Hansard Transcript 1993-Jun-17 vol. a | Legislative Assembly of Ontario

That, in the opinion of this House, since the conservation land tax rebate has been cancelled making it impossible for some conservation authorities to pay their taxes; and

Since the government is asking conservation authorities to accept funding cuts which are far more severe than those foisted on other sectors of society; and

Since the Association of Conservation Authorities of Ontario have offered A Blueprint for Success which would save Ontario taxpayers an estimated $100 million; and

Since the future of our wetlands, floodplains and conservation areas are threatened by this government's fiscal mismanagement;

Therefore, the conservation land tax rebate should be immediately reinstated to conservation authorities and the government should seriously consider and implement the concepts outlined in the Blueprint for Success.

The Deputy Speaker (Mr Gilles E. Morin): Pursuant to standing order 96(c)(i), the member has 10 minutes for his presentation.

Mr Bill Murdoch (Grey): I am presenting this resolution to the House today because I'm very concerned about the difficult situation we find our conservation authorities in. This government has cut their operating funds by more than those in other sectors, and they are being asked to sacrifice in addition to eliminating the conservation land tax rebate for public land.

The people of Ontario are worried now about their environmentally sensitive lands. They are afraid that they may have to be sold if there is no money to pay the taxes.

To show Bob Rae and his Minister of Natural Resources that they are serious, a lot of people from my area have come down here today to show their support for this resolution. They want to support their conservation authorities, for the wetlands and the floodplains, the parks and the forests, which they believe the government is abandoning.

We have a lot of people sitting in the gallery, both here and up there, from my area. We have people from the conservation authorities, from the field naturalists, a lot of representatives from municipalities, chambers of commerce, a lot of sportsmen's clubs, heritage and other groups from my area that are very concerned that if we continue in this way, downloading on to our conservation authorities and on to our municipalities, there will be no land left for people to enjoy and the sensitive areas will be sold to private developers, and that would be unfair.

I share a number of their concerns also. I believe that what we can do is protect this land for the environment, and there is a way of doing it. My own area has been very lucky to have a lot of this land bought up and looked after by the conservation authorities, but the problem is that this government now has reneged on a promise that was made for many years by other governments, that they would pay the conservation land tax.

What this is going to do is force some of the municipalities to sell some of this land. As you know, in the private sector, if you fall behind in paying your tax bill, after three years the municipalities can and may sell the land to pay the taxes.

We have the same situation happening here. For many years the conservation authorities all over Ontario have gone out and with the help of the government and with the help of many individuals bought a lot of this land to protect, as I said, land such as wetlands and lands of significant interest, lands that all the people in Ontario would like to enjoy. Therefore, the wisdom of the past governments was that all the people in Ontario should pay the taxes on it. Well, something's happened. This government decided that, no, the local people are going to have to pick up the tax bill, and it's straight downloading.

I see in the audience Mr Kirk, who is sitting up there, who in our area is called Mr Conservationist. This man has spent most of his whole life collecting land, looking after land that is sensitive and should be enjoyed by everyone and should be protected for everyone. As I said, he's spent most of his life doing this and working towards that.

He's gone to many different clubs all over and asked them to donate land, donate money and put it into the land of the conservation authority, because as you know, the conservation authority is a group that is managed through the Ministry of Natural Resources of the province and it paid the land tax. But all of a sudden, without any consultation, this government decides, "Hey, we're not going to pay that tax any more."

What does the conservation authority do? They only have two people they can collect money from, and one is the province and the other is the municipality. They owe the taxes to the municipality, so they can't go to the municipality for any more money. We have a problem and that is why this resolution is here today.

I want to stress that Mr Kirk also worked to get a lot of the land along the Niagara Escarpment put into the conservation authorities. In my area, the Niagara Escarpment winds through pretty well over half of Grey county and we're proud to have the escarpment in Grey county. There may be some other things we're not proud of with the escarpment but we won't discuss those today. But that land is very sensitive and there are a lot of land-use problems there, so the best way to solve some of those problems was to buy that land. As I said, Mr Kirk knew that also and he worked hard to get a lot of this land.

Now what's going to happen when the conservation authorities do not pay their taxes? We're going to be in trouble and I'm afraid we may lose some of this land and the people of Ontario will lose the land also, and it may be lost for ever if development takes over, if the municipalities are forced to sell it. I want to tell you, Mr Speaker, that we're in a serious problem here.

In my area, I have four conservation authorities and I'm proud of them all. We have the Grey Sauble Conservation Authority, the Saugeen conservation authority, the Nottawasaga conservation authority and a little part of the Grand, and I know there are some people here today from the Grand also, as well as the other three conservation authorities.

The big thing that's a let-down is that the bureaucrats at Queen's Park promised us they would pay this. Now, we understand that the government has problems with money right now and we in this party want to help it out and solve that problem. We know we don't have a lot of money in Ontario right now, but this is not the way to do it, to download it on to the municipalities.

What happened is that each of the ministries was told it had to cut back, and that's fine, we agree with that. But the bureaucrats in the MNR, who have always been jealous of the conservation authorities because they do a far better job of delivering programs, said, "Hey, we'll nail the conservation authorities; we'll take the money from them," and that's what they did.

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Mr Murdoch: But the problem is, it goes right back down to the poor taxpayer.

These bureaucrats said, "We're going to nail them," and that's what they did and they duped the government. I think when the government wakes up and finds out what the bureaucrats did to them, it's going to agree with me on this motion. I hope that they will come out at 12 o'clock noon today when the vote will be on, and vote for this.

Also, I wanted to talk a little bit about A Blueprint for Success. That's also in this motion. The conservation authorities also want to help the government solve their problems and help them with their money, so what the conservation authorities did is that they got together and came up with A Blueprint for Success, which will save almost $100 million.

What I want the government to do is to listen to them. There's a lot of overlapping and duplication of programs. If somebody wants to develop, they have to go to almost 12 agencies, and a lot of those agencies say the same thing, do the same thing. Well, we can save a lot of money by looking at this Blueprint for Success and help the government out in its problems.

This is why this resolution's been put on the floor today. I'm looking forward for the government to support me on this and then it can go back to the Ministry of Natural Resources and tell the bureaucrats that they can't download on to the municipalities through the conservation authorities, because it's not going to work. We're going to lose some sensitive land which we don't want to do. What's going to happen also is that municipalities and individuals are not going to help support conservation authorities buying more land because they need their tax base, and we'll lose sensitive areas that should be bought right now.

There are lots of areas in our province right now that need to be protected and this is the only way it can be done, or one of the best ways it can be done, because everybody in Ontario shares the pain when the taxes are paid through the province to the conservation authorities.

Again, I just want to point out the importance of this resolution and the importance of the government of the day supporting this. I'm sure my colleagues from the Liberal Party are here to support us and I know I have support in our own party to help find a solution to this problem.

One way is to give back their land tax money immediately. It must be done right now, because the taxes are due. The municipalities need the money. They've already budgeted their budgets. If they're not paid now, that means that they're going to have to go back to the local taxpayer and raise taxes to make up the shortfall.

In my area alone, there could be over $300,000 lost, which is a large amount of money if you take it over the area of Grey and Bruce and we just can't afford that there, and the rest of the people of Ontario and places like that can't afford to lose this money. If we want to keep Ontario healthy and a good place to live, and places that need protecting, this is the only way it can be done. I hope that everyone here will support me in this bill.

Interruption.

Mr Len Wood (Cochrane North): To start off with, I just want to make the comment that --

The Deputy Speaker: Could you wait just for a minute, please. I would like to remind the people in the gallery that it's not permitted to applaud. Only the members on the floor can make noise, but not the people in the gallery. I would ask for your kind cooperation. The member for Cochrane North.

Mr Wood: Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I'm pleased to get up and make a few brief comments on the bill brought forward by the member for the Conservative Party. This is a budget item that he's asking to be reversed, the conservation rebate tax be reversed in the budget. We had the expenditure control, we had the budget and we had the social contract talks of nine weeks that were part of trying to control the amount of money the government is able to spend.

On the conservation authorities, I attended a meeting and spoke to the authorities on April 19 at Airport Road in Mississauga. The message at that time was made very clear, that we have to find a better and more efficient way of dealing with all the ministries and agencies out there, find better and more innovative ways of dealing with things.

Conservation authorities were created primarily to meet very specific challenges -- flooding and erosion control -- and they've been doing that for almost 50 years. We realize that the job is not done, but the need for major capital programs is greatly diminished.

An enormous amount of publicity has been carried out. An article from the London Free Press of June 1 mentions a lot of duplication between different ministries. It suggests that there is probably $100 million of duplication, money being spent that is just duplicating what the municipalities, the province, conservation authorities, and other ministries are involved in supplying there.

I would expect that when the member for Grey brought forth this resolution, he knew full well that any suggestion or idea that a budget item we dealt with be reversed -- I'm opposing the resolution he has brought forward. I believe there are other ways and means of dealing with this. There have been a lot of different meetings, including the meeting at which I was their guest speaker. We have to find ways and means of dealing with that realistically and not just reversing that.

There are going to be meetings with a number of different ministries, including with the Minister of Natural Resources, Howard Hampton. I understand that meetings are going to be held later on next week to talk about the whole situation, the problem we've had. We had to find ways and means to reduce the expected deficit from $17-plus billion down to $9.2 billion. The conservative authorities were not being singled out any more than any other group to find the reductions.

Mr Murdoch: It's not $9.2 billion. You're still over $10 billion.

The Deputy Speaker: The member for Grey, you had your turn.

Mr Wood: In the brief time I have, I believe we should all work together to find a way of dealing with this. The conservation authorities, in conjunction with MNR, with the Ministry of Agriculture and Food, with various ministries, have come up with some programs where they're saying there's a lot duplication, a lot of waste. I think we should encourage them to continue on this route and encourage them all to sit down together to find ways and means of making sure that the pain and hurting that every agency is feeling right across the province is the least painful possible.

I'd just repeat that conservation authorities were created primarily to find ways of controlling flooding and erosion. This process is going to continue, but we have to find ways of doing it within the financial restraints we've been faced with, the worst restraints we've ever been faced with going back 50 years, since the recession.

With that, I'd just like to say thank you very much, and I'll listen to the comments from the other members.

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Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines): I'm rising to support the resolution which is before the House today. I think it makes a lot of sense.

The program initially was to encourage people to turn over properties to conservation authorities. It allowed conservation authorities to acquire, for the general public good, lands which were environmentally sensitive. It seems to me that when that program was introduced, it received a good deal of applause from a wide cross-section of the public, and for this reason I believe it should be restored.

It's interesting. If I had asked people, when I had the opportunity to be the Environment minister of this province, "Which party do you think is probably going to deliver most in terms of environmental conservation?" many objective people, because the NDP has always portrayed itself in this way, would perhaps have suggested that the New Democratic Party would have been the party to do it.

How ironic it is that today the budgets of the Ministry of Environment and Energy and the budgets of the Ministry of Natural Resources are severely cut at a time when the government has an opportunity to look at all of its ministries and make choices. The easy choice, of course, is always to say everybody's going to be cut equally in every ministry and it kind of keeps cabinet ministers happy. To govern, however, is to choose and to make decisions, and it seems to me that if the government wished to indicate a priority for the environment and for conservation, the measures announced in the last budget would not have been introduced. Now we have a situation where the operating grants to conservation authorities are being cut back.

The conservation authorities, as well as everybody at the municipal level -- and I look at the general municipal level when we talk about conservation authorities -- fully recognize that we're in difficult economic times. They don't expect that the provincial government is going to be opening up the coffers and giving millions upon millions of new dollars for the purpose of the operations of conservation authorities.

But one of the problems that they confront is that the government has not given sufficient notice to anybody at the municipal level of the kind of drastic cuts that we're seeing in operating budgets of conservation authorities and other local authorities across the province, so their ability to adjust, their ability to make the changes that are necessary, is severely limited by the fact that there was very little notice of what was going on. In any event, it seems to me that if we want to preserve for future generations the lands and the circumstances that exist on those lands, it's going to require an appropriate investment by the provincial government in that regard.

I have raised with the Premier on a number of occasions in this House a number of expenditures that I think are outlandish. I've dwelt on the issue of, for instance, government advertising and what I consider to be self-serving government advertising. If the government were to cut back on that, cut back on the kind of electronic and print advertising that is simply a pat on the back publicly for the government, and would devote those funds to conservation authorities, I think we would find that the circumstances for conservation authorities would be much better.

Now, by eliminating the conservation land tax rebate program, the government has, as I say, eliminated a program that had a good cross-section of support. Sometimes, programs that governments implement satisfy one specific group, one specific organization, one specific segment of society. I would suggest to members of this House that that particular tax rebate program had widespread support across Ontario. If you talked to people from various walks of life, if you talked to people who are supporters of various political parties, I think you would find a pretty good consensus that that was an excellent program.

To see an NDP government eliminate that program, an NDP government which had its Agenda for People, which it brought out during the election campaign and shared with people during the election campaign, to have that same NDP government now withdraw that particular conservation land tax rebate program is indeed ironic and certainly not acceptable.

I am alarmed by the fact that we could be losing environmentally sensitive lands, that in desperation, just as individuals in desperation are forced to sell off properties and lands from time to time, the circumstances facing conservation authorities are such that they are going to be compelled to do the same. It is estimated that by eliminating the conservation land tax rebate program, which of course we know is a subsidy provided by the provincial government to the conservation authorities -- it assisted them in paying property taxes on lands they administered -- the government can save $3.6 million. But according to the Association of Conservation Authorities of Ontario, nine to 10 conservation authorities have given preliminary indications that they will have to consider land sales in 1993, and that number could virtually double in 1994.

That seems unacceptable to me. I hear people talking about the Oak Ridges moraine, I hear people talking about the Niagara escarpment and other beautiful lands across Ontario, and I think most people would concede that it is a worthwhile objective to save those lands for future generations and for the enjoyment of present generations, to maintain the fauna and the wildlife that exist in those particular areas.

In addition to this, the conservation authorities are of course going to be facing layoffs. That means more unemployment in various areas of the province and it also means a reduced service provided to people. It's interesting to note that when people want to practise restraint, and everyone agrees with restraint, there are consequences.

Our quarrel in the opposition is this specific program. We recognize that the government is looking for every possible way to save, and the conservation authorities have said they recognize this as well. They have taken a long-term and comprehensive view of the kinds of programs that are administered by various ministries, such as the Ministry of Natural Resources, the Ministry of Agriculture and Food and the Ministry of Environment and Energy. Those three ministries are involved in one way or another, along with conservation authorities and sometimes local municipalities, in administering various programs. Some good suggestions have come forward from the conservation authorities on how these efforts can be coordinated and money can be saved.

So I will be, I'm sure with a lot of my colleagues, supporting this particular resolution. I hope that members on the governing side will listen carefully to the arguments put forward by people across this province and in this House and indeed that they will support this resolution.

Mr Allan K. McLean (Simcoe East): I'm pleased to rise this morning in support of the resolution brought forward by my colleague the member for Grey. I'm in a rather unique position. I have spent 16 years on the Nottawasaga Valley Conservation Authority and I served two years as chairman, so I know the background about conservation authorities and the key role they have played in the delivery of the natural resources and the planning, management and the protection of the streams and waters in this province.

Since their formation in 1946, conservation authorities have witnessed first hand many of the serious problems that exist as a result of the responsibilities for natural resources and environmental management. Today they are struggling through the maze of resource management agencies in order to find a logical way to ensure that resources of Ontario's watersheds can effectively be managed and enhanced.

They have done it well over the years, but their restraint in recent years is leaving the management agencies struggling to fulfil their mandates. They have obligations, commitments that have been made. They have capital projects under way, which are also funded by the local municipality in partnership.

I recognize the importance of this resolution and I recognize the input the member for Grey has had as chairman of his conservation authority. The key aspect of his resolution really has to do with the tax rebate. It's impossible for some conservation authorities now to pay their taxes. Some of them say, "We either sell the land or don't pay." They wrestle with how to pay the bills. The Otonabee Region Conservation Authority has some $62,000 it's not going to get from the ministry to pay taxes. The Nottawasaga Valley Conservation Authority has some $70,000 it's not going to get to pay its taxes.

We have seen the Blueprint for Success prepared by the Association of Conservation Authorities of Ontario, which it says will save the government $100 million. Is that not a step in the right direction?

The future plan for wetlands is the other important aspect of his bill.

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On the 20th anniversary of the conservation authorities program being administered by the Ministry of Natural Resources, it has declined: The 1992 financial support in inflation-adjusted dollars was only 45% of what it was 20 years ago, the first year the partnership was put in place, and it's gone down ever since.

The former NDP Minister of Natural Resources announced in May 1991 that Ontario's 38 conservation authorities were to receive a total of $48.7 million in funding for 1991. In November 1991 the same minister turned around and announced that his government had stopped payment on more than $1 million in promised funds for conservation authorities. This is totally unacceptable when these authorities have made commitments with their local municipalities to go ahead and do the work that they thought was to be put in place. That's an example of what the member for Grey is talking about with regard to this resolution.

On May 5, 1993, the conservation authorities of Ontario released the Blueprint for Success: Restructuring Resource Management, and in the conclusion of this document, conservation authorities indicate that society can no longer afford to maintain the current institutional arrangements that promote inefficient resource management. They go on and suggest:

"Resource management must be planned and implemented on a watershed basis. The province should focus its attention on the planning aspects of resource management, including legislation, policy, research and provincial-scale planning."

The province should have managed its resources better. We're not opposed to the restraint, but we say, when you come along and take the amount of money three years in a row off of conservation authorities, it really makes them stop and think, "Are we a partner or are we not?" And when we see the government spend $1.3 million just to poll the public with regard to their opinions, we say that money is not being spent wisely.

So when we look at all the aspects of it and we look at what the nature conservancy has done with regard to partnership in purchasing land, there are thousands of acres that have been purchased in Minesing Swamp. The taxes are being paid by the conservation authorities. It originally started out that the Nature Conservancy of Canada was a partner in that.

The recreational properties that have been established around the province by conservation authorities: Who is going to continue to maintain them with partnership of the local municipality? The government says that it's meeting with people. Well, we hear that all the time, they're meeting, but are they listening? Are they listening to the concerns?

The number of people who are here this morning supporting the member for Grey with this resolution are an indication of the concern that's out there across the province with regard to conservation authorities, so I urge everyone in this Legislature to vote yes for this legislation, because if you do that, you're voting yes for the environment, yes for the future of our children and yes for the future of parks and recreational properties in this province.

Mr Gilles Bisson (Cochrane South): I'm going to try to take a little bit of a different tack in regard to what is happening here and what this resolution is all about and what really strikes at the core to this whole debate.

I think all of us recognize, the people who are here from the conservation authorities, the public that is watching this debate today and members in this House all understand where we find ourselves today, not only in Ontario but most other jurisdictions across North America.

The problem is simple. There's a pot of money about this big and there are needs that are about that big, and the difficulty with us, like anybody in the private sector or anybody with their personal finances, is that you need to be able to deal with the question of, how do you manage your cost in regard to what's happening on the expenditure side? That's the problem we have.

This problem isn't a new one. No, this problem's been around for a while, and the problem has been probably magnified, I would say probably about 10 times, in light of what the recession we've been going through for the last two or three years has been. We've seen governments across Canada have the same problem where costs have been increasing on a very, very steady increase as a slope because of the demands that are put on governments because of the recession.

There are more people unemployed. There are more people needing help as far as unemployment insurance, social assistance, other kinds of pensions. When people are out of work, there's difficulty when it comes to home problems where people have to access their community health services etc, so our costs go up.

But at the same time, the difficulty is that revenue went down because there are not as many people working. The problem that we have in this province is the problem that we have across this country: There are not enough jobs out there, and with not enough jobs, there's not enough money coming into the tax coffers in order to be able to pay for those programs, such as what we are talking about in the conservation authorities.

So governments of the day are stuck with some very difficult decisions, and the decision is, how do you manage this problem? The government has some choices. The government can say, "That's okay; we're not going to touch anything and we're going to allow things to go the way that they are and we'll allow the debt to accumulate and accumulate and accumulate." Well, we've seen the federal government do that over the years, and we see now a $35-billion-per-year debt that is sitting at the federal level that nobody's dealt with. What I fear in the long run is that after the next federal election, no matter who's there as a government, they're going to have to deal with that very serious problem.

How are they going to deal with it? They will have to cut, and once they have to cut, they're going to come on to us, the provinces, and cut the transfer payments, and we'll be in a situation where increasingly governments will have a difficult time finding money to pay for problems.

Interjections.

Mr Bisson: So what we are doing here in Ontario is to say we need to be able to deal with the problem. I see I've got the hackles up in the Conservative caucus, anyway.

The problem is that we have to manage our expenditures. So government made some decisions. Are the decisions easy? Of course not. Do governments enjoy making these decisions? Of course not. Are conservation authorities important to our society? Of course they are. But the fact still remains there's not enough money in the pot to pay for them, and for the member across the way to suggest that we shouldn't deal with the question of expenditure reduction and we should just make sure that everybody gets the same amount of money that they got in the past, or somehow magically take the money from another ministry to give it to the conservation authorities in order to allow them to operate in their entity as they are now, is to say, "Transfer the problem from MNR and put it on to the conservation authorities." I don't think that the people of Ontario want us to do that. I think what the people of Ontario want us to do is to be fair in the approach.

So let's examine what happened through the expenditure reduction plan. The government looked at all of the programs that the government offers, from the Ministry of Natural Resources to the Ministry of Health, all of them, and the conservation authorities fall under the MNR. Each one of those ministries was affected as far as costs, and each of those agencies that are transferred dollars from those ministries is affected when it comes to cost, in one way or another. Either people will be affected through the social contract in regard to the negotiations that are going on now or their actual budgets have been reduced. Everybody has to be able to share in being able to manage the costs. That's simply what's happening.

The political problem we have is that, first of all, people don't accept change very well and, secondly, people don't want to accept any cuts in their own backyard. I don't as an individual who works as a salaried employee of the government, and I don't expect the conservation authorities accept that either.

So why was the money cut in regard to the conservation authority on the conservation land tax? It is because there isn't the base there in order to pay for the bill. The conservation authorities, like all other agencies within the government, have to do their part in being able to manage down the cost.

The political problem that we have, and I'll get back to where I was going initially, is that it is very difficult to manage this politically. Why? Because you have, first of all, the media out there that will report what is going on, and there's a little bit of fearmongering going on at the same time where it gets very, very difficult for a government to be able to have any kind of rational debate about this because people are hurt, people are upset, people are all kinds of things because of some of the things that happen within the opposition, sometimes within our own government caucus and what happens within the media.

I say, if we take a look at the problem, that we look at what happened in the private sector maybe as an analogy. The private sector over the past number of years has had to cut very drastically in order for some of those companies to stay alive. I look at my riding: Dome Mines, a big mining company; 300 people got laid off two years ago, three years ago, because of what was happening inside the industry. Those workers had no opportunity to deal with that, other than just accepting the layoff. Falconbridge in my riding has just announced 250 people are going to be laid off at that mine, and the list goes on and on. We just noticed IBM in the papers yesterday saying they're going to lay off another 1,000 people.

I say that because I think it's important that people understand what's happening out there. You have a private sector that's hurting. The opposition will say, "Well, it's all Bob Rae's fault." Well, give me a break. I think people are smart enough to figure that that's not the problem. But what's happening is that because you've got fewer people working, you've got fewer people paying taxes and the government has less and less revenue to be able to deal with the question of how we fund conservation authorities and how we fund various kinds of programs.

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The difficulty we have in this province is that we need to find a way that we can start having some kind of mechanism or some kind of way of getting people to the problem. If you can get people to the problem, to understand what the heck is going on, and you get people to understand what some of the options are, maybe then we can try to manage this in a little bit better way. But it's extremely difficult to do that because people don't want to accept sometimes that they're the ones who are going to have to take the cut. That's as simple as what it comes down to.

I would just say in finishing --

Interjections.

Mr Bisson: I look at the Conservative members across the way jumping up and down in this debate. I look at you and I look at eight years of Tory government in Ottawa and I say, "Shame on you." So don't start your sanctimoniousness with me.

The question we have to ask ourselves is simply this: Do conservation authorities serve a useful purpose in our society? Of course they do. Do conservation authorities do a good job within our communities? Of course they do. Would we want to be able to give all the money necessary to conservation authorities to do the proper job? Of course we would all want to.

The reality is there is not enough money in the pot to be able to make that happen. Conservation authorities, like everybody else within MNR, within the Ministry of Health, within the Ministry of Education, within all sectors of government, are going to have to deal with the question of how we learn how to do more with less. Do we like that? Of course not. But such is the reality that we find ourselves in today in 1993 in the economy that we are sitting in. We're not the only ones having to deal with it. It's happening all across the country. It's happening in the United States. It's happening everywhere. We look across the border to the United States, where they're trying to cut $400 billion in spending.

So I think we need to find a way in order to get into these kinds of debates and to say, "What's the problem, what do we do, and how are we able to share information so that we can manage this as best we can?" At the end of the day, it is going to mean that there will be reductions. I think we all understand that. But for the member from the opposition to say, "Well, the solution of this year is to say conservation authorities are not going to get the cut and we're going to somehow get the money from MNR to do it," is transferring the problem from one particular ministry on to another. I don't think that's a solution that will, quite frankly, work.

I think conservation authorities are responsible bodies that are going to deal with it the best way they can. It's not going to be easy; I admit that. But like every other ministry, they're going to have to try to deal with this problem in as proactive a way as possible.

I say, just in closing, is this something that people like? Of course not. I think all of us would rather be in a different position. I think all of us would like to have an endless pot of money to be able to pay for these programs over the long run. But such is not the case. We need to manage this the best way that we can, and we have to find a way in this province of getting our partners together and saying: "Here's the problem. Where do we go from here? How can we find the best possible solution, given where we're at?"

Mr Steven Offer (Mississauga North): It's my pleasure to take part in this debate on a very important resolution from the member from Grey, and let me say at the outset that I will be wholeheartedly supporting the resolution.

I think there is no question that for those who are wondering why this province is in a state of chaos, who are questioning the mismanagement, all they have to do is refer to the statements made by the members from Cochrane South and Cochrane North. I think that underlines the chaos and it underlines the mismanagement. I think it's a bit early in the day for members in this Legislature to receive a sanctimonious, patronizing, holier-than-thou statement by any member of the government while this province finds itself mired in a state of chaos.

I want to speak directly to the resolution itself. I think we recognize that right now the conservation authorities pay their taxes on land but receive the money back from the province in terms of a rebate. The government has cancelled that rebate program. What that has as a result is, of course, that the conservation authorities now have an expense which they otherwise did not have.

My area of responsibility is found within the Credit Valley Conservation Authority. I know there are many people here from their own conservation authorities. We recognize that conservation authorities are made up of men and women, dedicated individuals who are committed to a purpose: preservation of environmentally sensitive lands. I think that people in the past, in the present and in the future will be the beneficiaries of the tremendous work that is done by conservation authorities throughout this province.

So the government has now cut a program which will without question increase the costs for conservation authorities. But they've not just done that; they have also reduced the amount of money that they are going to be receiving through the expenditure control plan. So it is not just that they have cancelled a program which increases the expenses; they have also at the same time said to the conservation authorities, on very short notice, "Your revenue will also be reduced." So this is, without question, a double hit on conservation authorities, and I know from mine, as being representative of many throughout the province, they are doing the very best they can to deal with the realities of a fiscal nature that the province finds itself in, and I want to deal in a short while on that.

What happens when you have this double hit to the conservation authorities? Firstly, it may very well be the conservation authorities will not be able to acquire more lands by will or by grant or by gift, and they won't be able to because they won't be able to afford to pay the taxes on the land which has been offered to them. I think we all suffer if that becomes an obstacle for a conservation authority in any jurisdiction to acquire lands.

Secondly, as a result of the cancellation of the rebate program, it may very well be -- and I do not fearmonger, as members of the government would have the general public believe in terms of the opposition or third party -- but it may very well be that conservation authorities will go into default in terms of realty tax payments. They may very well have to go into default because of the fact that not only has the rebate program been cancelled but also the amount of money that they're going to be receiving has been reduced, and that leaves one with very few and very narrow options.

Thirdly, it may result, and I think the word is most likely "will" result, in a greater burden on local municipalities. In this respect, I think that we recognize that the smaller the municipality, the fewer number of people, the lower the tax base, the greater the burden, and I think that the government has not recognized the impact that that will have on municipalities across the board, especially the smaller municipalities, as a result of its action.

Lastly, in terms of the impact, I think in principle it has always been the objective of governments, and I do not include the present government in this respect, that it is in the best interests of this province that conservation authorities acquire land, environmentally protect land. I think that has always been that principle. This cancellation of this program really erodes the principle that has been in this province for many, many years. And I'll tell you, as a result of that, we and our children will suffer. If conservation authorities are impeded in doing the work that they have done so well in the past and if they're impeded in doing that work in the future, it is not just us in this Legislature who will suffer, but it is also going to be our children and our children's children. So it is not just the cancellation of a program, as important as that program is, but it is also striking at the very principle of what conservation authorities have been doing so well in the past, have been asked to do, have been promoted to do, and that is acquire environmentally sensitive land.

Again, the members of the government say, "Well, you know, we only have X amount of dollars," and they speak in that what has become too obvious patronizing way. Conservation authorities, let me tell you, have put forward to the government a blueprint. They have said: "We recognize the problems. We have looked at the ways in which we can save moneys." They have put forward a blueprint, a blueprint which in their opinion would save many millions of dollars.

The Minister of Natural Resources said he's going to take a look at it, but that is not enough and I think the conservation authorities in the province recognize that it's not enough. There has to be a commitment by the government and a commitment by the Premier that not only will the Minister of Natural Resources take a look and be part of that blueprint, but also that there will be a commitment by the government that all ministries who are affected will be part. If that is not the case, then I have very strong reservations about whether that blueprint program will in fact succeed. There has to be a commitment by the government that they will bring in all ministries that will be affected to really take a look at that blueprint.

Conservation authorities are not just saying, "More, more, more"; they are saying, "We recognize the fiscal position of this province, we are ready to deal with it, we have a blueprint for success," and I think it's the responsibility of the government to start to listen to the men and women who man the conservation authorities in this province.

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Mr Leo Jordan (Lanark-Renfrew): I would like to, first of all, congratulate the member for Grey for bringing in this resolution. It's very important at this time to bring to the attention of the government the seriousness of its budgetary cuts relative to the conservation authorities.

I would also congratulate the member for Simcoe East for his detailed explanation of the past history of conservation authorities and the service that they have given to Ontario over the years.

We realize that cutbacks are necessary in order to control spending and to control deficit, and that's not the discussion here this morning. The member for Cochrane North indicated that we were trying to fight cutbacks that you were trying to put in the budget to balance your books. That is not why we're here this morning at all. The reason we're here this morning is, somehow, the Ministry of Natural Resources has put what you might say is a double whammy on the conservative authorities. To correct the situation, all you have to do is restore the tax rebates. The other 10% or 11% cuts that have been imposed, they can deal with that.

Mr Wood: Which hospital do you want to shut down to get that?

Mr Jordan: Don't confuse the issue. I say to the member over there, if he would give us a commitment this morning that his ministry would reinstate the tax rebates while they bring all the ministries together that are involved in this and get them around the table so that we can come up with one-window shopping for environmental control in the province of Ontario --

Mr Wood: They're meeting.

Mr Jordan: They're meeting, but I say, in the meantime, that we put a hold on this tax rebate so that the conservation authorities are not with their backs to the wall, getting ready to dispense with land.

Mr Wood: The budget said no.

Mr Jordan: Never mind the budget; you wouldn't even let us debate it. Do you want us to debate it this morning or what?

Interjections.

The Deputy Speaker: Order.

Mr Jordan: In talking with some of the members of the government, who have the power to make a decision on this resolution, I wonder in their discussion if they really understand what the conservation authorities do across the province of Ontario. The conservation authorities are Ontario's only community-based environmental protection agency, and I stress community-based. They're Ontario's only watershed-based resource management agency.

The conservation authorities represent 497 municipalities and 11 regional governments. They have a 50-year proven track record of delivery. Of all the groups across this province that provide a service to the people, this is the last group that needs to be cut by what amounts to 32%, when you take the tax rebate and the overall cutback to the conservation authorities.

So I ask the members of the government this morning to think about an accountable, effective and efficient way to balance its books if that's what its objective is -- sometimes I wonder -- but to please this morning understand that they cannot hit the conservation authorities for 32% and other groups for 10% or 11%. To correct the situation, and it's very simple, just put that ruling on the tax rebate on hold. Reinstate the tax rebate and let us get together and have meetings and get this problem resolved.

Mr Ted Arnott (Wellington): I'm very pleased to rise in support of my good friend the member for Grey in his resolution toady with respect to conservation authorities and restoring some fiscal sanity from the provincial government's perspective in helping out the conservation authorities.

I don't have time to read the entire resolution, but he has said, "The conservation land tax rebate should be immediately reinstated to conservation authorities, and the government should seriously consider and implement the concepts outlined in the Blueprint for Success," which is a blueprint, a plan, that has been put forward by the Association of Conservation Authorities of Ontario as a helping suggestion to this government, which is in such chaos and such a mess that it needs advice and helpful comments from its various transfer partners.

As the member for Wellington, I represent four conservation authorities: the Grand River Conservation Authority, represented today by Allan Holmes, the general manager, and Archie MacRobbie, the chairman, and I'm pleased to welcome them here today; the Maitland Valley Conservation Authority; the Credit Valley Conservation Authority, and the Saugeen Valley Conservation Authority. I have four that I represent and I've spoken to most of them with respect to this issue. They're very, very concerned.

This particular resolution deals with two major issues: the funding issue and the alternative plan that's been put forward by the conservation authorities. From the tone of the debate from the government side, I still believe it does not fundamentally understand what conservation authorities do and the importance they have to their communities.

Interjection.

Mr Arnott: Well, you don't fundamentally understand what you're doing then, because they have three sources of funding: the provincial operating capital grants; the municipal levy, the money they receive from the municipalities on their watersheds, and the conservation land tax rebate. In partnership with municipalities over the last 50 years, they've done an outstanding job of delivering programs on a very cost-effective, cost-efficient basis.

With respect to the Grand River Conservation Authority, we had a meeting this morning with members from the watershed. They were all invited. I was informed, and I was shocked by the statistics of how this government action is going to affect the Grand River Conservation Authority. They pay about $1 million in taxes to the local resident municipalities, the authority does, and this cancellation of the conservation land tax rebate means that $500,000, money that was formerly coming to the conservation authority from the government, is no longer going to be coming. What it means to this authority is a 30% cut in the operating budget of the Grand River Conservation Authority, and that means important programs will not be delivered.

I don't even have to get into the social contract, because that's going to be discussed later, but that has had a profound impact and it's creating a lot of difficulty for all the government's transfer partners, including the Grand River Conservation Authority and the other conservation authorities. It's making it extremely difficult to plan. The longer this government continues to waffle on this issue, it's creating a great deal of uncertainty and a lot of problems with respect to budgeting and planning in these important agencies.

Mr Wood: What's your solution, Ted?

Mr Arnott: My solution is very simple: Take that blueprint and read it. You should read it and you should recognize it for what it is.

The Deputy Speaker: Please address the Chair.

Mr Arnott: Mr Speaker, the minister's parliamentary assistant has challenged me. But that is the solution.

There is a great deal of constructive suggestions within that particular document and it's very important that the government take a good, hard look at it. I know that the association of conservation authorities is bringing forward more detailed suggestions. Don't get caught up in what the civil servants tell you, because it's very, very important and you yourselves espouse this. This particular government says you've got to deliver service, especially with respect to environmental issues, on an ecosystem basis, and conservation authorities are ideally set up to do that precise thing. I would challenge you to look at it in those terms.

I'm very concerned about the fact that the government has indicated that it's not going to support this resolution. I would encourage them in the 15 seconds that I have left to please, please rethink their position. It's very, very important. It's an important issue to rural Ontario. This is another fact that we are constantly having to put forward, that rural Ontario is getting the short end of the stick with this government on just about every single issue.

The Deputy Speaker: The member for Grey, you have two minutes to reply.

Mr Murdoch: First, I would like to thank my friends from the Liberal Party, Steve Offer and Jim Bradley, for supporting us on this. Their support is greatly appreciated. Also, Ted Arnott, Leo Jordan and Al McLean from the Conservative Party, to be here to speak on this important matter today, I certainly thank you.

The problem is, we've got this government over here that doesn't understand anything. You've heard everybody over here tell you and you still don't understand. You're sitting over there, cackling and heckling away, and you don't even know what you're talking about. The important thing is, we've got to get these guys to understand something.

So far, there's no one left in Ontario whom you haven't got mad at you. You got voted in, you were an environmental power, you always said the environment was important, and now you're just throwing it away. All kinds of environmentally sensitive areas are going to be lost to this province just because you people don't understand, and you don't take the time to understand things.

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There are two things in this resolution. One is that you should implement the concepts of the Blueprint for Success that the conservation authorities gave to you. You say you can do that. Okay, that's one. We've got you half way. But the tax rebate has to be given back immediately. The conservation authorities must pay their taxes to the municipality. You can't download; you can't keep downloading on everyone. So take a look at that and at 12 noon, when we vote on this, look inside yourselves and say, "We've got to give that back."

You can do that. I know some of you over there are smiling, but I know you can come back here at 12 noon and vote for this resolution. Then go to your Minister of Natural Resources and have the money reinstated because the conservation authorities certainly need this money. There's lots of other land out there that needs to be bought which won't be if you don't change your attitude over there. That is the problem: your attitude. You always say you consult. The trouble is that you've never listened to anybody and you're going to have to start doing that pretty soon.

The other thing, before I go is that I'd like to thank everybody coming from Grey and Bruce. I certainly appreciate them all being here. I can't name them all, but I hope they hang around for 12 o'clock and we'll see how the socialists vote then.

The Deputy Speaker: The time for the first ballot item has expired.

INTERNATIONAL TRADE

Mrs MacKinnon moved private member's notice of motion number 15:

That, in the opinion of this House, since promoting trade, investment and job growth is the leading priority of the government of Ontario and that the North American free trade agreement is, on balance, not in the best interests of the province because this agreement:

(1) will cause net job loss in Ontario;

(2) will apply downward pressure on environmental standards;

(3) will apply downward pressure on labour standards;

(4) makes no mention of labour adjustment for workers and since the federal labour adjustment assistance remains inadequate because of the job losses caused by the FTA;

(5) encroaches into more areas of provincial jurisdiction, and will limit Ontario's ability to implement its economic and social policies and because the deal intrudes on more areas of provincial jurisdiction than previous trade agreements, such as regulation of investment, financial services and standards;

(6) will not end American trade harassment;

(7) will treat Canadian and Mexican energy reserves differently, and

(8) will make the devastation of the FTA worse;

Therefore, this House urges the government of Ontario to oppose the implementation of the North American free trade agreement by all possible means.

The Deputy Speaker (Mr Gilles E. Morin): Pursuant to standing order 96(c)(i), the member has 10 minutes for her presentation.

Mrs Ellen MacKinnon (Lambton): Promoting trade and investment in job growth is the leading priority of the government of Ontario, and in the opinion of this government, the North American free trade agreement is not in the best interests of the province.

The cabinet committee on North American free trade provided a public forum for debate and it is interesting to note that the majority of presenters to the committee were against NAFTA.

The free trade agreement has already cost Ontario 45,000 jobs in the manufacturing sector and we will lose thousands more with NAFTA. The reasons are basic and simple. Mexico has low wages and weak enforcement of labour standards. In order to compete, some Ontario firms will have no choice but to demand workers reduce their wages or face layoffs. Some companies will think about diverting their investments and relocating to areas where production is cheaper. Either way, the Ontario worker pays.

We also know jobs will be lost as industries relocate to places where lack of enforcement of environmental standards makes production cheaper.

NAFTA also threatens the jobs of workers who are least able to rebound from sudden unemployment: those with less than a grade 9 education, those over 45, and those who are female.

On balance, the price that the people of Ontario will have to pay for NAFTA is too high. It threatens the jobs of tens of thousands of workers and it limits Ontario's ability to build the kind of economy and society we desire.

Ontario will also be faced with the responsibility of looking after workers who will lose their jobs because of the NAFTA deal. In 1988, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney promised, and I quote, "the finest labour adjustment programs in the world" to deal with workers displaced by the free trade agreement.

Well, that didn't happen. Instead, the federal government cut and diverted unemployment insurance funds and failed to deliver on its commitment to fund worker training and adjustment programs, and there's no indication that Prime Minister-elect Kim Campbell will be any different. The federal government has already stated it will not provide further labour adjustment programs, despite the fact that NAFTA will increase the vulnerability of about 350,000 Ontario workers in industries sensitive to imports. Workers in these industries are typically older, less educated and female.

The federal government has failed to recognize the adjustment consequences of its trade policy and has not delivered on its commitments to fund training and adjustment programs. Instead, provincial governments and workers have been left to bear the burden of NAFTA's effects on the economy and the workplace.

A fundamental concern about NAFTA is that it doesn't fix a critical flaw of the free trade agreement: Ontario's lack of a guaranteed market in the United States. When the free trade agreement was introduced, the federal government promised assured access to the United States market and an end to harassment of our goods crossing the border. Unfortunately, that has not happened, and there is nothing in NAFTA that remedies the problem.

What is the federal government's position on the issue? Every time there is another trade dispute concerning soft lumber, steel, hogs, pork or automobiles, the federal government's response is: "Don't worry. We'll win most of the cases eventually."

As our Premier Bob Rae noted recently in a speech at McMaster University, "The pursuit of trade should be something that we do in order to increase our quality of life and to improve the nature of our community." The Ontario government believes its ability to pursue those goals is harmed by NAFTA, and for a variety of reasons.

NAFTA prohibits the provincial government using its authority to favour Ontario firms and inhibits our ability to pursue policies in the interests of Ontario. For example, NAFTA would not permit Ontario to reserve access to the forestry and fishery industries for Ontarians. NAFTA also encroaches into many new areas of provincial jurisdiction, including the regulation and enforcement of environmental standards, financial services, land transportation and speciality air services. None of these were covered by the free trade agreement.

NAFTA will also allow foreign corporations and investors to challenge provincial measures they consider contrary to NAFTA. To make matters worse, the province has no means to participate directly in the general dispute settlement process.

The NAFTA agreement will also have a serious impact on women. Ontario women in the manufacturing sector typically earn their living in labour-intensive industries which have already been hit hard by free trade. Since the free trade agreement came into being, Ontario has lost tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs. Under NAFTA, the Ontario government believes the province will lose tens of thousands more as companies lay off workers or relocate to places where labour is cheaper and goods cost less to produce.

In addition, women dominate the workforce in several manufacturing industries that are among the most likely to suffer under NAFTA: knitting mills, textiles, apparel, footwear, and printing and publishing. The price Ontario women will have to pay is too high: lost jobs, downward pressure on wages and labour standards, and lack of labour adjustment programs.

For all these reasons I have just mentioned, it is clear to me and my government that the North American free trade agreement does not serve the best interests of Ontario, and it is also very clear to the majority of the residents in this province that they do not support this agreement either.

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Mr Monte Kwinter (Wilson Heights): I welcome this opportunity to join in this debate and try to put what I hope is a clearer view on what we are talking about. This morning I was interested to see a headline and a story in the Toronto Star, and it says, "Only the NDP understands the real world out there." This was a quote from the federal leader, Audrey McLaughlin, "Only the NDP understands the real world." After listening to the member speak, I can only say that it is only the NDP which hasn't a clue as to what's happening in the real world out there.

Let me tell you: One of the things that people do not understand, and don't understand because as I say they live in an artificial world, is that if low wages were the only criteria for industrial success, Haiti would be the industrial capital of the world. Our competition does not come from low-wage countries. Our competition comes from Japan, it comes from Sweden, it comes from Germany, it comes from the UK, it comes from the United States, all of which are very high wage countries. Their wages are higher than ours.

Cheap labour is not a problem. It is only a problem in those jobs that Canadians will not work at anyway. What we have to do is we have to establish a system where we become truly competitive.

There is another fallacy. The member states that with the approval of NAFTA, suddenly Ontarians and Ontario workers are going to be put at great disadvantage. I challenge you to go out into any supermarket, any department store, any kind of a manufacturing facility and identify one Mexican product that is there. You won't see it. The trade between Canada and Mexico is infinitesimal.

When you consider that the combined trade between Canada and the United States is $250 billion, the combined trade between Canada and Mexico is less than $3 billion and it is not a factor in our economy. They have no effect. To suggest that because NAFTA is going to come into effect, suddenly everybody and every manufacturer in Ontario is going to go to Mexico is patently absurd. For the member to even suggest that indicates that she has no knowledge of what the real world is all about.

Let me tell you that we are in the situation that Canadians have far more to gain than they have to lose in NAFTA. We are marginal players in this deal, and I say this advisedly, because our trade between Mexico and Canada is so small. But consider this situation: If the United States and Mexico were to enter into an agreement and Canada was not a part of that, why would any foreign investor who was looking to establish a manufacturing facility put it into Canada? If they put it into the United States they get the benefit of the FTA and they would get the benefit of an agreement negotiated between Mexico and the United States.

We have to make sure we are at the table, that we are part of a loop of a North American trading bloc so we can make sure we remain as competitive as we can. To suggest that it would be in the best interests of Ontario and of Canada not to participate in that particular trading arrangement makes no sense.

I want to add that there's no question that there are problems with the agreement; hopefully, we can negotiate the best kind of deal we can in some of the side agreements that are being discussed.

Mr Rosario Marchese (Fort York): You sold them out already.

Mr Kwinter: I am not. I am defending Canada. I am defending our ability to be competitive.

I think you should understand, and I'm sure you know, that for every dollar that you have in your pocket, a third of that is because of trade. We are a heavily trade-dependent jurisdiction. Unfortunately, the government doesn't understand that, and it's gone about and shut down every one of our trading offices around the world without realizing that is the lifeblood of our economy.

If you take a look at our counterparts in the United States, for every dollar they have in their pocket, only 10 cents is there because of trade, so we are three times more trade-dependent than our American neighbours.

What does that mean? That means we have the opportunity; not because of NAFTA, but just because of the profile that NAFTA has given to the opportunities that are in Mexico. We have an economy in Mexico that has over 80 million people. Marketers would salivate at the idea of accessing an 80-million-person market, yet Canadians, by and large, have no real presence.

There are some, and I'll give you an example because I happen to be involved in it. Magna has opened a plant in Puebla in Mexico. They have opened it in spite of NAFTA. They're there, they're operating. But they are providing opportunities for a Canadian company to expand, to be able to create employment, and that is what we talk about.

If you had suggested to anybody that we should not deal in the United States, people would run you out of town, because that is where we get the stimulus for our economy. I can tell you, in Mexico there is an opportunity for Canadian companies in a very, very expanding market, but even more importantly, it has a land link to Canada, which means it's easy to get access to. The city of Monterrey, Mexico, which is a burgeoning industrial centre, is closer to Toronto than Calgary is, and there are opportunities for Canadian manufacturers, Ontario technology, Ontario knowhow, to penetrate that market.

Canada has far more to gain in accessing the Mexican market than Mexico has in accessing the Canadian market, because Canadians have got a highly sophisticated, industrial base; there's no question. Mexico has some competitive advantages in the way of agriculture because of its climate and because of its subtropical location, but generally speaking, we have an opportunity to make sure that there is a market that will benefit Canadians and particularly benefit Ontarians.

The questions keep coming up that suddenly, environmental standards are going to be lowered, labour standards are going to be lowered, that people are going to flee to Mexico because of the cheap labour. Let me also disabuse you of a fact that everybody seems to talk about. All you have to do is talk to Frank Stronach, the president of Magna, and he will tell you that the labour rates in his plant in Mexico are not that different from the labour rates of his plants in Ontario. There's no question that they're lower, but you also have to understand that they are lower because they haven't got all the fringe benefits we have and some of the advantages we have. But the idea that there are people working in these high-tech industries and being paid pennies is just not true.

There's also no question that there are lots of people in Mexico who will work for very, very low wages because they live in very, very low wage areas. But the kind of work they do is not the kind of work we have to be concerned about. If we have to be concerned about that work, then we have to be concerned about Taiwan and Thailand and China and Hong Kong and Singapore and Poland and Brazil and every other low-wage country in the world. That is where the competitive situation is, and I can tell you that the traditional supporters of the NDP are not prepared to do the jobs that command that kind of wage.

What we have to do as a country if we're going to be competitive is establish ourselves as the higher value added producers. I can tell you that manufacturers have no hesitation in paying whatever the job requires as long as the payment of that salary is tied to productivity. We have a problem where we demand high salaries for low productivity. What we have to do, if we are going to be competitive, is develop this ability to create higher value added jobs.

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I want to talk again for a minute about the FTA and the canard -- that's the only word I can use to describe it -- that there are hundreds and hundreds of thousands of jobs lost in Canada as a result of the FTA. If this FTA is so pervasive, how come it seems to have affected Germany, the United Kingdom and Japan, where every one of those jurisdictions is going through severe economic times and severe downsizing? What is happening is that we are involved in a global restructuring. We've gotten to the point where there are more players in the game, more people who are able to compete with us. As a result, if we're going to be competitive, we're going to have to get our act together and become more productive.

The NDP puts forward this motion at a time when it is bringing in its social contract, where it is saying that in order for us to be competitive, in order for us to get our fiscal house in order, we're going to have to downsize, we're going to have to get rid of employees, we're going to have to roll back wages. That is exactly what is happening in industry -- exactly. When the Premier stands up and says that the civil service, the public service employees, cannot be exempted from the same thing that's happening in industry, that they have to play their part and understand that in order to become competitive we're going to have to downsize and get ourselves to the point where we are productive, that is exactly what has happened to industry. Industry reacted a lot sooner than government did, unfortunately.

What has happened is that we have this juxtaposition, this coincidence. At a time when there is in the industrialized world global competition, global recession, we have a downsizing of industry and a consolidation. The NDP in its wisdom has decided that this is all as a result of FTA, that this is what has happened: The free trade agreement has devastated us.

Let me just put a couple of things into the record so that you can put it into context, because the figures are similar in Mexico, as they are in the United States.

Before the free trade agreement, 80% of all of the trade in goods and services between Canada and the United States was duty-free, 80%. Of the 20% that was still tariff-laden, the average tariff was 10%, and that 10% was going to be removed over a period of five or 10 years. We are now into year 3, so the amount of influence of the FTA is minimal. It's only a fraction of that 20% that is being compounded.

Mexico is in exactly the same position. At the present time, 80% of the trade in goods and services between Canada and Mexico is duty-free. Of the 20% that still attaches duty, the average is about 10%. It's very similar to the United States.

What is going to happen with NAFTA is that there will be an ability to make some good adjustments, hopefully, to the FTA. I was the first one to criticize the FTA, not because I was opposed to free trade but because I was opposed to the deal; I thought it was a lousy deal and could have been better. I think NAFTA has made some corrections; not as many as I would like to see, and hopefully that will be resolved in some of the side agreements.

But the point is that in order for us to maintain the standard of living our citizens want, we are going to have to expand our trading horizons. To look at a market of over 80 million people, one that is in our hemisphere, one that has wonderful opportunities, and suddenly turn our back on it is folly of the highest order and is unworthy of a government.

What has happened is that there is a knee-jerk reaction, a feeling that if it's Mexico, it is bad. I have to refer to some of the members of the back bench who were critical of the fact that I was out promoting Canadian technology in Mexico. They thought that was a bad thing. We have to pick up the slack of what is happening, and Mexico presents that opportunity.

The Deputy Speaker: Your time has expired.

Mr Gary Carr (Oakville South): I'm pleased to add a few comments to the debate. I want to thank the member for his comments. As we all know, he's been actively involved in the trade issue and I think said it very well.

In fact, he said exactly what I was going to say right off the bat. Most of you on the other side don't even realize -- I should set it up by telling you I worked for Livingston International, which is the largest custom broker here in Canada; not to start a commercial for them, but I'm familiar with what the products were. We made our money by paying duties and taxes on behalf of people.

Prior to the free trade agreement signed in the late 1980s -- I will ask the members on the other side; they may know if they heard -- what percentage of the products came in duty-free? Most people say 10%, 20%, 30%. I tell the members opposite, as a former custom broker, 80% of the product between Canada and the US came in duty-free prior to the free trade agreement. Prior to the free trade agreement the duty on computers, for example, which is one of our largest imports from the United States, was 3.5%. I know, because our company paid the duties and taxes on behalf of many the computer companies. So 3.5% was the duty that was paid. The value of the Canadian dollar has more to do with trade between Canada and the US than the free trade agreement does, I say to the members on the other side.

When they talk about blaming all our ills, I want to show you the budget that was introduced by your Treasurer, your budget, Ontario Budget 1993. Your Treasurer; I want everyone to know whose budget this is. I want you to turn to page 5 of that budget. Remember, I'm saying Floyd Laughren and Bob Rae's budget. These are their figures on trade. I will read it verbatim.

"So far this year, Ontario's international exports are up by more than 11%." Canadian auto exports are up 26%. "Manufacturing shipments have risen by more than 6%. Who says...Ontario can't compete? Who says Ontario workers are not among the best and the most productive in the world?"

Mr David Winninger (London South): You do. You just change your message depending on the day.

Mr Carr: We've got this member saying that all the jobs lost are due to free trade. Meanwhile, his government is saying that the percentage of increase has gone up. Quite frankly, we have lost the same amount of jobs since the Berlin Wall has fallen. You can blame it on free trade or the Berlin Wall; it makes about the same amount of sense. In March of this year we had the highest exports out of the province of Ontario to the United States we have ever had in the history of this province, even though they are in a dramatic recession as well.

I want to touch briefly on one little thing before I go. This government, in a time of fiscal restraint, spent $300,000 going around the province with a program to fight the free trade agreement; $300,000 at a time when we're cutting back nurses' salaries, teachers' salaries. We had a day care for second-rate cabinet ministers, the Minister of Agriculture and Food, to go around and produce a report that cost the people of Ontario $300,000. What do you think that report said? Premier Rae, prior to the start of that committee said, "We're against the NAFTA agreement." Guess what happened after? Guess what they said? "We're against it."

We spent $300,000 of taxpayers' money for political purposes to basically try and prop up your stupidity and your federal counterpart's, who, I might add, I heard last night saying she's going to fight NAFTA. Well, she's going to have a pretty good time, because she's at 8% in the polls. She is now pretty close to Preston Manning. All you need to do to a federal New Democrat today, or in Alberta or in British Columbia or anywhere, is say two words to make them recoil in fear, jump over banisters, anything to get out of the way. Those two words are "Bob Rae," because Bob Rae has done more to destroy jobs in the province of Ontario than any free trade agreement, and I say -- and I have respect for the member personally -- you should be disgraced to come in and present this resolution when health care, education, every part of the provincial responsibility is going down the tubes. If you really have the gumption to believe what you say, then do the honourable thing, resign your seat and run federally. I don't think you've got the guts.

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Ms Jenny Carter (Peterborough): It gives me great pleasure to have this opportunity to contribute to this debate. The free trade agreement has been a disaster. Thousands of unemployed factory workers in my riding of Peterborough could certainly tell you that -- 2,000 since February 1990. NAFTA will be more of the same.

I remember Pat Carney being quoted as saying of the Americans and the free trade negotiations, "We gave them everything they asked for." I can't believe that a government could sell us out as the Tories have done and still be taken seriously by the electorate. They can't do enough for the United States. It's heads you win, tails we lose. But this deal is not even good for the people of the United States, and for the people of Mexico it's terrible.

The member for Wilson Heights was implying that this was going to be a good deal all around. Tell that to the mothers of malformed babies in the maquiladora districts of Mexico. Tell them life has got --

Interjections.

The Deputy Speaker: Order, please. There is one person who has the floor. You all had your chance to debate. It's her time. The member for Peterborough.

Ms Carter: The standard of living has gone down there and we're being told that good jobs don't move. Well, a job in a car industry can be very good in Ontario and then when it gets to Mexico the pay is quite different and it's a low-wage job.

This is a deal made by and for the big multinational corporations. It aims to get us all organized in a way calculated to most maximize their profits. The interests of ordinary people, and that includes most business people, simply do not come into it. Of course we need to trade, but this is not the deal we need. Trade should be from a solid base of integrated local and regional enterprise and from a base of regional concern where people support each other and protect their environment. Business which has no loyalty to any population anywhere is liable to end up destroying far more wealth, freedom and happiness than it creates. Look at Haiti: It's a free-for-all and it's a hell on Earth.

This is a democratic country and a democratic province. Democracy was not handed to us on a plate; it had to be won from a ruling class which would much rather have continued to run things its own way. Now they're trying to take that democracy away from us through the back door, leaving us with a democratic structure and process which will henceforth produce governments which have no power to govern. All the important decisions will have been made, laid down in the terms of the free trade agreement and NAFTA. The federal government is not only giving its own power away without any interaction with public opinion; it's giving away the powers of the provincial governments too. Those governments have had no input whatsoever in the negotiation of the agreement. They have not been consulted. The people have not been consulted, and yet they will be bound, and tightly bound, by the outcome.

The agreement is too long and complicated for ordinary folk to read or understand. It is easy to tell lies about it, but valid interpretations are available to those who will listen. The deal on pharmaceutical products alone should be enough to turn Ontarians away from this agreement. Patents will now be protected for 20 years, but it was the now-threatened generic producers who were investing in creating jobs in Ontario and their products which were helping to keep down the cost of Ontario's drug benefit plan.

I had a bus company representative complaining to me in my riding that an Alberta company was encroaching unfairly on his territory. That's nothing compared to what will happen when any North American enterprise has to be treated the same as local firms. I believe in utilizing local firms wherever one happens to be. That's the way new, small enterprises get started and have a chance to compete. This concept of equal treatment is being carried to the point where people can be prosecuted for in some way coming between a would-be exploiter and that which he wants to exploit.

Environmentalists in BC, who don't want to see greedy outsiders or anyone else cut down our priceless heritage of old-growth forests, are already being sued. Where will insanity like this stop? Might we one day be prosecuted for living healthy lives and depriving drug companies of their expected market?

We're already committed incredibly to exporting energy to the United States, whether we want to or not, and at the same price we charge Canadians. Taxpayers here are paying to construct pipelines to take natural gas to the States. There has been talk of exporting water on a large scale. Nothing in NAFTA would prevent that. Will we one day send our Great Lakes water to California so they can grow vegetables to export back to us? Shall we as taxpayers have to pay for the megaprojects to achieve that? We have to have the right to make progress, progress in protecting our environment, in achieving full employment, in protecting workers' rights and labour standards, and in making sure that the high living standards made possible by modern technology and the resulting increased productivity per worker don't just lead to extreme wealth for the few and a life of poverty and misery for the rest of us.

With our new technology, we should all be able to live well without needing to work long hours and without needing to destroy our environment. We have the means as never before of making a good life for all, including the disabled and the elderly and yet we already see our living standards and our employment levels sliding. Don't let's give in without even a fight to the selfish few who want to exploit the rest of us. We have work to do to make this a better world for us and our children. Why should we surrender to faceless, non-elected officials the tools that we need to shape that world? We may never get another chance.

I was really proud of the big turnout in Peterborough when the cabinet committee came there and of the points that were raised. We shall keep up the fight.

Mr David Turnbull (York Mills): I'm very pleased to rise today and speak on this issue. I have to say from the outset that I think we see a demonstration of intellectual dishonesty by the members of this government when they refuse to admit that free trade has in fact worked extremely well.

Mr Len Wood (Cochrane North): Withdraw. Apologize.

Mr Turnbull: Overwhelmingly, and it has already been spoken about from the government's own budget --

The Deputy Speaker: Order. Please take your seat. I would ask the member to be careful in your choice of words. I just want to remind you, be careful in your choice of words.

Mr Turnbull: Mr Speaker, I would like to withdraw the word "intellectual."

The government has refused to admit that its own numbers indicate that exports are up. The numbers are very clear that since we've had the advent of free trade we have had greater exports to the US in history. We must first of all talk about what has happened with free trade before we move on to discussing NAFTA.

The Canadian Manufacturers' Association survey, which was released in June 1992, said that more than half of those surveyed reported that they had had no lost market share in Canada, whilst 39% of them said that their exports to the US had grown, and that indeed is why the numbers are up.

What we are seeing with respect to job losses is quite clearly due to world restructuring. We heard the member for Wilson Heights debating earlier and pointing out the fact that you cannot blame free trade for the loss of jobs in Germany or Sweden or Japan. That's a fact. It is world restructuring. We live in a very different world and we must be competitive. The kind of competition that we have to provide is with high-tech jobs, with jobs that our people are trained for and must be better trained for. We cannot expect to be able to compete with the lowest-wage countries in the world in the low-scale jobs. That is a fact and that is a fact which has been accepted by Germany and Japan a long time ago.

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Turning to NAFTA, we must understand that 80% of all Mexican goods currently enter Canada duty-free. However, that is not the case of Canadian goods going into Mexico. The majority of Canadian goods are subject to fairly high tariffs. What does Mexico need? They need steel, they need financial services, they need transportation material, they need machinery, they need telecommunications, they need computers and they need cereals, all goods which Canada is extremely well positioned to provide them if we can remove those trade barriers. We see an excellent market opportunity with respect to Canada.

We haven't heard any statistics from the government which support its argument because quite frankly there are none. The fact is that we need to be competing in Mexico. You could say, "Well, we've got the free trade agreement with the US, and let Mexico have their NAFTA." The trouble with that argument is that what happens is we then have a hub and spoke situation where the US becomes the hub and it has free trade with Canada and also free trade with Mexico, but we do not have free trade with Mexico directly and Mexico with us. The essential element is access to the market, access which we are currently denied but which the Mexicans are not denied to our market. It has previously been said that if you go into Canadian supermarkets and look for Mexican products, and I absolutely agree, you will be hard pressed to find Mexican products, and you won't find Mexican high-tech products because there are none.

Let's just talk for the moment about one of the concerns that has been expressed, and it is a legitimate concern, and that is the environment. The suggestion is that if we allow Mexico into a trading relationship with the US and Canada, somehow our environmental standards are going to be dragged down. That is patently wrong. The reason for that, I will point out the fact: that it has been quite clearly identified that the countries with the lowest standards of environmental protection are very poor countries. Colin Isaacs, who is an expert on the environment, has pointed out the fact that those poor countries cannot afford to put in those environmental standards. However, Mexico has been making great strides in the last few years towards improving its environmental standards, and guess what? US, Canadian, European and Japanese companies that have moved into Mexico, to the greatest extent have applied the same environmental standards to their manufacturing that exist in their home markets, so we are in fact moving towards improving the environmental standards in Mexico. As we improve their standard of living, through freer trade, we will arrive at a point where they will be able to afford to improve --

Mr Gordon Mills (Durham East): At $4 a day?

Mr Turnbull: Once again we have one of the uninformed hyenas from the NDP screaming across the floor at the fact -- he has no facts.

The Deputy Speaker: Order. Let me read you part of the procedures and what it says so clearly. It's 23(k). Let me read it for all the members to understand what it is all about: "Uses abusive or insulting language of a nature likely to create disorder." That is very clear. So language used in the House should be honourable. I would ask you please to follow that.

Mr Turnbull: Mr Speaker, I would point out that the member for Durham East regularly screams across the floor.

Mr Mills: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: The member for York Mills called me a hyena, and I think that's unparliamentary and I ask him to withdraw that remark.

The Deputy Speaker: Order. I did not hear that expression, but if he did say that, I would expect him to apologize.

Mr Turnbull: Mr Speaker, I withdraw that remark.

I will point out that this is a government that has said NAFTA would steal our blood, our water and our culture. There is absolutely no evidence of this. This is a government which set up a committee, at taxpayers' expense, with no members from the opposition on that committee, and from the very outset said that they were going to travel the province and find evidence against NAFTA. They said from the very outset that no matter what was said in evidence, they would still oppose NAFTA.

Now, Mr Speaker, I have a fundamental question for you: Is it right for taxpayers' money to be spent in this way, for the government to form its own committees to travel the province, ignoring the opposition and ignoring the input from those people who come forward to bring testimony? If they say from the outset that it doesn't matter, that they're going to oppose it, you really have to question why $300,000 in such hard times would be frittered away in this way.

Let's just look further at the question of sovereignty. NAFTA provides for national treatment. National treatment: What does that mean? It means that the same rules apply to the country importing as the domestic companies. Funnily enough, they are the requirements of the GATT. Is this same government going to suggest that the GATT is a bad idea? I suppose they probably do, because they are flat-earth believers. They believe that if we continue to sail on, we're all going to fall off the edge of the world. Well, I've got news for you. We've found that it's a round earth, and you have to have a little bit more confidence in the future and at least base that confidence on the facts that have come to the fore since the free trade agreement has been put forward.

The Deputy Speaker: Your time has expired.

Mr Gilles Bisson (Cochrane South): I've only got about three or four minutes. We're dividing the time equally among our caucus and I understand we have an agreement to give some time to the honourable member for St Catharines, Mr Bradley, as his caucus for some reason took all the time up on him. So let me make a couple of points very quickly.

Members opposite of the Conservative Party said a couple of things in their debate and I just want to touch on them really quickly.

They talk about intellectual dishonesty on the part of this government being opposed to NAFTA and talk about how the free trade agreement has worked so well. Well, I would like to say to the members of the third party that I wish you would go talk to the unemployed. I wish you would go and talk to the people in this province, all across this country, who have been directly affected because of the free trade agreement.

We need not go far. We can go to the Scarborough van plant just down the road here in Toronto. Here was a plant with 3,000 workers that was the most productive van plant, the most profitable van plant within the GM chain. We need to go look around St Catharines-Niagara Falls in regard to the glass plant that GM has, the block plant. The same story: the most profitable and the most productive and highest-quality plants they had in the GM chain. They were closed. I wonder why?

They were closed simply because of one reason, because of the rules now, because of the dismantling of the Foreign Investment Review Agency that those scoundrels in Ottawa allowed to happen, and I call them scoundrels, Mr Speaker. Sorry if it's unparliamentary. I'll sort of withdraw it, but I'm kind of upset.

The other point in regard to the free trade agreement is that it allowed those companies to say, "We are no longer going to take a look at a Canadian content policy. We're going to take that away because we lost it under the dismantling of FIRA and we've lost it under the FTA."

It came down to this: GM had plants somewhere in the United States, and in some cases in Mexico, depending on what plant we're taking about, that had a larger production capacity than some of the plants that we had here in Canada. Then it became a question, "I can fit my small plant into my bigger plant," and it was strictly a decision on the part of GM in order to rationalize its operation. But under the old rules, before free trade, before the Tories came to Ottawa, they could have never done that.

1150

So shame on you, you Conservative people, for suggesting that free trade has no effect on the workers of this province. If Ontario finds itself, like the rest of this country, having to deal with the mess that we're in right now with the lack of revenue, where we are in regard to expenditures, it's because there are less people working.

The problem we have in this province, like the problem we have across this country, is a problem of joblessness. When people don't have work and they don't have income, they don't pay taxes, and then it costs the government a heck of a lot more money. Why are we there? Not because of Bob Rae's socialist Ontario. I would directly say because of Brian Mulroney's vision of a multinational agenda being instituted in Canada, and shame on you for that.

I've still got a minute left; I'm doing well.

The other thing I would like to say in regard to the NAFTA committee that the province of Ontario put forward is that one of the things they said was that the government had no business putting together the NAFTA committee because, after all, this was a federal issue, and why would the provincial government even get involved? It was none of our business.

NAFTA directly goes to the heart of the powers of the provincial governments of Canada on a number of fronts, and I don't have time to list them. Do you know what the sad part is? It's that with the industry within Ontario and Canada, the third party, and in some cases the Liberals, said we didn't have the business to do this. They said we should just sit there and not say anything.

Unfortunately, the only people who may turn this thing down in the end are our American brothers on the other side of the river who are turning around and saying NAFTA's not a good idea for the United States either. Now we see the American administration trying to put side deals on NAFTA because it's so God-awful. They also recognize what it means to their economy.

With that, Mr Speaker, I'm going to end. We don't have enough time. I cede the floor to the other member, but I'm firmly opposed to NAFTA, firmly opposed to the Tory agenda, and will be proudly voting in favour of this motion.

Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines): May I ask for consent to use two minutes of the NDP time?

The Deputy Speaker: Is there unanimous consent to use two minutes from the government side? There is unanimous consent.

Mr Bradley: I want to thank the members in the New Democratic Party for that opportunity to take two minutes. I simply want to address my remarks to the member and to this resolution, in favour of the resolution.

I think the member deserves credit for bringing this resolution forward, because it is an issue which is very important to the province of Ontario.

As the former Environment minister in this province, I recognize, and members have mentioned this, the pressure that there will be on Canada, and Ontario as well, as part of Canada, to lower our environmental standards because we'll be facing Mexican environmental standards. That would be very detrimental.

In addition to that, we have labour laws in Ontario, laws that have been fought for over the years, that do not correspond to those in Mexico. It is my view that, again, it would be detrimental to people in Ontario, particularly those who are protected by labour legislation, if they were forced to compete with those who don't have the same kind of legislation; in Mexico, for instance.

In addition to that, I recognize that President Clinton is having second thoughts about this particular agreement. If we look at what's happened with the free trade agreement and its contents and its lack of clarity and lack of sanctions for those who would violate it, we see that we are presiding over the de-industrialization of the province of Ontario and much of Canada. Much of that can be attributed to the free trade agreement, the specific agreement that was signed by our federal government with the federal government of the United States.

The last point I would make is that there was not sufficient opportunity in the federal House to debate this particular issue. Members were limited to about 10 minutes apiece, and it was rammed through by the federal government without the necessity of ramming it through. For this reason, I think it's opportune for this House to express its view on this issue, and I intend to vote for the resolution which is brought forward by the member for Lambton.

Mr Marchese: I strongly support this bill and will make some comments with respect to it.

The Canada-US free trade agreement has devastated Ontario unlike any other province -- it's devastated Ontario -- and the North American free trade agreement will make it worse; it will not make it better.

Trade should not be an end in itself. It should, as the Premier said, improve the quality of life for all Ontarians, for all Canadians. It has not done that and it will not do that.

Let's look at some of the things that the free trade agreement was supposed to do. I want to speak to that in order to bring some clarity that I don't think Mr Kwinter was able to bring.

It's difficult to separate with scientific accuracy the effects on the Ontario economy of the recession and the high dollar on the one hand, and the effects of FTA. It's true that it's difficult. We suspect the high dollar's had a devastating effect. We suspect that the recession has had a terrible effect on our economy; we know that. But it's fair to say and fairly accurate to say that we lost anywhere from 50,000 to 100,000 jobs just because of free trade. Many, many people will agree to that.

What we say is that the architects of the free trade agreement claimed there would be more jobs in Ontario and throughout Canada. That's what they said. It isn't true. It hasn't happened. They also said that some of the studies that some of these people on the other side alluded to predicted growth in Canadian manufacturing employment of 15%, 20% or higher. That hasn't happened. It's a lie. There are no studies to support it. In fact, what we have is evidence of losses of jobs, and the North American free trade agreement will do that as well.

Remember the adjustment program? The federal government said, "We will give money for adjustments in the event of job losses." There weren't any dollars and the workers of Ontario had to shoulder those costs. Under the North American free trade agreement, there will be further losses and we will have to shoulder those losses as well. This North American free trade agreement is going to devastate the people of Ontario, our economy, our investment and our sovereignty.

The Deputy Speaker: Your time has expired. The member for Lambton, you have two minutes to reply.

Mrs MacKinnon: I wish to thank all members for participating in the debate. This is obviously a subject that can bring out the best and the worst in people.

As a member of a farming community, I would like you to consider the following things.

Interjections.

Mrs MacKinnon: Yes, you're the one who said I was going to sit for five years.

I would like you to consider the following as a farmer. The farmers in Lambton county are devastated this week, particularly the pork producers in my riding and across Ontario and Canada. They are reeling from the latest decision made by the panel earlier this week that sided with the US Department of Commerce.

The US claimed that live hogs exported from Canada to the US in 1989-90 were subject to countervailable duty rates, because of our national tripartite system, to the tune of some $20 million. This is devastating to farmers all across Ontario and all across Canada.

How can we possibly stand here and defend something like the North American free trade system? The constant harassment of our hog and pork industries has not been ended by the free trade deal. Indeed, there seems to be a flagrant disregard of this deal by many American industries and within the US government.

Once again, I thank the members very much for this debate. I believe it has been worthwhile. And thank you very much, Mr Speaker, for putting up with the House this morning.

The Deputy Speaker: The time provided for private members' public business has expired.

Mr Chris Stockwell (Etobicoke West): There's time left, Mr Speaker. I'll use it.

The Deputy Speaker: It's their time.

Mr Stockwell: I may be one of them for all you know.

The Deputy Speaker: Is there unanimous consent?

Interjections.

The Deputy Speaker: Order.

CONSERVATION AUTHORITIES

The Deputy Speaker (Mr Gilles Morin): We will deal first with ballot item number 15 standing in the name of Mr Murdoch.

If any members are opposed to a vote on this ballot item, will they please rise.

Mr Murdoch has moved private member's resolution number 14. Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry?

All those in favour of the motion will please say "aye."

All those opposed will please say "nay."

In my opinion, the ayes have it.

Call in the members. This will be a five-minute bell.

The division bells rang from 1200 to 1205.

The Deputy Speaker: All those in favour of the motion will please rise and remain standing until your name is called.

Ayes

Arnott, Bradley, Callahan, Caplan, Carr, Carter, Cousens, Cunningham, Curling, Daigeler, Drainville, Eves, Harnick, Harris, Johnson (Don Mills), Jordan, Kormos, Lessard, Mahoney, Malkowski, Mammoliti, McLean, Mills, Morrow, Murdoch (Grey), Runciman, Sorbara, Stockwell, Tilson, Turnbull, Villeneuve, Wilson (Simcoe

West).

The Deputy Speaker: All those opposed to the motion will please rise and remain standing until your name is called.

Nays

Abel, Bisson, Cooper, Coppen, Dadamo, Duignan, Frankford, Haeck, Hansen, Harrington, Hayes, Hope, Klopp, MacKinnon, Marchese, Martin, Mathyssen, Murdock (Sudbury), North, Owens, Rizzo, Wessenger, White, Wilson (Kingston and The Islands), Wilson (Frontenac-Addington), Winninger, Wiseman, Wood.

The Deputy Speaker: The ayes are 32; the nays are 28. I declare the motion carried.

INTERNATIONAL TRADE

The Deputy Speaker (Mr Gilles E. Morin): We will now deal with ballot item number 16 standing in the name of Mrs MacKinnon.

If any members are opposed to a vote on this ballot item, will they please rise.

Mrs MacKinnon has moved private member's resolution number 15. Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry?

All those in favour of the motion, please say "aye."

All those opposed will please say "nay."

In my opinion, the ayes have it.

Call in the members. This will be a five-minute bell.

The division bells rang from 1209 to 1214.

The Deputy Speaker: All those in favour of the motion will please rise and remain standing until their name is called.

Ayes

Abel, Akande, Bisson, Bradley, Callahan, Caplan, Carter, Cooper, Coppen, Curling, Dadamo, Duignan, Fletcher, Frankford, Haeck, Hansen, Harrington, Hayes, Hope, Huget, Kormos, Lessard, MacKinnon, Malkowski, Marchese, Martin, Mathyssen, Mills, Morrow,

Murdock (Sudbury), North, Owens, Rizzo, Wessenger, White, Wilson (Frontenac-Addington), Wilson (Kingston and The Islands), Wiseman, Wood.

Nays

Arnott, Carr, Cunningham, Daigeler, Harnick, Johnson (Don Mills), Jordan, Murdoch (Grey), Sorbara, Stockwell, Tilson, Turnbull, Wilson (Simcoe West).

The Deputy Speaker: The ayes being 39 and the nays 13, I declare the motion carried.

All matters relating to private members' business are now completed. I will now leave the chair and the House will resume at 1:30 this afternoon.

The House recessed at 1218.

AFTERNOON SITTING

The House resumed at 1330.

MEMBERS' STATEMENTS

TORONTO MAPLE LEAFS

Mr Tim Murphy (St George-St David): It is with great pleasure that I rise today in the House to pay tribute to the Toronto Maple Leafs, for whom we had a reception.

Not since the days of Darryl Sittler, the Tiger, Lanny McDonald and Borje Salming has the city of Toronto been so completely galvanized in support of their team.

It was not only the success of the Buds in the playoffs which captured the imaginations of so many hockey fans but the manner in which it was executed.

Led by the likes of Doug Gilmour and Félix Potvin, this team truly exhibited grit -- as a Liberal, I appreciate that -- determination and heart. These are the qualities that are the most important to speak of when one recalls the success of this year's team. When one considers that the most avid, enthusiastic and energetic of all hockey fans across this province are, at the same time, our most precious resource -- children -- the importance of these qualities becomes magnified.

I would think that we would all agree that no matter the area of human endeavour, if one approaches it with dedication and a belief in oneself, success and pride will certainly follow.

In this light, I suppose we all owe a special thank you to coach Burns who taught all of us that having the temperament of a human furnace can pay huge dividends in terms of extracting a team effort from all players.

So I say to the Toronto Maple Leafs: Congratulations and good luck, especially those concerned with the ceremonies being conducted tonight at the Metro Convention Centre. Who knows, perhaps a few familiar faces from this year's team calendar will not only be at today's opening ceremonies at the corner of Front and Yonge but some day permanent residents.

Mr Ted Arnott (Wellington): I'm pleased to join and extend my congratulations with other members of this House to the Toronto Maple Leafs for an outstanding season this year.

Today I had the honour of attending a reception and buffet lunch here at Queen's Park to honour the 1992-93 Toronto Maple Leafs.

I want to thank the team, its coach, Pat Burns, and manager Cliff Fletcher for giving Toronto eight months of spectacular hockey. We watched eagerly in front of our TV sets and at the Gardens as the team played 21 games in 42 exhausting nights.

The Leafs took the Norris division, finishing Detroit and St Louis in seven games before facing the LA Kings in the Campbell conference. It was an exciting and remarkable journey.

The Leafs were a tremendous boost to tourism in Toronto. Restaurants, taverns, retail establishments and hotels all profited from the success that the team enjoyed.

Fans will have many fond memories of the guts, passion, heart and desire which the Leafs displayed over the course of their season and in the playoffs. I think Mike Foligno expressed the sentiments of Maple Leafs fans perfectly when he told reporters after the final game, "When you sit and you look at how far this team has come in such a short time, nothing leaves this room but pride."

I know that I speak for all members of the House when I say, congratulations to the Toronto Maple Leafs for creating magic on ice.

SOCIAL CONTRACT

Mr Tony Rizzo (Oakwood): I rise today to state my position on the social contract issue.

We must not forget that generations of Ontarians have worked hard to create our unique system of public services. We must not forget above all, and I quote from the Public Service Coalition proposal text, that "the people of Ontario elected this government in part because of the strong New Democratic commitment to public services.

"In this critical time, when workers, families and communities have been put under enormous economic strain...the people of Ontario are counting on the Ontario government to protect and improve public services."

Ontarians understand that to protect and improve public services we have to control the deficit. What is paramount for our government is the general interest of all citizens. I know and understand very well the union movement's feelings towards the government's initiatives, and I praise the unions' contribution to the bargaining process. I'm sure that a little more goodwill on all sides will result in successful negotiations during the next period.

More cooperation in more areas between government, public and private employers and the union movement is the key to the success of contemporary states. Eventually, labour will become a full partner in the decision-making process under any government. It is time the union movement is recognized as a legitimate presence at all tables where important decisions are made, inside and outside the workplace.

HEALTH CARDS

Mr Gilles E. Morin (Carleton East): The Minister of Health recently admitted that the cost of fraud related to health cards is at least $20 million. Other estimates say that fraud costs the taxpayers of Ontario hundreds of millions of dollars annually.

The Provincial Auditor's 1992 report raised a number of concerns: the inaccuracy of registration information, the lack of a formal process to ensure regular updates of information, the issuance of thousands of cards more than there are persons in Ontario, the lack of an adequate system of control that would allow health care providers to verify the validity of health cards.

The government of Ontario intends to cut over a billion dollars in health care services. Instead of addressing directly and swiftly the issue of fraud and the abuse of our health system, the Minister of Health chooses to control the number of physicians allowed to practise. She chooses to close hospitals. She will soon dictate the conditions surrounding the delivery of medical services. How long will it be before she starts issuing prescriptions?

I recently introduced the Health Insurance Amendment Act, 1993. Bill 44 is supported by the Ontario Medical Association. It will reduce fraud, improve the administration of health cards and save costs. The time has come for a new health card with photo identification and expiry date.

AVALON RETIREMENT LODGE

Mr David Tilson (Dufferin-Peel): I'm pleased to bring to the attention of this House the 10th anniversary of the Avalon Retirement Lodge in my riding of Dufferin-Peel. The anniversary marks a milestone for the Avalon retirement home as it continually strives to achieve high standards for both its residents and staff. The work of everyone involved should be acknowledged. The staff have, in a time of restraint, shown how the needs of the residents and the imposed rules from Queen's Park can somehow be juggled to accommodate everyone.

I have an opportunity to personally see the commitment and professionalism of the staff at the Avalon on a regular basis. I would like to offer my personal thanks to the staff for going above and beyond the call of duty, so to speak, in serving their customers, the seniors. It is very appropriate that Avalon retirement home is celebrating its 10th anniversary in June, during Seniors' Month.

I would also like this government to realize that Avalon retirement centre is an example where private enterprise can and does operate a seniors' home admirably within the very stringent guidelines of the Ministry of Health, and indeed does so very well. We should be holding up these enterprises as examples of standards to achieve as being province-wide, and not force them out of business by unbalanced funding and unnecessary administrative duties.

TORONTO MAPLE LEAFS

Mr Peter North (Elgin): Today it is with great pride and pleasure that I stand on behalf of the government of Ontario to heartily congratulate the Toronto Maple Leafs hockey organization for a tremendous year. We had the pleasure of welcoming them to this Legislature today.

The people of the province, and indeed across Canada, were given a special gift this year as they sat glued to their television sets witnessing a certain mix of youth, experience, talent and heart. This group of players and management personnel took us back to the glory years as they worked us through the Detroit series, powered us through the St Louis series to the Norris division championship. Next came the Kings in LA, where our team took it to the seventh game and the last minute, within one minute of the Campbell conference championship and the Stanley Cup finals.

Although it was a special time for the members of this club, it is hard to put into words the meaning of your accomplishment to the youth of this province. All over the cities, towns and villages there still continue today the screams and yells and cheers of young boys and girls playing road hockey, emulating and acting their favourite players and their favourite plays of a certain game that shone in their minds. Your accomplishments gave them pride, hope and an image to look up to that knows no boundaries and crosses all lines.

A special thanks to Steve Stavro, Cliff Fletcher, Pat Burns and staff for presenting us with a team of this calibre, and the support they extend to this organization.

The fans of the Toronto Maple Leafs and hockey as a whole at all levels have been treated to something very special, something we will not soon forget.

We look forward to great things in the future. We look forward to the screams and yells of young people, later in the spring, playing road hockey and cheering for their favourite team, the Toronto Maple Leafs.

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SOCIAL CONTRACT

Mrs Elinor Caplan (Oriole): Yesterday I asked my Tory friends where they stand on the social contract legislation. Judging from question period yesterday, the Conservatives are still talking out of both sides of their mouth. When the NDP began the social contract negotiations, Mike Harris told Bob Rae that he could count on his party's support. By the end of April, Harris said: "I will support your legislation. Bang, bang, bang, first, second, third reading." But by May they had changed their tune.

Members of the Conservative caucus said, and I quote: "This process is flawed from the beginning. It's a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants process." One week Mike Harris says, "I support the social contract talks" --

Interjection.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Order, the member for Willowdale.

Mrs Caplan: -- the next week Mike Harris says --

Interjection.

The Speaker: The member for Willowdale, please come to order.

Mrs Caplan: -- "We told you the social contract talks could not possibly succeed."

On Monday, June 14, the Conservatives said they might support the legislation in principle. Yesterday Mike Harris said in one question, "You have our support," and in the very next question he was critical of the legislation. I want to know, where do the Conservatives stand on the social contract legislation, Bill 48?

We have an NDP government that makes policy changes with the wind, with help of course from opinion polls. It seems that the Tories are no better.

I ask them -- now that Lyn McLeod has explained it to you; I hope you realize this draconian legislation is bad, bad, bad -- where are you? Where do you stand? The people of Ontario want to know.

Interjections.

The Speaker: Order. The member for Leeds-Grenville has the floor.

POLITICAL MEETING

Mr Robert W. Runciman (Leeds-Grenville): This weekend the provincial council of Ontario's New Disintegrating Party will meet in Gananoque, in my picturesque riding of Leeds-Grenville. On their heels will be an angry horde of the brothers and sisters burning their NDP membership cards to protest Premier Rae's offer of "take it now or we'll just take it all later."

This event, which promises to be half soap opera and half circus, will I hope be all profit for Gananoque tourism operators, who have seen their trade decline by 33% in the last four years. It is ironic that the NDP government will do more to help the local economy by having a political barbecue serving Bobby on a bun than it ever did through any of its half-baked economic initiatives.

It is our hope that the influx of these protesters will more than double the town's population on Saturday and that they will be as generous in their contributions to the coffers of local businesses as they once were in their contributions to the coffers of the NDP.

So on behalf of Gananoque, known as the Gateway to the Thousand Islands, I'd like to say welcome to CUPE's Sid Ryan, to OPSEU's Fred Upshaw and to all those protesters who will be travelling with them. Bring your spouses, bring your kids. What the heck, you can even bring a Liberal, because they really know how to spend and abuse a credit card.

Take a leisurely boat tour of the Thousand Islands. Visit the Thousand Islands Wild Kingdom or take in a play at the Thousand Islands Playhouse. Bring your money and stay the weekend.

FOLKLORE FESTIVAL

Mr Gary Wilson (Kingston and The Islands): I rise today to recognize Folklore, an annual multicultural festival that took place in Kingston last weekend. For the $6 price of a passport -- children under 12 free -- visitors could tour 17 countries at nine locations throughout the community.

The kickoff occurred the previous Sunday with a colourful, vibrant parade down Princess Street to city hall. In touring the pavilions, I was impressed by the opportunities for people of all ages to participate in cultural activities from preparing food to singing and dancing. Especially noticeable were the many children who were performing dances that were a tribute to the skill and dedication of both dancers and instructors. Looking forward to what these young dancers will be performing in years to come is delightful indeed.

Something new this year was the multicultural pavilion at the Memorial Centre. Here at one location, people could watch a variety of performances on centre stage while enjoying samosas at the Indian pavilion, spring rolls at the Chinese, Turkish coffee and Spanish pizza. There were also displays by the board of education, the mayor's advisory committee and the police advisory committee.

I applaud the organizers of the Folklore festival who have worked hard with the many volunteers who prepared food, staffed booths and performed to bring many hours of enjoyment to area residents. They provide a model of showing how everyone in the community benefits when people from diverse backgrounds work together. I'm pleased to say that the crowds were larger this year, boding well for an even more successful Folklore in 1994.

STATEMENTS BY THE MINISTRY AND RESPONSES

COMPENSATION FOR WRONGFUL CONVICTION

Hon Marion Boyd (Attorney General): I would like to inform members today that a compensation package has been awarded to Mr Richard Norris, who was convicted and imprisoned for a crime he did not commit.

Mr Norris was found guilty on February 5, 1980, of break, enter and indecent assault on a female and was sentenced to 23 months in jail. He served a total of eight months and 10 days of his sentence before being released on parole. Mr Norris has always maintained his innocence.

Ten years later, in November 1989, James Anderson confessed to Richard Norris that he had committed the offences. Following a police investigation, Mr Anderson was charged, tried and convicted.

On November 29, 1991, Mr Norris's conviction was overturned and an acquittal was entered. He then became eligible for compensation under the 1988 federal-provincial guidelines for wrongfully convicted and incarcerated persons. Mr Norris's case is the first in Ontario in which the guidelines have been used to compensate an individual wrongfully convicted and imprisoned.

The guidelines provide for compensation for persons wrongfully convicted and imprisoned as a result of a conviction for a Criminal Code or other federal penal offence. Compensation would only be made in cases of individuals who were innocent of the crime and where a new or newly discovered fact showed that there had been a miscarriage of justice. The guidelines themselves set out the prerequisites for compensation.

Despite the many safeguards in Canada's criminal justice system, innocent persons are occasionally convicted and imprisoned. This is one unfortunate case where the system failed.

There is no question that Mr Norris suffered a grave miscarriage of justice. It has been submitted that Mr Norris's incarceration had a devastating effect on him psychologically, as a consequence of which he lost his job and continues to suffer a loss of income.

Our government is pleased to announce that a compensation package totalling $412,616 has been provided to Mr Norris in recognition of the pain and loss of income he has sustained as a result of this miscarriage of justice. We sincerely hope that this payment, shared equally by the provincial and federal governments, will reflect the governments' desire to act on humanitarian grounds and respond to some of the consequences of Mr Norris's ordeal.

The compensation package reflects medical evidence to the effect that there has been a substantial loss of past and future income as a result of incarceration and the subsequent effect on Mr Norris's psychological health.

Of the total sum, Mr Norris has already received advance payments of $90,000 over the last year and a half to assist him during the compensation process. In addition to the compensation package, he has received an amount to cover reasonable and proper legal fees and disbursements.

There is no doubt that the eyewitness identification by the victim of Mr Norris was complicated by the fact of his close physical resemblance to Mr Anderson. Police, the crown attorney and Mr Norris's defence lawyer have stated that there is no doubt in their minds that the victim was absolutely certain that it was Richard Norris who had attacked her.

The Ministry of the Attorney General has concluded that the cause of Richard Norris's wrongful conviction must be attributed in large measure to the well-known dangers inherent in eyewitness identification. Erroneous eyewitness identification is probably the single greatest cause of wrongful convictions. For this reason, law reformers, academics, jurists and government commissions have not only warned of the danger of such evidence but have also attempted to provide certain safeguards for use in the judicial process to minimize the risk of wrongful conviction based on such honest but mistaken eyewitness identifications.

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As a result, the ministry has recommended that a federal-provincial-territorial working group be appointed to examine the area of identification evidence with a view to amending the Criminal Code and other federal statutes to provide for safeguards against wrongful convictions based solely or largely on eyewitness evidence. The Law Reform Commission of Canada, in a report published in 1983, made recommendations to attempt to reduce the potential for wrongful conviction in cases based largely on eyewitness identification, and its recommendations provide an excellent starting point in this much-needed area of criminal law reform.

The ministry has also recommended that crown attorney education provide for an awareness of the potential for wrongful conviction based solely or largely on eyewitness identification, the unreliability, in many cases, of eyewitness identification, including the causes of such unreliability, and the need for law reform in this area. Furthermore, the ministry has recommended that a federal-provincial working group be asked to reconsider the guidelines on compensation in light of the experience gained in this first case. I fully support these recommendations.

I cannot begin to imagine the trauma Mr Norris has suffered as a result of this ordeal. I realize that it would be impossible for anyone to eradicate these tragic events. However, I do hope that the compensation package may alleviate to some extent the suffering of Mr Norris and his family.

Mr Tim Murphy (St George-St David): I rise to applaud the minister for taking this step. I think it's clear that when anyone in the criminal justice system is wrongfully convicted, it brings the whole system into doubt and, to some degree, disrepute. I think we have to be concerned as a Legislature and people responsible for the system of law in this province that that does not continue. There has recently been an unfortunate spate, it seems to me, of these wrongful convictions, and I think it is worthwhile to take a look at those aspects of our criminal justice system that have given rise to wrongful convictions.

Let me say in that regard that I think there was to a certain degree an amount of strangeness involved in recommending reconsidering the guidelines after only the first use, but I think there are places to look for some recommendations in that regard.

I'm sure the minister is aware of the results of the Marshall inquiry and the recommendations it made, and I think there are some sensible ones that can be looked at. They've recommended that these issues be determined by judicial inquiry and that there be no pre-set limit on those compensation awards. As I'm sure she's aware, the guidelines currently provide for a limit, at least with respect to non-pecuniary losses, and I think we should look carefully at the Marshall inquiry results in that regard.

This gives rise to the issue of victims not just of the criminal justice system but of crime. We have in the standing committee on administration of justice been considering a bill of rights for victims of crime, and I would ask the Attorney General to look at this in terms of victims of the criminal justice system in the broad sense.

We have been talking in that committee about the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board. Frankly, some of what we've seen is appalling. People have written to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board asking for compensation as victims of crime and have received letters back from that board saying: "We've received your application. Don't call us for six months." That is entirely unacceptable.

In addition, the delay in proceeding with applications is 12 to 18 months, and that too is unacceptable. If we are to create a sense of fairness, a sense of confidence in our justice system, we have to remember the victims of crime. I am entirely concerned that this government has not taken the steps necessary to recognize that the victims of crime are part of this system and need to be recognized, I think through some kind of mechanism that recognizes their involvement in the system. It could be a bill of rights for victims of crime; at least the principles involved in that kind of legislation should be applied.

There was a federal-provincial agreement in that regard, and I believe Ontario and Alberta are the only two provinces that haven't legislated those guidelines in some form. While this circumstance is a good one, I think it raises the issue of dealing with victims of the criminal justice system in a broader sense, and I think this government should take a move in that regard. Those are my comments.

Mr Robert V. Callahan (Brampton South): I'd like to address this. This gentlemen was a constituent in my riding. Although I applaud what the Ministry of the Attorney General finally did, this man and his family were put through sheer hell trying to receive compensation.

I suggest that in a case where the acquittal is not just a finding of not guilty as a result of some failure on the part of the crown to put in evidence or that it put in inappropriate evidence but where it was based on another person coming forward and indicating that he committed the crime, there should not have been the delay, the dragging of the heels by the government. Certainly, in other areas, if it were based on inadmissible evidence or whatever, then there is a reason perhaps for investigating it more thoroughly. But I can tell you that this gentleman's lawyer visited me on a number of occasions and sent me letters indicating the sheer agony his family went through. In fact, at one point I believe this gentleman was very close to suicide because of the delay of this government in terms of compensating him.

In the final analysis, I would say to you that if this doesn't tell us and reinforce, certainly my belief, that capital punishment is not an appropriate remedy -- and I hope it will never be brought back in, because juries do make mistakes.

Mr Charles Harnick (Willowdale): Unlike my Liberal counterparts, I am not going to applaud the minister for something that cried out to be done, for something that was obvious to be done, and for something that took such a long time in the circumstances.

What I will say is what this is really all about: It's all about individual rights and it's all about the importance of the state recognizing that when it makes a mistake it has to correct it, but that it should correct it in a timely way.

The other ironic things about this that bother me are that this gentleman went to jail for a crime he did not commit and the person who committed the crime ended up going to jail for less time than the person wrongly identified. What does that say about the justice system in the province of Ontario?

I'll read to you what the Elora Sentinel said:

"Norris is...bitter that Anderson received a more lenient sentence than he did.

"Norris was sentenced to 23 months; 12 years later, Anderson was sentenced to 15 months.

"Norris spent nine months behind bars, and lost his job;" for a crime he didn't commit, "12 years later, Anderson," who was given a more lenient sentence, "was granted day parole so that he could continue" working.

What does that say about the justice system in the province of Ontario?

The real difficulty we have here will not be solved by changing the rules of evidence to make sure that people who are identified are not identified wrongly, or setting into place safeguards for that problem. The problem we have in this province is that the administration of justice is under terrible pressure.

We saw in this Legislature about three years ago some 50,000, 60,000, 70,000 cases that were Askoved because they took too long to reach court. The Attorney General of that day spent $50 million to rectify that situation. He rectified that situation by throwing money at it, and now, three years later, the same backlogs continue to exist in the courts. We jettisoned 50,000 cases. They're all back, and the present minister is sitting on the Martin report, which has now been available for several weeks; it hasn't been released. We in the opposition have not been given the courtesy of taking a look at that report, although I know it's been off to the printers for several weeks.

That report is the first attempt to try to streamline the justice system in the province of Ontario; I don't know why the delay continues and continues and continues. We are back to where we were when Askov was decided. If we want to look at why a person like Mr Norris ended up in the situation he was in, it's exactly because the justice system can no longer carry the volume we're trying to make it carry, unless it's streamlined.

The other thing is that I have some real reservations as to whether this gentleman has in the end been treated fairly. I understand this gentleman may never work again or may never be able to hold a job on a permanent basis. If he has 20 more years in his working-life expectancy and he's going to make the poverty level of income for him and his family, which is $20,000, a $400,000 settlement is nothing to write home about, particularly when you consider that some of that is for his pain and suffering and some of that certainly should represent interest on the money.

I would tell my good friend the Attorney General that I don't think this is the most generous offer that could be made in this situation. The state has got to compensate him fairly. I know that this is not just the provincial government, that it's the federal government as well. I think the Attorney General of Ontario should take the lead in making sure that this gentleman is compensated properly. I don't believe he is.

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WITHDRAWAL OF BILL

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): On Wednesday, June 16, the member for Welland-Thorold, Mr Kormos, introduced a bill entitled An Act to amend the Legislative Assembly Retirement Allowances Act. It has been brought to my attention that this bill is in unilingual format only, which is contrary to subsection 3(2) of the French Language Services Act, 1986. I must therefore advise the House that this bill contravenes standing order 38(d) and must be removed from the order paper.

It is now time for oral questions and the honourable member for Scarborough-Agincourt.

ORAL QUESTIONS

UNEMPLOYMENT

Mr Gerry Phillips (Scarborough-Agincourt): My question is to the Premier, and it has to do with, I guess, really the vision that you have for the province.

You will know, Premier, that in your budget you call for an unemployment rate this year of 14%. The Premier's shaking his head, but it's in your budget, 14%. As you look ahead at the unemployment rate over the next two years, by 1995, it is still running at 12%, over 700,000 people unemployed; still by 1995, roughly the same number. This, to us, is intolerable. It's a disgrace. It is unacceptable. I would hope it's unacceptable to you.

My question is this: Why should the people of Ontario have to live with your economic plans that call for and state we will have an unemployment rate this year at 14%, and by 1995 it will still be running well above 12%?

Hon Bob Rae (Premier): I think the member is focusing on the issue which is the issue we all want to focus on and that's the issue of work and jobs.

I would say to him very directly that I would never at any time call for rates of unemployment anywhere in the ballpark that the member is describing; neither does our budget call for these kinds of rates. What we are facing in a province of 10 million people, in a country of nearly 30 million people and in a North America of 300 million people is an economic reality that we're trying to change and that we're seeking to change in cooperation with the federal government and in cooperation with the G-7 meeting that's going to be taking place in Tokyo.

I happen to believe that there's a major economic challenge for all of us. It's an issue that I discussed with the Secretary of Labor in the United States on Tuesday, Secretary Reich. We both agreed that the rates of unemployment that we're facing in this country and in his country are unacceptably high, and that we have to find new and better ways of creating more employment and more opportunity. I don't know of anybody in government who isn't preoccupied with this question of how we can create more work.

I would say to the honourable member that I'm sure he'll have criticisms and positive suggestions to make and I look forward to hearing what they are, but I want to say to him there is no monopoly on any side of the House with respect to dealing with this question and dealing with this issue.

Our rates in this province obviously follow and flow from the overall economic situation in North America and the overall situation in the OECD countries.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Could the Premier conclude his response, please.

Hon Mr Rae: This government has stood out among all the jurisdictions in emphasizing the importance of controlling the operating costs of government, investing in infrastructure and doing everything we can to help those people who have been affected by the kinds of economic changes we've seen. We stand out in North America, we stand out among OECD countries in leading the way in terms of infrastructure investment and in terms of dealing with operating costs.

The Speaker: Could the Premier please conclude his response.

Hon Mr Rae: I'm proud of our record as a government in dealing with these issues.

Mr Phillips: You may be proud of it, but I think it's a disgrace. It used to be that Ontario had the lowest rate of unemployment in the country. Now every province west of here has a lower rate. You can stand up here and speak proudly about a 14% unemployment rate, but I think it's a disgrace. If you're proud of your record, then I think you should be ashamed of yourself. The 14% unemployed will have real problems in dealing with the Premier.

We heard today, Premier, from responsible people in the business community that your budget is going to kill jobs. When you were talking out of the other side of your mouth, when you were in opposition, you said, "Listen, Treasurer, when you raise taxes, you cost jobs." That's when you were talking out of the other side of your mouth. Now that you're Premier, you're going to find that tax increases cost jobs.

I'll go back again. How can you justify 14%? That's not me speaking. That is the number in your budget. This is what you predict for the future. I say it's a disgrace. If you want to stand up and say you're proud of it, I want you to explain to the people of Ontario why you can accept a 14% unemployment rate in 1993 in the province of Ontario.

Hon Mr Rae: First of all, the rate is not 14%, and the member knows it.

Mrs Elinor Caplan (Oriole): Yes, it is.

Hon Mr Rae: No, it isn't. Come on, get real for a minute.

The Speaker: Order.

Hon Mr Rae: Let's take it seriously. I couldn't join the Linda Leatherdale reception at lunch, but I understand the member was received with appropriate comments from the crowd. I want him to know the Liberal Party has no particular monopoly on this.

Neither does the Conservative Party and neither do we. We're wrestling with a difficult situation. I would say to the honourable member, look at what we've done: a billion dollars in money that we are putting into training, the amount that we are putting into investment infrastructure, the efforts that we're making.

I would say to you that if the Liberal Party is now, after its record in government, turning around and saying, "Put us back in because we're going to be the no-tax party as well," let me tell you, you have zero credibility on that with people in the business community or anywhere else.

I speak to bankers, I speak to industrialists, and the one thing the senior leaders of business say consistently to me is: "Premier, you are making a start where no other government was prepared to move. In particular, you're moving where the Liberal government would never have done things." The Peterson government would never have had the courage to face up to the challenges we've had to face. You have zero credibility with the business community when it comes to dealing with these issues. None at all. None.

Mr Phillips: The Premier can shout and he can yell and he can finger-point. But it is your words, Premier, in your budget that say: "During the recession many workers have given up looking for work. If these discouraged workers were counted as unemployed, Ontario's current unemployment rate would be 14%." That's your budget. That's what you say: 14%. Now you get up and yell and scream that it's acceptable. It isn't acceptable to us and the Liberal Party. When you became Premier, the unemployment rate in this province was 6%. There was no other province that had a lower unemployment rate.

You want to go and blame free trade and blame the federal government. You had the lowest unemployment rate in the country. Now, for the 700,000 people who are out of work, I want to know -- you promised that the unemployment rate now would be 8.5%. Those plans have failed. Will you now acknowledge that your plans haven't worked and will you bring forward some plans that are going to reduce the unemployment rate below this unacceptable 14%?

Hon Mr Rae: I don't think there's a soul in this province who believes the kind of old-style politics and the kind of old-style arguments you're putting forward. This is the same group that called the election after two and a half years or two and three quarter years in office, knowing what was happening with the recession, and going before the people and parading, saying: "Look at us. We've got a balanced budget. How wonderful we are."

Mr Gregory S. Sorbara (York Centre): New-style politics is to shoot your friends. New-style politics is to promise one thing and do another. New-style products is to destroy collective bargaining.

The Speaker: Order, the member for York Centre.

Hon Mr Rae: The people didn't believe you then and they're not going to believe you now, because it doesn't add up, it doesn't make any sense.

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Interjections.

The Speaker: I ask the member for York Centre to please withdraw the unparliamentary remark.

Interjections.

Hon Mr Rae: I say to the honourable member that if you look at the money that we put into capital, the money that we put into Jobs Ontario Homes, Jobs Ontario Youth, Jobs Ontario Training and Jobs Ontario Community Action, we are doing everything we can to address the unemployment issue. We are going to be working with other governments to do it.

I would say to the honourable member that it is a fact of life that it is going to be a world problem with a world challenge. We are dealing with it here. We are taking on the role here. We are dealing with it around the globe. Those are the facts of the situation and that's what we are facing up to, and we are facing up to it in an honest and direct way.

No other government in recent years has had the courage to say, "Yes, there are some workers who've given up because of what's happened in the economy." I don't remember any Liberal budget ever talking about that fact, and don't tell me that it's a fact that started in 1990. It's been a fact of life --

The Speaker: Could the Premier conclude his response, please.

Hon Mr Rae: -- that's been there in the economy for years and years and years. We're the party that's facing up to it. You're the ones who are pretending, "Vote for us, free beer tomorrow." That's the Liberal slogan, "Free beer tomorrow." Nobody believes that kind of old politics any more, not a soul. Not a soul goes for that stuff.

The Speaker: Could the Premier please conclude his response. New question, the member for Mississauga West.

Interjections.

The Speaker: Order. The member for Mississauga West has the floor.

SOCIAL CONTRACT

Mr Steven W. Mahoney (Mississauga West): It's interesting to me to hear the Premier shouting that we shouldn't make this a partisan issue, and yet instead of answering the very serious concerns about unemployment from our Treasury critic --

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): To whom is your question directed?

Mr Mahoney: My question is to the Premier, and maybe he can answer my question without pointing partisan fingers -- maybe.

Yesterday my leader, Lyn McLeod, asked the Premier to explain to this House how the municipalities, the school boards, the universities, the colleges and the transfer partners that the Premier always refers to can make the cuts under this legislation known as Bill 48, when they've already implemented wage freezes and they've already implemented unpaid leave within the organizations that they control.

The Premier responded, "Where people have already made a substantial sacrifice or where they have already taken steps...obviously that is a factor that would have to be taken into account."

What do you mean, Premier, when you say "taken into account"? Are the transfer partners that have already implemented wage freezes and already negotiated unpaid leave with their workers going to have to make further cuts, as set out in Bill 48? Are they indeed going to have their transfer payments from you to them cut? Premier, what's your answer to that?

Hon Bob Rae (Premier): I think the answer to the member's question is exactly the same as the one I gave to the Leader of the Opposition yesterday. It is the same question, so I would imagine that the same answer would apply, and that is that as there are negotiations which will no doubt take place within the next number of weeks -- there have been a number already between the municipalities, for example, but specifically between the municipalities and the government -- this is obviously something that will have to be taken into account.

You say there are many who already have. There are also many who haven't. Therefore, there has to be a very tough assessment as to what the practices have been in different places, but the negotiations will have to take that into account. I think that's a very fair- minded and realistic approach.

Mr Mahoney: I guess, Premier, you don't understand the question.

If you've got a number of municipalities, hospitals, universities, colleges around the province that, in determining the level of their tax increases and their service levels, have already negotiated pay freezes, have already negotiated unpaid leave, have already sent out their tax bills, have already announced to their constituents what the tax rate will be, and you come along and set a global figure, a blind global figure for a cut, what are you going to say to the municipalities that indeed have come in responsibly: "You don't have to make the cuts outlined in Bill 48. You don't have to deal with the unpaid leave because you've already done it"? Therefore, the municipalities that haven't done it are going to be hit even harder than what they already anticipate.

You've come out and made a statement that you're going to do something for Hamilton -- we don't know what it is -- because it's already acted responsibly. North York has already acted responsibly. Mississauga already told the people they'd get a 1% tax decrease. They've already negotiated with their people.

Premier, you're causing all kinds of confusion and uncertainty. People are frightened. They don't know what to do about the cuts that you're proposing in Bill 48.

Will you come clean? Tell the municipalities what you mean when you say you will take into account the cuts that they have already implemented. Are they going to be exempt because they've already done it, and the other municipalities will pay twice? What exactly do you mean, sir, when you say it will be taken into account?

Hon Mr Rae: The answer is, very directly, as I've already said in answer to previous questions when they have been made, that your leader is the one who's used the word "exemption." I've made it very clear there will not be any blanket exemptions. I've made that very clear.

What we've said is that during the course of the negotiations, for those municipalities and those areas that have already reached agreements which clearly fall within the framework of the social contract discussions and which clearly fall within the same approach with respect to real efforts at wage restraint and to days off and so on, obviously those factors will be taken into account in the course of the negotiations. I don't know what more I can say to indicate that this government has a clear approach. With those who have already taken that approach, obviously that will be taken into account.

Mr Mahoney: I can just picture sitting around the table at a council where you've already put your budget to bed and you've made the cuts. Let's take an example that comes in line with Bill 48 that your Treasurer introduced. The municipality says, "We've already made the cuts, so therefore I guess we don't have to make any more." You've got over 800 municipalities just in the municipal sector alone. Premier, if 100 of them have already met your targets, how are you going to get the $2 billion out of the remaining 700? That means they're going to have to cut deeper. That means that the municipalities that have not to date come in line with the rules and regulations set out in Bill 48 are going to have to cut deeper.

Your quote, sir, yesterday: "I can understand the frustration of people saying, 'Look, we already gave.' I think that's something that any negotiation has to take into account."

Premier, don't you get it? These people have done their work. Many of the municipalities have been on a debt elimination program for the last 15 years. Many of these municipalities are indeed debt-free today and they are able to balance their budgets. Now they sit in fear that this Premier is going to penalize them, even though they have acted responsibly, even though they have met the guidelines outlined by your Treasurer --

The Speaker: And your question?

Mr Mahoney: -- you're going to take more, you're going to cut deeper and you're going to penalize the people who have budgeted properly in this province of Ontario.

Premier, very simple: How do negotiations under Bill 48 allow transfer agencies that have already implemented wage freezes and unpaid leave to implement the further cuts that you are forcing them to make? Will you give us a straight answer?

Hon Mr Rae: I think that if anything is clear, it's that this government has dealt directly with these issues in a way that other governments have found it difficult to do. I think that's very clear.

These issues will be discussed at the table with the municipalities, and I must say that when I discuss these issues with municipal leaders, as I've done, I find that their attitude is completely different from the kind of overblown, hot-air rhetoric we're hearing from the member for Mississauga West.

Mr Mahoney: They're scared to death of you.

Hon Mr Rae: No. The member opposite says that people are afraid to say what's on their mind. That hasn't, generally speaking, been my experience in dealing with municipal leaders. They tend to be very direct in dealing with us, certainly in dealing with me, and I'm equally direct in response. Whenever I'm asked the question which the member has put forward, I say very directly that that is something that can be taken into account at the table but there will not be and there cannot be any blanket exemptions, and I'm not about to declare that today.

TAX INCREASES

Mr Michael D. Harris (Nipissing): My question is to the Premier. I have here just a quarter of the 55,000 ballots that came in today. They were --

Hon Floyd Laughren (Deputy Premier and Minister of Finance): Did Linda give them to you?

Mr Harris: The Treasurer asks, did Linda give them to me? I now hear today that the Liberals are the "free beer" party, and we know that the NDP will give us free fridges to put them in. What more could Ontarians ask for?

At noon today hundreds of angry taxpayers were here to tell you and the Treasurer and your party what they thought of your $2-billion tax grab. Over 55,000 have written to the Toronto Sun to tell you that they cannot afford high-taxing government. Equally important is this message: Even those who could in the short term afford higher taxes are telling you that if they can keep the $2 billion -- the families, the individuals, the companies -- they can, with that money, create many more jobs than you can.

If you agree with me that job creation in this province is the number one priority, if you agree with that, why will you not let families, consumers, businesses, the private sector, keep their $2 billion so they can create the jobs we need in this province?

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Hon Bob Rae (Premier): If I may say so, I think there was a government that took the kind of position that the leader of the third party, in his now coalition with a well-known Toronto newspaper, is putting forward. That was the position that was taken in the United States in the 1980s.

We are now looking at having to pay for the deficits that were caused by that kind of approach. If you look at the inherited $4-trillion deficit problem which the United States is wrestling with, together with the situation we face following the example of the federal government in Ottawa, which I assume the member, as he was such an active member of the convention this weekend, was a very strong supporter of, I think we've seen that.

The hard reality is that as we see it, and we call them as we see them, we don't see a way of dealing with the extent of the deficit problem in this province, or indeed nationally, without addressing the revenue side and without addressing the issue of taxes. You may disagree with that, and the easy medicine, the soft medicine, the way you say it --

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Could the Premier conclude his response, please.

Hon Mr Rae: -- is: "No problem. Just do it all with attrition and that will solve your entire problem. No need to do anything else." I don't think that has quite the credibility that's necessary to deal with the extent of the tough problem we face.

Mr Harris: I will form coalitions with any and all who are concerned that this, one of the most highly taxed jurisdictions in the whole world, is uncompetitive because of the last eight years of overtaxing and overspending. Any who will join that fight are on my team, and I'll join their team.

This Ontario government, not just you, has reached into the pockets of working men and women in this province too many times. Our problem is not the same as the United States. We've got a spending problem of a magnitude unparalleled almost in any country in the world, a spending problem, and we cannot continue to feed that appetite by hiking taxes.

You're right: There are no easy solutions. I've never said there were. But we can cut back on the massive increase in spending, the likes of which we've never seen, for the last eight years under liberal socialism in this province of Ontario.

These taxpayers are telling you that they will help you, will work with you, and I am telling you that I will work with you to cut $2 billion of your own spending instead of hiking it as you did in your budget and instead of hiking taxes. Will you listen to them now? Will you listen to the people who are asking you to cut your spending, not hike taxes?

Hon Mr Rae: It's interesting when you talk about taxes, because the Treasurer has just shared a very interesting chart with me. When you talk about people who are making less than $30,000, which is a very, very substantial number of people in the province, and you look at the taxes that we charge on those people, our taxes come in at 27.4, marginal rate. I know these aren't necessarily the people you were addressing on the front lawn: the people making less than $30,000. I think the audience was a slightly different audience out there. Nevertheless, New Brunswick, 28.1; Manitoba, 28.4; Saskatchewan, 29.1; Newfoundland, 29.2; Quebec, combined rate, 37.7. We're at 27.4.

So when you go around badmouthing the province the way you've been badmouthing this province, when you badmouth the competitiveness of this province, you explain that to the workers in Oshawa who competed against two of the top plants in the United States and beat the competition, because this is the best place to do business: We have the lower payroll taxes, we have a better health care system, we have a fairer attitude in relations between employers and employees, we have better productivity, we have a better attitude to training and we have competitive tax rates. And when it comes to people making less than $30,000, there are only two provinces that do better than us and there are seven provinces that are higher than we are.

So we're doing very well, and I think the honourable member ought to stand up and shout and be proud of this province rather than continually standing in his place and running it down as a place to do business. It's a good place to do business, and you know it.

Mr Harris: I'm always proud of this province. It's its Premier, its government that I badmouth every day, that the poverty groups out on the front lawn are badmouthing. They don't think your budget is fair, taxpayers don't think your budget is fair, public servants don't think your government is fair. You brought in a budget that taxed everyone over $20,000 a year; you gave them tax hikes.

Premier, let me read you excerpts from a letter from Brian Malcolm.

"Dear Mr Harris:

"Unable to attend the tax protest on June 17 because I'm trying to earn a living to pay the bloody taxes. I am with you. Please convey my message to the government of the day, who only received 38% of the popular vote, that they had no mandate to hike taxes.

"I hit the wall on taxes some time ago. I'm just a working stiff, one of the ones the NDP is supposed to protect, and they're stripping this province of its future. I fear my children will have to seek employment elsewhere.

"To keep my message short: Stop spending. Resign."

That's what they're saying. That's what they're saying about you.

Premier, I would ask you this: Given this, you obviously must realize that the people of Ontario don't trust you to spend their money wisely, that you have a very poor record, as does the government before you, as does the government before them, in taking people's money and spending it wisely.

Why, can you tell me, do you so distrust families and people in this province to spend their own money their own way? Why do you distrust them so much that you want to go into their pockets and take another $2 billion out?

Hon Mr Rae: Provincial taxes, as a percentage of GDP, are lower this year than they were two years ago when we took office. That's a fact which the honourable member can't deal with. In each one of your questions, you've talked about how, "You should stop spending." That's exactly, in many, many ministries and in countless examples, what we did.

You're the ones who set up the foreign offices; you had offices in all those countries. We're the ones who shut them down; we've closed them down. We've taken steps that your government had an opportunity to do time and time again and you never did them. We're doing them, but we're also determined to maintain the social fabric, to maintain good housing programs, which you want to do away with, to maintain a public responsibility for child care, which you want to do away with. I don't want to slash and burn housing programs and child care programs. We want to maintain those.

We have competitive, fair tax rates for people in the province; you compare us with everywhere else.

I come back to the central point. You consistently misrepresent, in a most unfair way, what is going on in Ontario in a way, I can only say to the honourable member, that it's not simply that you're attacking the government, you consistently run down the province of Ontario, and that's something I can say, as Premier, I will never, never do.

Mr Harris: Maybe I'll get better answers next week from the new leader coming out of Gananoque, I don't know. But I'll try anyway: It might be my last opportunity, so I'm going to go to the current Premier.

Interjection.

Mr Harris: Are you running? Is that what you're telling us? Are you starting to campaign today? "Gordy for Premier."

My question is to the Premier. Earlier this week, you were quoted as saying you would not meet with the new Prime Minister designate on economic issues because she had not yet won a mandate from the people.

Well, the electors who voted for you did not give you a mandate to hike taxes, to date, by over $4 billion. They did not give you a mandate -- $1 billion increase in the first budget, $1 billion in the second, $2 billion in this -- to hike taxes over the already record tax hikes that the Liberals had given us. They didn't give you a mandate to double the provincial debt. They didn't give you a mandate, after the Liberals left us with the biggest deficit in the history of the province for any one year, to triple that deficit, and yet this is what you have done in your first two years in office.

Nothing you've done resembles the Agenda for --

Interjections.

The Speaker: Would the leader take his seat, please. I can't hear what he's saying.

Interjections.

The Speaker: Could the leader complete his question, please.

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Mr Harris: Given that your agenda that you campaigned on is totally different from the agenda that you brought in and it's changed so much and you've changed your mind, wouldn't you agree with me that the voters of Ontario should be given a second opportunity to vote on this budget?

Hon Mr Rae: The answer to that question is no.

Mr Harris: Later today I will be introducing legislation that will allow voters to petition for a referendum on a provincial budget.

When you came into office, here's what you said in your first throne speech --

Interjections.

The Speaker: Order.

Mr Harris: Look at that. It would be terrible if we had democracy and the voters had a say.

November 1990 in your throne speech, here's what you said, that you would be a government that will listen to the people and respond to their needs to the best of its ability. Will you live up to your commitment? Will you listen to the people? Will you support my referendum legislation that I'm bringing in today?

Hon Mr Rae: I've had some experience with referendums. I would say to the honourable member, first of all -- I'm interested that somebody who believes in such strong, stringent control of the budget -- the referendum we had on the Constitution cost tens and tens of millions of dollars.

The second point I'd make is, look at the Tory approach to their ballot on the question. Look at the question that they put. The question would be, do you want to have it all and not have to pay for it and vote for Mike Harris, the Mike-Harris-have-it-all-and-don't-have-to-pay-now, don't-pay-later plan, or do you support the vicious, mean policies of the Rob Rae NDP government which will come in and grab all kinds of money out of your pocket? Which would you pick?

Hon Mr Laughren: Some referendum.

Hon Mr Rae: That's some referendum. The ballots that are piled up there in your laundry bags give some clear indication as to the real credibility behind the question.

Mr Noble Villeneuve (S-D-G & East Grenville): Sounds pretty fair to me.

Hon Mr Rae: Sounds pretty fair. The member from Stormont-Dundas-Glengarry says it sounds good to him. That's my point: You've got to deal with this situation in a realistic way. Governments have to bring in tough budgets and that's the way it is. I didn't see you standing up and demanding a referendum on the GST. I didn't see you standing up and demanding a referendum on Mulroney. I haven't seen you do that.

Mr Harris: You bring something forward you campaigned on and I'll say maybe you have a mandate. Nothing you're bringing forward in this budget is anything like the Agenda for People or what you campaigned on. My caucus has consistently endorsed the idea of referendum legislation. The member from York Mills currently has a bill before the House for the second time. The member for Leeds-Grenville introduced referendum legislation in 1987, six years ago. I introduced a bill in 1991.

Premier, we work for the taxpayers. My referendum legislation will let you set the question. If you want to have a different kind of ballot, we're ready for that kind of ballot too. Let's ask them the big question. If you want to ask them the big question, we're ready for that too. But this legislation lets you all keep your cosy jobs for another two years and it simply allows the people to have an opportunity to say, "Go back to the drawing board and redo that budget." I would ask you, will you support the referendum bill we are presenting today, which simply allows the taxpayers and allows the voters to pass judgement on your budget?

Hon Mr Rae: I can understand how agitated the member is. I've found that he's never really recovered since he was turned down for the lead part in Jurassic Park.

I want to say directly to the honourable member as clearly as I can that the approach he's taking to public policy is not an approach that will withstand --

Interjection.

The Speaker: Order. The member for Etobicoke West.

Hon Mr Rae: -- serious scrutiny. This government has taken some tough decisions. We've also done so many things that we talked about during the last election campaign, so many things that we campaigned on that you were opposed to. We will deal with them in the Legislature; we will deal with them under the rules of Parliament; we will deal with them as a parliamentary democracy.

That's the way we're going to deal with it, and we will then go to the people at the conclusion of our term and be elected or defeated by the public. That's the parliamentary way; that's the democratic way.

The kind of cheap and easy way that you're referring to and the kind of facile way you're referring to to deal with public policy, no realistic government in the province or in Canada would adopt that kind of a policy. Nobody would take that seriously for a moment, except in search of a cheap headline.

PUBLIC OPINION POLLS

Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines): I have a question for the Premier. I have dealt with this issue with the Premier on a number of different occasions in the hope that he would mend his ways or at least go back to his original philosophy on this matter.

I asked that our staff in the official opposition file a request under the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act to find out how much polling the government is doing with the taxpayers' dollars, because I can well remember when the Premier used to denounce previous governments for spending money on polls and of course not sharing it with the opposition.

I ask the Premier this: In view of the fact that the Premier is tearing up the contracts of public service workers, in view of the fact that the Premier is ordering cuts in essential services in the province of Ontario because of the dire economic circumstances facing the province of Ontario, and people generally agree that the Premier has to engage in restraint, how can the Premier possibly justify blowing over $1 million on polls to tell him what he and his government should think?

Hon Bob Rae (Premier): Mr Speaker, I'll refer that to the Chairman of Management Board.

Hon Brian A. Charlton (Chair of the Management Board of Cabinet): The member opposite is correct; I myself heard him raise this question in the House a number of times. It's interesting when you look at questions like this and look back over your shoulder at what's been spent on polling in the past and the kinds of things that money for polling has been spent on.

As we go through significant downsizing in the public sector, as we go through the reorganization of ministries and as we go through looking for different ways to deliver services, consultation with the public is an extremely important part of that process. I should point out to the member who raises the question that the cheapest consultation we can do with the public is the kind of very polling that he refers to.

Mr Bradley: I find that so difficult to believe from a party that was so sanctimonious on this issue. I happened to agree with them in years gone by when they took that position and I thought that when they were elected they would translate their principles into action, but they haven't.

The question I come back to with the Chair of Management Board is this question: Recognizing the very difficult economic circumstances we face in the province, recognizing that you're asking the public service to take cuts in their salaries and that you want to tamper with their pensions, recognizing that you're asking the people of Ontario to have essential services cut because of the economic circumstances, would the minister and would the Premier, because the Premier can whisper an answer to you, not agree that your credibility in dealing with the public service, in dealing with the municipalities, in dealing with all of the people who will be experiencing these cuts would be increased considerably if you would quit squandering money on polls to tell you what you think?

1440

Hon Mr Charlton: Again, the member's question is an interesting one, but it's only interesting because of the kinds of polling that the Liberal government used to do in this province, polling that was exclusively focused on gauging political attitudes out there.

This government has done three rounds of polling over the past two and a half years almost entirely focused on customer service attitudes. The customer service attitudes that are being pursued are issues about finding out how to deliver the services that the public wants in a more efficient way, in a way that's acceptable to them, and it's part of the process of dealing --

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): The member for Oriole.

Hon Mr Charlton: -- with the very questions the member raises.

The Speaker: New question, the member for Mississauga South.

Interjections.

The Speaker: The member for Oriole, please come to order.

ONTARIO FILM REVIEW BOARD

Mrs Margaret Marland (Mississauga South): My question is for the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations. In response to a petition tabled in April of this year, this minister said, "It is the policy of the Ontario Film Review Board not to approve films with sexually explicit scenes that degrade or humiliate women, depict brutal violence with sexual overtones, involve the sexual exploitation of children or depict bestiality or necrophilia."

I have learned that the Ontario Film Review Board has approved sex films depicting necrophilia and incest. As well, many slasher films that show brutal violence against women in a sexually suggestive context have also been approved. Minister, how do you explain the contradiction between your statement and the decisions being made by your Ontario Film Review Board?

Hon Marilyn Churley (Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations): I certainly have no evidence that the film review board has been classifying films of the nature that the member described. I would be interested if she would provide me with that information so I would know what she's talking about.

In regard to the slasher films, she's already raised that issue before in the House, and I explained that most of the slasher films she was talking about pre-date the formation of the film review board. We've had several conversations about that and I think she understands the issue. But please get me the information and I'll look into it.

Mrs Marland: You seem to forget, you're the minister responsible for the Ontario Film Review Board. I'm not going to do your homework. You should know what's going on in this province today, and if you don't know what's going on in this province today, maybe you'd like to speak to the Mahaffy, the French or the de Villiers families. Then perhaps you might understand why this question is important, instead of sitting down and smiling as though it's humorous.

Tomorrow, the Ontario Film Review Board will meet to discuss changes to the board's guidelines so that adult sex films can show bondage, the insertion of foreign objects and ejaculation on the face. You can imagine how hard it is to stand in this House and say that, but it has to be said for you to understand what it is we're talking about and what it is we're concerned about.

The chair of the Ontario Film Review Board has received letters opposing these changes from such groups as the Canadian Federation of University Women and the Coalition for the Safety of Our Daughters. Also, many, many municipalities have passed resolutions to eliminate triple X videos.

The Ontario Film Review Board's guideline for adult sex films do not reflect community standards, yet the chair of the Ontario Film Review Board said, "I will always err with anti-censorship before I err with fascists." I would suggest that the quote by the chair of the Ontario Film Review Board implies that anyone who disagrees with the board's approval policies is a fascist.

Minister, my final question again to you is, will you ensure that the Ontario Film Review Board's guidelines do reflect community standards and comply with the statements that you have made in response to petitions against violence and degradation of women and slasher films?

Hon Ms Churley: I'm happy to answer the question. I am aware that the policy committee was making some recommendations to the full board, and in fact no such decision has been made. It will be considered at a future board meeting, I believe tomorrow, but this has not been passed, by any means.

As I've said before, the board is made up of a diverse group of people from all over Ontario who represent all kinds of views, and it's up to them to sit down and talk through and come to conclusions about what should be classified and what shouldn't, and that's what they're doing. But I want to assure the member that I, too, am very concerned about the issues around violence against women and have expressed those views to the board and will continue to do so.

ARTS AND CULTURAL FUNDING

Mr Donald Abel (Wentworth North): My question is to the Minister of Culture, Tourism and Recreation. Madam Minister, in my riding of Wentworth North, I have several library boards, heritage boards, parks boards and others that greatly depend on grants from your ministry. In fact, the very existence of some of these boards depends solely on grants from your ministry.

Members of these boards are, as most Ontarians are, fully aware of the tight financial restraints faced by this government, and this creates a great deal of fear as to how the current financial situation is going to affect them.

Madam Minister, what do I tell the members of the Dundas Public Library board, the Ancaster Historical Society, the Flamborough Heritage Society, the parks boards and the community information centres in Wentworth North?

Hon Anne Swarbrick (Minister of Culture, Tourism and Recreation): I appreciate that there are many groups and communities across this province who are interested in the questions that the member has asked, so I appreciate the opportunity to respond.

The concept of people who are most in need being protected is exactly the fundamental principle our government has applied in its recent round of expenditure controls. On the issue of libraries, I'll start with that first, the members of the government's caucus tremendously recognize the value of libraries in communities, and so for that reason would not hear of any cuts to the per household grants to libraries. I'm happy to say that we have fully protected per household grants to libraries.

Libraries are also entitled to project grants under my ministry. We have, of course, with expenditure targets to meet, had to make some cuts in the project grants, from a total of what used to be $2.9 million to $1.9 million this year. I should say, though, that libraries are very much an important part of the provincial information system in this province, and for that reason, my ministry has assured them that we'll be working with them to help them access telecommunications funds that are now available through our government's new telecommunications strategy.

With regard to the impact on libraries of municipal cuts, the members of the House will remember that the Minister of Municipal Affairs has announced that --

The Speaker: Will the minister conclude her response, please.

Hon Ms Swarbrick: -- the unconditional grants to municipalities will be cut by no more than 3% of a municipality's operating grant. I know in North York, for instance, it's 0.46%. Libraries therefore --

The Speaker: Will the minister please conclude her response.

Hon Ms Swarbrick: -- I believe to be quite well protected from any cuts from this government to the municipalities because they are not of the degree that would adversely affect libraries.

The Speaker: Will the minister take her seat. Supplementary.

Mr Abel: I still don't have my complete answer to the question --

Interjections.

The Speaker: Order. The member for York Centre, please come to order. The member for Wentworth North is entitled to a supplementary. Will the member place his question, please.

Mr Abel: This happens to be a very important issue in my riding.

I still would like to know, Madam Minister, what I would tell the historical societies, parks boards and, most importantly, the community information centres in my riding.

Hon Ms Swarbrick: The heritage boards and historic societies etc are eligible for the project funding under my Ministry of Culture heritage project grants. That fund used to amount to $7.4 million. As a result of our cuts, we've been able to maintain a $4.8-million pool for them. The criteria are now being worked out to make sure that again we're able to provide that funding to those community groups that most need it. The issue of job creation and job maintenance, of course, will be an essential part of those criteria.

In terms of parks boards, they'd be most interested, of course, in the recreational grants funding. That has been sustained from $12.2 million down to $8.4 million, but again, with those kinds of criteria now being developed to protect those most in need.

The Speaker: Could the minister conclude her response, please.

Hon Ms Swarbrick: As the member has asked, community information centres funding of $1.1 million in base funding which we initiated last year is protected, as are the project grants to them.

That leaves probably one area uncovered, but if I'm out of time, I'll sit down.

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ONTARIO FILM REVIEW BOARD

Ms Dianne Poole (Eglinton): My question is for the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations. Concerns continue to be raised in this Legislature as to whether the Ontario Film Review Board is protecting the interests of women and children in this province. Recent actions by your government have only increased our concerns.

It was Wendy Priesnitz, a board member appointed by the NDP government, who recently tried to push through that motion at the OFRB recommending that the board allow adult sex videos, bondage, the insertion of foreign objects, double penetration and ejaculation on the face. This is absolutely unbelievable, but minister, it is your government which is now attempting to have that same Wendy Priesnitz appointed as vice-chair of the OFRB. Yes, the very person who's at the centre of this storm of controversy.

Minister, will you withdraw your unfortunate recommendation that Ms Priesnitz be appointed vice-chair of the OFRB?

Hon Marilyn Churley (Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations): The board has a number of co-chairs or vice-chairs. The way it works is that there are a number of board members, and it's divided up into three panels with a vice-chair on each one. So there are a number, and it's not restricted to a specific number. The right number is the number that it takes to do the job. There are quite a few vice-chairs.

Mr Gregory S. Sorbara (York Centre): You support her? Wake up.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Order, the member for York Centre.

Hon Ms Churley: I would say to the member that my understanding of the discussion around the policy changes is that there has been no final determination by the full board and that this is just one recommendation of several that are being made by the full board, which the full board will make a decision on.

They certainly are aware of my concerns around violence against women in general and particularly gratuitous violence that really contributes to violence against women. But overall there is a vast variety of opinions on these issues at the board.

Ms Poole: This minister constantly claims that it is an independent board and that she can't intervene. What the minister doesn't say is that her staff spent two hours personally coaching Ms Priesnitz in her office before she was to go for that appointment. That is true and we have the name of your assistant who did the coaching.

What the minister also doesn't say is that the public appointments secretariat in the Office of the Premier lied about the qualifications of Ms Priesnitz and what the status was. In what they provided to the committee, they said that with the expiry of other appointments, a vacancy for the position of vice-chair was available. The board right now has five vice-chairs. That is the most it's ever had in its history and there are no vacancies. The Office of the Premier also said that Wendy Priesnitz has been a member of the Ontario Film Review Board for one year. She spent most of that year in Romania. She hasn't got the experience on the board and she is not qualified to be a vice-chair.

Why don't you admit that this is part of your no censorship at any cost program and why don't you withdraw this terrible appointment?

Hon Ms Churley: The statements that the member, I regret to say, is making are totally ridiculous and not factual information. If I'm to be attacked on these things, I would wish that the members would have factual information. As I said, there are no set members to be vice-chairs. Each panel has to have vice-chairs. There are a number of vacancies coming up.

Ms Poole: He said there was a vacancy. There are no vacancies.

Interjections.

The Speaker: Order, the member for Eglinton.

Hon Ms Churley: Please listen to my answer. It's important that you know the facts.

There are a number of vacancies coming up over the summer. We need some new vice-chairs to sit on those panels. That's the fact of the matter and I'll be happy to get you more information on that.

With regard to my staff meeting with Ms Priesnitz --

Interjections.

The Speaker: Order, the member for Eglinton.

Hon Ms Churley: -- it is not unusual for my staff to meet with our appointees for many of the boards and commissions that we appoint people to. Going before a government standing committee can be a very harrowing experience.

Mrs Elinor Caplan (Oriole): You have no credibility on this. Revoke the appointment. Resign.

Interjections.

The Speaker: Order, the member for Oriole.

Hon Ms Churley: -- and it is very common practice to sit down --

Interjections.

Hon Ms Churley: To wrap up, it's very common for us to meet with appointees --

Interjections.

The Speaker: Order, the member for Oriole.

Hon Ms Churley: -- who are being appointed to boards and commissions so that we can explain the process to them. It hasn't been restricted to this one woman. My staff has met with many appointees.

HIGHWAY TOLLS

Mr David Turnbull (York Mills): My question is to the Minister of Transportation. What will the revenue generated by toll roads, as set out in Bill 17, be used for?

Interjections.

Hon Gilles Pouliot (Minister of Transportation): With the highest of respect to the member opposite, I find it extremely difficult --

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Order.

Hon Mr Pouliot: -- when I'm constantly being interrupted by another distinguished colleague, the member for Mississauga. Would you kindly repeat the question so I can give you the answer that you so rightly deserve?

The Speaker: The House would come to order first.

Mr Turnbull: I asked what the revenue generated by Bill 17 from toll roads would be used for.

Hon Mr Pouliot: When we talk about the new concept of toll roads, the intent is to dedicate the revenues from toll roads, which we propose be in place by 1996. It will be a dedicated amount and go directly to pay for the cost of the roads and hopefully a fairly substantial portion thereof.

Mr Turnbull: In the February announcement by the minister with respect to this bill, he made certain criteria. He said that "toll systems should be used on new roads only and that tolls intended to accelerate road construction and not finance road maintenance" -- I emphasize "not finance road maintenance."

To the minister, I would say I'm just reading from your bill. Under subsection 47(2), it says, "Subject to the approval of the Lieutenant Governor in Council, the corporation may make regulations designating any highway as a toll highway."

My question to you is very simple. Is your government incapable of drafting legislation which reflects the criteria that you set out, or is there a hidden agenda?

Hon Mr Pouliot: It's obvious that my friend opposite needs help, and I'm here to try to get him back on the road, because obviously there are a great deal of difficulties once you hit the soft shoulders.

The purpose of tolls is to offer people a choice, offer an alternative, help alleviate the traffic, the congestion of the 401, which is incidentally, as you well know and you can appreciate, 350,000 vehicles per day, the second busiest in North America. It's being oversubscribed, overcapacitated, so we're building the 407.

In order to involve the free enterprise system, in order to do it faster -- because at the rate of construction that we have set forth, Highway 407 would see its completion in 2035. Well, we can't wait that long. We can't wait to be in our 25th term of office, so what we're doing is getting everyone involved and we're accelerating construction, and tolls will allow us to do this.

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MUNICIPAL PLANNING

Mr Noel Duignan (Halton North): My question is to the Minister of Municipal Affairs. Planning and development issues seem to mobilize public opinion more than any other issues in my riding and I guess in most other ridings throughout Ontario. I'm constantly asked for help by constituents who are frustrated with the current planning process. Concerns about development in my riding vary widely, but there's a common theme running through them all. Citizens feel strongly there is not enough public consultation and involvement in the making of decisions that affect their lives. They demand much stronger protection and enhancement of the quality and the integrity of the air, water and land resources. Will the minister explain to the House how he intends to deal with this report from the Sewell commission?

Hon Ed Philip (Minister of Municipal Affairs): The commission released its draft report in December. Since then it has had some 17 public forums across the province. The public consultation process was unprecedented in terms of its scale and the number of people it was able to hear. The final report I expect will be released very soon and will contain in fact a number of changes based on the input that the commissioners have had. As a matter of fact, the commission has scheduled a press conference for Monday, June 21, to release the final report. When we receive that report, my staff and I will be reviewing it. We will be making recommendations to our cabinet, including recommendations for further consultation as needed. I can tell you that the existing policies will not be changed until we've had that consultation.

Mr Duignan: The commission has been developing a set of goals and policies that are intended to give a clear direction to governments and their staff for carrying out the responsibilities under the Planning Act. These goals and policies have so far included protection of the environment and cultural heritage, recognition of social needs, promotion of intensification, protection of agricultural areas, pursuit of energy and water conservation. Can the minister assure us that there will be an attempt to ensure that the principles of the Sewell report will be taken into account when the Minister of Municipal Affairs begins his revision of the Planning Act?

Hon Mr Philip: Yes, I can assure the member that will happen.

Mr Steven Offer (Mississauga North): We can hardly see your straight face.

Hon Mr Philip: I'm sure that Mr Offer, who has somebody acting as his ventriloquist right now, is pleased with that.

The commission's final report set out its proposals for a new planning system and a comprehensive set of provincial policies. After the commission submits its final report, the cabinet will review the recommendations and decide on the implementation of the report. The principles recommended in the commission's report will be a major consideration in any revisions to the Planning Act which we will be making.

Recent land use planning initiatives of the government included the work of the provincial facilitator's office. We're moving in the direction of implementing the commission's report, the cabinet-approved growth and settlement policy guidelines released last September, and the proposed revisions to the Planning Act that were introduced two weeks ago as part of the bill which I introduced.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Would the minister conclude his response, please.

Hon Mr Philip: All of this is part of a comprehensive package to be sensitive to the public and to speed up the process.

The Speaker: The time for oral questions has expired.

Ms Dianne Poole (Eglinton): On a point of privilege, Mr Speaker: I refer to section 21(a) of the standing orders, which refers to points of privilege. It is extremely important to me, for my credibility in this Legislature, that ministers not make false statements about what I have provided as information. I have here a document which was sent out by the Ontario Film Review Board this very week, which does not even list Wendy Priesnitz as a member. That's how much experience this particular member has, that they don't even have her on their list. I would like an apology from the minister.

The Speaker: The member will know that she does not have a point of privilege. Members may rise to correct their own record, but not someone else's.

Mr Robert V. Callahan (Brampton South): No, she is saying she misled the House.

The Speaker: The member knows that he cannot use unparliamentary language.

Mr Steven Offer (Mississauga North): What is parliamentary language?

The Speaker: You may not accuse another member of misleading the House. Not the member for Eglinton; the member for Brampton South, who is not in his rightful place.

Mr Callahan: I will go back to my rightful place.

The Speaker: Yes, and then withdraw the remark. Thank you.

Motions. I'm sorry, did the minister wish to respond?

Hon Marilyn Churley (Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations): Ms Priesnitz has been a board member for well over a year. I just want to clarify that to the member.

The Speaker: That is a matter of discussion and quite properly belongs during oral questions.

PETITIONS

PUBLIC SERVICES

Mrs Joan M. Fawcett (Northumberland): I have a petition to the Honourable Lieutenant Governor and the Legislative Assembly of Ontario.

"We, the following undersigned citizens of Northumberland, beg leave to petition the Parliament of Ontario as follows:

"We, the undersigned, call on the Ontario government to maintain and improve our public services. Public services are vital to our communities and our way of life. We can't afford to lose them."

I have signed the petition.

INTRODUCTION OF BILLS

LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY RETIREMENT ALLOWANCES AMENDMENT ACT, 1993 / LOI DE 1993 MODIFIANT LA LOI SUR LES ALLOCATIONS DE RETRAITE DES DÉPUTÉS À L'ASSEMBLÉE LÉGISLATIVE

On motion by Mr Kormos, the following bill was given first reading:

Bill 53, An Act to amend the Legislative Assembly Retirement Allowances Act / Loi modifiant la Loi sur les allocations de retraite des députés à l'Assemblée législative.

Mr Peter Kormos (Welland-Thorold): This bill today amends the Legislative Assembly Allowance Act by providing that members retiring on or after January 1, 1993, would not be entitled to be paid their pension until they attained the age of 60. If a member dies on or after the day on which the bill become law and leaves a surviving spouse, the spouse would not be entitled to be paid survivor pension benefits until the day on which the member would have attained the age of 60 had he or she lived. However, if such a member leaves a surviving child or children but no spouse, the children would still be entitled to an immediate survivor benefit.

BUDGET REFERENDUM ACT, 1993 / LOI DE 1993 SUR LES RÉFÉRENDUMS PORTANT SUR LES BUDGETS

On motion by Mr Harris, the following bill was introduced for first reading:

Bill 54, An Act requiring Referendums on the Budgetary Policy of the Government of Ontario / Loi exigeant la tenue de référendums sur la politique budgétaire du gouvernement de l'Ontario.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry? No?

All those in favour of the introduction of the bill will please say "aye."

All those opposed will please say "nay."

In my opinion, the ayes have it.

I declare the motion carried.

Mr Michael D. Harris (Nipissing): This bill will allow some of these petitions to be delivered to the electoral officer if it's passed. It's to provide that after any budget, if 5% of eligible voters petition the election expenses officer to hold a referendum on the budget, and should 50% of the eligible voters vote and 60% of them vote in favour of a review, it requires the government to go back and bring a new budget forward. It's not a confidence vote; just a little say in direct democracy. I encourage the government to allow it to come forward as soon as possible.

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ORDERS OF THE DAY

SOCIAL CONTRACT ACT, 1993 / LOI DE 1993 SUR LE CONTRAT SOCIAL

Mr Laughren moved second reading of Bill 48, An Act to encourage negotiated settlements in the public sector to preserve jobs and services while managing reductions in expenditures and to provide for certain matters related to the Government's expenditure reduction program / Loi visant à favoriser la négociation d'accords dans le secteur public de façon à protéger les emplois et les services tout en réduisant les dépenses et traitant de certaines questions relatives au programme de réduction des dépenses du gouvernement.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Does the minister have any opening remarks?

Hon Floyd Laughren (Minister of Finance): Yes indeed, Mr Speaker. I did want to make a few remarks on the introduction of Bill 48, the Social Contract Act, 1993.

This piece of legislation is vitally important to Ontario. It will enable us to protect public service jobs; it will enable us to preserve priority public services that promote a high quality of life; it will encourage public sector employers and employees to work together to find solutions to our fiscal challenges, and it will help us to save $2 billion a year in savings for each of the next three years. That will help us slow down the growth in Ontario's debt and enable this province to continue investing in jobs and people and services in the years to come.

It means we are dealing with Ontario's problems rather than running and hiding from them the way the Liberals did when they were in office in this province.

Interjections.

The Acting Speaker (Mr Dennis Drainville): Order.

Hon Mr Laughren: This bill will also help us ensure fairness as we undertake restructuring in the public sector. The legislation sets out certain parameters for the parties to work within. It protects low-income employees. It protects pay equity. It provides income protection and extended redeployment and retraining benefits for any laid-off workers. It encourages successful negotiations by offering a reduced target for those who can reach an agreement that follows the principles outlined above.

The bill also safeguards jobs and services by placing time lines on the parties for negotiations and by providing a plan of action should local or sectoral agreements not be reached by August 1.

Bill 48 honours the process of negotiation by allowing six more weeks of talks. At the same time, it protects our priorities of jobs and services by laying out a plan of action to safeguard these things. The bill also represents a serious effort by the government to ensure that its deficit target is met.

Interjections.

The Acting Speaker: Order.

Hon Mr Laughren: I know the Liberals don't want any solutions to Ontario's problems. They just want to tax and spend, and we're not going to do that.

This piece of legislation is part of the government's three-pronged plan to control the deficit so that we can continue investing in jobs and services. We have already announced $4 billion in savings through the expenditure control plan. We have already announced how we will raise revenue this year through a combination of tax, non-tax revenues and asset sales that will amount to over $2 billion.

Mr Gregory S. Sorbara (York Centre): Remember Alberta? No New Democratic Party.

Hon Mr Laughren: Mr Speaker, are you going to allow the Liberals to permit me to talk or are you going to allow them to heckle all afternoon?

The Acting Speaker: I would say to the honourable member for York Centre that I've said "Order" a number of times. Obviously the Minister of Finance has the floor, and I would ask the honourable member not to interject and to allow him to make his statement.

Mr Sorbara: I would just say, Mr Speaker, if the Minister of Finance wants to deliver his speech in the Parliament, that's fine, but --

The Acting Speaker: The honourable member will not make any statement because it's not his position to make a statement. I would ask the honourable minister to continue his comments.

Hon Mr Laughren: He still hasn't got over the fact that he's no longer in government and never will be again. That's his problem.

Mr Sorbara: Two terms, Floyd. You're going to have one.

Hon Mr Laughren: Mr Speaker, are you going to control the member from York Centre from mouthing off all afternoon?

The Acting Speaker: I would say to the honourable members on all sides of the House that this is obviously a contentious issue. If we could allow those who have the opportunity to speak an opportunity to speak, that's the way it should be done in this House. I'd ask the honourable minister to continue his remarks.

Hon Mr Laughren: I'll try once again, but if the member from York Centre is just going to mouth off, it's going to be very difficult to introduce the second reading of this bill.

Mr Steven W. Mahoney (Mississauga West): Knock it off, Floyd, and give us our information.

Hon Mr Laughren: Well, he's just one big mouth.

This bill to reduce public sector compensation by $2 billion is the final part of our budget plan and it is a necessary part. I've assigned each of the eight sectors a spending reduction target based on its share of the total public sector wage bill. Effective July 1 this year, we will reduce transfer payments to employers in these sectors according to their targets. The bill gives the parties, government, employers and bargaining agents until August 1 to negotiate compensation measures in order to meet their new targets.

Interjection.

Hon Mr Laughren: Is the member from York Centre going to continue to mouth off all afternoon or is he going to let me continue to speak? I'd ask a ruling from you, Mr Speaker.

The Acting Speaker: I would say to the honourable minister that there are always interjections on all sides of the House, it seems to me. I would say to the honourable minister --

Interjections.

The Acting Speaker: I would ask the honourable member just to be seated for a moment. There's no question that there should be respect for all members who have the floor in this House. Obviously, the honourable Minister of Finance has the floor. I would ask him to take the floor and I would ask other members not to interject.

Hon Mr Laughren: Each agreement, whether sectoral or local, must live up to the principles outlined in Bill 48; that is, fair and equal treatment of employees, exemption for those earning less than $30,000, and enhanced redeployment and retraining opportunities for laid-off workers. Within this framework, the parties have the flexibility to use creative ways to find their reduction targets.

The incentive for employees to negotiate an agreement before August 1 is access to the job security fund. The incentive for employers to negotiate an agreement is a reduced savings target of 20%. This incentive will be offset, if necessary, by lower unfunded liability payments to the public sector pension funds. Pension benefits will not be decreased. By reaching the agreement before the deadline, both parties can avoid the fail-safe provision.

This provision, which comes into effect August 1 if the parties don't manage to reach an agreement, guarantees the government its $2 billion while minimizing the impact of the reductions on public sector jobs and services.

Interjection.

The Acting Speaker: Order. I'm going to say to the honourable member for York Centre right now that his continual interjections, regardless of my requests for him to comply, are totally unacceptable. I would ask the honourable member to please refrain from that, and if the honourable member doesn't refrain from that, he's going to have to leave this House for the day. I ask you to please allow the honourable minister to make his statement.

Hon Mr Laughren: The fail-safe allows employers to freeze wage increases until March 31, 1996. If that is not enough to meet their target, then employers can require employees to take up to 12 days a year of unpaid leave.

This government believes that restructuring in the public sector must be based on the principles of fairness, supporting priority services and protecting jobs. At the same time, we recognize that the principle of collective bargaining should be honoured. This bill steers a very difficult course between these principles of respecting bargaining on one hand and securing jobs and services and fairness on the other hand. That's why we've allowed another six weeks for employers and employees to work out ways to reach their targets. This is in addition to the eight weeks we gave them during the first round of talks. These moves respect bargaining, but in the end we must secure the principles of jobs, services and fairness. That's why we introduced the fail-safe for August 1. It is the only way we know of to save the $2 billion while still protecting public sector jobs and services.

We are the first government in Canada to attempt such a far-reaching social contract. Despite some setbacks, we continue to believe this is a worthwhile process. We also believe that the proposals we made at the original set of negotiations were fair and progressive. That is why we have maintained many of the principles of the social contract in this bill, Bill 48. I remain quite hopeful that numerous agreements on a sectoral and local level can be successfully concluded.

In conclusion, I would just say that this government is attempting to deal with this expenditure problem, unlike the predecessor government, the Liberals, who spent in a totally out-of-control fashion during the 1980s, which got us into the mess we're in now. We are dealing with the problem, and we're going to put this province on a sound financial footing regardless of the fact that the official opposition has no alternative, nothing but complaints, and denies its role in the problems that we have to deal with today.

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Mr Sorbara: It just blows the mind to imagine that this Minister of Finance, who a few short years ago in this Legislature was one of the great defenders of civil rights and the rights of workers to organize and bargain collectively, could be sponsoring a bill which basically suspends and poisons collective bargaining in the public sector for purposes that amount to a $2-billion saving in one year.

Is that the price for him of collective bargaining? Is that the price for him of the civil rights that people have fought and worked for over a course of 50 years?

His bill will not survive. Even if it is forced through this Legislature, the people of this province, when they actually analyse it and see that instead of simply dealing with the wage issue, the Minister of Finance has suspended collective bargaining in Ontario, the Minister of Finance has curtailed or removed the typical right of a worker to participate through a trade union in issues relating to his workplace -- all of that is gone by the Minister of Finance, who replaces collective bargaining with arbitrary powers placed in his hands, where he can make decisions on behalf of 900,000 workers as to what he thinks is right or wrong in Ontario. The truth is that over the past three years it's not the workers who have been wrong but the Minister of Finance who has been wrong.

He says that this is all due to overspending by the Liberals during 1985 to 1990. I remember Floyd Laughren, then a simple member of the opposition, referring to every single sector in this province as being underfunded and demands from Floyd Laughren to spend more money in our colleges, to spend more money in our universities.

I say to the Minister of Finance that this bill shames him. It shames his party. It does not achieve the objectives that he wishes to achieve, and it will be a horrible legacy when his party and this government are finally defeated.

The Acting Speaker: Further questions and/or comments?

Mr Alvin Curling (Scarborough North): This kind of bill guts the heart of what the NDP stands for. I can't understand, as they sit there, that not one of those members would get up -- and I hope they will during this bill -- to speak against it.

I tell you, people out there are hurting, and they're hurting badly, to realize that 9,000 contracts have already been settled and that this socialist government, which at one time would have come down so heavily on the government of the day from 1985 to 1990 if we had ever tampered with collective bargaining agreements, now is the one getting in there and ripping apart these contracts.

Some of these members were begged and beseeched to run for positions when they couldn't find anyone to run, many of them from OPSEU and all the unions. They ran, and on the back of those unions they got in with that support. They turn around now and go to them to gut their contracts, to lay them off, to tamper with their vacation pay, to tamper with their pensions. The people will not forget after they have done a terrible job.

I know the honourable member so well, who is quite an honourable man, but the task he has today -- he was so wrong in his 1990 budget, so wrong in 1991, and when we told him he was going in the wrong direction, he said, "No way." Then he turned around and looked beyond 1990, and started to say, "It's the Liberal spending and mismanagement." They are the ones who mismanaged this budget so badly and now turn on those people who are struggling; not only to tax them heavily at the beginning, not only decide to promise them a whole lot of free tuition fees, but today you're going to take more out of the economy. It's a shame.

Mr David Turnbull (York Mills): On a point of order, Mr Speaker: It's obvious this government is so ashamed of this legislation that it doesn't even have a quorum in the House.

The Acting Speaker: I would ask the table, is there a quorum in the House?

Clerk Assistant and Clerk of Committees (Ms Deborah Deller): A quorum is not present, Speaker.

The Acting Speaker ordered the bells rung.

The Acting Speaker: Further questions and/or comments?

Mrs Barbara Sullivan (Halton Centre): I notice that noticeably absent from the Minister of Finance's remarks today was information that could elucidate the government's position with respect not only to changes that it will be making in the pension plans of public servants who are employed by this government but the effect on public service pensions in other sectors.

The government has assumed, and I think our leader made the point very well yesterday, that there will be $500 million of savings taken out of pensions twice, on two occasions, for two different purposes. Although the government has, we are told, calculated those pension savings at $500 million, we have seen and have heard from actuaries who say that in fact the Treasurer is placing the public sector pension plans at a far greater degree of risk than should be allowed and the people who will suffer from that are the pension holders. We heard the Treasurer say nothing about this.

There will be catch-up subsequent to the end of this social contract. The Treasurer spoke nothing about that and what kinds of additional pension changes would have to be made on a later occasion.

I am asking the Treasurer today if he will present to us, because he did not discuss this in his remarks, any actuarial studies that have been done. Bring them to the table and let's have the whole thing in the open so people know what will happen to them when it comes time for them to retire and to make changes in their own plans about their permanent and long-term life.

The Acting Speaker: Further questions and/or comments? Seeing none, the honourable member for Nickel Belt, you have two minutes to respond.

Hon Mr Laughren: I will be very brief. The member for York Centre should give no one a lecture on workers' rights, given what he did to workers when he was the Minister of Labour. However, putting that behind us --

Mr Mahoney: He isn't even here.

Hon Mr Laughren: I know he's not here. He yelled and shouted and then ran out of the chamber. I think we don't need any lectures from the member for York Centre on protecting workers' rights, given his record both in dealing with workers' compensation issues and health and safety issues.

I would say to the members of the assembly that it's true that respect for collective bargaining is something which most of us hold very dear. I can tell you that for me personally it was a very difficult choice whether or not to simply reduce transfers to our agencies out there by $2 billion, thereby not only causing 20,000 or 30,000 layoffs in the public sector, but jeopardizing, to a tremendous degree, services to the most vulnerable people out there. I can tell you that for me I came down on the side of protecting vulnerable people all across this province, because I don't believe that removing services at the community level is the appropriate thing to do when there's a 5% solution in public sector compensation. I believe what we've done is to steer a very difficult course between respecting the collective bargaining rights of employees and protecting services for vulnerable people all across this province.

That's not an easy choice to make, but I don't believe for a minute that the answer is what the Liberals are implying: to not reduce expenditures. I honestly don't know what they want any more. They say they want a lower deficit, but they don't want it to come out of public sector compensation, they're opposed to any kind of reduction in expenditures, they don't like the tax increases and they don't want a higher deficit.

The Acting Speaker: The honourable member's time has expired.

Hon Mr Laughren: I want to tell you, it is completely beyond me how they expect to have any credibility in this province whatsoever.

The Acting Speaker: Further debate?

Mr Mahoney: I don't know if I can say I'm delighted to rise to speak on this issue, because I'd really rather we weren't in the shape that we're in, that this Treasurer has put us in. The only answers we ever get to any of our questions that are raised or to any of our speeches or any of our comments or reactions is that they don't know what the Liberals want. I'll tell you something. We know what we want: We want you guys to come clean. We want you to tell the people of the province of Ontario what you're really doing to them.

I see some of the young people have left. I'm disappointed because I wanted to use an analogy that I see happening, although there are still a few folks here watching this. I see an analogy. We all know --

1530

Mr George Mammoliti (Yorkview): They did nothing for five years.

The Acting Speaker: Order.

Mr Mahoney: Mr Speaker, he doesn't bother me. Don't worry about it. I'm not quite as sensitive about this as the Treasurer. I can handle the heckling, but I appreciate your attempts to keep them under control.

I thought about a very recent event that's taking place and it's got to do with the new movie Jurassic Park. The Premier made reference to it earlier today in an answer, pointing to the leader of the third party in some kind of reference to his playing the lead role in that particular film. I'm assuming he was thinking of him as being a dinosaur.

I think Steven Spielberg missed the mark. I don't know how many of the young folks here have seen this wonderful movie. I've seen a lot of the clips and everything and it looks quite dramatic. He shouldn't have called it Jurassic Park, he should have called it Queen's Park.

I mean, it's quite clear to me. If you just follow me with the script, we have the Harrisaurus and the Torydectaurus. Here they are with all their simple-minded solutions of simply wiping out taxation, reducing the deficit, increasing services, all the simple-minded solutions of the Torydectaurus and Mr Harrisaurus; led by, on the government side -- follow me with this script -- the Laughren brontosaurus. The Laughren brontosaurus is a plant eater.

The thing that doesn't quite make it is that the brontosaurus in the movie has a long neck and he's able to eat the foliage from the tops of trees. So we'll have to stretch our imagination a little bit and say that this man, the Treasurer, the Minister of Finance, the brontosaurus of Ontario, a plant-eater stripping trees bare, this Treasurer is stripping the taxpayers bare with his increased taxes and with the regulatory burden.

I want to get to some of the regulatory items because we seem to focus on things like tax increases. It's the hidden damage this government does that is so frightening to the business community and, frankly, to the working people, men and women, of this province.

Then we go to the most unusual dinosaur of all in the movie Queen's Park. We go to the Bob Mackenzie stegosaurus. It had heavy armour covering his entire body, including a large plate like an arc around the head and shoulders. The purpose of this for the Bob Mackenzie stegosaurus is to give it complete protection from the outside.

Yesterday, Mr Speaker, you'll recall I asked a question of Mr Mackenzie -- "Do you support Bill 48?" -- a man who until he became Labour minister would have stood probably in this seat or that seat and said that he was the champion of collective bargaining, that he was the one who was going to protect all of the workers in this province. Yet he stood up, I give him credit, and he openly admitted he's changed his stripes. He's totally on the other side. Hard to imagine Bob Mackenzie as a Tory, but clearly he has said he is supporting this draconian legislation which will be stripping workers of their rights for collective bargaining and their opportunities for freedom in the collective bargaining process. But he makes a great character in this cast for the movie Queen's Park.

The Tyrannosaurus rex: In the movie, an interesting character, the largest of the meat-eaters, the most vicious and feared, attacking and eating even its own species. We have for the purposes --

Mr Chris Stockwell (Etobicoke West): There he is, Bob Mackenzie.

Mr Mahoney: No, it's not Bob Mackenzie. For the purposes of the movie Queen's Park, we've renamed it to the Tyrannosaurus rae. It's quite clear to me Mr Rae would eat his own species, in throwing them out of cabinet, in leaving them out on a limb wherever they want.

That of course leads us to the pterodactyls, who were able to fly to safety. You, sir, among all in this House know what a pterodactyl will do. He will simply fly across the floor to a lofty perch, high up in the corner of this place. So you have a place in the wonderful movie Queen's Park as one of the pterodactyls, along with Mr Kormos, Mr Morrow and former cabinet minister Haslam, and we don't know how many others.

That's one of the things that's so fascinating around here. There are people sitting over there, I would say right over there, strong supporters of the labour movement, strong supporters. I believe the member for -- would it be Downsview? The member for Fort York -- strong labour types, no question; solidarity for ever. Well, they are pterodactyls potentialis, I would suggest. They may at any time fly across this chamber to a perch high up here and be stars in the movie, Queen's Park. Steven Spielberg awaits.

But the most fascinating thing of all in the comparison of the movie Jurassic Park and the yet-to-be-released movie, Queen's Park, is how did we come to the destruction of the dinosaurs. Scientists will tell you that there was a large meteorite that flew around the earth and slammed into the earth some millennium ago and coughed up a covering around the planet that blocked out the sun, and the dinosaurs were extinct.

I thought about this this morning and I thought, "This social contract is exactly like a meteorite. It is flying around the province of Ontario and I think the good news is that when it slams into the province of Ontario and creates the damage, then these dinosaurs, Harrisaurus and the Torydectaurus, will be gone. They will be gone and the Premier and his group all will be gone and we will finally be rid of the dinosaurs in the movie, Queen's Park, and the humans will climb out of the ashes --

Mr Stockwell: It's not even funny, Mahoney. Stop.

Mr Mahoney: I'm not trying to be funny; I'm trying to be accurate. They will climb out of the ashes and they will realize the serious mistake they've caused.

I'm particularly interested --

Mr Robert W. Runciman (Leeds-Grenville): I regret to interrupt the speech, Mr Speaker, but I have to draw to your attention that I don't believe there's a quorum present.

The Acting Speaker: I'd ask the table to ascertain if there's a quorum.

Clerk Assistant and Clerk of Committees (Ms Deborah Deller): A quorum is not present, Speaker.

The Speaker ordered the bells rung.

Clerk Assistant and Clerk of Committees: A quorum is now present, Speaker.

The Acting Speaker: The honourable member from Mississauga West has the floor.

Mr Mahoney: It's interesting how members of the Conservative Party get upset when they don't like someone saying something about, perhaps, their behaviour on this issue or their position. We're not sure what their position is yet. I'm going to dwell in my 90 minutes much more directly on the government, but i think it is very important to point out that there have been several flip-flops, that we're really not quite sure where the Tory Party is standing.

They like to stand up and shout about supporting restraint, but let me just tell you, Mr Speaker, that Mr Mike Harris and the Ontario Tories just can't seem to make up their minds where they are, and in two short months he and the party have both supported and opposed the social contract process. They said the $2 billion in cuts wasn't enough -- in fact, I read quotes in this place saying they should cut deeper -- and then accuse the NDP of going too far on the $2 billion.

They've bashed the unions and then criticized the government for union bashing. They want it both ways. Again, they've demanded legislation to enforce the social contract and then announce legislation isn't necessary. It's confusing, I'm sure, to those folks who would like to perhaps support them. They say, "We don't understand what's going on." They propose simplistic alternatives and then change the numbers they use to support their proposals less than a week later. Now they sound like they don't like the social contract, but they can't tell us how they'll vote on it, and who knows what tomorrow will bring.

There's more on the inconsistencies, but I'd rather get to Bill 48 --

Mr Stockwell: Just wait an hour, you'll know where we stand.

Mr Mahoney: Well, I probably don't have as much trouble understanding where you stand. If you could get the rest of your caucus to come along, then you might have a position. You're up? Okay, that's good, you might have a position. Maybe you can tell me if your leader, Mr Harris, has given you the freedom to actually express a caucus viewpoint. That will be fascinating to hear. If the caucus position supports today the rather right-wing extreme views of the member for Etobicoke centre, then perhaps tomorrow it will support the rather left-wing views of some of the pink Tories who are over on that particular side, if there are any left, but we'll find that out.

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The Treasurer talked about dealing with Ontario's problems and one of the things -- and I believe he believes this. I don't think he's insincere in believing it. I just happen to think he's seriously flawed in his thinking and that he's wrong. He says that the purpose of this bill is to safeguard -- I think this is almost a quote -- jobs and services. Then at the same time as they do that, they turn around and announce -- what do they call it? -- a job protection fund.

What it really is, it's an unemployment fund. They're topping up unemployment insurance benefits. Help me on this. If you're creating a fund --

Interjection.

Mr Mahoney: How can you have wage protection, I say to the member opposite, when you're freezing wages? Is that wage protection? "Okay. We'll protect you at this rate for the next three years." Don't play games with words. Call it what it is.

We supported a three-year freeze, no problem with that. But you're not going to solve the problem and find the $2 billion that you need, that this Treasurer needs to meet his stated goals by simply freezing wages. You know that. Your partners have told you that. The municipalities, the universities, the colleges, the school boards, they've told you that.

The conservation authorities were here earlier today. The conservation authorities have put forward a proposal where they can find $100 million in savings for this government and they have said, "Look, don't take away our tax credit." Mr Speaker, you know how that works. When the conservation authority buys land or acquires it through some sort of legacy from a citizen, there are taxes due on that land. They are not exempt. No one is exempt. They have to pay taxes.

Where do they get the money for that? They get it in the form of a tax grant from the provincial government. Why? Because the provincial government, on behalf of the people of Ontario, is interested in supporting the conservation authorities to protect all of the land, the Niagara Escarpment land, the Credit Valley land, the land in the Etobicoke Valley system, the Don Valley system, the Rouge park, whatever it is. They want to protect all of this land for the future of our young people. So they give them a grant to pay for the taxes.

What this government is saying to the conservation authorities is, "We're going to cut that grant out." If they cut that grant out, then the next question is, "Are you going to exempt us from having to pay taxes?" and the answer is no. So they then say, "Well, tell us how we're going to pay our taxes." There's only one answer for these people. What can they do? Can they put revenue-generating facilities in all the conservation authority lands? Are they going to build -- even though they have no money -- swimming pools all over the province of Ontario? You know, it's like Field of Dreams: Build it and hope they will come.

They have no way of generating the revenue except one solution: sell the land. If they sell the land, who would buy it unless they can do something with it, such as put some construction on it, build a house, build a building, do something with the land?

The conservation authorities are under seige. They've said to this government, "We'll give you $100 million," and this government has said: "We're not interested. Meet our targets. We're cutting out your grants. We're cutting out your tax grants. We don't care what your problems are." That's what I'm hearing. That's what they're hearing. That's why they're down here supporting the private member's bill that was on the floor here today, which I'm pleased to say I supported. That's why they're upset. They're not saying, "We can't help." They're saying: "We recognize that we are part of the problem. We recognize that we've got to get our act together as an association, provincially, of conservation authorities."

Maybe there need to be some mergers of particular functions. Maybe there needs to be some rationalization of services. Maybe we don't need to have the Ministry of Natural Resources advising council on an issue in one of their areas at the same time as the conservation authority is giving advice contrary to the Ministry of Natural Resources.

I take you back to the Creditview bog, an infamous problem in Mississauga in which the city council approved, after having gone through the entire process, a draft plan of subdivision on the land that was encompassed by the Creditview bog, only to find out that the conservation authority had one recommendation and the Ministry of Natural Resources another. The thing wound up in a bog, frankly; it wound up in a mess. It wound up costing the taxpayers money. It wound up costing the, in this case, very innocent land owners, a number of them. They weren't huge, big developers, but even if they were, what does it matter?

It wound up costing the people who owned the land, who wanted to build the houses, who wanted to create the jobs, who wanted to create economic development, who wanted to create growth, who wanted to do something positive, who wanted to pay taxes through all of this. You know that when you build, you create value added products, be they homes or whatever. When you do that, you sell them and people fill them up with furniture and with refrigerators and with carpeting, and with all of the good things that make up a community on the outside: you build community centres, and it goes on and on and on.

That's how you get the economy of this province going again. This economy in Ontario, especially in the GTA, is a bricks and mortar economy. If we could get the construction industry going again, we'd have work for the construction workers in the province, for goodness' sake. We'd have opportunities for people to experience growth.

Mr Anthony Perruzza (Downsview): When you had the bill, you planned ahead. Ask yourself a question: What's going to happen?

The Acting Speaker: Order.

Mr Mahoney: I don't know what's bugging him, Mr Speaker. Did you just sit on something, or what seems to be the trouble?

Mr Perruzza: You don't know what you're talking about.

The Acting Speaker: Order.

Mr Mahoney: If the example of the conservation authority -- I even see a few nods over there. I think people understand how serious a problem the conservation authority issue is.

Interjection.

Mr Mahoney: You wouldn't understand what I'm talking about. Maybe you don't have any conservation authorities in your riding. Maybe you don't even understand how important conservation land is in this province. Let me tell you --

Interjection.

The Acting Speaker: Order. I've asked the honourable member for Downsview to please end his interjections. The honourable member for Mississauga West has the floor. It is his turn to speak. You will have an opportunity to be part of this debate, and I would ask the honourable member to allow the member for Mississauga West to speak. The honourable member has the floor.

Mr Mahoney: Thanks very much; I can use a little help. Gary, good to see you, the member for Oakville South.

The point I was attempting to make is that when you make decisions to cut something, there's an impact, and what this government has not done is looked at what the impact is. We know there has to be restraint. Why not listen to the conservation authorities? Why not listen to the association of authorities from around the province who have offered this government right on a platter $100 million in savings? They've said, "We know we're part of the problem." Vicki Barron at the Credit Valley Conservation Authority said to me: "Steve, we know we're part of the problem. We want to be part of the solution."

Well, forcing them to sell their land at a time when we should be finding ways to conserve more land for our future uses -- anybody who believes in the environment, anybody who believes in the ecology, anybody who believes in the opportunities for our young people to enjoy conservation lands, be they on the escarpment or wherever, would understand that we do not want to force our conservation authorities to sell their land. So what are they going to do? How are they going to get the money to pay the taxes?

You can shout all you want, but the reality is that one of the partners -- I just used that example and I have some others -- in this process is the conservation authorities.

Mr Perruzza: You guys squeezed them for five years. You squeezed when you had all kinds of money.

Mr Mahoney: What's interesting as he starts to spout again is that these people have been in government for over two years now, and any time they're asked a question, all they can do, whether it's from the third party or the official opposition, is harken back to former governments. I don't know when they're going to learn it, but you guys have got the limos, you guys have the government, you have the mantle of power -- although I know it rests in the corner office and there's only one person who controls that lever; I know that for a fact. But you have the limos, it's your job to set policy, it's your job to listen to the people of this province.

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So we have the Treasurer standing up here. Obviously it's difficult for him; I can appreciate the fact that this is a difficult time for Floyd Laughren. This is the same individual who used to espouse nationalizing Inco. If that's not left-wing socialism -- I don't even think that's democratic socialism. This is the same person who used to believe in all that kind of thing.

Mr Perruzza: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: We're talking about the social contract, and it seems to me he's talking about anything but the social contract legislation.

The Acting Speaker: The honourable member for Downsview does not have a point of order. The honourable member for Mississauga West has the floor.

Mr Mahoney: I'm not surprised at that, because they obviously don't get it. They don't realize what I have been talking about for the last 10 minutes. It's the impact on the conservation authorities as a result of the cuts that come from the social contract. They just don't get it. I am talking about that.

I'll recognize that my description of Floyd is perhaps not germane to the debate at hand, but I use it simply to make a point, that he has gone from those days when he would have supported nationalizing Inco to now saying he doesn't want to do things like that. He's changed his mind. A quantum leap, believe me, a quantum leap, my goodness, to go from the far left of democratic socialism to the far right of what you'd have to call Tory bluism. Talk about a dinosaur. It's fascinating to see that transition. It's amazing. It's just because all of a sudden he's in power. It isn't what he said when he was over here.

I recognize that the Treasurer has a problem. My leader, Lyn McLeod, has offered on numerous occasions to be part of the process to help solve the problem. We believe there has to be restraint in this government. We told them two years ago not to keep bringing in $10-billion deficits. But they didn't listen. They thought they could spend their way out of a recession. They thought they could simply ignore everyone's advice and decide they were right.

Hon Evelyn Gigantes (Minister of Housing): That was your line, not ours.

Mr Mahoney: You did it, I say to the Minister of Housing, another classic example of someone who could have done something for this province, for this economy, by delaying the implementations to the building code. I know it upsets her when I say this, but all they asked for in the building industry was to delay the requirement to put insulation from the ceiling to the floor in a basement, where up to now it has gone down to the frost line, just delay it and save $3,000 to $5,000 cost in a house.

Hon Ms Gigantes: Wrong, wrong.

Mr Mahoney: It's not wrong, Minister. I have seen nothing from you to prove me wrong; I have all the stats. I know you're just going to stick your head in the sand and say you don't really care about that industry. All you want to do is give more money to non-profit housing, because of your socialist dogma, because of your mentality that simply says you've got it right and you're the only one who knows, you're going to work all of this out. I have just tremendous confidence in you, you can rest assured. I'm quite sure that if she disagrees with me, she must think she's right, because we would never agree on issues of economic development and growth. We would never agree on ways to try to help the housing industry and in turn try to help the consumer trying to buy a house.

Hon Ms Gigantes: That's too bad.

Mr Mahoney: I can assure you of that, because you want them all in your nice little communes, all sitting there being subsidized.

Interjection.

The Acting Speaker: I would ask the honourable members in the House, first, not to have interjections. Second, please address the Chair. I think we can end the kind of back-and-forth discussion we've had up to this point.

Mr Randy R. Hope (Chatham-Kent): Mr Speaker, I am a patient individual --

The Acting Speaker: Order.

Mr Mahoney: Oh, Randy's going to lose his temper. Oh boy, I can hardly wait for that.

One of the things I said earlier, when the Treasurer made his opening remarks about protecting jobs, was that it's interesting that the very document we're talking about here today sets up a fund to top up unemployment insurance payments to people. Why would you do that if you're protecting their jobs?

Interjection.

Mr Mahoney: Well, for those jobs you don't protect. Why don't you say it's partially a job protection fund? But it's not a job protection fund. And how in the world you can ever say you're protecting services is just mind-boggling. Let me give you some examples.

This is a report that was done, and it's going to have to be updated, but it was a report that was done for my own city council by staff on the potential service level implications. We know they're not protecting jobs, because they've set up an unemployment insurance top-up fund to try to pay for those people who lose the jobs. We know that. Now, are they protecting service levels? Here's the impact, potentially. It could be worse; it could be a little better. We'll see. The proof will be in the pudding.

To Mississauga Transit, a cut of 43,200 operating hours in the bus services in our city. Is that important to these people who get driven to work in a limo or to those who perhaps just live down here when they're working here? They don't need a bus to get to work. They don't need to worry about that. Is that important to the people who live and work close to home, where they don't need a bus?

Let me tell who it affects. I hear the platitudes about protecting the people who would be most affected by these cuts. This is what this government is purporting to do. The people who will be most affected by this are the people who have no option but to use public transit. What are they going to do, hitchhike when they go to the doctor, when they go shopping or to the grocery store, when they take their kids to the doctor, when they take, in many cases, their teenage kids to school who don't have busing, who have to use public transit? In fact, what we need is a situation where we have an integration more of our school busing system and our public transit system in communities like mine, in communities all over the province, so that we can reduce the cost to the school boards. That is a positive suggestion that could work.

But instead, by just blindly making a cut without even understanding -- the member for Halton Centre earlier asked the Treasurer: "Have you done the studies to determine what the impacts are?" We haven't had an answer to that. We went through eight weeks of negotiations at the Royal York, subsequently several more weeks of fumbling around and introducing this legislation. Subsequent to that, we'll go through several more weeks of trying to find more cuts, and there haven't been any studies. I think the member was incredulous when she said in response to the Treasurer, "I don't think he has done the studies."

How can you justify making cuts without knowing what the impacts are? You leave it to the local community to find out what the impacts are and then you set up some broad sectoral table that's so far removed from the local community. They don't know the impact on that local community, and you try to pretend that you're protecting the people who need your help. The people who are stuck and need transit service in my community are not going to have it with these cuts. Forty-three thousand hours: That's a lot of time; that's a lot of buses that will be taken off.

All I say is, if you want to make that decision, then make the decision knowing that you're going to hurt those people. Don't try to pretend that you're making these cuts and they won't hurt anybody, when you know they will, or you should know.

Fire protection: In Mississauga, the result of the original go-round of these cuts is nine additional staff absent each day. Are we overstaffed in the Mississauga fire department? Talk to the union out there. I know them quite well. I don't think they would tell you they're overstaffed; but nine additional fire staff absent each day.

The removal of area number 1 from service: Let me tell you where that is. Area number 1 is in Malton in an industrial area. What it means is there will be no fire protection for that industrial area. Is that what we want? That's what the city is faced with. It's fine for you to sit down here in your ivory tower and just tell them they've got to cut globally without knowing the impact, but there's going to be no fire protection in that particular community. Imagine that in 1993. I just find that incredible.

Planning and development: an interesting one, one that I don't think these people would care about if they understand it.

An increase in the turnaround time for building permits: Someone will say: "Look at that. Mahoney is fighting on behalf of the builders and the developers." The interesting thing is, yes, I am, frankly, to a degree. But you know why? Because when they get a building permit and they build a house, it becomes a home for somebody, somebody buys it, and I don't think that in today's society -- when we lost $700 million in revenue through provincial sales tax the first year this government was in office, and $300 million in revenue the first year it was in office in reduced land transfer tax revenue, what does that mean?

That means when someone buys a house, he pays land transfer tax to the provincial government. We lost the taxpayers $300 million. Does that mean that maybe we should find a way to get that money back? What do you think?

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It seems like a good idea to me, and maybe the way to do that is to take a look at the planning process. So what do they do? They call up their good buddy the former mayor John Sewell and they say: "Here's $3 million and here's a plan. Go on out there and examine the planning process and come back to us and tell us how we can streamline it."

The intention was to find a way, I would think, to improve the turnaround time for building permits. I'm assuming that was the intention. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the intention was to create more red tape to slow down development so that they could increase the allocation of non-profit and co-op housing and forget the private sector. Let's face it, the private sector's been driven out of day care, the private sector certainly has been driven out of building rental accommodation and, I would add, and I would frankly come clean on this, that I believe that your party --

Mr W. Donald Cousens (Markham): That's a change. You're going to come clean? Talk about someone who is going to come clean. He has finally admitted it.

The Acting Speaker: Order.

Mr Mahoney: I believe that your party, Mr Cousens, implemented rent controls. You implemented rent controls, in all your excitement. You brought it in after you promised not to.

Mr Cousens: At last the Liberals themselves, a moment of history in the province of Ontario.

The Acting Speaker: Order.

Mr Mahoney: Our party exacerbated rent controls. Without a doubt our party exacerbated it, but these people have taken it to a new level that has simply driven people out of building rental accommodation.

Mr Cousens: Wait. I want to see it happen.

Mr Mahoney: I'm admitting that we were wrong in that. I'm admitting that you started the problem, and we made it worse, but these guys have taken it to a new level. All three parties are complicit in bringing in a system that has literally driven any private sector individual or company out of building private rentals. You would have to be mad. Not only that; any promises that could be given by anybody in politics today that they were going to scrap it, I'm going to tell you that if I was an apartment builder, I'd say, "I don't believe you." So there's complicity on all three sides of this House on that issue. We should recognize that, and in my view we should take a very serious look.

If you want a royal commission, maybe that's one we should look at, although I don't like spending $3 million to figure something out that's staring you right in the face. I think there are better solutions, but there are going to be as a result of these cutbacks -- people won't think that's a big deal. The public out there thinks that when it gets asked this question, "Do you support Bob Rae and his cuts?" the way the question is asked is, "Do you think we have too many civil servants in this province?" The answer, "Yes." "Do you think we should cut the deficit by laying off civil servants in this province?" The answer, "Yes."

Ask it this way: "If we cut the care" -- to the Minister of Health -- "that is currently being provided to your mother, who suffers from Alzheimer's in a nursing home, and the only solution you have is to either pay for your mother's care yourself, extra money, or bring her home and take care of her in your home, and one of the spouses who happens to work has to leave work to come home, do you support that? Do you support that if there's a delay in needed surgery times?

What did we hear today? My goodness, the potential of closing anywhere from one to ten hospitals. I don't believe that, maybe one or two, which would be catastrophic --

Mr Hope: Stop dramatizing.

Mr Mahoney: It's not dramatizing. That's the point. They think it dramatizing. You just don't get it. It's not dramatizing it.

Let me give you one that maybe you'll understand. Do you support the cuts if it means increasing the size of the kids' class from 30 to 40? Answer the question. Some people think that's fine. I talked to an educator the other day who said that she taught -- she's retired now -- 40 kids in the class and it didn't affect them. If that's the case, is that what society believes? Is that what our Minister of Education and Training believes? Is that what Richard Johnston believed when he served on the select committee on education that I served on with him? That's not what I heard. That's not what I heard at all.

What I've heard every stakeholder in education in this province say to me, just about every one, is that if we can somehow reduce the size of the classes, it'll give the teachers an opportunity for more instruction time with the kids.

The whole issue of streaming: Are you going to destream and put 40 kids in a class at the same time? I'll tell you, I support destreaming up to and including grade 10 if it's the will of the local board, and it should be a local decision. I support it, but if you're going to start putting 40 kids in a class, I'd have to rethink it. I think it's dangerous. I think it's very dangerous.

Do you support these cuts if it means we have to lay off police? Because it does.

Ask the question properly. We all believe the civil service is too large. We all believe government is too large and interferes in our lives too much. I sure do.

I had a meeting the other day with a couple of friends of the government, the two gentlemen who run the Workplace Health and Safety Agency. I've asked questions in the House of the minister, and I believe everybody in this House supports the principle, and this is just an example of the kind of regulatory agency and regulatory problems that you are creating in implementing what was intended to be good legislation, Bill 208. It was intended to be good legislation that would say to the working --

Mr Bill Murdoch (Grey): You changed it.

Mr Mahoney: Well, if you don't like Bill 208 -- because you didn't like it when you were over here; I recognize that -- why don't you cancel the agency and save the six and a half million bucks you're spending, if it's no good? I mean, what do you want? You want it both ways?

I think these guys are trying to do a decent job, but the implementation, from a business person's point of view, guess what he or she gets in his or her mail. They get a notice from the occupational health and safety agency that says: "Welcome to NDP Ontario. We're going to train you in how to prevent accidents and how to be healthier, and if you don't do it our way, we're going to fine you half a million bucks and put you in jail." That's what it said.

Mr Hope: Right.

Mr Mahoney: Well, you can laugh, but that's what it said. Then they opened up their next letter, and the next letter, and I said this is Mr McMurdo, the next letter they opened up, they opened it up and it said: "We want to update the information on your corporation, so enclosed you will find some forms to fill out that we'd like you to send in so we can punch it all into our computers. And oh, by the way, enclose a cheque for $50 made out to the Treasurer."

Every company, no matter how big it is, in the province got this notice just grabbing 50 bucks out of its pocket. Unbelievable.

Now, can you imagine? Some of you have worked in business, maybe even owned a business. Can you imagine how frustrated you'd be? You'd sit there: "I don't believe this. On the one hand, I'm sitting here trying to pay my taxes to stay alive, to keep my people working. This government just stole $50 out of my pocket for nothing, and now they're threatening to put me in jail if I don't set up a committee and send somebody off to some course for training."

Is improved occupational health and safety training wrong? No. How you implement that is the key. I'm pleased to say to the Minister of Labour that I was assured by the two gentlemen, the co-chairs who came in to see me, that they are doing in-service training right on the job of their program for health and safety.

I don't like some of the stuff they're training them on. I don't understand why they're spending half a day talking about how laws are made. I don't understand what in the world that has to do with running a chemical company or a steel plant or a small business, but they insist that's part of the training. I guess they want to make friends with everybody and teach them how legislation is done. But maybe I'm being nitpicky on that. I'll agree to that. Yes, maybe on that I am. They've got to put a training program together and they've got to keep people interested. I understand from them, and they're going to get me testimonials, that some of the training that's been done has been very successful.

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Nobody argues with the principles of Bill 208. Indeed I had quite a battle, quite an argument about Bill 208 when we were the government, and fought with the then Minister of Labour and fought with the Premier and we made changes to it. We appointed a neutral Chair who quit in disgust because he saw what you were doing. We eliminated the unilateral right that some worker who was having a bad day could just shut down the operation because he or she --

Mr Hope: Oh, I'm sure.

Mr Mahoney: Well, that's what it said. We eliminated that and we worked with the business community to come up with a plan that made sense. We said, "Here's Bill 208, business will tell you" -- and this does affect, by the way, the social charter because it's all about confidence, it's all about impact, it's all about taxation levels, it's all about regulation levels, it's all about surviving in this economy.

If this government could only look at deregulation, if it could only look at a system where it could work hand in glove with the private sector to make the necessary tools available for better occupational health and safety training, it would find it could do it for a lot less than six and a half million bucks. The agency's gone from zero to $6.5 million, like that.

There are all kinds of areas. You all know I have a private member's bill that I introduced to repeal the Ombudsman Act. Ten million dollars a year: It's not a lot of money, but if everybody around here would do that, it would be a lot of money. What are we doing? The Ombudsman service is a fine service but can we afford it today?

My argument is that there are 130 ombudsmen in this place and if we're doing our job, what do we use the Ombudsman for, we MPPs, when that person sits across from us at our desks and we have to say: "Look, I'm sorry, I can't help you. I've tried. I've written letters. I've fought for you. It's over. I can't help you any more." Instead of saying that and having the courage to say that --

Mr Hope: Oh, no, no, no.

Mr Mahoney: Oh, many members in this place turn around and say, "Well, I tell you what, I'll send you to the Ombudsman." We can't afford that any more. It's just a luxury that should not exist around here.

That's not a particular comment about any of the individuals involved. I think the Ombudsman service, dating back to Mr Maloney -- all of the ombudsmen have had a particular place and have done the job as they saw fit. We may differ with how some of them do it from time to time. We may differ when our current Ombudsman puts ads up on billboards and tries to look for problems, but that's not what the issue is. The issue is that when you're trying to develop a social contract you have to show the people that you've looked at your own operations, that you've looked in the mirror.

I don't think this government has done that. What this government has done is that it has simply said to all the so-called -- and you'd better stop calling them partners out there because you're not treating them like partners. You wouldn't do that kind of thing to a partner; imagine. What they've done is that they've simply passed it on down to the former partners, we'll call them, of government and told them to find the solutions.

There are direct impacts and the people will know them and the day will come, because your phones are going to ring off the wall in your constituency offices, let me tell you, saying: "I had no idea that the social contract cuts were going to mean this. I've got my sick mom at home now. What am I going to do with her?"

We can go back and say that everybody should just be responsible for that, or we can understand that we live in a society where we're better off to have good quality health care for sick mom and allow the individual to work and generate income and pay taxes and try to help support the system. That's not what's going to happen under this.

A simple thing like libraries: We heard the minister the other day -- yesterday, I think it was -- stand up and make an announcement about aboriginal libraries, that there were going to be improved services. The reality is that in my community libraries are going to close, books are going to stay in the basement. It's been a problem for years that they've faced, but what choice do they have?

If you're giving them a choice, if you're listening to them, if you listen to the municipalities -- I hear the Premier today in answer to my question about the impact of these cuts on the municipalities. He stands up and says: "Boy, I don't know, when the municipalities talk to me they're really friendly. They don't tell me there's a problem. They say they can work this out."

Well, I've got a news flash. June 14, here it is, a news release from AMO, the Association of Municipalities of Ontario. Don't believe me. I didn't make it up. It's from Joe Mavrinac, the president, the mayor of Kirkland Lake, and he says:

"'We question how much help this will be to municipalities, which have to deal with enormous cuts to their transfer payments,' said Joe Mavrinac, president of AMO and mayor of the town of Kirkland Lake."

"He went on to say: 'Municipal employer representatives stayed at the talks."'

They didn't walk away with all the unions. Why didn't you keep talking to them? Why didn't you carry on the talks? They wanted to be part of the process, just like the conservation authorities I referred to earlier, just like the school boards. Everybody wants to be part of the solution to this problem, instead of having a cut, a knife come down from on high, telling them what they're going to have to do. That's the real, obvious unfairness to this.

Joe went on to say, "Municipal employer representatives stayed at the talks and remained committed throughout the process to working out a solution with the government to cut the deficit, save services and jobs and ensure no tax increases."

If you're trying to figure out how to build a better mousetrap, you should probably go to someone who's already built a mousetrap and say, "How can we improve on this?" Why don't you go to the municipalities and say, "I don't know how you guys did it, but you managed to bring in no tax increases to your citizens," or, in the case of my city, a 1% tax decrease. "I don't know how you did it. Tell us how you did it."

Mr Cousens: How big are your reserves?

Mr Mahoney: The reserves are big, Don, but they didn't use reserves to do it. If they had, I'd admit that. They're in this position, though, because -- here's a real cute idea -- about 15 years ago we in our municipality decided we were going to set up reserves for a number of things so that we wouldn't have to borrow the money 10 or 15 years down the road to buy whatever it was, whether it's replacing automobiles in the public works department -- cars wear out, trucks break down, so we have a reserve.

Every year, you take a certain amount of money out of your current budget and you put it in your capital reserve budget. In real life, I guess it's called savings. You put it there and you say: "We're not going to touch that. As tempting as it is, we're not going to touch that. We're going to have to tell the people that they're going to have to wait for that arena, for that community centre. Even though there are a lot of lot levies generated and the moneys go into reserves, they're going to have to wait five years until the population reaches a certain level."

Why don't you go to them? Not just my city. North Bay, I understand, has gone on a debt reduction plan over the past 10 years where it's taken its debt from $50 million in debentures down to $29 million. That's pretty dramatic. On anybody's chart that would be a line that goes down, instead of a line that constantly goes up like yours and runs off the page. Why don't you go to these people and talk to them? Are you too proud? Is that the trouble? I recognize that your revenues are down. I recognize that the recession has had a devastating impact on the treasury over there. I understand that.

But what you've got to do is find out how to get those revenues up again. What are your solutions? "We'll get our revenues up. We'll increase taxes." Wrong. You will find -- and I'm telling you, you want to look this up in Hansard if you care -- that your revenues will go down as a result of your increasing taxes. You just don't get it. I don't know why. You've got a problem, a serious problem. Why not look at that? Why not sit down with the municipal sector? Why not sit down with the hospitals? I don't see any of the Windsor members here. What has Windsor got, five hospitals servicing that community? They sat down with their health advisers and the district health council and said: "This is nuts. We don't need five hospitals to service the people in Windsor. How do we downsize?"

Interjection: You answered yourself in your question.

Mr Mahoney: Well, I'm happy if I answered it. It came from the community. They didn't need you to come in with a hammer and go, "Boom, we're going to fix you guys." Shouldn't we find ways where those hospitals share service levels? Maybe one hospital's particularly good, whether it's in medical research or treating cancer or paediatrics, whatever it is. Why should all five be doing the same stuff together? What about a central stores? I know they talked about that in Windsor. I was there. I talked to the people at the chamber of commerce. They said: "We think it makes sense. Why not have a central stores available where all medical supplies can come in and then be distributed?"

1620

They're looking at rationalization at the community level. They understand the fact that they're part of the problem and they want to be part of the solution. There are all kinds of examples all over the province, and this government simply fails to look at them, thinks it can come in with a hammer and that's going to solve it.

It will backfire. There will be catastrophic impacts in the community. I tell you, while I believe very, very strongly that your deficit has to be brought under control, there's more than one kind of deficit in this world. There's a deficit in human services, there's a deficit in community services.

What are you going to say to the kid who's pounding on the door at 3 o'clock in the morning, trying to get into a children's aid shelter? "Sorry, son, no room." He's going to say, "But my dad just beat the heck out of me and my mom's run away from him because he's violent to her too, and I have nowhere to go." This is not dramatizing a problem. This is going to happen and you know it's going to happen.

One thing I will say that I believe about New Democrats, and I've said it before, is that they do have a heart. At times it bleeds too much and it's a little too big, but they do have a heart. I don't believe any one of you would be callous enough, unlike at times my friends in the third party, to want to strip social service networks, to want to strip safety nets from the people who need them the most. I just don't believe you really want to do that. I can only assume you don't understand that this is going to be what comes out at the bottom end in those service cuts.

I heard a radio commentator this morning say basically that. I won't mention his name, because he's too much of a socialist for me, but he's on in the morning on CFRB, so you can figure it out. He said, "The problems are going to start showing up in a couple of months' time and they're going to show up in the form of more problems with our youth, fewer police officers to work with our young offenders."

He had somebody phone in from the young offenders' office who gave the impact on the cutbacks. In fact, the cutbacks in the time this individual was going to experience were going to save the government, on his salary alone, something like $1,400. They can't eliminate the service, so the only way they can deal with his time off is to bring in somebody else to work overtime to cover for him. It's actually going to cost almost $1,000 more to replace the laid-off -- or the time off, whatever you want to call it -- individual. You see, the economics are kind of backwards. It just doesn't cut it. This thing is going to end up costing you more money.

You're going to lose revenue because of your increased taxes on business. We see it every day. We know businesses are leaving. This Minister of Labour stood up in this House and defended with such vigour Bill 40. I congratulate him, because he had to deliver amendments to the Ontario Labour Relations Act to the unions or he was in deep trouble. Never mind Bob Rae; this minister, a former member of the Steelworkers union, was in deep trouble if he didn't stick to his guns and deliver that. The minister and others say, "It hasn't had a great impact." It's because the companies that are leaving are not sending in farewell cards to the government. They're not even telling you. The reason for that is that they may not be leaving in their entirety. They may be leaving some kind of operation here. Some of them even do business with the government, with municipal governments, with school boards. They don't want you to know they're leaving and going to the United States, but believe me, they are, and the impact of them leaving, in the long term, is quite catastrophic to the business infrastructure in this province.

More than that, how do you ever measure and quantify the number of business decisions that are made not to invest here? The Premier stands up and says, "Be proud of Ontario." I think every member in this House is proud of Ontario. I don't think that should be an issue. This Premier has a nerve to say that to a member in opposition, because we criticize. You know what that's like? That's like Kim Campbell standing up and saying, "If you don't agree with me, you're just an SOB." That's what I heard him say today. It's the same thing. He said, "If you stand up and shout about the problems in this province, then you're not proud of this province." That is so unfair and unPremier-like. He should be forced to come in this House and withdraw those remarks and apologize. It's really unfortunate, because we're all proud of Ontario.

I said the other day that I believe Ontarians are some of the hardest-working men and women in the world. Sure, we have our problems. Our welfare lines have swollen because of the recession or depression, our unemployment insurance lines have swollen for the same reason. And at a time when a government should be saying to people, "We understand your worries. We understand your problems. We recognize the fact that the economy is suffering," this government should be doing things to encourage business.

Maybe some form of amendments to the OLRA could have been put through at an appropriate time. Not the draconian ones of eliminating secret ballots and democracy in the trade labour movement, but some of the issues perhaps could have been put forward. There's nothing wrong with organizing in a positive way. Lord knows, I grew up in a union. I understand the benefits of the trade labour movement to the working men and women. But the reality is that you don't have a good union or a good relationship when you polarize the relationship between the business community and the labour movement. In fact, what you do is you take away the opportunity to protect jobs. How do you protect a job when the business closes? I don't understand that.

I know how they do it. They take some money out of Ontario Hydro and they buy the company. They help the workers buy the company. Then my good friend Leo Gerard, national director of the Steelworkers, stands up in Sault Ste Marie when the deal was done in Algoma Steel and says, "It's a great day for worker control." That's what he said. That's the scary part. That's the dogma that the people of Ontario do not want to see in their government. They don't mind it if Leo says it, but they don't want to see it in their government. Yet you're applauding that type of attitude. You're encouraging it. You're fostering it. You're not building any sense of confidence or opportunity for growth for the future of this province.

To get back to the municipalities' concerns about the social contract, Joe Mavrinac goes on to say, "This legislation provides us with little assurance that savings will be found in compensation. For many municipalities, a wage freeze will not provide the savings needed to offset the cuts, especially in this fiscal year."

I wish the Treasurer were here. I understand why he's not; he's been under siege. The man has been under a tremendous amount of pressure. He's admitted that this is very difficult stuff for him, and I understand that. I feel some sympathy for the fact that he's under that kind of pressure, because it's really not the Treasurer who's orchestrating this. He's being pushed out the door. It's the guy with the propeller on the beanie behind him -- the Premier -- pushing him out the door, saying: "You go out there. I don't want to go. That's tough stuff." Poor Floyd. For goodness' sake, we all know him to be a gentleman and an honourable man. We may disagree with some of his policies, but we all know him to be a decent person. He's being pushed out the door by the Premier saying, "You get out there and take the flak."

The fact is that the wage freeze is not going to solve the problem. Let me tell you one of the things that we're all concerned about, 1996. Let's jump ahead, away from the movie "Queen's Park," away from the dinosaurs. They've all blown up. The asteroid has hit the planet Ontario and all of the dinosaurs in the third party and in the government have been destroyed and we're starting over again, trying to rebuild this infrastructure which has been torn apart. In 1996 the contracts all of a sudden all open up again. The social contract is finished.

What is this government doing? They've introduced a bill known around here as CECBA. It has to do with bargaining rights for civil servants. They're giving the civil servants the right to strike that they do not currently enjoy. I had a meeting the other day with the Deputy Minister of Labour, a fine fellow. I appreciated his sincerity. I asked him the question, "Do you have any concerns about that?" He feels that there's good justification for putting forward those amendments. That's his job. I respect that. My concern is that in 1996, when these people have got the right to strike and they're operating under Bill 40, under the OLRA, there will be a shutdown of this province of a magnitude that we've never seen before.

1630

Talk to me about GO Transit. We saw the other day what a one-day walkout on the job did to the service level of GO Transit. It literally shut down the commuter system in the GTA: couldn't get to work, jammed the highways, chaos, disruption, people late for work. I hope nobody got fired. That was a one-day walkout, an illegal one, because they don't have a right to strike. So they all said they were sick at the same time. I guess it was the GO flu or something.

All of a sudden the trains aren't going. If they are going, they don't stop at the right stations; they just bypass. Imagine that, you're waving to the wife and kids or your husband is there to pick you up after work, and you're waving as you go by, and the train goes right by: ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. It doesn't stop. That's what happens.

We have a potential with the amendments this minister introduced the other day -- I don't know if I have them all here. Under the amendments to that contract -- they're here somewhere -- that is going to give the workers an opportunity to strike.

What's that going to mean? That's going to mean that those workers are going to come back and say: "Look, we've just been through the toughest times in labour history, and we can't believe that it was a labour government that put us through it. We've had our contracts reopened. We've had our rights to collective bargaining stripped. We've had our democratic process taken away from us. We're not going to take it any more." The next government is going to sit there and face this reaction, and say, "Well, look, these guys left us with a bigger mess than we ever could have imagined."

In fact, the debt in September 1990 for this province was $39 billion; too high, but it was manageable. The debt service was about nine cents on the dollar; manageable. The debt currently is $78 billion or $79 billion, climbing towards the century mark. Without a doubt, the next government that inherits office in the province of Ontario will be saddled with a debt of federal proportion, with a debt service that could be in the range of 20 cents to 25 cents out of every single dollar.

Mr Rosario Marchese (Fort York): What a debt, hey, Steve.

Mr Mahoney: Well, look, that's the fact. That's what's going to happen. That's the course you set for yourself when you took over the ship.

Mr Marchese: A sinking one.

Mr Mahoney: It wasn't sinking at all. It was a debt with nine cents on the dollar. That's not a sinking ship. My goodness, Ottawa pays 34 or 35 cents. That's a sinking ship. The fact of the matter is that the province of Ontario was the most dynamic engine for industry, for growth, for workers, for jobs, for men, for women, for young people, for seniors, in the entire country, and now --

Hon Richard Allen (Minister without Portfolio in Economic Development and Trade): And you messed it up.

Mr Mahoney: Well, it's really ironic. I guess nothing you guys have done in two and a half years has caused a problem. It is really interesting the way you constantly find ways to justify your existence, to justify your budgets. Imagine planning a deficit of $10 billion a year.

Then, on top of that, how do you pay off the deficit? You take the deficit and you say, "I'm going to pile it on top of the debt." That's like taking your overdraft and putting it on top of your mortgage. You might get away with that for one or two years, but you're not going to get away with that for very long. Unfortunately, that's what you've tried to do.

The municipalities claim -- Joe Mavrinac and all the municipalities -- that a wage freeze will not provide the savings needed to offset the cuts, especially in this fiscal year. Understand the problem here: The fiscal year for all municipalities is December 31, set by the government of Ontario. Not set by them; set by the province. The fiscal year-end for the province is March 31, again set by the province.

We've got a problem. If you want to make cuts in a year for annual savings, you cannot expect the municipalities to do it when half of their year is already gone. They've already spent the budget. The fact of the matter is that the municipalities have the authority to spend a certain percentage of their budget before they set it, because you can't close down. You get a snowstorm and, you've got to get the equipment out. You can't shut off the water taps. You can't tell the cops to go home. You can't tell the firefighters to leave the fire and let the house burn. You have to keep some continuity. So they continue on with their process. They've already spent over half of their budget by the time you guys get around to saying, "You've got to make cuts."

The date you've set is August 1. I'm not a mathematician, but you don't have to be awfully bright to figure out that if you want a year's cuts in six months, you've got to double the amount of cut. You've got to double the amount of hurt. You've got to cut your services twice as much as you might have had to cut them if you were given an opportunity to make these cuts within a responsible fiscal period.

At least the Treasurer should go the municipalities and say, "We're going to respect and honour your fiscal year and the cuts will be made based on the number of months left in that fiscal year on a pro rata basis." At the very least, he should do that.

Let me just talk about the bargaining process, because there's some concern about that. You would have thought that this government of New Democrats, more than any, because they purport to be the representatives of big and small labour and the people who champion the workers -- mind you, I don't accept that. In fact, I reject it categorically.

I believe that the rank and file on the floor of all the shops and the plants around this great province are not New Democrats, they're not Liberals, they're not Tories. Most of them don't have a card and don't want one. Most of them are pretty cynical. Most of them simply want to get through the shift. Most of them want to get their kids through school. Most of them just want to pay off the Visa, the mortgage, survive. That's all they want to do. They're not political animals like you and I. Most of them don't watch this stuff. They think we're nuts when we get up here and yell at one another. All they want to do is survive.

The rank and file on the floor, those who belong to unions who have been dissociating themselves from the NDP and cutting off the funding to the NDP, don't understand what's going on. Talk to the folks -- and I know you sympathize with them, but sympathy doesn't put food on the table -- at the Scarborough van plant. Talk to the people in Niagara Falls. Talk to the people in my community, all over this province, who have lost their jobs.

The minister has a puzzled look on her face. Don't be puzzled. As a former labour representative of OPSEU you, among all -- it's incredible to us that you and the current Labour minister can actually stand up and support destroying what you worked your whole careers to build up. It's really quite remarkable. But it's your decision and it's your right to make that decision. I frankly don't have a problem with your making it, as long as you understand the impact. The impact is to destroy the infrastructure of our communities. The impact is to destroy what organized labour has worked so hard to build up.

I have a fair amount of sympathy for the labour movement.

Ms Sharon Murdock (Sudbury): Oh, oh, oh.

Mr Mahoney: I do. The members can say I don't, but I do. I understand.

I was there in Sudbury when the Steelworkers raided the Canadian Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers. I talked to the men and women on the street. The member for Sudbury arrives. I was there in Sudbury. I went through some of the battles. It was a difficult time. There's still some comeback, I think, in Sudbury, over that particular raid.

The trade labour movement, though -- think about it. Back in the 1960s, the Steelworkers actually negotiated a seven-year contract with Inco and with Algoma and with Stelco in District 6 of the United Steelworkers. Imagine that.

Mr Sorbara: Who was the head of the Steelworkers then?

Mr Mahoney: The head of the Steelworkers then was a guy by the name of Bill Mahoney.

Mr Sorbara: Great labour leader.

Mr Mahoney: Very pragmatic. Not some dogmatic, philosophically driven --

Mr Sorbara: Bob Rae type.

Mr Mahoney: -- Bob Rae type or Bob Mackenzie type or Leo Gerard type. What we've got is that the leadership in the labour movement has got you guys under control, has got you in a stranglehold, and now you're trying to break loose. You're trying to show everybody that they don't control you.

So what do you do? At the same time as you're kicking them in the shins, you hand them a little sop called the right to strike for civil servants. So you're kicking them and you're saying: "Guys, don't worry about it. We know we're not going to be the government in 1996. These other guys are, and you will have an opportunity to get even with them. We're going to get it all back for you."

1640

In fact, picture this: Picture Bob Rae with a placard, walking up University Avenue, leading 10,000 OPSEU and CUPE workers, solidarity for ever, as he marches saying: "We've got to take on those nasty Liberals. We've got to get you your money back." It's going to happen, as sure as I'm standing here.

Maybe Bob Rae will quit and leave town. Maybe he won't even be around, but somebody -- which one of you guys? Peter Kormos, the only New Democrat left that I know of, the only New Democrat left.

They shake their heads. Are you telling me that you're a New Democrat and you're voting for Bill 48, I say to the member from Sudbury, the parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Labour? Unbelievable. You know that Steel will look at you and say, "Well, I'll tell you one thing. I'm glad you're not doing this to us." You know that.

Ms Murdock: They've already lost.

Mr Mahoney: You know why they've lost? Because the economy is down the tubes, the economy is down the drain, because what do you do? You bring in all of this legislation, you bring in the implementation of good legislation and you destroy it. That's what you do. You guys, honestly.

Ms Murdock: Oh, please.

Mr Mahoney: Well, you do. Do something that would generate some economic growth. Do something. You've got probably, I say with great respect, one of your most competent ministers in the Economic Development and Trade portfolio and I haven't seen a statement out of that ministry since this House sat. What's happening over there? Is there any new investment coming into this province?

Hon Frances Lankin (Minister of Economic Development and Trade): We're making statements outside the House.

Mr Mahoney: They're making statements outside of the House because they haven't got the guts to make them in here. Isn't that the truth? "Let's have a press conference." They can't even get that right. We had a minister yesterday make a statement on something that was totally irrelevant to the document that had been delivered to our critic; totally wrong.

I said yesterday that they can't even run a hot dog stand, and then I apologized to Monte Kwinter. As he said, "There's nothing wrong with Kwinter hot dogs," so I'll take all of that back.

I don't know what you can run, but you sure can't run this government. Maybe you can run the trade labour movement. Maybe you can run unions. Maybe you can go back to that. That would probably be good.

Mr Sorbara: There are no openings left there for those guys.

Mr Mahoney: They can run, though. You see, all those people at the top of the trade labour movement are elected and these guys are all now experienced politicians. Maybe they can run for those jobs.

That brings up a point that one of the most interesting, fascinating things is how this government treats the duly elected labour leaders. As the son of a duly elected labour leader for 26 years -- dad was head of the Steelworkers, an elected position; he had to campaign all across Canada for that job -- I understand what it means to be a labour politician. It's tough stuff.

You walk into a union hall in Hamilton or in Brantford or in Timmins, and boy, they're saying: "What have you done for me lately? What have you done for my benefits? What have you done with the government? What have you done to increase my wage package? What have you done to improve life for my kids? What have you done, Mr or Mrs Labour Leader?"

You know what they have to say? I feel sorry for Sid Ryan, a nice Irish fellow. Sid Ryan has to say: "What I've done for you lately is I've got into bed with a government that's totally destroying everything I've fought and you've fought to build up over the past many years. What I've done for you lately is I've had to sit across a sectoral table and watch the New Democrats, that I used to support" -- remember Sid Ryan? "Bob Rae, I will never forgive you." Is that what he said? "I will never forgive you, Bob Rae."

I'd love to be a fly on the wall in Gananoque this weekend, let me tell you. Premier Lankin on Monday morning, that's what I think we're heading for: Premier Lankin. Go and get fitted for the robes right now; we're going to have a ceremony. We'll bring you in here, we'll get the horse and carriage, and we'll have a new Premier.

I've got to tell you, I don't know how Rae is going to survive that. I'll bet he's at home putting on that tacka-dacka, whatever it is, that suit of armour the Minister of Labour wears to try to protect himself. I'll bet when he walks in, there'll be someone on his back covering him as he walks into the place. He's got to be nervous.

Mr Sorbara: But who's going to be more right- wing, Premier Lankin or Prime Minister Campbell?

Mr Mahoney: I don't know. I haven't heard any statements out of Minister Lankin about economic development and growth, so I don't know, I can't answer that question about who would be more right- wing. It would be hard to be more right-wing than Bob Rae, though. It would be hard. He must have real serious trouble with his conscience.

Let me talk about the negotiation process, just to give an example of how we think this is such a muddle. Here we've got in this legislation direction to the municipalities and the school boards and the universities -- by the way, they can find the money. They've tried to tell you that. They can find a lot of the savings, but they want to do it their way. They don't want a hammer brought down on them on August 1. As I said before, sit down and listen to them. They figured it out long before you. As usual, the people in the streets are miles ahead of their government. They sure are in this case.

But let me talk to you about the method. While they're negotiating at the table in the local community, there's going to be another Royal York Hotel. Somebody said the only people winning out of this are with the Royal York. They're making a lot of dough: Benihana, dinner every night; lots of egg rolls going out of there, I'll tell you. It looks great.

So there's going to be another sectoral table. Maybe it'll be in a tent out on the front lawn of Queen's Park. That's where it should be, because this is such a damn circus that you should conduct all this stuff in a tent.

Sorry, Speaker, I'll be careful. He doesn't like it when I use the vernacular.

So these sectoral negotiations are going to go somewhere with the eight groups. Who are they? Health, education, Ontario public service, community service, colleges, universities -- they've even split colleges and universities into two sectors because they don't want them talking to one another; that'd be the worse thing that could happen -- agencies, boards and commissions, known as ABCs, and municipalities.

Eight sectors are going to sit down and talk. Here's the deal for you: The Treasurer says -- this is too much -- "If we can get a sectoral agreement and we can then couple that with a local agreement, we'll give you a 20% discount." How do you like that? It's like running Honest Ed's. Fantastic. We've got some real marketing agents over there. These guys are brilliant. But if you don't get the sectoral agreement at the same time as you get the local agreement, you're out of luck. You're going to pay the big bucks.

Mr Tim Murphy (St George-St David): The Leon's government event: Don't pay until 1996.

Mr Mahoney: Yes, the don't pay a cent event. There you go; unbelievable. Well, we're going to pay. They won't have to pay; they'll be history.

But what do you say to a municipality that says: "Look, we sat down and negotiated with our fire service and we got them to agree to a 0% raise for the first time in so long we can't remember. They've agreed to a wage freeze. We sat down with our inside and our outside workers and they've agreed we're going to shut down city hall for a couple of days; we're going to give people some time off. We've worked it out."

The sectoral group dealing with -- who is it now? Peter Warrian? Michael Decter? Whoever it is doesn't come to the same kind of agreement, because he's trying to put in place some broad-cut system that's going to just gut the local negotiation process. So you turn around and say: "Sorry, folks. We offered you 20% off the cuts but because the sectoral agreements at the Royal York," or the tent at Queen's Park or wherever it is, "haven't come to a head and been successful, we're not going to give you that discount."

What a convoluted process is being put in place. There will be negotiations -- you can just picture it -- going on all over the province. Everyone trying to figure out how to save money for this government when they've already told you. I started out with $100 million in savings from the conservation authorities. You're ignoring that. The municipalities have told you how to save money. You're ignoring that. The school boards have said: "We can increase class sizes by one or two kids. It won't be too catastrophic and we can work our way through this." Why don't you work with them? Why don't you give them the 20% discount?

Why are you telling people you've got to cut these huge catastrophic cuts that are going to have a major impact on the service levels in the community, that are going to affect your kids and my kids and their kids? Why are you doing this? I just don't understand why you won't come up with a plan that can work.

1650

You know what else is going to happen? We talked about the right to strike. Any of you who have been through negotiations with a union, and I assume most of you have, know about the issue of sick pay. You know about unions and workers that bank sick pay, which then becomes an unfunded liability by the employer, in most cases by a municipality or a school board. So you'll have a bunch of members of the particular sector with this huge unfunded liability.

The municipalities are trying to get out of that. In the fire service, the municipalities are coming along and saying, "Look, give us a break. If they're sick, fine, but no banking of sick days for new firefighters." That's one of the positions that's put forward every time you get into negotiations with the fire service. They don't like to give on that. It's a very important benefit to them. It's worth a lot of money. It means when they retire, they cash it in. Big dough. Big severance.

What you're creating here with these unpaid days off is another bank. You're going to have a sick day bank, number one; you're going to have an unpaid day bank, number two. You're actually creating an unfunded liability that your partners are going to have to deal with somewhere down the road. Where are they going to go? Can they go to their taxpayers? Mr Speaker, I ask you.

We had a demonstration on the front lawn today. The taxpayers are up in arms. They are saying, "Don't increase our taxes $2 billion by the provincial government." Let me tell you, if any of you have ever been a municipal politician, you'll understand what it's like. They can get a hold of you there. You can't hide in the Legislature when you're on municipal council. Most times they can phone you at home. For a lot of your members, they don't even know the number of the offices.

Mrs Sullivan: Or they don't have an office.

Mr Mahoney: Or they don't have an office.

Mrs Sullivan: Their offices are closed three days a week.

Mr Mahoney: Sure. So the municipal people, I say to Mrs Harrington, are going to pay a tremendous price for this; tremendous pressure. They're going to come back to the next provincial government and say: "Look at what this has done. We now have a totally unmanageable situation." You see, it's not a matter even of financial bankruptcy; it's a matter of a bankruptcy of ideas. You have no solutions.

I've only got about eight minutes left. Oh, I found the CECBA notes, but I think I've already made that point.

I want to talk a little bit about the Health minister's Bill 50 and the broad powers Dr Ruth is going to enjoy under this bill. This is scary. We have some simple questions: What services will be cut? Medical services, we're talking about. How will they, the bureaucrats in the Ministry of Health, make the decisions? On what basis will they decide what services are medically necessary, and when did Ruth Grier become qualified to make those kinds of decisions? Where's her certificate in medicine?

One thing we should all try to do is do what we do best and stay the heck out of what we don't know anything about, yet we have a Health minister putting forward a bill that's going to literally give this minister the power, by the stroke of a pen, to decide that certain medical procedures will not be covered -- with no negotiations with the OMA, no discussions with the stakeholders, with no public discussions, for goodness' sake, with no opportunity for people to come in and ask questions about this. It's quite incredible.

I think this clearly points out the mentality of this government. It's the classic example of their lack of understanding. I was going to say lack of caring, but I won't, because I do believe you care. I just don't think you understand.

Look at what the government did to the interns. Now, who are the interns? The interns are not 55-year-old, $250,000-a-year doctors. The interns are not the 65-year-old, 70-year-old doctors who are ready perhaps to retire, to do a little less work. The interns are the young men and women who have just come through 10 long, hard years of education to become a doctor.

Ms Murdock: Residents.

Mr Mahoney: Am I not right, I say to the member from Sudbury? That's not who the interns are? That's who the interns are, trust me. I knew you didn't understand.

Ms Murdock: They are the second-last year of medical school.

Mr Mahoney: But they're just coming through. You want to be picky: second-last year of medical school. Excuse me. They're interns, of course, but they're in the ninth or 10th year of their education to become a doctor. What do you do?. You come out with a first policy that says that interns who come out of the system will only be allowed to bill 25% of the normal revenue.

Ms Murdock: Residents.

Mr Mahoney: No, I'll come to the changes. Originally you said 25%, and you tried to pretend that this was only if they wanted to do business here in Toronto. That's just not true. There are four areas where 42 doctor positions were opened up in southwestern Ontario for 380 family practitioners coming out of the intern program -- 42 places. Everybody else in the province, whether they operated in Gananoque, Timmins or Thunder Bay, was going to be allowed to bill 25%.

I raised it. Others raised it. Our critic, Barbara Sullivan, raised it and met with them on a regular basis. They said, "How can they do this to us?"

Ms Murdock: Easy.

Mr Mahoney: "Easy," the member says. Yes, it is easy. That's the trouble: It's too darn easy for this government to make those kinds of callous decisions without understanding the impact. Talk to the mothers and fathers who have helped those young people go through med school.

Then you came back and you said: "Tell you what, I guess we're a little harsh. What we're going to do is we're going to turn it around and we'll let them bill 75 cents on the dollar, instead of 25, for an 18-month period," once again not based on locating in Toronto or in the highly populated areas, but wherever they locate. That's going to be the decision. So 75% of a regular doctor, but no negotiation. That's a pretty big chunk.

Why wouldn't you, say, look at the entry level of med school and say to the people who are thinking of becoming doctors: "I wouldn't advise this. We've got too many doctors already." People say to me at some of the receptions and events I've been at, "Oh, the doctors can pay." What about the young lawyers who come out and don't have a job? What about the engineers who come out and don't have a job?

Mr Robert V. Callahan (Brampton South): Right on.

Mr Mahoney: Not "right on," I say to my friend from Brampton, because those young lawyers have options. Those young lawyers can go out and hustle for business. Those young engineers do not rely on the government for their income. That's the fundamental difference.

Ms Murdock: The doctors do and they pay their school on top of that.

Mr Mahoney: A doctor has no choice. A doctor bills OHIP or bills nobody.

Ms Murdock: That is true.

Mr Mahoney: You don't think that's true? Where else does a doctor bill, to the cabinet minister? They bill OHIP.

So you tell them, after they've been in school, after they've gone through all the heartache, after the public taxpayer has paid for their education, that they're out of business.

Ms Murdock: No, you tell them to go where they are needed. That is what you tell them.

The Deputy Speaker (Mr Gilles E. Morin): Order.

Mr Mahoney: It's absolutely unbelievable. To hear the chirping over there, to hear these people try to defend that kind of crap just makes my blood boil. That is such nonsense and so unfair, and you know it. When you go home and talk to the mothers and fathers of those young men and women who have dedicated their life to medicine, I don't know how you do it. You must be embarrassed. You must be ashamed of Bob Rae, you must be ashamed of the NDP.

Use some common sense. Start at the beginning. Sit down with the doctors who have finished their careers and talk to them about how they can help. They would all help. They've all told me they would help. They'd be prepared to take reductions, they'd be prepared to take cuts, but those doctors who are at the end of their medical careers don't want you destroying the young men and women who are coming up to take their place.

Guess where they're going. They're going south of the border, and I don't blame them a bit. They'll see half the patients for twice the money, with all kinds of opportunity for growth, with all kinds of support for research dollars, with a wonderful life for their families, because you are driving them out of this province, just as you are driving out business, just as you are destroying confidence, just as you are destroying everything that means anything to anybody in this province of Ontario.

When that Premier stands there and says that because we criticize you we criticize Ontario, I say to that Premier: "Shame on you, Bob Rae. That is nonsense." We love this province. That's why we fight for it. We love the people of this province. That's why we're in politics. We care about our communities. We think you people are so wrongheaded. You're destroying everything we've all worked for to build in our communities.

1700

Hon Mike Farnan (Minister without Portfolio in Education and Training): More passion. More emotion. A little more emotion.

Interjections.

Mr Mahoney: I'm telling you, you do make me angry. That's why maybe it seems a little passionate.

Interjections.

Mr Mahoney: You can be cynical if you want and you can laugh if you want, and yes, I'm out of time, but I've got to tell you something: This opposition, led by Lyn McLeod, will fight you every step of the way on this bill and we're going to defeat this bill and defeat this government.

Mr Sorbara: Remember Alberta, if you're interested in the results in Alberta.

The Deputy Speaker: Order, order. Questions and comments.

Mr Cousens: The member from Mississauga West has given us the Liberal alternative to what the government's proposed in this bill. If you have been able to take from his comments what the Liberal alternative is, it would be nothing. I can sense the anger that the --

Mrs Sullivan: What's your position, Don?

Mr Cousens: You'll hear it shortly, and we do have a position. But I want to say, why haven't the Liberals till now come forward with any concrete proposals on what they would do to address the crisis that Ontario is in?

It's one thing to stand in opposition and be critical of everything, but it's quite another to be able to go back and come forward with responsible legislation and options. What I hear Mr Mahoney doing is continuing the whole sense that his leader has said. She says that the government must take steps to bring the deficit under control by reducing the total public sector wage bill. Yes, that's fine, but I haven't heard how this group of Liberals would do it. They call for fiscal restraint and then they suggest you open up contracts and have real negotiations.

How much money are they going to get? What are you going to open up in those negotiations? You talk about contract-stripping and yet you're willing to come along and bring about legislation that would open those contracts. What I see the Liberals doing -- and I would like the member from Mississauga West to explain how it is he isn't just sucking and blowing at the same time, with the Liberal presentation -- what in fact you're really doing is wanting everything and yet you're offering nothing in return.

It's so easy to just be critical, as you have been. I was looking for something concrete form the Liberals and it has not been there and I think you owe us an apology for taking so much time to say nothing.

Mr Hope: There was one thing that was puzzling me a bit. As I listened to the comments made by the member from Mississauga, which I always find attractive, I was just waiting for the closing remarks for the Ontario flag to go over his shoulders and for him to hug himself in the Ontario flag. You missed a perfect opportunity for a photo shot.

But what I would like to ask the member from Mississauga, who makes reference to his leader, is that I've been still waiting and I've still been trying to find it in Hansard. I remember there was a comment made about 18 points, and I'm still trying to find the Liberals' 18 points to economic renewal or to bring this province under control. I'm still waiting to find those. I've been through Hansard and consistently I still have not heard the Liberals talk about those points. It would just be important to me.

Mr Steven Offer (Mississauga North): What about the relocation to Chatham?

Mr Hope: I hear the opposition heckling about what's going on with relocation to Chatham. There were just announced 200 additional jobs in the private sector that are going into my community, which is not dependent upon government operation. I compliment those people from private enterprise who have been able to see that Chatham is a prosperous place, contrary to the Liberal promise.

It's amazing that the members say, "What's happening?" Let me tell you how the Liberals plan on getting votes. The Liberal leader goes into Chatham after the AgriCorp announcements: "AgriCorp Carrot Held Out in Front of Chatham, Ontario Liberal Says," and he says they're going to buy votes in the next election. Vote for a Liberal and they'll get AgriCorp. What a very misleading way of trying to pursue the people, trying to identify what's going on around this issue.

In closing, to the member from Mississauga, I enjoy your synopsis of what you're saying, but I just truly would ask if, in the two minutes -- I thought in the 90 minutes you would have told us -- but in the two minutes, at least give us a highlight of the 18 points the Liberals really feel are important.

Mr Callahan: Mr Speaker --

Interjections.

Mr Callahan: Mr Speaker, can I start over again? I'm not getting in here anyplace.

I want to say with reference to my friend from Mississauga West, one of the tragedies that the NDP does not understand is that you don't put everybody in the same basket. You could have done this in a very much more humane way with the young medical students. You could have said: "Okay, here's the rule: Those who just got into medical school, you will graduate and you will have an opportunity to serve your community, but we're going to put a total moratorium on medical students in the future." They didn't do that. This government seems to think that the way you deal with it is the axe and the retroactive stuff.

You know, people have rights. You take them away indiscriminately, without any sympathy or any understanding. But if it happens to be union rights, your union leaders coming to you and saying, "We'd like this," you're prepared to open up the entire barn.

Finally, I would like to say that you say you've heard no positive comments about how you could have dealt with this. Start collecting your debts. There's $120 million in family benefits that were paid through fraud or mistake. You haven't collected a nickel of it. Why don't you take the lotteries that we see on television every night, and instead of giving people the full capital amount of $13 million, give them a life annuity like they do in the States. Take 30% of it in tax immediately. Use that money, instead of immediately looking to the question of: "We've got to get that deficit down. Let's lay people off."

I tell you, you people are a fraud, an absolute fraud, in terms of you have lost your commitments, you've lost your principles, and I believe that people in the NDP who thought you stood for something are now burning their cards all over Ontario, and you will see it in the next election. We've seen 8% federally. We'll see less than that with you people in the next election.

Mr Stockwell: This is going to be a very acrimonious debate, I'm sure, as we wear on.

Interjection.

Mr Stockwell: What?

Mrs Sullivan: Torysaurus.

Mr Stockwell: Oh, me? Jeez, I just heard from a -- I won't even get into that debate. I think it was rather a silly comparison, Jurassic Park. I don't even think it was funny either, so I suppose that's why. But I think it's going to be an acrimonious debate.

Mr Steven Offer (Mississauga North): If it was your line, you'd be laughing.

Mr Stockwell: Maybe I would be, but if it was my line it would have been funny.

Mr Callahan: You've got better lines, Chris.

Mr Mahoney: You're funnier than me, Chris. I agree with that.

Mr Stockwell: But I think we would be in a rather acrimonious debate, and I understand the position that the member from Mississauga West is putting forward in a lot of respects. I understand the arguments he makes. The dilemma that you're faced with in this --

Mrs Sullivan: How will you vote, Chris?

Mr Stockwell: Well, I think we'll probably end up voting in favour of the legislation, but I think there are going to be a significant number of amendments that we will move, because I think there's going to be a significant --

Interjections.

The Deputy Speaker: Order.

Mr Stockwell: I think it's going to be a very difficult time and there's probably going to be a lot of amendments. I know there's going to be a lot amendments and public hearings to take place, and I think that is necessary. I don't believe that we can just simply stand idly by while the province crumbles, and I don't necessarily believe that this legislation is in its present form good legislation. I think it needs to be altered dramatically. If those alterations are taken, then I think you probably could find widespread support in the population of the province of Ontario.

Although I think Mr Mahoney gave an impassioned speech, and I think at times it bordered on a very decent speech, by the same token, the alternatives that were offered by the member were rather slim. They were truly rather slim. I suggest that by suggesting putting off the deficit, I don't think the world bankers will accept that argument any more, so you need something else.

The Deputy Speaker: The member for Mississauga West, you have two minutes to reply.

Mr Mahoney: I thought there was another response.

The Deputy Speaker: Let me -- one, two, three, four. That was four. You're the last one.

Mr Anthony Perruzza (Downsview): One, two --

Mr Stockwell: Three, four.

The Deputy Speaker: Four. That's right.

Mr Mahoney: Hold it. Do it this way. Put your hand up in the air. One, two, three, four.

The Deputy Speaker: Order. You're using your two minutes.

Mr Mahoney: Thank you. I just want to help them. They asked me what I would do. One of the first things I would do is teach you how to count. But anyway, let me thank the members on all sides for their comments and for their criticism, because that's what that time is for.

1710

Let me say to the member from Etobicoke West, at no time did I say, "Ignore the deficit," at no time did I say or would I say, "Ignore the problems of this province." I think they're catastrophic. I think you would agree with me that these guys have exacerbated and created these problems to a point where it's almost irretrievable. To the member -- sorry about the riding: Mr Hope. I say to the member who says, "Give us some of the ideas," that I did. You weren't listening. Take it home tonight and read it. I'm sure it'll put you to sleep, but try and stay awake.

What I've asked is, sit down with the people who have offered you solutions. Sit down with the people in the municipal sector who tell you they can find you the money you need in the municipal sector without gutting their contracts, without creating layoffs. They are saying that. If they can't do it, then let it be on their heads, but they are saying that. Sit down with them. Turn to the people. Sit down with the conservation authorities, the very first thing I said in my opening, after I used the analogy that so offended the member opposite.

Let me just tell you, sit down with the people. There are all kinds of ways to get the economy going. Don't increase taxes, for God's sake, to try to increase revenues. The opposite will happen.

Report continues in volume B.

June 17, 1993

PRIVATE MEMBERS' PUBLIC BUSINESS

CONSERVATION AUTHORITIES

INTERNATIONAL TRADE

CONSERVATION AUTHORITIES

INTERNATIONAL TRADE

AFTERNOON SITTING

MEMBERS' STATEMENTS

TORONTO MAPLE LEAFS

SOCIAL CONTRACT

HEALTH CARDS

AVALON RETIREMENT LODGE

TORONTO MAPLE LEAFS

SOCIAL CONTRACT

POLITICAL MEETING

FOLKLORE FESTIVAL

STATEMENTS BY THE MINISTRY AND RESPONSES

COMPENSATION FOR WRONGFUL CONVICTION

WITHDRAWAL OF BILL

ORAL QUESTIONS

UNEMPLOYMENT

SOCIAL CONTRACT

TAX INCREASES

PUBLIC OPINION POLLS

ONTARIO FILM REVIEW BOARD

ARTS AND CULTURAL FUNDING

ONTARIO FILM REVIEW BOARD

HIGHWAY TOLLS

MUNICIPAL PLANNING

PETITIONS

PUBLIC SERVICES

INTRODUCTION OF BILLS

LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY RETIREMENT ALLOWANCES AMENDMENT ACT, 1993 / LOI DE 1993 MODIFIANT LA LOI SUR LES ALLOCATIONS DE RETRAITE DES DÉPUTÉS À L'ASSEMBLÉE LÉGISLATIVE

BUDGET REFERENDUM ACT, 1993 / LOI DE 1993 SUR LES RÉFÉRENDUMS PORTANT SUR LES BUDGETS

ORDERS OF THE DAY

SOCIAL CONTRACT ACT, 1993 / LOI DE 1993 SUR LE CONTRAT SOCIAL