're supposed to sit here and accept it, "Oh, it's just one big, happy mistake."
"Mel Swart, one of the architects of the NDP's public-owned auto insurance scheme, says the recent decision to drop the plan is heartbreaking. Mel Swart, former MPP for Welland-Thorold, said yesterday Bob Rae's government is making a very serious mistake by abandoning its goal for public auto insurance. He has received a tremendous number of calls from supporters, whose feelings range from regret to very bitter disappointment."
The federal NDP members who were elected to Parliament got into the act. Johnny Rodriguez, the federal NDP member for the area of Nickel Belt, near Sudbury, was critical of the Ontario NDP flip-flop on insurance. He said, "The NDP are backing away from what has been a major part of the NDP platform since I joined the party in 1963, and the credibility of the government is at stake."
So Johnny Rodriguez, a federal member of Parliament with the New Democratic Party, knew all about this. He must have known it was going to cost from $1.5 billion to $2 billion to do this. He must have known that 6,000 full-time jobs and 8,000 part-time job would be lost. Yet he was willing to stick by his guns. He was willing to say that he knew what the consequences were. But these people across the floor come here today -- it's almost laughable -- and ask us to believe that they didn't know. Mel Swart knew and Johnny Rodriguez knew.
The Toronto Star, September 25, 1991: "NDP Accused of Flim-Flam on Auto Suits: Ontario New Democrats are using deception and flim-flam to renege on their promise to restore the full rights of accident victims to sue, victims' rights group says."
Mr Speaker, that gives you a clear picture of what happened after the NDP broke its long-held commitment to nationalizing the automobile industry, and that, I say to my colleagues in the House, is what has led us to where we are today. That's why we have Bill 164 in front of us today. They had to do something. Internally, the caucus was divided and at each other's throats. The party was making public statements. Senior members of the party, former members of the Legislature, elected MPs of the federal New Democratic caucus, all of them were making public statements about what a tragedy this was, what a terrible thing had occurred, so in order to try and regain some shred of respectability within its own party, the caucus got together, forced the Minister of Financial Institutions to come up with something else, and that something else is Bill 164.
Mr Speaker, I note that it is now 6 of the clock and that I have 54 minutes left for debate time. I'm very sorry I have to interrupt the comments I want to make, because many of the viewing public now will not be able to follow the comments made on the next day. I regret that deeply, but with your permission I'll adjourn the debate.
The Deputy Speaker (Mr Gilles E. Morin): It being 6 of the clock, this House stands adjourned until 1:30 of the clock tomorrow.
The House adjourned at 1801.