SOCIAL CONTRACT ACT, 1993 / LOI DE 1993 SUR LE CONTRAT SOCIAL
Report continued from volume A.
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SOCIAL CONTRACT ACT, 1993 / LOI DE 1993 SUR LE CONTRAT SOCIAL
Continuation of debate on the motion for 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 Deputy Speaker (Mr Gilles E. Morin): The member for Stormont-Dundas-Glengarry.
Mr Noble Villeneuve (S-D-G & East Grenville): And East Grenville. I was just reminiscing a bit today. It's going to be 10 years in December that I was elected to this Legislature and had the opportunity of sitting in government, sitting in opposition and sitting where we are now as a member of the third party. As a matter of fact, the government in place now has been in all of those positions during those 10 years.
Interestingly, I recall the Legislature having been recalled to settle some TTC strikes and a number of others, and when this government sat as an opposition party, it could not have done enough to protect its friends within the labour movement. I admired them for it because it was a doctrine, it was a dogma and they followed it to the T. You respect people who do that.
However, something happened. Those were the days when Big Brother giveth. We are now entering the time where Big Brother taketh away. It's a rather strange phenomenon, that the Big Brother would be led by Premier Bob Rae. He is the Big Brother, along with his brothers in that party, and if indeed he would have laid the cards on the table when negotiations occurred --
Hon Marilyn Churley (Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations): What about sisters?
Mr Drummond White (Durham Centre): Brothers and sisters.
Mr Villeneuve: Brothers and sisters, of course. I apologize. The two founding genders very much exist and coexist and thank God for that.
However, back to the subject at hand. When this party --
Mr Jim Wiseman (Durham West): You got yourself out of that one smoothly.
Mr White: He is smooth.
Mr Villeneuve: I've been here for 10 years.
We go back to the philosophy of the governing party. There's only about four members left of that original group and of course they are the four power brokers on the front benches from the time when I was first elected here. They still look the same; they've aged a bit, but their philosophy has totally turned around, completely. I'm going to cite you a few examples.
Whenever we went back and recalled the Legislature -- I remember even the Liberal Party was prevented from presenting a budget. They had to table it. These people knew every little trick in the book to make this Legislature work to their satisfaction, their needs and their desires, and I, as a member who was newly elected, was admiring them for -- it's strange; they're in opposition and yet seem to be able to get their agenda on the front burner, and I give them credit for that. However, their agenda now is somehow off the beaten path, the path that has traditionally been the New Democratic Party line.
I would like for them to explain some of the initiatives that were taken in this deal, for example, to have said to their so-called friends and partners, "We will sit at the Royal York from the beginning of April till whenever it has to be, and you will negotiate with us." Well, their partners were at the table and negotiating for more than two months, well into June, $5,000 a day, and nothing was happening.
Their partners did not know what the alternative solution was. If they would have had the alternative solution, ie, the draconian bill that has been brought in -- and I think this bill can be amended to make it at least palatable; if not democratic, at least palatable -- the partners may well have sat down and said, "If this is the alternative to the negotiations, we better take this very seriously."
However, they did not in their wildest nightmares think that Premier Bob Rae could do that to them, and this is what they're having to accept, the reality of political life when you reach the levers of power. Big Brother was always there to give. Big Brother now is taking away.
I have some suggestions. A number of people phoned me up on the weekend, and I'll just tell you how serious these things are. Two OPP officers phoned me, on my cellular phone besides that, and they have suggested that they know how to cut about $500,000, without hurting at all their salary scale and the 12 days off and what have you.
Apparently the Ontario Provincial Police have what they call a quarter century club: 26 different gatherings, banquets, throughout the province to recognize those members who have 25 years or more in the force. They're saying that in these tough times we don't need this quarter century club spending probably $15,000 or $20,000 -- and I don't know how much. Those were suggestions to me by OPP officers.
I ask the government, have you checked with anyone before you brought in this very ill fated legislation that you will be applying to your so-called friends? I have difficulty with that.
Municipalities: I represent 23 very rural municipalities in the riding of Stormont-Dundas-Glengarry and East Grenville, and when I speak to employees of the municipalities, I find that by and large some of the smaller ones probably have five or six employees and some of the larger ones may go up to 15 or 20. But I find the majority of these employees at the municipal level are not at the $30,000 threshold.
Mr Wiseman: They have no problems.
Mr Villeneuve: They have no problems, the member for Durham West says. Well, I can show you what they're being cut by, and if indeed the cuts come through as I have seen them, a municipality with 10 employees, five of whom make more than $30,000, is being chopped $21,285. It's pretty big when you stretch it over five employees, and all of the municipalities that I represent are in that ballpark.
They have, because of very difficult economic times in the province of Ontario, led the way in attempting to reduce the costs. The costs have been reduced over the past number of years. They led the way. The government of Ontario is just now starting to realize what's happening. These municipalities knew that indeed their tax base was eroding, mostly an agricultural tax base, and yes, they have attempted to do their tightening of their belts, and now they're being told, and I could go down the whole list here, everything from $6,300 -- no, the village of Finch had $4,700 cut -- to somewhere in the area of $40,000 from one of the larger municipalities.
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Those are pretty big cuts to municipalities that have already suffered the pain, and this is in an area where the economy has been most difficult for quite a number of years. It surrounds the city of Cornwall. I know one of the government members, when my colleague from Cornwall brought in a private member's motion to attempt to move one of the newly formed crown corporations to the city of Cornwall, for some reason said that he figured the people of Cornwall were crying wolf. I'm here to tell you that if they're crying wolf, then I will resign my seat. I have seen the difficult times that the people in the city of Cornwall and surrounding area are facing. There is no doubt about it: 3,000 jobs lost, not to return. Times are very, very difficult.
I want to talk about the critic area I cover, which is Agriculture and Food. The Minister of Agriculture and Food is a pretty good friend of mine. Certainly we have our political, I guess, discussions and areas that we don't agree on, but by and large he's a person I respect very much and certainly an honourable gentleman.
The government asked the minister and the ministry to cut the spending within the Ministry of Agriculture and Food. They cut 10% last year. They cut 10% again this year. I say to you, if all of the ministries within this government had cut 10% last year and 10% this year, as did the Ministry of Agriculture and Food, we would have no deficit in this province. Twenty per cent of $53 billion is somewhere between $10 billion and $11 billion, and that's basically the problem we have with Ontario's economy right now.
Interjection.
Mr Villeneuve: I see the Minister of Housing says no. Those are the facts.
Agriculture provides, directly and indirectly, some 20% of the jobs within the province of Ontario. The production of food, the processing of food, the transportation of food, the handling of food, whatever, provides 20% of the jobs. That very important ministry is down now to 1% of the entire budget of the province of Ontario.
The partners of this government, should they have had to take the kind of reduction in income that farmers have had to endure and live with with very little support from governments, would indeed have a very legitimate bone of contention and be probably in an area where their credibility would be very, very difficult to dispute.
The credibility of some of the union leaders is always interesting, because they are always in a position where it will never be enough when they're bargaining. Yes, they have to come to an understanding, they have to come to an agreement; however, they generally ask for pie in the sky and then settle for something else. Everyone goes into negotiations knowing that. But the credibility is difficult to accept when those things are occurring. There's a great deal of posturing.
However, when we go back to Agriculture and Food, one of the very basic industries within our province, times are most difficult. World prices for grain have completely come apart at the seams, the cost of production continues to climb and profit margins are very small, if indeed they exist at all.
If we factor out the farm tax rebate -- which is not support for agriculture; it's simply returning that portion or the approximate portion of real estate taxes on farm real estate and farm buildings that is attributable to the school boards -- we find that the total budget for agriculture in 1990 was less than 1%, in 1991 it was 0.87%, in 1992 it was 0.75% and now it is below 0.75%. That is the portion of the entire provincial budget that is basically there to support agriculture and all of the related industries within that food production, processing and transportation network.
I say again, if these other ministries had been able to follow the example that the Ministry of Agriculture and Food has been forced to do by this government, we would have no deficit in this province at all.
We go back to Agriculture again. The ministry shut down two of its five agricultural colleges, and I think that's somewhat of a very sad situation and indicates to me that agriculture and the training of people to produce food for us is not a very important priority to this government. Centralia and New Liskeard had been operating for a number of years. Yes, the enrolment was down somewhat. However, no negotiations occurred. Where can we amalgamate some of the --
Mr Leo Jordan (Lanark-Renfrew): A point of order, Mr Speaker --
The Deputy Speaker: I believe you're not in your seat. I cannot accept your point of order. The member for Stormont-Dundas-Glengarry, you have the floor.
Mr Robert V. Callahan (Brampton South): Mr Speaker, I believe there is no quorum in the House.
The Deputy Speaker: Would you please check if there is a quorum.
Clerk Assistant and Clerk of Committees (Ms Deborah Deller): A quorum is not present, Speaker.
The Deputy Speaker ordered the bells rung.
The Deputy Speaker: A quorum is now present. The member for S-D-G & East Grenville.
Mr Villeneuve: I see my friend and colleague the Minister of Agriculture and Food just came in. He's watching the monitor very closely.
Back to the cuts that occurred to and within the Ministry of Agriculture and Food. The two colleges: I think it was a travesty to have them both close down. Certainly, there should have been some negotiations occur to see if indeed some programs that were not as popular as others might have been able to be axed and yet maintain the colleges as we've known them for a number of years. Both New Liskeard and Centralia got cut off completely.
The dairy inspection program, which consists of a number of people who had been doing farm inspections, plant inspections and milk-quality or dairy-quality inspections for many years, some 26 out of a staff of 36 across the province were cut by the Ministry of Agriculture and Food, immediately after they had been told they need not worry or expect any cutbacks.
These are pretty rough situations within a ministry that is so important as far as I'm concerned. The production of food and the related industries to that should be the number one priority in this province and for this government. We don't see where they are recognizing that particular department as important at all.
I have here a letter from the Leeds and Grenville County Board of Education. They again were leading the government because they did cut their costs of operation very substantially in 1992 and now they're faced with some very heavy cuts which they've already pared down to as little as they could. Here are some of the comments:
"In 1992, the Leeds and Grenville County Board of Education made significant expenditure reductions, putting in motion a three-year plan. Unfortunately, because the board was one year ahead of the provincial government in implementing its plan, it now appears these efforts will not be recognized within the requirements of the expenditure control plan and the social contract."
Signed by Mark Darrock, chairman of the board.
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Again, a letter signed by the director of education, Mr Kinsella: "It is similar to the method the ministry used for those boards who did not implement junior kindergarten." Mr Kinsella is offering to the government some ways around, as opposed to, the social contract legislation. "Each was given an opportunity to present a case as to why they could not implement the program. We would appreciate the same opportunity in relation to the expenditure control plan and the social contract. Those boards that have made the appropriate expenditure reductions and can demonstrate the fact should be given the chance to present their case. Once accepted, then the expenditure reductions would be recognized as meeting the requirements of expenditure control plans and the social contract."
We're in an area where our school board's assessment base is not rich by any stretch of the imagination. It has had to be very careful over the years, particularly in the recession beginning in 1990, and it continues in such a fashion. So the government, whether the legislation is implemented or not, I believe must recognize, with school boards and with municipalities, exactly where the cuts have occurred, and if they've occurred in the last year or 18 months, they also should be recognized and not punished for doing exactly what the government at Queen's Park should have been doing two years ago.
The conservation authorities: I found it an interesting private member's motion, and I see the member for Grey here. The conservation authorities are meeting here in Toronto pursuant to the private member's motion from the member for Grey that was approved by this Legislature last Thursday. They are in a position where their cost to operate is making it imperative for them to start selling real estate to pay their taxes -- not a very appropriate situation when these conservation authorities own lands that are considered ecologically fragile, some wetlands, lands that must and should be preserved.
We have a situation where the conservation authorities -- I see the Minister of Natural Resources is here, and I presume he had a meeting with them or his officials had a meeting with them today. I certainly hope they were able to come to some sort of agreeable solution so that these conservation authorities are not forced into selling real estate or other capital assets to pay their taxes.
I also want to remind the Minister of Natural Resources while he's here that we had a very major landslide in the south conservation authority watershed on Sunday. Almost three kilometres of ground slid into the river, an area that had been expropriated by governments a number of years ago. Thank goodness no one was killed, but we had a very major landslide. All the responsible people are meeting down there today to attempt to find a solution, but money will have to be forthcoming.
This was a freak of nature and not unanticipated, thank goodness, and provisions had been made. But the river is now blocked and there will be contaminated water supplies for a number of the towns downstream. I gather the water is just now making its way through.
We had a landslide in that area in 1971. I recall it well and you may as well, Mr Speaker, because you come from that area. It blocked the river. What occurs the following spring is that sediment or dirt from the bottom of the river winds up on the flooded land. What we had in that year were a number of farm ditches that were plugged with ground that came up from the bottom of the river after the landslide, and a cover of ground upwards of 12 inches on top of existing grass and hay crops, and reseeding had to be done. So we have a fairly major problem there and a major expenditure coming up.
I think this government must address the abuses in the system, the OHIP card I think being number one. We're looking at estimates of between $700 million and $900 million annually of abuse by people who should not be receiving health care here in the province of Ontario. That kind of money must be addressed.
We have a situation -- and the Minister of Culture, Tourism and Recreation I'm glad to see is here today. Her parliamentary assistant was at the opening of the new dock facilities at the Upper Canada Village marina a month and a half ago. The St Lawrence Parks Commission has been asked to cut very substantially. They now have had to close a park known as the Raisin Region Conservation Authority park. We have several interested people. There are 100 serviced sites at that park. It's about one kilometre away from Lake St Francis on the Raisin River, and easy access by boat; one river flows into the other. But what we have here is a park, paid for totally by public funds, which will have to remain closed. At least it looks like it will have to remain closed.
I think that's a travesty, because in the area, this particular park could serve families. It's out of the way. It's not along the St Lawrence and therefore it would be considered secondary.
However, the park is closed, and because of union agreements -- and they call them successor rights -- they're going to leave that park closed, a park totally built with public funds, with a number of people ready to lease it, keep the grass trimmed and make it available to constituents within the riding that I represent. Yet because of a number of bureaucratic requirements, this will not happen. I think that's a shame, and I appreciate that the minister and her parliamentary assistant are looking at this, but the whole system is jammed and stalled.
Mr Len Wood (Cochrane North): We'll look into it.
Mr Villeneuve: Yes, the government is here, and, "We'll look into it." That's what we want to hear. That may be the last thing we want to hear. Get the government out of my hair and I'll be able to make things go.
I want to touch on just another subject, and I don't have a lot of time left, but we have three governments in Canada that call themselves social democrats. Well, because of them and because of other reasons but primarily because of the government of Ontario, Alberta Tories won a very glowing election last week. I think it was primarily based on cutting taxes and getting the government out of the affairs of the nation.
We do know that more companies leave our province, first because of high taxes, second because of government interference and third because of requirements by all levels of government to submit to all the requirements and the needs of government. This is a fact, and this has been proven. Lower wage costs come about fourth on the list of why companies go elsewhere; taxes and government interference are numbers 1 and 2.
I think this government is starting to get the message. Probably this government is just as much responsible for a Tory win in Alberta as any other, because the three socialist governments, the one in BC, the one in Saskatchewan and the one in Ontario, are not exactly the model that the rest of Canada wants to follow.
In 1985 I was a member of a Progressive Conservative government, and people for some reason thought the alternatives were better, and yes, I recall well. As a matter of fact, I was a member of the Frank Miller cabinet when the day came in late June that the marriage was on, the fix was in and the Tories were out. That was very interesting, because at that time a lot of people said: "Ah, now, the Liberals. We know what they stand for. They're awful good administrators and they will put this province on the map."
Well, they put the province on the map all right. They doubled the taxes, they doubled the take from the public, and lo and behold, they started to ask for more bureaucratic requirements, studies. They were very heavy on studying, and restudying. They poured more money into paper than you can shake a stick at, and that's when the economy was growing by leaps and bounds. They're kind of proud to say that, through a lot of good luck, they were able to balance the budget one year. In spite of the fact that they had anticipated almost a $1-billion deficit, they managed, through a lot of good luck, to balance the budget.
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Of course, they talk a lot about that, but they seem to forget and don't talk about the $10 billion of additional total debt that the province of Ontario got under a Liberal administration, I guess a Liberal-NDP government, because from 1985 to 1987 that's what it was. When the Liberals would announce an expenditure, the NDP would say: "That's fine, but not nearly enough. We need more." They got more. The public of Ontario got more.
Mr Speaker, as I sit sometimes in the chair you're in and sometimes in my regular seat, I find it amazing that they're all looking for someone else to blame. Yet who pays the bills? The taxpayers of Ontario. They pay all the bills. They also assume the debt of governments, and governments are notorious for just continuing to get into debt and forgetting about paying it off, because spending public money is one of the easiest things in the world. Then you've got to live with it.
You've got to live with the consequences of mortgaging the future, the future of young people, the future of businesses that may never come here because of high taxes and government interference. That's what the record doesn't say or show: those potential businesses that never do get off the ground or set up shop. We do know that in Ontario, as well as just about anywhere else, small and medium-sized businesses create the wealth, pay the taxes and employ the people. We must never, ever lose track of that.
As I sum up this somewhat mixed-emotion presentation, I say I will be supporting the legislation, but it must be amended. My colleagues have stated the amendments. We cannot gut a contract that was negotiated and signed in good faith. We must wait for that contract to expire. We must freeze the size of the civil service and we must, every time a contract comes up, negotiate. That's what it's all about.
The Deputy Speaker: Are there any questions or any comments?
Mr Chris Stockwell (Etobicoke West): The member from Stormont-Dundas-Glengarry has --
Mr Bill Murdoch (Grey): And East Grenville.
Mr Stockwell: And East Grenville; that's quite a name for a riding. He has highlighted quite a few points that we discussed in caucus. I don't think I'm speaking out of caucus to say that there was some handwringing about this piece of legislation, but one agreement among the group was that there had to be some amendments accepted by this government. We think they're reasonable. They're not onerous at all. They still would allow this government to save the money it is looking to save, but it allows for a system of checks and balances.
I think one of the most difficult things for anyone to accept as part of this legislation is the absolute and thorough control government will have over all aspects of the social contract. You will be able to reopen the contracts, roll back the wages and demand pay pause days. People could get fired and have no recourse. The recourse they did have was to the legal system. You've taken that away, taken it away through the social contract, and you've done so in such a draconian fashion that it allows no protection for the workers any more.
I understand where you came from, but since this mantle of power has been hoisted on you you've run around, in a lot of instances, like chickens with your heads cut off, from pillar to post, making decisions that absolutely haven't got any basis in the foundation for which your party was organized.
The social contract, reopening of contracts, clawing back wages -- we're looking for the amendments we are putting forward. Mr Villeneuve has outlined those clearly. He's told you where we want to see this contract go. He's told you how the savings can be made. If you're looking for public support, I think the first thing you will do is bring in the support of the opposition parties by accepting their amendments and making this thing go forward in a much better fashion.
Mr Callahan: We hear the Conservative Party saying that it has flip-flopped. They're not sure whether they're going to support this legislation or whether they're going to vote against it. They tell us there are amendments they will bring forward that are going to turn this into a fair bill that's going to save everybody. It's interesting to listen to that salvation speech over there. Yet we have not seen the amendments; we have no idea what the amendments are.
Mr Murdoch: Where have you been, have you been sleeping or something?
Mr Callahan: No, no, you haven't. I beg to differ. In any event, they seem to have a different position every day. Every three months, they have a different position. They've had a different position each time.
They talk about controlling expenditures. I have to tell you that the word "deficit" in the province of Ontario did not arise during the Liberal administration; it arose well in advance of that.
The net result is that when they talk about this having been foisted upon the government of the day, that's not the case at all. The government of the day has failed to even address the question of where there could be expenditures saved.
I will have an opportunity in a few minutes to speak at length on this, because in terms of how you solve a problem, you don't solve it by hammering the people of this province. I speak of the workers as well as the taxpayers. You sit down in a rational way and try to discover, what is the waste in government? Where can we cut expenditures? You do that first, and I suggest that hasn't been done.
The Conservative government seems to be the tax fighters, yet on the one hand they've got one position, the next day they've got another position, the next day another position. I'll be referring to those in my speech. I find it absolutely incredible that they've really not given us their position. There seems to be mixed emotions in their caucus in terms of how they're going to deal with this. I guess we'll find out on the day the vote is actually taken.
Mr Jordan: It's a privilege to have a short time to comment on this very important legislation, I must say. But first I would like to comment on my colleague's presentation. I think it was an excellent presentation. He not only covered the purpose and the content of the bill, but also the reason the bill was required.
When you cover the reason the bill is required, you have to ask yourself, why are we in this dilemma at all? How did we get here? As our member has pointed out, the reason we're here, the real beginning, started with the opposition. Their philosophy was tax, tax, tax and then spend, spend, spend. The philosophy of the government is spend, spend, spend and then tax, tax, tax. So what happens? Everybody's caught in an unprepared situation.
When they took over the government, they had the feeling, and they were very secure, that they were taking over a set of books that was well balanced. Of course, you and I know --
Mr Bob Huget (Sarnia): They were balanced with the other set.
Mr Jordan: You're right; I thank you. You see, $3.5 billion was sitting there that had to be accounted for, and then with your Agenda for People ahead of you to spend, spend, spend, naturally we are finding ourselves in the situation we are in.
But it seems to me that the government and the Premier especially have realized the situation they're in. He has listened to our leader, Mike Harris. He has realized that legislation is required. He has brought in legislation. Naturally, the legislation doesn't necessarily agree with the type of legislation we would have brought in, but of course we wouldn't have been in the situation. So there you are.
However, we are going to be given the opportunity, I hope, to make some amendments to that legislation that will make it acceptable to us and we can vote for it and, hopefully, get this government back on track and down the road show a plus on the books.
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Mr George Mammoliti (Yorkview): It's almost like the third party has gone to sleep, has woken up --
Mr Stockwell: Shhhh, shhhh.
Mr Murdoch: Shhhh, shhhh.
The Acting Speaker (Mr Dennis Drainville): Order.
Mr Mammoliti: There are obviously some flat tires there, holes in some of the --
Mr Stockwell: Shhhh.
Mr Murdoch: Shhhh.
The Acting Speaker: Order.
Mr Mammoliti: Mr Speaker, some order here.
They have fallen asleep and literally overnight have turned into these labour relations experts, trying to tell us how to deal with employees, trying to tell us what language to use and what legislation would be appropriate in this circumstance. I don't want to listen to that.
The member had said earlier that he's been in the Legislature for 10 years. He would have been here when that government, the Conservative government, took away anything that crown employees 10 years ago had negotiated in their collective agreements. You did it with one swoop. There was no negotiating, and now they have the gall to criticize this government for attempting to negotiate a package so that we can get out of a bind the Liberals next door to them created. They're the ones that got us into this mess.
Mr Stockwell: The Liberals got you into a $25- billion debt in two years. Oh, George, you will see communists under rocks next.
Mr Mammoliti: Yes, the Liberals did it to us. The Liberals put us into a debt we'll never forget, and now we're having to make up for the problems. Spend, spend, spend; somebody said that earlier. The Liberals did that and they did it consistently: 33 tax increases as well.
The Acting Speaker: Thank you. Your time has expired. The honourable member for S-D-G & East Grenville has two minutes to make a response.
Mr Villeneuve: To the member for Yorkview, that's exactly what I was talking about: When Big Brother giveth, Big Brother taketh away. He has proved my point beyond the shadow of a doubt. He doesn't want to listen, and it's Big Brother's turn to take away. That's amazing. I could not have made my point any better. He does not want to listen, doesn't even believe people like my colleague from Etobicoke West, who has been in business, employs people in a number of businesses, was a municipal politician and is now elected here: "We don't listen to people like the member for Etobicoke West, I'm sorry. He happens to be an employer of people, so we can't listen to him. He's poison." I'm telling you, it's terrible. That's the attitude that comes from this government.
To my colleague from Brampton South, he does sound a lot like a lawyer, because he is a lawyer and he is a good one. But he has not seen the six amendments. If I had more than a minute, I would read them for him very quickly. They're very simple amendments, and they make sense.
It's not the magic wand that the Liberals have, that Cinderella touches it and it turns to gold. I'm sorry, those days are over. They had those days from the mid-1980s to the end of the 1980s, when they managed to balance the budget in spite of themselves and not by good management; by a lot of very good luck they did that.
They're now coming back and saying, "The Tories don't know where they are." I'm sorry; we have a very solid position here. I heard the member for Oriole, just before question period, stating that she didn't know the Tory position either. They should be here more often. There's a problem. I hope I have helped a little bit.
The Acting Speaker: Further debate?
Mr Callahan: I'm amazed that another member from the government wouldn't have gotten up and spoken on this. I want to praise you, Mr Speaker, as I did before, for taking the strong stand you did in terms of your principles, which seems not to be emulated or adopted by any of your colleagues, or your former colleagues, of the New Democratic Party.
I'd like to talk about this in terms of what might happen if we simply let the government pass its bill. It might be very interesting. We could very cavalierly stand here tonight, not debate the bill and let the government pass it; and it will pass, no doubt, because there's a majority government. But I would predict that the net result of this will be that we will be involved in appeals right up to the Supreme Court of Canada. This bill clearly will not stand the test of a constitutional challenge. It is the most draconian, the most one-sided, the most dictatorial bill that has ever been placed before a democratic Parliament.
Let's say I'm right, and I think I am right, and perhaps my view is shared by other people who have taken the opportunity to look at this bill. Let's say I'm right and that it does go to the Supreme Court of Canada. Recognizing the length of time it takes to wend its way through the various courts up to the Supreme Court of Canada, we could be looking at as much as three years.
If I'm correct and that happens, what happens to the myriad partners referred to in the schedule of this act? How do they set their budgets? How can they possibly decide how much money they need to operate? How can they understand what services they can provide?
I'll tell you what's happening. In recognition of that fact, this is what's already happening among our transfer partners. In my municipality, my city holds a July 1 celebration, as they do in many areas and corners of Ontario and around Canada; it's our birthday. They have fireworks; they may have some entertainment for the young kids. It's probably the only free thing people can have if they can't afford to put their kids in skating or into some sport or ballet or whatever. It's an opportunity for them to get together as a family. It's an opportunity for them to see something as a family that doesn't cost them anything.
My municipality, rightly or wrongly, because of the fear of what's going to happen with this social contract, either legislated or negotiated, is reluctant to hold that festivity this year. No one comes forward with the opportunity to pay for that, so in my community, those people who can ill-afford to put their children into various events are going to be deprived of the opportunity of going to Chinguacousy Park. It's a great celebration, a great family event, and they're not going to be able to do that this year. I suggest to you that they won't be able to do it in 1994 and they won't be able to do it in 1995, while this bill wheels its way through the legal process, which I guarantee you it will do, and everybody's left in total disarray about just what is going to happen.
I suggest to you, as well, that if you drive through any of the municipalities in Ontario -- certainly mine is representative of everybody else's -- you're seeing situations where simple services such as grass cutting are not taking place. Municipalities just don't know what to do. They're left in a total quandary.
My colleague from Brampton North and I appeared before our city council to try and help it understand what the social contract was all about and how it would impact on the services that could be provided to the taxpayers of our riding, of our city. To begin with, you hit them with taxes on insurance, after the budget had been struck, which is going to impact significantly on the people of that city. That's number one; that's the first problem you gave them.
You now give them this problem of this thing called the social contract, which leaves them in total disarray. They have absolutely no idea what they're going to do. The school boards have no idea what they're going to do. And, which to me is absolutely the most insensitive thing this government could possibly do, children's aid societies, which are mandated by law to look after children and protect children, haven't got a clue what they're getting, haven't got a clue how much money they're going to have to help these people. My advice to them, and I may go jail for it, is that I told them: "Go ahead and spend it. You're duty-bound by statute to look after these young people, to protect them." And I said, "If you don't get the money, then go and sue the government for it."
And this is precisely what's going to happen. The people out there are in such disarray over this whole process. It's not the concept; it's the process. I don't think anybody will argue that we can't allow a deficit to continue to build as it has over successive governments and pass that on to our children as their heritage. We have to do something about it. But I suggest that what you've done is you've thrown out to the people of this province, all of our transfer partners, a piece of legislation or a philosophy that they can't understand. They don't know what it means. They don't know what it's going to cost them. They don't know what it means in terms of reduction of service.
One thing that is clear in this bill is the fact that with people in essential services, you're saying: "We'll solve that problem. We'll have them take their 12 days off a year, 36 in all, on the days that they would receive paid holidays."
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Let's be upfront with the people of this province. What is that doing? Think about it. When they take their 36 days at the end of the three-year period of this social contract, someone has to take their place in those essential services. That means that you have suddenly dropped on to municipalities, on to police forces, on to everybody else, the cost of replacing those people.
Let's just take a police force. How can you possibly hire replacements for these members of the police force three years from now unless you have trained them, some sort of training so they can take the place of those people who are off for the 36 days? It's impossible.
What's the plan? What plan does the government have to deal with that? Or is it simply a matter that you figure you're not going to be around here after 1995, so the hell with it? "We'll get ourselves to look good for now. We'll get our budget down below the $17 billion," which nobody ever believed anyway, "and we will pass on this obligation to the next party that forms the government."
That's the only thing I can think of. That's got to be exactly what you're doing. You're fed up with government; you don't know how to deal with it. So what do you do? "We create smoke and mirrors and we pass it on. We pass the baton on to the next government so that it can get us out of this mess."
For God's sake, I plead with you to at least play fair with the transfer partners, to make it clear to them what their obligations are going to be down the line. Don't play the smoke and mirror political game with them that you're playing, that the Treasurer did in his budget by creating three crown corporations to hide assets and debts to make it look better in the budget.
Let's let the people, the taxpayers of this province, at least have a fair shot at knowing what the problem is. Let's also give the people who provide the services the opportunity to be able to pare down expenses so we can all meet this mutual objective, but at the same time, let them plan for how they're going to secure revenues. You're not doing that.
I venture to say that the people in this Legislature who pass this legislation are one day going to find it very difficult to face up to the citizens of their ridings, because the citizens of their ridings will have a long memory. They will remember what you did to them. They will remember what you did to their services. They will remember just how they're going to get a big hit three years from now which will just fall out of the sky because of all this hanky-panky that's going on right now with this government.
I find it interesting that everyone over there seems to be in total accord, with the exception of the member for Victoria-Haliburton and, I understand, the member for Perth, who had the guts to speak out against it. You're playing a game, which may be nice to keep you out of the rain and no heavy lifting for the job you've got, but it's not playing fair with the people who are going to have to provide services and are going to have to look after all those necessary things in our province.
Young offenders' facilities, I see they're being attacked.
Court reporters: The Attorney General is thinking about bringing in a process which will in effect eliminate about 700 to 800 jobs, 95% of whom are women, most of them single parents. She's going to replace them with some megamachine that will be in the central belly of a courthouse that will record everything that's said in every criminal trial and civil trial in that courthouse. They're doing this without even having taken a pilot project. I find it absolutely incredible that they would do that.
The process was tried in British Columbia. British Columbia had a legislative committee look at it and it determined that it wanted to return to the old system because it was more reliable. I asked the Attorney General about it. I said, "Attorney General, have you done a pilot project?" She said: "Yes. It's in existence in the Ottawa courthouse." Well, I have to tell the Attorney General that she's totally wrong. It is not in existence in the Ottawa courthouse.
Hon Evelyn Gigantes (Minister of Housing): It certainly is.
Mr Callahan: The Minister of Housing should also check into it, because I have checked with the legal profession there and it is not in existence.
Hon Ms Gigantes: You've got it wrong. You've got the wrong information.
Mr Callahan: Unless the Minister of Housing has actually gone to the Ottawa courthouse and looked at it and seen it there, she's wrong. I won't say she's lying, but she's wrong.
In any event, here we've got all this concern about single parents, which is understandable, women who have to work to support their children and pay for their day care, and you are about to, in the stroke of a pen, eliminate something like 700 or 800 jobs, 95% women's jobs in terms of court reporting, for this fling you're going to take with this magic microphone.
I can throw a couple of problems at you. If somebody lies in court, how are you going to prove it? You don't have a court reporter who has been in court and heard the lie and reported it faithfully able to come into court and say, "This is what happened."
The court of appeals in New Jersey recently was reported as having complained and thrown out a very serious conviction of a very serious murder in New Jersey because it couldn't rely upon this new system which it had down there too, this cost-saving event. I suggest to you this cost-saving event is going to result in danger on our streets, people being released on the streets who are dangerous people, simply because this government didn't bother to look at the question of whether that was a cost saving or whether it's going to cost us millions in terms of money and in terms of human agony down the road.
Laughter.
Mr Callahan: Mr Speaker, I wonder if we could have the laughing cease. I think this is a very important issue and one that should be discussed in some degree of seriousness as opposed to ministers of the crown laughing about it. I hope they're not laughing at this.
When one looks at the whole situation of our school system, how do our school boards plan in terms of the potentiality of this legislation being challenged in the courts? Three years can go by there too. The school boards will be in total disarray. They'll have absolutely no idea how to plan.
I talked to my school board trustees; I talked to my city councillors. I wonder how many members of the government have bothered to talk to them to find out just how significantly concerned and upset they are about this and the fact that they don't understand what the government is trying to do.
The government says, "Here's our piece of legislation," and the Conservatives say, "We've got these amendments that will deal with the legislation." I suggest to them that regardless of what they bring in, unless it's a right of appeal or unless it's a right to take some of the power away from the minister, this legislation is going to fall. It will not be upheld. It will not be capable of being upheld.
When I look at some of the things such as the cutback on expenditures for legal aid clinics -- these are the people who are the poor. They can't afford to go out and hire their own lawyer, and you people are going to put a hit on them. That's just one more example of how I think you people have lost your principles totally. In an effort, in a frenzy to appear like you're cutting costs, you just cut them indiscriminately.
I'll tell you what I think part of the problem is: I think the ministers themselves have not spent enough time understanding their portfolios and therefore knowing them better than the civil servants do. When the Treasurer came in, suddenly discovering that there was a $17-billion, or whatever it was, possible deficit, and said, "Well, cut 10%," the minister says to the minions, "Cut 10%," but doesn't bother to check where they're cutting it from, and suddenly you get cuts that cut and bleed.
That's really where the danger is. You may think the people of Ontario are going to be excited about the fact that you've reduced these expenditures or made the attempt to reduce them, but when they find the spinoff from that, when they find that these cuts are in places where they shouldn't have been cut instead of the places where they should have been cut, you're going to find that the anger of the people of this province will be unsurpassed. You will find it out very shortly.
As I said when I began, we as the opposition probably could take advantage if we wanted to be totally partisan and simply let you pass the legislation and let you suffer the fallout from it, but I don't think that's fair to the people of this province. If there's one purpose of any of us being in this Legislature it is to ensure, if we're on the government side, that what we're doing is in the best interests of the people of this province, and if we're on the opposition side, to point out to you where the mistakes are so we can rectify them.
In fact, that's what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to say to you, slow down, because this legislation -- I don't know where you got your legal opinions from but I suggest you get a few more, because I think this legislation, if it's not constitutionally invalid, will be tied up in the courts, as I said, for three years and you won't see it come out until those three years. In the meantime you've lost all this time to rectify what's happening in the province.
I look at the Conservatives. One minute, they've told us they're going to support it, the next minute they're not going to support it, and the next minute they've got amendments. In two short months Mike Harris and the Tories have both supported and opposed the social contract. First they said the $2 billion in cuts wasn't enough. Then they accused the NDP of going too far to get the $2 billion. Well, which is it? You can't ride the horse both ways, side-saddle and left and right.
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They've demanded legislation to enforce the social contract and then announced that the legislation wasn't necessary, again a flip-flop. They proposed simplistic alternatives and then changed the numbers they used to support their proposals less than a week later.
They sound like they don't like the social contract bill, but they can't tell us how they'll vote on it. Just as an example, Mike Harris starts off in favour. This is reported in Hansard, April 14, 1993. He says, "I applauded the initial announcements that you were going to talk with public sector employees and with representatives of a million of them."
Mike Harris, in Hansard of April 28, 1993, said: "I will support you to go even further; you know that as well. I want to state clearly today that I will support legislation -- bang, bang, bang, first, second, third reading -- one day past a realistic deadline." We're still debating it. Has he changed his attitude on that? Is this another flip-flop?
Then he said the legislation isn't needed. I quote from Hansard of June 7, 1993. This is Mike Harris, the leader of the third party: "I presented you and your Treasurer with a fourth option.... There's a three-year plan with natural attrition, with a hiring freeze. It would mean a permanent downsizing of government, no unnecessary layoffs, enough flexibility to ensure priority services are maintained, and quite frankly, no legislation is even required to implement that one." A change again.
He seems to change his mind perhaps as often as he changes his tie; I don't know. Two days later, legislation was back on. I quote from Hansard of June 9, 1993: "We have told you that your contract talks could not possibly succeed. The union leaders had no chance, with credibility, to keep their jobs and negotiate rolling back contracts unless three commonsense things were put on the table, unless you are firm on three areas. One, the amount, $2 billion. Secondly, the deadline....the legislation, the hammer that you plan to bring in." That's Mike Harris in Hansard of June 9, 1993.
Mike Harris on June 14, 1993, is quoted as saying in Hansard, "I'm serving notice today as well on this piece of legislation that I and my caucus colleagues will be putting forward amendments to this bill."
Five days later, "bang, bang, bang" was back on the shelf. This is Mike Harris of June 1993, commenting on social contract legislation, "Retroactive rollbacks, gutting the negotiation process, creating the chaos out there is not the right way to go."
We have the government over there not putting something clear forward so that the transfer partners, all those transfer partners can deal with it. If you look at the bill, it's absolutely amazing the transfer partners that are involved. There are people who are helpless, who are unfortunate, who can't help themselves, who can't fight for themselves who are being damaged by this bill. I'd read some of them, but time doesn't permit.
You've got the NDP doing that and then you've got the Conservatives over here not knowing which shoe they put on first in the morning, and then you expect the people of this province to understand what's going on, to accept it. I guess they do accept, and I can accept, and I think every member of the Legislature can accept, the fact that we have been spending too much. We continue to spend simply because we think we have cheques left, that we can write them, instead of looking at our bank balance and saying, "We can't spend any more."
But aren't there other ways to do it? I've suggested many ways to many treasurers; for instance, your favourite topic, Mr Speaker, lotteries. We paid $13 million, maybe higher, and I bet that's probably the highest we have ever paid on a 649 payoff, to one citizen of the province of Ontario. I've suggested to treasurers, why don't you do what they do in the United States? "You don't get the $13 million, thank you. You get a life annuity which is equivalent to a monthly payout of that $13 million." You take 30% right off the top -- that's additional revenue for the government -- and you put that in the consolidated revenue fund to offset our cost of providing services.
We discovered in the standing committee on public accounts, and the auditor's report reported it, that $120 million -- the thing that frightens me, having been down here for eight years, is that doesn't even scare me any more; we talk in millions like it's dollars -- of taxpayers' dollars were paid out in family benefits that were either through fraud or mistake. I'll tell you how they collected it. They collected 10% of that. Then I asked the public accounts committee to have the people in the government who do the collection to come before us, because I wanted to find out how many people we have in the collection department where this is collected. I discovered that the cost of collecting was 20%. So we were already out of pocket. We may as well have written off the $120 million. They couldn't see putting this out in the private sector and letting them take a crack at it, or selling it to them for a third of the amount and getting that money and putting it in the consolidated revenue fund.
We also found that although ministries are required by Management Board policy to report debts, after they are outstanding for a certain period of time, to this collection agency, many didn't. They didn't bother. There were no teeth that could require them to monitor this and to report to the collection agency. The auditor wanted the public accounts committee to instruct him to investigate that matter, but that was defeated, by my recollection, by the majority members on the public accounts committee. There's $120 million that has just floated off.
I understand as well that Hydro's spent half a million dollars -- and I'm having this investigated by the auditor -- to buy furniture for the Hydro building. When the interior decorator decided it didn't fit the decor, they didn't use it. What they're doing is hiding it in a warehouse; they move it from warehouse to warehouse around this province so nobody will find out about it and therefore embarrass the government. We've got a special audit. I hope it's going to be passed by the members of the government and they won't try to beat it down and hide it. But it's going to be debated as soon as possible before public accounts and we get the auditor to go out and find that out.
I'm told by a Supreme Court judge that at 361 University Avenue, which is the General Division court, there was something in the neighbourhood of a half a million dollars of new furniture put in. The place was wallpapered at major expense for the public. It wasn't needed.
What's going on here? Is somebody asleep at the switch? These are the accounts, these are the amounts of money. If you continue to spend, then you're depleting the moneys that are available to provide jobs and adequate services for the people of this province. Your stewardship is absolutely incredible, that you would allow these moneys to slip out of your hands.
Instead, what do you do? The Treasurer increases the cost of buying a home in terms of registration fees. That's his way of getting it: Grab the revenues. I'll tell you, if you went into a registry office anywhere in this province, you could shoot off a cannon and you wouldn't kill anybody except staff. That's how bad the situation is. That situation has been caused by a number of things. The taxes that your government has brought in have simply stymied business. They're not prepared to get involved in business; it's too expensive.
I see people losing their homes every day. My son articled for a law firm in Toronto. They had more power of sales -- that's when you can't pay your mortgage any more and they sell it out from under you -- in this province than they had in the Dirty Thirties. What do you people do about it? You up the cost.
If you die in this province, it has now become extremely expensive. Instead of having the guts, as you said you were going to do, to bring in some sort of inheritance tax, you went in the back door and upped the fees to probate a will, to administer a will. You dealt with the most vulnerable people, people who scrimped so that when they passed away, they could pass on some money to their family. What did you do? You cut a great deal of that out of it by the probate fees, these increased fees.
Wake up. Wake up and smell the roses. There has to be a million ways we could save money in terms of the expenditures that are going on in the government; this government and every other government. But for God's sake, let's not just suddenly decide that we're going to kill the fly with a hammer. Let's not decide that we're going to do it, that we're going to set a precedent in this House, by passing a piece of legislation that I said in a comment on one of the other speeches is the most draconian, the most undemocratic piece of legislation that I have ever read.
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I challenge every one of the members: If you're interested in looking after your constituents, if you're interested in avoiding the possibility that we will pass a document out of this House and set a precedent for dictatorial powers, if you're interested, read it; if you've got any guts and if you care about the people who elected you to this Legislature, read it. Because if you don't read it and you vote for it, you have committed one of the greatest frauds on the people who gave you a sacred trust and sent you to this Legislature.
Let's look for other ways to cut expenditures in government -- I'm sure they're there -- and let's stop passing taxes that interfere with the opportunity to create jobs, because that's what you're doing. The budget of the Treasurer was one that had no imagination. It was simply a hit, a hit at a bad time: It was a hit when people were down, an unfair hit. If it had been reviewed and looked at in a more careful and humane fashion, we might be bringing ourselves back up out of this recession, but certainly not with what's going on in this House.
The Acting Speaker: Questions and/or comments?
Mr Allan K. McLean (Simcoe East): I wasn't going to use my two minutes, but I was provoked by the member when he said he doesn't know where Mike Harris stands. Mike Harris issued a news release on June 9 that he "today proposed a package of measures to ensure the public sector wage issue is finally resolved in the interests of all Ontarians, including public sector workers." I hope the member is listening.
"Harris's suggestions follow Bob Rae's announcement in the Legislature that sector-by-sector cost-cutting talks will resume, this time with clearly defined goals, a firm deadline and the prior tabling of enforcement legislation, as Harris had called for all along.
"Key elements of the Harris package include:
" -- Establishing a realistic timetable for restraint;
"'It's ridiculous to set an August 1 deadline for implementing measures which in some cases will be retroactive to January 1,' Harris said.
" -- Providing mediation:
"'One of the reasons why the first talks collapsed was a lack of hard experience among participants in reforming large organizations,' Harris said. 'The Premier should therefore appoint someone to renew sectoral talks who's negotiated this process before -- the auto industry, for example -- where labour and management have worked together to produce a better product with a streamlined workforce.'
"Harris suggested as possible candidates CAW president Buzz Hargrove, former OFL president Cliff Pilkey and veteran negotiator Vic Pathe."
" -- Starting the attrition clock now:
"Attrition does not require legislation. Nor does it demand any employment or job security sacrifices on the part of current public servants.
"By adopting these measures, Harris said, the Premier will ensure that the following critical challenges could be met or exceeded:
"Fiscal targets contained in the 1993-94 NDP budget;
"Genuine consensus between government, union leaders and their membership;
"Permanent, structural downsizing of the cost and scope of the public sector.
"'Ontarians are tired of waiting for action on downsizing government so we can get on with the task of upsizing the private sector and creating prosperity,' Harris said. 'But they want it done effectively and cooperatively, with tangible results. That is exactly the spirit in which these proposals are offered."'
There you are.
The Acting Speaker: Further questions and/or comments? If there are none, the honourable member for Brampton South has two minutes to make a response.
Mr Callahan: I have to respond to that, because Mr Harris has been reported as saying that we could save $2 billion, and then it went to $6 billion, through attrition. Think about it. If you have attrition and you put a hiring freeze on -- let's just take the police force for an example, that through attrition your officers retire and you don't hire anybody else. Who's going to be looking after the province? The people watching have to realize, and I'm sure they do, that common sense says that principle by the third party leader is absolute nonsense.
I would say finally, though, that the New Democratic Party, with its legislation and this arrangement that it has to have essential services -- and there are a lot of them: ambulance workers, you name it -- if it is going to have them take the time off, during the three-year period, from their vacation, I think the public should understand very clearly that they are going to have to be replaced after the three-year period's over by replacement workers. We estimated that this would cost about $3 billion.
What it means is that by saving the so-called $2 billion that they're saying now, they're going to pay $3 billion in three years. It would be far less injurious and probably far more beneficial if they borrowed the money from the bank; they could pay off the billion dollars interest on it for the next three years. You'd be in the same boat, and in fact there would be a lot fewer people suffering.
I urge the government, every member, to look at the legislation, first, to see that it's unfair, and second, to look in their own areas and see where we could save money, and third, for God's sake, when you vote, don't let the government try to bully you into it because you're afraid you're going to lose your ten grand as a PA or as a whatever, whatever other special thing you have.
The Acting Speaker: Further debate?
Mr McLean: I'm pleased to have the opportunity to speak on Bill 48. We're all limited to half an hour and I may not use all that time, but I hope to have a few things to say about this social contract legislation and I hope some of the comments will be useful. I'm sure the Treasurer will be listening on his television set.
The legislation introduced by the Finance minister really has been a concern to the municipalities in this province. They've been confronted by enormous cuts to their transfer payments. The municipal employees' representatives acted in good faith by staying at the talks and remained committed to working out a solution with the government to cut the deficit. They wanted to save services and jobs and ensure that there were no new taxes.
The social contract legislation provides little assurance that savings will be found in compensation. Many of Ontario's 839 municipalities believe a wage freeze will not provide the savings required to offset the NDP government's recent slash of $110 million in unconditional grants and the $285-million cut to the public sector payroll. The government has left municipalities with no choice but to lay off employees and cut services. Municipal representatives are also alarmed about the distribution of the cuts to individual municipalities.
Throughout the social contract discussions, municipalities focused on the need to reduce the sectoral target and recommended that one quarter of this year's impact be deferred to the second quarter of 1996, making the amount for 1993 no more than $150 million. This is a reasonable suggestion in recognition of the fiscal year problem facing municipalities across Ontario. The Premier has an obligation to direct his government to help reduce the impact of mid-year cuts on the municipalities in Ontario, which are facing some tough times.
Time is running out and the resumption of discussions must happen as soon as possible, that is, before the social contract legislation becomes law. Once again, the government has hit the average person squarely in the wallet with a budget that clobbers everyone in Ontario. The province is Yours to Discover and now it is Yours to Recover. The $2-billion tax grab is the single largest in the provincial history, and the bulk of it will be borne by people who just are barely getting by as it is.
This budget means everybody will have less money in their pockets to spend. That's going to kill jobs and reverse the already fragile economic recovery. The same government that continues to grab for everybody's wallet also continues to download programs on to Ontario's 839 municipalities and is not providing the adequate funding which is needed.
To top it all off, the Ministry of Municipal Affairs has taken back some of what it has already given the municipalities: more than $110 million in unconditional grants. The unconditional grants to the county of Simcoe, the city of Orillia and the township of Medonte have been laid out for you, and I must say that Bob Rae's government is focusing on all 839 municipalities, which are now paying for his mistakes and for his increase in taxation.
When he came the first year, he thought he could spend his way out of the recession. Instead of that, it really did the opposite. As I am saying, you simply can't get 10 kilograms out of an eight-kilogram bag of anything.
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The Minister of Municipal Affairs will slash a total of $275 million in transfer payments to Ontario's municipal sector. That will result in cuts in the county of Simcoe, some $361 million, and in a city the size of Orillia, $671,000; a population of approximately 25,000 to 26,000 people. I have been told that the council spent hours last night determining what they're going to do. They just have no idea what they're going to do when they are cut by $671,000.
The town of Penetanguishene is being cut by $107,000 for a population of approximately 5,400 or 5,600, a large amount of money. The little village of Coldwater, $17,900. We look at the village of Elmvale, $26,000; $35,000 to Medonte township; $59,000 to Orillia township; $70,000 to Oro township; $87,000 to Tiny township; $63,000 to Mara township and $12,000 to Rama township.
In the letter on June 14 to the municipalities to announce the transfer payments, he indicated that everyone -- the government, employers, bargaining agents -- is committed to ensuring that the impact of the fiscal reductions is distributed fairly. Well, many municipalities have already slashed their budgets and many of them have already cut the days of work. People have already agreed to take off Fridays or four or five days during the year.
Clearly, the employees, the workers, the bargaining agents, the municipalities and the Ontario PC caucus have taken up the cause of debt reduction, and we have been very strong on that. We want to get the spending under control. The only group not committed to this cause, from what I'm my gathering over the past two years, has been the government. They have created chaos. The municipalities have brought down their budgets, which have already made financial commitments to the local community.
As I said, our caucus has taken up the cause of debt reduction and spending controls. Mr Harris has been saying for three years now that we've got to have less government, reduce the size of government. In fact, we have offered the NDP government a plan which I believe would achieve permanent reductions in the size and cost of the public sector and allow for restructuring without the chaos and inequity that we would get in this Bill 48.
Our proposals have been:
(1) The PC caucus has urged the government to implement a three-year hiring freeze in an effort to reduce the annual cost of the public sector compensation by over $2 billion in the third year of this legislation.
(2) We would implement a public sector wage freeze commencing on the anniversary date of all contracts and continue it for the three-year period from that date.
(3) We would establish whistle-blower provisions to protect public servants who report fraud, waste or other abuses in the workplace.
I wanted to say here that a lot of times ministries have money left over at the end of the year, and our year ends March 31. There shouldn't be a rush, as there has been in the past, for ministries to use up their allotment. They should just be more careful and spend what's needed and turn the rest of it back into the treasury.
(4) Establish provisions to discourage government departments from spending their budgets within the fiscal year to eliminate so-called year-end burnoff or face rollbacks, and that's just what I was talking about, that the ministries should be doing that.
(5) Give performance bonuses for public servants based on efficiencies and productivity gains, similar to private sector agreements such as those involving the Canadian Auto Workers union, and establish an expenditure review committee to identify non-productive government programs and to prioritize existing programs.
If these commonsense, fair and effective management principles and measures were adopted, with attrition as their primary management tool, up to $3 billion could be permanently removed from public sector wage costs over three years.
Mr David Tilson (Dufferin-Peel): On a point of order, Mr Speaker: We're enjoying the member's comments, but I don't believe there's a quorum to hear his comments.
The Acting Speaker: Is there a quorum?
Acting Table Clerk (Mr Franco Carrozza): Speaker, a quorum, is not present.
The Acting Speaker ordered the bells rung.
Acting Table Clerk: Speaker, a quorum is present.
The Acting Speaker: The honourable member for Simcoe East has the floor.
Mr McLean: Thank you, Mr Speaker. It's hard to believe that the time has gone so fast, and here I am only half done my remarks.
I ask this question: Who put us in this dilemma in the first place? That is really the question that needs to be asked.
Well, Bill 48 is a Liberal legacy. Despite the economic boom, the Liberals were spending-crazy during their time in office. They increased expenditures at double the rate of inflation. They increased the debt by $10 billion and hit Ontario with 33 tax increases to pay their way. The size of the public service increased from 80,000 in March 1985 to 88,000 in March 1990, and I understand that it's up to close to 93,000 today. In the same period of 1985 to 1990, the payroll costs jumped by 60%, from $2.7 billion to $4.4 billion.
So the Liberals elevated the expenditure based on an unsustainable level and the social contract fiasco is the end product. The NDP inherited these problems from the Liberals and intensified them by driving up program spending by 12%.
Bill 48 is reactionary and it's panic-stricken and the NDP's last-minute response to the fiscal emergency. Bill 48 is shortsighted. There is no long-term plan to save the taxpayers' money or to permanently reduce Ontario's public sector. What we have always said was, freeze the wages, freeze the civil service, and in three years' time we would save approximately $4 billion.
The legislation really lays the foundation for a wage catch-up campaign which will start in 1996.
In some of the areas there has been a great concern raised, there have been letters written. My colleague the member for Lanark-Renfrew indicates to me that Patricia Robinson, the mayor of Arnprior, writes: "The social contract is absolutely devastating for our community. Our town is already working with a minimal staff. We do not operate like the provincial government where you have six people doing one job. And now the social contract has forced me to reclaim $100,000 from our staff budget. We simply cannot cope with the situation the government has created." That's one small municipality.
With regard to the mandatory 12-day unpaid holiday, Mayor Robinson said the following: "To call them 'unpaid' is utterly laughable, especially where this will be applied to our essential services. Police staff will have to be called during these mandatory holiday periods and they will be paid time and a half."
Tom Woodrow from the Orillia police force talked to me on the weekend about this very social contract. He doesn't understand how they're going to fulfil the obligations they have to fulfil in the city of Orillia, and I can understand that.
The member for Lanark-Renfrew is not speaking tonight so he asked me to make a few comments with regard to his riding for the record so that his people know we are talking about the social contract.
The town of Perth is in an extremely tight fiscal situation. "We have to find a way to make up for the lost $253,000. We cannot raise taxes or lay off staff, so we are being forced to find other means of cutting back. Unfortunately, important community projects will be scrapped....construction projects are being cancelled and we will not be hiring part-time staff. The social contract has concentrated solely on the provincial side of things, while disregarding the local municipal governments who have to bear the brunt of their decisions."
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Where is this money going to come from in the transfer payments that are being cut to the local municipalities? They have their budgetary policies in place. The government says, "Well, they've got seven months left until our fiscal year of March 31." Most municipal governments run on a fiscal year from January 1 to December 31, and that's what they have based their funding on. So where is the money coming from? There's one place, and local municipalities only have one source of income, and that is from the tax base. It's either that or they cut services: cut down on their road work, cut down on their recreation departments. There are many places that they're going to have to cut in order to find the funds that are being taken away.
The Liberals got us into this mess and now they haven't got the decency to help us out. Mike Harris and the PC party have called for expenditure controls and debt reductions. Since 1988, we have been calling for that, since before it was politically correct even to do so. At that time, in 1988, the economy was great. There was nothing but spending taking place.
There were a few other things that happened in about 1988. We had a tire tax. We had a provincial sales tax increase from 7% to 8%. Today we have insurance premiums being taxed. The very government that said, "We're going to have public auto insurance," is now adding 5% to every auto insurance bill we get and 8% for other insurance premiums on top of that, for your household or whatever.
We have the land tax increased substantially. We have the inheritance tax which has increased. We have the conservation tax being taken off the conservation authorities. Where is that funding going to be made up from when the conservation authorities and the municipalities have had shared agreements over the years?
I think we have supplied a responsible opposition to this legislation. We support this legislation in spirit and we want to see the amendments added. We have not just criticized; we have opposed constructively. Our leader has offered many constructive changes. The six amendments that he has asked are made upon principle. They are made on what we believe to be fair, because we're asking for a wage freeze, we're asking for an employee freeze and we're asking that the government not take away what people have fought for over these many, many years, and that is a collective bargaining agreement. When a collective bargaining agreement is agreed to, that should stay in place, and for this government to even consider breaking that agreement is totally unacceptable.
Somebody said today that if the NDP were in opposition and any other government had done that, they would bring this House down, it would be closed, they would stop anything that's going on in this Legislature. So for this government to be wanting to break contracts that have been negotiated certainly leaves me wondering what will happen next.
There's a letter here from the county of Renfrew:
"While it is clear that compensation does not include overtime, it is not clear to us what share of employees' costs of benefits is to be included in the calculation of compensation. For example, does one include the employer's share of the cost of health benefits, which is OMERS, federal and provincial statutory benefits such as UIC, CPP, WCB, weekend or evening shift bonuses?
"The failsafe measures of Bill 48 require the freezing of compensation from January 14, 1993, to March 31, 1996. In calculating the contributions of this freeze towards the expenditure reduction target, what value is to be placed on withholding cost-of-living increases for the three-year period? No cost-of-living increases have yet been scheduled or negotiated for the period in question."
So they are looking at this in a very, very serious way. What are they going to do with the position they've been put in with regard to Bill 48?
When I look at the powers of the minister in this bill, I have never seen a bill that has been brought in with so many dictatorial powers that the minister has. He can even delegate a power:
"Any power or duty conferred or imposed on the minister under this act may be delegated by the minister to any person designated by the minister and, when purporting to exercise a delegated power or duty, the delegate shall be presumed conclusively to act in accordance with the delegation."
That has been brought out in section 47, under "Delegation of powers." That means that the minister can delegate to any other minister his duties or powers.
A lot of people are listening to the speeches being made, but I'm not so sure they really understand who this social contract affects. The schedule says the public sector in Ontario consists of "the crown in right of Ontario," that's every agency, board or commission; "the corporation of every municipality in Ontario," that's every local board as defined by the Municipal Affairs Act; "every board as defined in the Education Act," which is the Metropolitan Toronto School Board and the Ottawa-Carleton French-language School Board, including its public sector and its Roman Catholic sector; "every university in Ontario and every college of applied arts"; "every hospital listed in the schedule to the classification of hospitals regulation made under the Public Hospitals Act, every private hospital operated under the authority of a licence issued under the Private Hospitals Act and every hospital established or approved by the Lieutenant Governor in Council as a community psychiatric hospital under the Community Psychiatric Hospitals Act"; "every corporation with share capital, at least 90% of the issued shares of which are beneficially held by or for an employer or employees described in clauses (a) to (d)"; "every board of health under the Health Protection and Promotion Act"; "the Office of the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario, the Office of the Assembly, members of the assembly and the offices of persons appointed on an address of the assembly"; and "any authority, board, commission, corporation, office...."
So when they talk about some 900,000 employees with regard to the public sector in Ontario, I'm telling you, that is what it consists of: many of those agencies, boards and commissions.
"For the purposes of this schedule, 'municipality' includes a metropolitan, regional or district municipality and the county of Oxford," and I'm sure most of them read "in the county of Muskoka" as well.
Look at the appendix of this act. The Ministry of Agriculture and Food: the Ontario Food Terminal, the Ontario Stock Yards. The Ministry of the Attorney General: all our legal clinics across this province will be part of this Bill 48. The Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Recreation: the Art Gallery of Ontario, the northern Ontario library, St Clair Parkway Commission. There are all kinds of them in here for which people out there listening don't really understand the implementation of this legislation. They don't. The Ministry of Community and Social Services; all of them are involved.
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There are many aspects of this legislation which I'm sure would be looked at before implemented. A lot of people consider this legislation to be very seriously flawed. Look at the demonstration that was outside, and people who demonstrated in Gananoque on the weekend -- we didn't see them all on TV because they wanted to make sure we didn't see all of them.
Mr Tilson: They hid demonstrators from us.
Mr McLean: They had demonstrators. There is no shortage of demonstrators.
Our leader hopes the parties can negotiate a contract without using this legislation. We would hope the government would see fit to take some of the recommendations we have made. The ones I'm mainly I'm interested in have to do with breaking contracts. Anybody in this province who has been involved in negotiations knows that when you fight and bargain long and hard across the table, you feel that when a deal is made and signed, it is secure. We don't feel that any government should come along and take that right away. We feel strongly about that and I, for one, find it very hard for the members in the government to even consider doing such a thing. I just think it's incomprehensible that they would do that.
So we hope that the parties will go back to the table and try, and that the Premier will say that will be one of the issues, that he will say, "Okay, when the contract comes due, that is when it takes effect," and in essence not break them.
I think even the unions understand that a downsizing has to take place. I think they understand that and they know it, so we're not the only ones who are talking about getting back to the table and trying to negotiate a fair deal.
Our leader has urged all parties to the so-called contract talks to build a sign of progress in achieving $2 billion in savings from Ontario's public sector payroll through negotiation. The prospect of a legislative solution has brought about some serious bargaining, just as we said it would. As Fred Upshaw himself told the Globe and Mail last night, "If you don't go to the table and you don't bargain, you suffer the consequences of the legislation." My point exactly, and I hope Mr Upshaw's view will be adopted by the others in the union coalition in the critical days ahead.
At the same time, Mr Harris has stressed that any negotiated short-term concessions must be coupled with measures to ensure the permanent structural downsizing of the public sector. "I will continue to push for clearly articulated PC proposals in both the legislation and any negotiated settlement, mindful that the Ontario taxpayers demand lasting reform of the size and scope of government." That's Mr Harris's goal and he hopes to see it through.
In summing up, I want to say that this has been a concern to me over the past several years with regard to the budgetary policies that have gone on in government. Government should be in the same position as businesses and individuals: You should have to balance your books and you should have to do it periodically to know that you're serious about governing.
You can look across this great country of ours, you can look in pretty near every province we have: Governments have not yet realized that there comes a day when the bill has to be paid. I think there have been a lot of leaders who have made promises and commitments and have been elected because the people felt that they were going to be given something. Now the day has come, and when we see the film about New Zealand, it certainly brought home to us a lot of the reasons and a lot of the problems that could happen here.
We want to be part of the solution. We don't want to be part of the problem that has existed. Some of the previous administrations, and our own party was one of them, should have talked more seriously about balancing the books. I know. I was part of the government in 1982 when Frank Miller was Treasurer and there were tax increases that he brought in that a lot of people really thought were totally unacceptable. He was trying to keep the deficit down as much as he could, but at that time we were in the downsizing; I know that the Chairman of Management Board, George McCague, cut the civil service from 84,000 to 76,000, and I think that was a step in the right direction. I also remember the Chairman of Management Board saying to each ministry, "You shall cut every budget by 5%."
Perhaps we did not go far enough. When the Liberals came to power on June 26, 1985, they went on a spending binge and they went on a hiring binge. In the good times of the 1980s, which we may never see again, there was a great, great expenditure that took place in this province. When we look back today, we often wonder about the ability of governments to control their spending. That day has got to come again.
I like what I'm hearing from my leader, Mike Harris, with regard to taxation, with regard to leading the government, with regard to making sure that, through attrition and not through job loss, we're going to do away with some of the budgetary policies and lower the debt in this province.
When we look at $10 billion being added to our debt every year, I remember being in this Legislature when our debt was $19 billion. Today, we will be about $73 billion. Look at what it takes every day just to pay the interest on that debt. It's a burden on the taxpayers.
Laughter.
Mr McLean: People may laugh at what I'm talking about, but I think common sense will still prevail. We need leadership that is going to make sure that what we're trying to do here is to get back on the right track. It's not easy. There has been a problem there. It's been there for years. We want to help in this problem, and I hope that in the end we will.
I want the government to look at our amendments and make sure there's a wage freeze and an employee freeze and that the bargaining units that have been put in place will not be interfered with until they run out. Then, at that time, it would be frozen for three years. I think those are commonsense approaches to a very serious piece of legislation.
The Acting Speaker: Questions and/or comments?
Mr White: I want to commend my friend from Simcoe East on his excellent speech. I think he very genuinely wants to bring up some means of resolving some of the problems we're faced with, and I think he did so in a very reasoned and articulate way. I would like to comment on a couple of things he mentioned.
The whistle-blowing legislation he mentioned sounds like an excellent idea.
The way the budgetary allotment for departments has traditionally been spent up in the last month of the fiscal year is something our government has stopped, last year and again this year, to make sure that kind of abuse of government budget doesn't occur. It would certainly be an excellent idea to extend that throughout the broader public service, not just with the government itself.
I think he did, however, mix up a couple of things when he was talking about budget savings. I think those points he made in regard to budget savings were important, but there are three aspects to how we're dealing with the deficit. One of course is $4 billion in expenditure controls, another is the social contract legislation which we're presently debating and the third is the revenue. If there were not a revenue increase, then we would have had to go into a much higher budgetary cut in other areas.
I commend the member for taking honest note of the fact that this is the government that is taking account, taking responsibility for the very difficult situation we're in, not avoiding it and simply passing it on but dealing in a serious and responsible way with these extremely high deficits so that our children will have a future that is not debt-ridden.
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Mr Hans Daigeler (Nepean): I must say, I am, as they say in French, bouleversé. I'm not quite sure what the correct English translation for this is, but I never thought I'd see the day when a member of the NDP would heap praise on what a Tory has to say. I've been in this place now since 1987, and honestly, I did not believe I would hear all kinds of accolades from the NDP, supposedly the party of the underprivileged and the workers and those who can't fight for their rights, to speak in high praise of the Tories.
What the Tory member for Simcoe East essentially did is point out a lot of very, very serious problems in this legislation. I don't understand, frankly, with all the very serious problems the member for Simcoe East pointed out with this legislation, why he's still going to support it. On any other legislation, the Tories would have said: "We will not support this legislation. This is the responsibility of the government. We are putting forward some ideas, but we're not prepared to support this draconian measure that the NDP, of all parties, is putting forward in front of the public."
While I think the member for Simcoe East has spoken well -- I don't take issue with that, he has spoken well -- I don't understand for the life of me the logic in the position of the Tory party. He has gone on for half an hour to indicate the serious problems with this legislation, but despite all the problems he's going to support it.
Mr Ted Arnott (Wellington): I'm very pleased to rise and commend the member for Simcoe East who spoke on Bill 48 putting forward such wisdom and good sense, as he always does, good common sense.
The member has diligently and effectively represented the Orillia area and the adjacent rural area around it for now a dozen years. I know he puts forward the views of all his constituents -- not just the working people, not just the business people, not just the public servants, but all the constituents of his riding -- and works very, very hard in that respect and puts forward and represents the views of all his constituents.
A good part of his riding, as well as Orillia, is the rural area, very similar to the riding I represent, Wellington. One of the inconsistencies in this legislation is the $30,000 cutoff. The government has indicated that employees of, say, for example, municipalities, who are earning less than $30,000 annually will not be affected, but if you look at some of those targeted cuts for some of the smaller municipalities in terms of how many employees there are at that smaller municipal office, if you were to apply those cuts equally to the employees, you would find that the employees would end up earning less than $30,000. That's a discrepancy in the legislation, an inconsistency that would really have to be addressed by this government.
The member for Simcoe East has really done a good job tonight putting forward the views of his constituents, and I want to commend him once again.
Mr Tilson: I too would like to congratulate the member for Simcoe East on his usual well-rounded presentation to this House. He certainly has raised the issue that many of us on this side have been concerned with: the simple expression as to what is a social contract, when we see that contract after contract, it's being suggested, is going to be opened up and broken. That's a question we've raised certainly in the Progressive Conservative Party and we're concerned with that.
The other issue we're concerned with, of course, that the member for Simcoe East raised, was the issue of the dictatorial powers that the Treasurer is going to have in this legislation. Even if some of the unions go back to the table and negotiate a contract, the Treasurer may deem that that sector hasn't satisfied the requirements and those who tried to settle may be penalized. A lot of people really won't know what's hit them until it's arrived.
More importantly, I think the member for Simcoe East has raised another issue, which is that this whole issue of social contract seems to be built around the idea, what's the big union going to do? There are other people in this province who are concerned with the spending that's being taken by all levels of government and they're not all involved with unions. In the small municipalities that the member for Simcoe East represents and which I represent, there are no unions. There's no way in which they can negotiate, and many of them are making less than $30,000. If the payments to be transferred to the municipalities will be cut, where are they going to cut? Because those employees are exempted for earning less than $30,000.
So I congratulate the member for Simcoe East for raising issues that perhaps many of the members who come from large urban areas haven't thought of. Certainly, those small municipalities in the country will have to be looked at.
The Acting Speaker: The honourable member for Simcoe East has two minutes to make a response.
Mr McLean: I would like to first comment with regard to the member for Nepean's remarks, because I think that is really the reason they are where they are. They brought in the land tax, they increased the provincial sales tax, they brought in a tire tax, they brought in a gas guzzler tax, they brought in the employer health tax. I mean, they brought in 33 taxes, and the problem is that there has been no cooperation between that party and the governing party since it came here due to the fact that they are where they are.
I commend the member for Durham Centre for his remarks and I thank him, because there's got to be a two-way street here. I'm positive. If there's some way we can make legislation better, I'm all for it.
I thank the member for Wellington, and I thank the member for Dufferin-Peel for his comments. On this side, where we are, we have seen in government for many years what it takes to try to be fiscally responsible. We got into some of the tough years, 1981 and 1982, when we were having the downfall in revenue. That's what the member for Durham Centre talked about: revenue. We see that problem in revenue. I can understand the problem the government is having.
I often wonder, instead of raising some of the taxes, especially the sales tax, if maybe they were reduced it would create an incentive for people to go out and buy. I remember that back in about 1982 or 1983 the then Treasurer took the tax off cars, refrigerators and stoves for three or six months. It stimulated the economy. If the Treasurer maybe looked at that aspect, an incentive for people to go out and to purchase and to spend, it might be of benefit for us all.
The Acting Speaker: Further debate?
Hon Bob Mackenzie (Minister of Labour): I'm pleased to rise today to speak on behalf of Bill 48, the government Social Contract Act. I would like to restate very clearly, in no uncertain terms, my support for this legislation and the financial and social objectives that lie behind it. I say that because at its heart the social contract aims to protect both government jobs and services now and in the future.
Our government is facing an absolutely unprecedented combination of declining revenues and increasing expenditures. Our total deficit stands at $68 billion and is growing at the rate of $1 billion each and every month. This year alone, going on as before, we would add about another $17 billion to that total. It is not unthinkable that bondholders, whether in New York or Tokyo, could someday be in a position to dictate Ontario's economic and social agenda. I feel strongly that we must act now before someone else acts for us.
That's why we've called all of the players together to try to work out a social contract aimed at preserving jobs for workers and services for the public.
Mr Stockwell: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: If the Minister of Labour's going to spend half an hour rationalizing this flip-flop, I think there should be a quorum to hear it.
The Acting Speaker: I ask the table to ascertain if there is a quorum.
Acting Table Clerk: Speaker, a quorum is not present.
The Acting Speaker ordered the bells rung.
Acting Table Clerk: Speaker, a quorum is present.
The Acting Speaker: The honourable member for Hamilton East has the floor.
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Hon Mr Mackenzie: In return, the government will get some much-needed financial elbow room to ensure that these services will not be threatened in quite the same way again. We have a plan, and we think it can work.
While it may be a difficult concept to grasp in the heat of the moment, the social contract in the long run will strengthen Ontario. Bringing our finances into line will allow us to maintain and build on our achievements in health, education and all the other social services our families depend upon.
Our priorities are growth, maintaining services and putting Ontario back to work. To achieve this, we simply have to ensure that our dollars are going to economic development and training rather than being drained away in debt servicing.
As the Labour minister, I can attest to the stories that cross my desk every day showing how deeply the recession has already affected workers in the private sector. For three years now, private sector businesses have been fighting the recession by downsizing, by trimming operations and by letting workers go. You see that very clearly in almost all of the industrial towns in the province of Ontario. Many businesses have collapsed, throwing hundreds of thousands of workers on the unemployment rolls, often with very little notice.
I'm proud that in just over the last 18 months, our employee wage protection program has paid out over $100 million to more than 40,000 workers whose employers owed them money, usually after declaring bankruptcy.
This is the world we live in, and I am sure that members of this House know of friends or family who have been directly affected. Nothing happens in isolation. The economic downturn in the private sector has hampered the government's ability as both an employer and a provider of public services.
That's why I return to the social contract as an ideal way for all of us to share the necessary pain and sacrifice. Let me say frankly that it's an opportunity that many workers who have lost their jobs outright in the private sector over the last few years would have dearly appreciated.
Some critics have claimed that with the Social Contract Act the government is putting the entire burden of deficit reduction on the broader public sector. This is not necessarily the case. The Finance minister's recent budget has already announced plans to reallocate this year, through revenue increases and expenditure controls in the Ontario public service, a total of $4 billion to deficit reduction. In order to fully meet our financial targets, we need another $2 billion in cuts from the broader public sector and the Ontario public service. The 950,000 workers in this sector are being asked to shoulder their share of the burden, but certainly no more than that. It bears repeating that the lower-paid workers, under $30,000, will remain exempt from any compensation adjustments.
The social contract gives us a chance to forge new ground in the way that government and public sector unions work together. It is an opportunity to change the way decisions are made and to improve the way government works, and it could come only from a government that respects working people and the collective bargaining process.
I am proud of what we've been able to do for working people in the course of our first term in office. It's been a progressive agenda. It hasn't been easy, and I don't think it has won us any points on Bay Street, but workers have always had to fight for anything worthwhile. I think we've made great strides in health and safety, labour adjustment, worker training, pay equity legislation and a pay equity down payment program for some of the lowest-paid workers in the broader public sector.
We've reformed the Labour Relations Act, and just last week we introduced a bill to modernize the Crown Employees Collective Bargaining Act, CECBA. We're taking steps to revive the economy and to put Ontario back to work. We've committed the province to a $6-billion investment program in infrastructure that will create 60,000 jobs by 1996 and more than 100,000 over the next 10 years. We're moving ahead with a three-year, $1.2-billion Jobs Ontario Training fund. More than 22,000 people receiving social assistance are now working again, and our overall goal is 100,000 jobs in this category.
Progress for working people has been our government's basic operating assumption since day one. As a former trade union member, I'm used to measuring progress in terms of the material and benefits gains made at the contract table, but progress can also be measured in terms of leadership, and with the social contract process the Premier is asking organized labour in the public sector to assume a leadership role.
Discussion, debate and disagreement are the essence of democracy and, I might say also, of collective bargaining. As the Labour minister, I urge all parties to return to the table with an open mind and to work for a settlement. Let us bargain, let us negotiate, but let us finally do what is right.
Perhaps we should speculate just a moment on what might happen if we fail to reach an agreement, and I think you would agree that it's not a very satisfying prospect. That's why the social contract, to me, is the only preferable alternative.
When we look at what we are spending to pay off the debt we currently have already, more than we're spending on education, and when we look at the fact that, without the actions we're taking, within the next year or two we would be spending more than we're spending on hospitals and some of our health care budget in Ontario on just retiring the debt and that most of it's going out of this country, you soon begin to see that we are heading for the same kind of bind that the federal government is currently in. They're in a position where they're now paying 33 cents of every dollar they raise to finance the debt that has been built up federally, and it's one of the reasons we don't see some of the transfer payments coming to the province of Ontario.
If we were in a position where we controlled that situation and where we had those literally billions of dollars to put into retraining, reinvestment, new programs for workers, we would be doing a heck of a lot more than any hurt we're doing in terms of the situation we're now in.
I must say that I have some difficulty, and I've tried not to be too partisan on this, with members of the Conservative Party in particular. I've always had a bit of respect for them because you always knew where they stood, unlike the Liberal Party in the House, which seems to be all things to all people. But I hear them in this House, on one hand, talking about how horrible it is -- this is something new, I must confess, and I think it has to do with the politics of the situation -- to even think of opening a contract, yet at the same time, in the next breath, telling everybody, "You elect us and we'll get rid of Bill 40; we'll get rid of CECBA," the very things that give workers the right to organize and negotiate in the first place. There's a hypocrisy about that that I find very, very difficult to deal with.
For any of us who came out of the trade union movement, it was not easy, but we had to look at what was the best thing and the fairest thing we could do for people in the province of Ontario, to my mind the only thing that really mattered, what was going to be most helpful to most of the people and most of the workers in the province of Ontario. We could very well have said, "We're just going to slash the transfer payments and leave it up to workers and the municipalities" and so on to do the negotiating. In my opinion, we would not have come anywhere near fairness for ordinary people than we are doing with the social contract that we've put forward for people in the province of Ontario.
I said that what guided me was none of the sacred cows we've had in the past, because I don't think many of them will live much longer, and that goes for some of the sacred cows in the trade union movement as well. It's simply what is going to work best for most of the people in the province of Ontario, and I saw that the fairest and best way of dealing with those people, the greatest number of people, was for the government to take control of the process of trying to reduce that kind of deficit and make sure we had the fairest reaction to ordinary working people in the province of Ontario.
I had no difficulty making the decisions I've made in terms of the social contract process. I think it's the best thing that could happen in the province of Ontario.
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The Acting Speaker: Questions and/or comments?
Mr Daigeler: I guess as a theologian I should accept the possibility of the conversion of Paul on the road to Damascus, but frankly I did not think I was going to witness the conversion of Bob on the road to New York, and I think that's what I've seen tonight.
When the member was in opposition I think his seat was somewhere about where I'm standing today, and he said exactly the opposite of what he said tonight. I don't want to blame him, because a lot of what he said I agree with. Finally, he's seeing the economic reality, seeing life the way it is out there, and I accept that. But what I would have liked to see from the member for Hamilton East in particular is a little bit of humility, the kind of humility we were expecting from the Prime Minister, Mr Mulroney, that he would have said: "I know that a lot of the things I'm saying tonight, that I'm defending tonight, are not what I said when I was in opposition, not the things I fought so hard for over many years. I have seen, as I'm now in government, that I have a broader responsibility," as he said, "to the good of all the people in this province, and therefore I have to take certain steps that force me to bring in this legislation." I think then I would have said, "Fine, I accept this." But the way the member has been going on and saying this is the best thing since sliced bread, as though he never had argued the opposite, I find very difficult to take, particularly from the member for Hamilton East.
Mr Stockwell: I was simply going to allow these comments by the Minister of Labour to pass. I'm sure he's had some very gut-wrenching moments going through this piece of legislation, and I understand that, because of the positions he took in his previous some 17 years in opposition, outlined, obviously, by the member for Nepean.
What raised my hackles is that if you're going to publicly reverse yourself in such a dramatic fashion, as you have done, and you probably more so than anyone, being the critic for Labour, being the Minister of Labour, putting forward positions in opposition that have no relationship to what you're doing today -- look, I don't have much opposition to what you're doing today. I believe in reduction and cutbacks and wage reductions and so on in the public sector. I'm a firm believer in that, and I've believed in that for my last 10 or 12 years of public life. But I will not take from this member any more lectures on consistency -- on labour consistency, on contract consistency, on any consistency -- when you have done what you have done over the past three years on a veritable array of issues that you face in government.
From government-run auto insurance to Sunday shopping to your Bill 48, you have absolutely reversed field on every issue you held dear. I accept the fact they have done it in government. I will challenge them occasionally on what they said in opposition. I will challenge them with what they said in the Agenda for People. But for you to have the audacity to stand and lecture anyone in any political field on what their consistent position should be after your escapade here in the last three years is the height of that H-word we're not allowed to use, Mr Speaker. Mr Minister of Labour, you can go ahead and make your speeches. You have lost any credibility to lecture anybody on consistent political thought.
Mr Randy R. Hope (Chatham-Kent): The compliments to the minister were well deserved. He indicated that he's seen directly on his desk the effects on a lot of people of a number of initiatives. I know he also witnessed on the weekend a number of tombstones that were laid beside the arena, which indicated federal Tory policies which have devastated a lot of our communities.
He talked about some of the concessions that some of the workers are taking. Let's take a look at Libbey-St Clair glass, where the pensions were locked in till they are age 65, a 65-cent rollback per hour, and they don't know what the destination of their jobs will ever be. When we talk about the effects of free trade, let's look at Motor Wheel in Chatham, where they were asked for a 50% reduction in their wages with no guarantee of a job. That plant is now closed today.
So there are a number of the issues that the minister talked about, proposals that were going over his desk. I compliment him on one initiative, that he had the ability to bring forward a wage protection program which protected those workers whose employers have run out on them.
But what the minister also indicated are our responsibilities as employers, because I can see the issue where, if we were just to remove the money from the coffers of our transfer partners, the effects that would be there and how the front-line workers would be affected. Yes, it's a very difficult situation to deal with concessions. I've been through it in the early 1980s, in 1981 and 1982, when we dealt with the issues of concessions. Yes, there are those who are going to be affected by a layoff or transfer of jobs, but it is our responsibility, and that's what you see here, a supplementary unemployment benefits fund.
How many collective agreements currently provide for an SUB fund that provides for 95% of the wages? Some of our bargaining in the private sector doesn't even provide for that. A training fund which provides for people to retrain back into the workforce, we don't have that. So what we're doing is acting as a responsible employer, and I think it is very important what the minister has brought across. The effects are there, and I think we better focus this attention more appropriately to federal economic policies called free trade and NAFTA.
The Acting Speaker (Mr Noble Villeneuve): One final participant in questions or comments.
Mr John C. Cleary (Cornwall): There's one thing that I would like to ask the minister, and I couldn't think of a better person to ask than a cabinet minister. There seems to be much confusion in the municipalities and the hospitals and in different areas about that $30,000 cutoff. Does that mean a $30,000 salary? If their benefits would include another 20%, 25% or 30%, would they not be eligible on this cutoff? Maybe the minister could explain that to me in his windup remarks.
The Acting Speaker: This completes questions and/or comments. The honourable Minister of Labour has two minutes in response.
Mr Arnott: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: I believe in his comments the Minister of Labour used the word "hypocrisy," and I would think he will want to withdraw that statement.
The Acting Speaker: That's not a point of order. The Minister of Labour, two minutes in response.
Hon Mr Mackenzie: I just want to say two or three things. I appreciate the comments from the members for Cornwall and Nepean. I heard the arguments they made.
I would say to the member for Nepean that if I had done a sellout, or whatever he's inferring with his comments, it would have come with a lot more pressure before us on Bill 40 when there was a campaign, the like of which I've never seen, to deny workers the right to organize or enable workers to have much more say in the decisions that are affecting them. Whether it's pay equity, whether it's wage protection, whether it's the reform of CECBA that will be before this House very shortly, they are all very indicating, I think, and positive measures that say what we are trying to do is what is in the best interests of workers.
Now, I might say there are some who take a look at Bill 40 and to this day are still screaming about repealing it. They'll want to do a little checking over what's happened in the four and a half months since the bill was put in place, because we are actually getting a fairly good response, including from the business community, in terms of timing, costs, workers' ability to organize. Workers who have taken charge of the ability to try to organize and been fired are back to work within 24 hours in a number of cases. There have been positive results that are not, so far, getting too much anti reaction even from the more hard-line people in the business community, and I think that's important.
Beyond that, I guess you'll forgive me for one little bit of arrogance. All of us are not perfect. I haven't heard the member for Etobicoke West for the last six months in this House.
The Acting Speaker: Further debate?
Mr Daigeler: If I may be permitted to continue a little bit on what the Minister of Labour just said, I respect what he just said and, again, there's a fair amount of it that I agree with. I think he's always been fighting, at least the way I have understood it, since 1987, since I've been here, for the workers to get a fair deal and also to be part of the decisions that shape their own lives. I think in his two-minute rebuttal he was implying that he continues to work towards that goal of involving the workers in management decisions. In fact, that is one of the, I think, indirect goals of this bill that is before us, and there are some difficulties with this, to which I will come a little bit later.
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But on the principle of involving the workers more over their working lives, I'm in agreement with this principle. In fact, I remember when I first came to this country more than 20 years ago I had a conversation at Carleton University with Angus Reid, the pollster. He at that time was doing his PhD at Carleton University and I was a graduate student there too. We had a very interesting conversation and I never forgot this, because at the time, when I came over from Europe, from Germany in particular, there was a lot of public discussion about what's called in German mitbestimmung, or codetermination.
Frankly, at that time -- that was around 1970, 1971 -- I could not understand why in Canada there didn't seem to be any kind of debate around this very fundamental question that was very much in the forefront of the public debate in Europe. Angus Reid explained to me, as a newcomer at that point, that the Canadian union movement was opposed to this idea of codetermination at that point, that they felt becoming involved in the management decisions was totally blurring -- which of course it is -- the clear division between management on the one side and labour on the other.
They felt much more comfortable -- that's the way Angus Reid explained it to me -- having that clear distinction between management and labour and, through the collective bargaining process and in negotiations, they'd want to continue in that way, rather than the European system, which was frankly blurring that clear distinction between management and workers and which expressed itself through the principle of codetermination.
Twenty years later we are, I think, again revisiting this and if I understand the Minister of Labour, with his project of Bill 40, one of his ideas that he was trying to accomplish and which we frankly in this party supported -- there are elements in Bill 40 that we support, different from the Tories. We have clearly said we're not simply going to take away the whole of Bill 40; we will only take away those provisions that hurt business.
One of the things that we feel is, in principle, again a good idea is that working together between labour, between the unions and management, sitting down and making -- realizing the fact that the decisions that are made in business, the business decisions, are of vital interest to the workers as well and that it's just not good enough to simply give them a wage or a salary and say: "That's it. We on the management side make all the other decisions and you just have to take it and hope for the best."
So this idea of some involvement of the workers in the decisions by business, I think I'm prepared to look at. As I said, I agree with the Minister of Labour on that principle. I'm getting a little bit sidetracked here because that's not really what I wanted to talk about tonight, but since the Minister of Labour brought up this issue, I thought I should put my own view and the view of my party in that regard on the record.
What I did want to say about Bill 48 in particular is about four main points. The first point I want to make is explaining from my perspective how we got into this mess in the first place, and frankly I'm getting a fair number of letters and calls from my constituents who say, "How did we get there and is it in fact that bad?" That's the first question they ask, "Is it in fact that bad?" Frankly, it is bad, but it isn't quite as bad as the NDP is trying to make it.
Let's not forget that it was at the beginning of April, if I remember correctly -- I may be a little bit off in terms of the exact date, so don't hold me to the precise date -- that the Treasurer said the deficit was going to come in around $12 billion, which we in the Liberal opposition, and I think the Tories as well, felt as being way too high. But then I think it was about two weeks later that the Treasurer, all of a sudden, said that instead of $12 billion it was going to be $17 billion. He keeps throwing this figure out, I don't know on what basis.
My point here is simply that we have to take, unfortunately, the figures of the Treasurer or the Minister of Finance with a big grain of salt. I must say I like the Minister of Finance. When I was parliamentary assistant of Revenue, Mr Laughren, the Minister of Finance, was the Revenue critic, and I thought we had a decent and reasonable exchange. But the figures that he has been putting forward over the last two and a half years are very, very confusing.
How is it possible that within two weeks a deficit can jump, according to the Treasurer's own statement, from $12 billion to $17 billion? But let's face it, this is somewhat of a moot argument, meaning, where does it lead? If $12 billion is bad, then $17 billion is even more bad. I won't give an argument on that, because I do agree that even if the deficit projection were only $12 billion, we still would have to do everything in our power to reduce that deficit figure. I quite agree with the member for Hamilton East that we cannot burden the next government and the next generation with a tremendously heavy debt load where over 20% of every dollar that we earn is going towards the interest payment of the public debt.
How did we then end up at a deficit of at least, let's say, $12 billion? First of all, in my opinion again, there has been some very poor budgeting on the part of the Minister of Finance. I'm really sorry to say that the member, Mr Laughren, would have done that. He put in some figures that were way too optimistic. He counted on -- what was it again? I think it was something like a billion dollars from the federal government in terms of payments for the difficult economic situation, equalization payments, that he was expecting to come to Ontario from the federal government. That clearly was an unreasonable number. He put that into his budget last year to butter his figures, to make them look better.
We told him at that point, "It's reasonable to expect some equalization payments from the federal government, but the figure that you put in is way out of line." That's precisely what happened. The federal government has come through with some equalization payments, but not anywhere near to what the Treasurer had expected and had put into his budget last year. He also made some assumptions about the economy that, in my opinion and in the opinion of most people, were way too optimistic.
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That's one of the reasons that really the budgeting forecasting of the Treasurer has not been very good, certainly last year and not even in the previous year. But, again to be fair in the way I try to be fair, budgeting is always a very difficult undertaking. You are doing forecasting. There's an element of prophesying in this, and to be humble here, we forecast some figures in 1990 that did not quite come true either. I have no qualms in admitting this.
In fact, I was a member in 1989 and 1990 of the finance and economic affairs committee that was studying the budget -- it wasn't really studying the budget -- that was doing the pre-budget hearings. I remember it very well, when we had all these economic gurus, I can only call them, all the economic experts from the big banks coming to us and giving us their expert opinion as to what the economy was going to look like. Frankly, essentially, they forecast a downturn in economic growth but certainly not anywhere near the way it happened.
Now, mind you, one major factor, of course, that they did not take into their equation and would have totally changed their picture -- because the basic assumptions underlying those calculations were wrong -- was of course the election of an NDP government. What they didn't count on was that the Liberals would call an election, and that's another matter.
My point is that forecasting is always a difficult discipline, especially if it involves the future, and since it involves the future, by the terminology itself, it is something where you have to use common sense, and that's where, in my opinion, the Treasurer has been lacking: common sense, what some reasonable assumptions are, and go with that and try to be rather pessimistic than too optimistic on your revenue side.
I was listening to some exchange earlier between the member for Willowdale and the member for Oriole which I thought was very, very good and very much to the point. The member for Willowdale, in my opinion, was way off base when he said, and the Tories keep trying to make that argument, that the Liberals left the NDP a $3.5-billion deficit.
Again, to the credit of the Minister of Finance -- I'm trying to look for his riding, and I can't quite think of his riding -- the member from Sudbury, in the Sudbury area, to his credit, at the beginning of his term did say that he wasn't blaming the Liberals for the deficit. The recession was coming in, the treasury officials were not able to accurately forecast the situation, and he said -- that's the Treasurer speaking; that's not me; that's not the Liberals; that's the NDP Treasurer speaking at that time -- he was not blaming the Liberals for the deficit. It was simply that that's the way it happened with the recession coming in and also with the NDP making certain spending decisions which led to the deficit being $3.5 billion.
That's precisely the point that the Provincial Auditor in his 1991 annual report made. First of all, he says -- and I'm reading here from the 1991 annual report of the Provincial Auditor, so anybody in the public who says, "Well, here's just the self-serving Liberals trying to defend their own record," I invite them to read the annual report of the Provincial Auditor, 1991.
The number's 2.3 -- that's the number under which he says this: "Ontario has had only one surplus in the last 20 years" and that's the "year ended March 31, 1990." So in 1990 we have had, according to the Provincial Auditor, a surplus, and that surplus, may I remind the members opposite and the members in the third party as well, included the capital budget. That is something very important to remember, because that included almost $3 billion of expenditures. Capital expenditures are the building of schools and roads and sewer construction. It's those expenditures that this government, the NDP government, is trying to move, and already has moved, off the books of the government. They're not even counting these capital expenditures towards their own deficit. However, in 1990, when there was a surplus, this figure included the capital expenditures.
Then the auditor goes on to say, as I just indicated, that there was, however, as it turned out, for the 1991 budget year, the one that ends March 31, 1991, a deficit of $3.029 billion. How did this come about? He says, first of all, "the extent of the recession, which was obviously not foreseen at the time of the budget." Again to his credit, the Minister of Finance acknowledged that, and I acknowledge it, that there was an element of the recession that none of us foresaw, that it would happen with that strength and with that speed.
Then there's a second point that we must not forget. The auditor -- not me, the auditor -- says that special payments were made which were not provided for in the budget. These special payments added to that deficit.
In particular to the member for Willowdale, who's not here at the present time but I hope he's listening in his office or at home on the television, the way I was when he was speaking this afternoon: Of that $3.5- billion deficit that the member for Willowdale was trying to lump on to the Liberals, almost half of that deficit was deliberate spending decisions by the NDP government, according to the statement by the Provincial Auditor.
I do not argue now and I did not argue then with the right of the democratically elected NDP government to make these spending decisions. They had the right to govern and they said: "We want to take this risk. We want to take these expenditures and we want to incur that $3.5-billion deficit at this time." Fine, but don't say that the Liberals left the NDP a $3.5-billion deficit, because that's simply not true.
I would just simply point out what these special payments were that were made by the NDP government. Again, I'm quoting from the auditor's report, "Special payments aggregating $924 million were made regarding the Ontario teachers' pension fund." Obviously it's rather ironic that today, almost three years later, we are in a position where the government really has to say, "This was too early that we made that payment and we have to take it back." They also made a $407-million payment to the Urban Transportation Development Corp and a $321-million payment to the Stadium Corp of Ontario Ltd. That's the SkyDome.
As I say, the government in its wisdom said, "We want to add these kinds of expenditures at this time to our books and therefore the deficit is $3.5 billion." Fine, fair, but don't say, "The Liberals left us with $3.5 billion," because that figure includes very significant expenditure decisions already by the current NDP government.
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I haven't gotten very far yet with the comments I wanted to make, but there's one other point I really want to put on the record, because no one else has made it at this point and that point also is a factor in explaining why we are in the situation we're in today.
Mr Paul Klopp (Huron): Don't go blaming it on Peterson.
Mr Daigeler: Just a second. I'm not blaming this on Peterson. I'm blaming this fairly and squarely on the Minister of Finance and fairly and squarely on this government, because it was the first bill that you passed. It was Bill 1. I will read to you what I said on December 5, 1990, in this House.
Bill 1 was the elimination of calculating the provincial sales tax as the bottom-line figure of all taxation. The way it used to be is that you calculated the amount of provincial sales tax that was due at the cash register after the GST had been included in the price. Again to be fair, a lot of my own constituents called me and wrote to me and said: "This is unfair. This is tax on tax." To be honest, it was. I acknowledge that. Calculating the PST on top of the GST is tax on tax. However, clearly the Treasurer, with that measure, which he then withdrew with Bill 1, was forgoing $500 million in revenue that he could have counted on every year since then.
Nobody has mentioned it so far. I want to put that on the record because I told the Treasurer, on December 5, 1990, "You're being generous with the one hand, but the time will come when you have to take it back with the other hand." Today we see this day.
I want to quote to you what I said on December 5: "The honourable member for Oxford," -- and by the way, I understand the honourable member for Oxford, Kimble Sutherland, is on his honeymoon. I wish him very well. Across all partisan lines, we certainly hope he and his wife will be blessed with many years of happiness and togetherness and hopefully with many more citizens for Ontario. I won't say any more NDPers --
Mr Tim Murphy (St George-St David): Taxpayers.
Mr Daigeler: -- but many more taxpayers, as the member for St George-St David rightfully says.
Anyway, to get back to the point I'm trying to make: "The honourable member for Oxford is taking great pride," -- because he spoke before I intervened -- "in this bill and is talking about the integrity of the government. However, I think, in fairness and in integrity, he should also mention that this bill" -- Bill 1 -- "off the bat, adds $500 million to the provincial deficit. I respect his decision and I respect the decision of his government and of the Treasurer to do that. He was elected to adjust the budget according to his own wishes, but I think he should not then stand up in this House and say: 'Well, the former government and the bad Liberals left us a big hole in the provincial treasury and therefore we cannot afford to fund universities. We have to charge tuition fees for students.'
"The way the minister seemed to indicate this afternoon in question period, I think he should be up front and say, 'Yes, we deliberately are adding $500 million to the provincial deficit by taking this measure and that is the decision we have taken.' I think he should mention that to the people of Ontario as well."
That's what I said at the end of 1990. At that time, it appeared very generous and the right thing to do. But frankly, as the Minister of Labour, who spoke earlier, has come to realize, there are some decisions in the life of a government that you have to take that are not very comforting, that don't seem too positive for the public, but in the interest of the long-term fiscal stability of this province they must be taken.
For a Treasurer to just off the bat give up $500 million, that's a lot of money. As I said, I was parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Revenue just before the government fell and I know that $500 million in the life of this province is a big amount, and we know that now. Now, just calculate, over the three years of the life of this government, that's almost $2 billion. That's almost half of the amount that this government is trying now to take back from the public, because it seemed to be so generous in 1990.
I just want to say again that a major reason why we are in the situation that we're in today is the fiscal, frankly, incompetence of this government. They want to do the right thing. I don't want to speak against their motives. I think they want to do the right thing, but there's also a way to do the right thing and a wrong way to do the right thing.
That's where I so fundamentally disagree with them and that's where we on the Liberal Party side are disagreeing with this particular initiative that is being put forward. We are agreeing that the fiscal situation of this province, the fiscal mess, must be brought into order, but the draconian way that this government is trying to do it is not the way to go, but rather do what the municipalities have requested.
I have only a minute and a half so I cannot really read into the record a letter that I have from the mayor of my own municipality, who wrote to this government on May 25 saying: "These broad-brush solutions made here in Toronto will not work. Give us the opportunity, give us the tools to come to an agreement at the local level."
My leader, Lyn McLeod, has been saying this from day one and my mayor in Nepean has been saying that and frankly the regional chairmen, including the chairman of Ottawa-Carleton, have been saying this and the other chairmen of the regional municipalities as well.
While I agree with the principle of putting this fiscal house into order, I fundamentally disagree with the approach that is being taken by this government. I just would like to say one quick thing. I don't think we should dump over the civil service because the civil service has been providing the services that we the public have been asking them to do and that we the public have been asking government to do.
The Tories always say, "Well, we have to cut government." Let's be realistic. It's not the government that we have to cut, it's the services that we have asked for, which are provided through the government and which cost money, and we have to decide that if we want a reduction of taxes, we also have to have a reduction of services. Since my time has run out, I thank you for the opportunity to participate.
The Acting Speaker: Thank you. Questions and/or comments? The member for Durham Centre.
Mr White: I would like to commend my colleague. He's spoken, however, about $500 million in revenues, and I think he's spoken quite eloquently and quite honestly, that in fact the Bill 1 of our government was a bill which did not tax a tax, would not have imposed the provincial sales tax upon the GST, that would allow for a future federal government to do away with the GST, that would have allowed the federal government we presently have, had it come to its senses, to do away with that hated tax, and would not mean that we had somehow bought into that tax, that we in any way condoned it.
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That $500 million that my friend mentioned is in fact a tax, the kind of tax that his leader so frequently opposes, and a tax upon a tax: $500 million of tax upon tax. That is revenue which we've forgone. It is true that that is the case. But the people who are watching and listening and interested in this debate I'm sure would like to know that had there not been a change of government, they would in fact be paying a tax upon a tax, that $500 million in extra revenue from a collusion between the former Liberal government and the then and now, but not for long, federal Tory government in imposing upon this province a hated GST, and we would also probably have an extension of that sales tax to other areas.
Interjection.
Mr White: My friend asks, what's wrong with that? What's wrong with this additional tax upon a tax? I'll tell you. It's an unfair and regressive tax. The measures that we have put in place have for the most part been progressive and based upon the ability of people to pay those taxes, whereas a consumption tax is a tax upon, very often, those who can least afford to pay it.
The Acting Speaker: Further questions or comments?
Mrs Yvonne O'Neill (Ottawa-Rideau): I want to commend my colleague from Nepean. I think he gave the fundamental purpose, what we've lived with in this province since September 1990: You give with this hand, and God only knows what day, but maybe tomorrow, you take back with this hand.
We know that the credibility of this government and its ability and sometimes its integrity are being questioned out there. They gave 2% salary increases to the provincial civil servants in January and now, five or six months later, they're asking them for that same money back on which they made commitments, whether it's to buy a house or a car or indeed to provide education for their children. The OMA is in the same boat, except I think more seriously.
They gave a 7% increase in salaries to many of the transfer agencies as late as December 1992, six months ago. How can anyone trust what this government says? It doesn't last even for a year. There is inconsistency, uncertainty, confusion, chaos.
This, I'm sorry to say, in this province is the summer of doubt; it's the summer of fear; it's the summer of uncertainty. It's all of those things for the public sector, but it's also for the many, many transfer agencies, whether they're services in the municipalities, whether they're children's aid societies, whether they're any number of services that people in this province have come to expect.
This government has no plans. They are deferring expenditures, even though they won't admit that, on capital. We all know that, whether it's capital for schools or capital for hospitals. They're talking about deferring payments on unpaid leave for a certain undefined group of people. That again will be paid by us in two or three years with compounded interest.
The Acting Speaker: Further questions and/or comments? Seeing none, the honourable member for Nepean has two minutes in response.
Mr Daigeler: First of all, I'd like to thank the member for Ottawa-Rideau for her comments and for underlining the main point that I was trying to put across and that obviously was so well understood by the member for Ottawa-Rideau, that this government is giving with the one hand and appears to be very generous and very supportive of the underprivileged but, on the other hand, it is taking it back, and taking it back with a vengeance, I would like to say, with this particular bill.
The member for Durham Centre said -- and I understand that, you know; it's fair to say -- "What's wrong with eliminating a tax on tax?" Well, on principle, it's a great idea. I'm all in favour of that. However, leadership is that with these kinds of generous measures, you don't create a bigger mess, and that's precisely what's happening.
I see the member from Ottawa Centre shaking her head, but she also -- and I would have liked to come to that point in my speech still -- is very much part of the problem that we have experienced with the legislation that she has introduced with regard to rent controls. What she has done is she has effectively eliminated the small contractors and the workers who are associated with the small contractors with her legislation in this province. That is one of the reasons why these people are no longer paying taxes and that is one of the reasons why they are receiving social assistance.
So what seems to be a great idea on what seems to be a moral principle that I fully support, is being, frankly, abused and distorted by this government. That is my main point, that if you govern, you have to put the long-term issues in perspective. You have to consider what are some of the other factors that enter the greater picture. That's my point that I was trying to make tonight.
The Acting Speaker: I want to thank the honourable member for Nepean for his participation and his response. Further debate?
Mr Stockwell: I'd like to say at the top that I will be supporting this legislation on second reading. I will be supporting it because this is probably, of the pieces of legislation this government has introduced, as close to the Conservative philosophy as anything that they have ever introduced. So that's probably why. I will also say this --
Mr Daigeler: Okay, that's good. The Tories want to eliminate collective bargaining.
The Acting Speaker: Order, please. The honourable member for Nepean has had his opportunity. The member for Etobicoke West.
Mr Stockwell: Maybe he wasn't happy with his wrapup and he wanted more.
Yes, there is some chaos and concern with respect to this legislation. We are offering, I will be clear off the top, six amendments. If those amendments are not adopted to clarify the problems that we think will be inherent in this legislation, we reserve the right to vote against it on third reading. I think that's a reasonable approach that any government would take: Allow them to take this out to committee, take it out to the people, hear their concerns, register our amendments, and then if they bring them back in a reasonable, coherent fashion, we will support it.
I will also say that this province is in a very, very serious mess financially. Now, every party seems to have a problem with how we arrived at this mess and each party is trying to blame each other for who put us into this mess in the first place. Let me say that the Conservative governments of the last five, maybe 10, years certainly didn't help the situation.
They deficit-financed when they didn't need to deficit-finance. They spent money when they didn't need to spend money. They introduced programs that I think were not properly before government, and I think it was one of the major reasons why that government under Bill Davis, and subsequently under Frank Miller, was defeated. The legacy that they left, I thought, was 43 years of a well-managed province, but as to the length of time that they were in government, I don't think they were as well managed as they were in the first number of years.
Now the Liberals are going to suggest, as was suggested a number of times by the previous speaker, that really they managed a booming economy and they had a lot of money rolling in and, yes, they spent the money but they had it and they didn't run up the debt. But history will prove them wrong. They accumulated some $8 billion to $10 billion in new debt during the greatest period of growth this province has ever seen. So I think there is maybe significantly more blame for that Liberal administration than the previous Conservative one, and maybe there isn't. Maybe there's a debate there that they're equally to blame.
This government, in my opinion, really, really messed things up in that first budget. I was sitting in this same seat when this first budget was announced and I could not believe, I was absolutely astounded at, the deficit figure that this government projected: $10 billion. Ultimately, it came in at about $13 billion.
At the time I thought, "This is nuts. This is crazy." But they did have their defenders. The Solicitor General -- I think he has another title, the Correctional Services minister. I remember going on a couple of TV debates with him and I think he honestly believed, as this caucus probably honestly believed, that they were doing the right thing. I remember he explained all the programs that they instituted and how the $10 billion wasn't really a lot. I said at the time it was more like $13 billion, and he said, "Oh no, it's $10 billion."
But I think you honestly believed that you were doing the right thing. You were truly socialists. I measured you as socialists. You were the socialists that I'd come to know: big spenders, a lot of programs, little fiscal control. I don't think you can debate that. The deficit that you brought in, some $13 billion, was horrendous, was unbelievably high.
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What astounded me, though, was your settlement packages to the workers, because you had admittedly said -- again, in this debate we had on TV, cable 10 -- that you were in a recession. I understood your deficit figure, but for the life of me, I couldn't understand the package you put together for the public service employees.
It was 13% or 14%. You say: "Well, there are new employees in there, pay equity and so on and so on. We only gave them a 6% increase." But even so, I thought, "If you really believe we're in a recession and you really think this deficit is too high, even marginally too high, why are you settling at such huge numbers for your employees?" I never really got a good answer. It wasn't like anyone else was getting 6% increases and it wasn't like anyone else's payroll was increasing by 13% or 14%, except your government's.
So we moved on to the next year's budget. At the time, I remember your spin line was "We're fighting the recession, not the deficit," and you all stood up and cheered Mr Laughren when he said that. I myself was falling out of my chair.
With the next budget you came in and tried to smoke and mirror this deficit. You moved things around and offset some payments that you had to make, the teachers' pension fund, and you claimed the federal government was going to give you $1.2 billion. You did a whole bunch of things, but your deficit was still high.
What astounded me was that here we were in one of the most depressive recessions we'd seen since who knows when, and again, across the board, en masse, you increased the public service payroll. You negotiated settlements at 2%, 3%, 4%, 5%, and you increased the payroll across the board. I thought, "If this is such a horrendous recession, why do you keep giving your employees these kinds of raises?" We in this party were telling you, "The private sector is laying off," and this government was increasing the payroll and broadening the size of the public service. It really astounded me, because I thought if you truly felt this was an incredibly difficult recession, why were you exacerbating the problems, paying people who had reasonably secure jobs at reasonably high wages, to tax people who were fundamentally out of work?
I am not shocked that we're at this stage today. I admit that I am absolutely shocked that this government is going about it the way it's going about it. I must admit, in all my years of listening to the NDP academics at the universities downtown and the suburban NDP who were used to the NDP style of checked jackets and elbow pads and the rural NDP and the unionized NDP, en masse, I honestly never thought I'd see you sit in unison, minus a couple of dissenters you don't buy into any more -- I never thought I'd see you sit around passing this kind of legislation.
I know it has got to hurt to the core of your bones. It must bother you like nothing has ever bothered you to introduce Bill 48, because Bill 48 does exactly what you've opposed and stood against probably your entire political careers and that you've stood against as a party in the history of your political party. But it's here and it must be dealt with, because we are in a financial mess, due in part to us, the Conservatives, those Liberals and really exacerbated by you, the NDP.
I said earlier that I believe in collective agreements and I believe in contracts. I believe wholeheartedly that if you sign a contract, you should live up to it. I also believe that if a private company signs a contract, it should live up to that contract unless the employees agree to negotiate that away. You see, you have one power that a private company doesn't have: You can change the law. No private company can change the law; you can change the law. This is the fundamental difference between what you're doing and what any private sector company could do: They couldn't change the law. You know Bill 48 is doing that. You're changing the law.
I'm a believer in the bang, bang, bang scenario. I believe in it because I want to see this reduction take place with the smallest pain and suffering upon all people who provide -- and not only the providers, but those who take advantage of -- public services. So why do I believe in the bang, bang theory? Because it's clean, it's fair and it's quick. And you know what? Everybody understands the rules.
If I were in the situation that this government is in and I had negotiated wage settlements over the past three years that added up to double-digit increases -- 10%, 12%, 13% -- to the payroll of the public sector, 20% to the payroll, I would simply introduce legislation to roll back everyone's wage by 5%, case closed, done.
I know that the unions wouldn't like it and I know that if you were in opposition you'd be having an absolute hairy fit if anyone ever suggested we should roll back wages by 5%, but you know why I would do it? Because it's tough, fair and reasonable leadership in very tough and unfair economic times. I have difficulty with your legislation because it's patently unfair, it's going to be nearly impossible to administer and people are going to take advantage of situations within the legislation who shouldn't be taking advantage of situations.
I make two quick points about your legislation and ask you, do you think this is fair? Do you think that some people should be giving up 5% of their wages over the next three years with pay pause days while others give up nothing? That's what your legislation will do, because I'll tell you right now, the policeman in Metropolitan Toronto or the day care worker in Scarborough or the attendant in a home for aged facility in Etobicoke won't be taking their pay pause day. They'll be banking their pay pause day. They'll be banking their pay pause day because in 1996 this thing lifts, and all those people who had to take a pay pause or a 5% reduction in their salary will have taken it except those people who are in mandated services. They'll have banked 36 days, and in 1996 they're going to say to the municipal government where they work, "You can either give me 36 days off, a month and a half, or you can pay me." And you know full well that municipalities are going to pay them, because they won't be able to afford to give every cop in Metropolitan Toronto an extra month and a half holidays in one year.
Do you think that's fair, that a cop making $50,000, $60,000 a year actually gets no reduction while a secretary who's making $25,000 or $32,000 gets a 5% reduction? It's not fair. It's not sharing the pain. It's not what you're trying to achieve with this legislation. It's unmanageable: It's impossible to implement on a broad-sector, fair basis. That's what makes it so wrong, that's what makes it so unreasonable and that's why people don't understand it.
You know what else I don't understand? I don't understand how you can take someone's legal rights away from them at any time. Many have suggested the War Measures Act. I don't think it's as draconian as the War Measures Act, but I don't understand how any government could say that if someone gets fired wrongfully they don't have any right to appeal that firing. That's not right, that's not democratic, and that doesn't happen in free countries.
If you get wrongfully dismissed, you have a right to appeal, a right to be heard; you have an opportunity to say, "I was wrongfully dismissed and my employer was wrong." That's what's wrong with your legislation, because you've taken those rights away from people, democratic, fundamental rights, all in the name of a social contract, all because you didn't want to say that everybody gets a 5% wage cut.
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I don't understand that. If you're going to reopen 8,000 or 9,000 collective agreements and you're going to try and work in a pay pause day that's going to cause havoc in a lot of municipalities, if you're going to tell some people they're going to have to give up the 5% while you're going to tell others they get to save their holidays for 36 months, if you're going to tell some that they have to take a 5% reduction, why don't you just tell everybody they get a 5% reduction? There's no service lost, there's no pain on the municipalities and everybody knows what's going on.
This is what I don't understand about your government. I understand that you want to negotiate with the unions, but I don't know why you think unions are going to come in and negotiate wages and packages away. That's not their mandate. They've got a constituency just like you. I've negotiated with unions. Their constituency is the dues payers, the people who pay their salaries, the members. Members don't let their executives go into negotiations and negotiate away pay and benefits; it's not in the cards. So it's going to be tough to get agreement.
Another thing I don't understand is, why did this just hit you? I can't honestly believe that one night Bob Rae was sitting at home watching W5 and saw the New Zealand story. I can't believe that's it.
This government has spent a significant number of weeks spinning its wheels. Some will say, "We had a full and frank and open discussion on negotiations." Yes, maybe you did, but you still spun your wheels because you're no further ahead today than you were when this was thought up some four or five months ago. People still don't know what the effect on their lives is going to be.
You want to know one of the other things that I don't understand? If you're so concerned about workers who work for governments in this province, why will you allow municipalities to lay them off when all you have to do is give everybody a 5% decrease? What benefit is it to see government employees, during the worst recession since the Depression, line up in UI lines after a year? Where's the benefit? I don't understand that, when all sharing the pain means is that everybody takes a 5% cut. Where's the benefit?
I support this. I support this because something like this needs to be done. But I honestly don't understand, in a social democratic, union-based government, who thought this up and who considered this to be reasonable and fair for both the constituents in the province of Ontario and the employees.
They suggest sometimes that Conservatives are draconian and not into negotiations, that they don't care about certain employees and don't have a caring, compassionate attitude to the people of this province. I disagree. With the great pains you took to try to prove your fairness and equitable relationships with the people who work in this province, you've done them a disservice. You've done them a great disservice: They are standing out there today in absolute and utter disbelief because they don't know what's going on.
If you want to know the most secure thing that people working in government could have today, the most secure thing you could tell them, the most gratifying thing they would like to hear from a government, it is, "Tomorrow you're going to have your job and you're going to get a 5% reduction."
You know something? I don't care what that gentleman who heads up the union, Mr Sid Ryan, or Mr Upshaw or Liz Barkley say. In my mind, they don't speak for the union rank and file, because the union rank and file is saying to me in my constituency office, "I just want to know if I have a job."
If you told them they had a job and told them, "We're just going to take 5% for three years" or whatever, and gave them the security of knowing they'll make their mortgage payment next month, they'd stand and applaud you rather than fight with you in the streets of this province today.
But no, we've got to have a social contract. We've got to have a social contract to throw people's lives in a spin; we've got to have a social contract to throw the municipal world in a spin; we have to have a social contract to close down emergency wards at Mount Sinai; we have to have a social contract to throw people's lives in this province into absolute chaos with a contract that I don't think is implementable, because nobody in this province has got the guts to stand up and say, "Real leadership means a 5% rollback for everybody." That's why we have to have a social contract and that's what this government isn't doing.
I don't know how they agreed to reopen 9,000 contracts. I don't know who talked them into pay pause days. I don't know who the guy is who told you that you can call it fail-safe mechanisms and compensation reviews. But you know something folks? You're listening to too many academics, you're listening to too many upper echelon bureaucrats, you're listening to too many consultants. You've stopped listening to the people, and the people aren't saying that.
The people are saying, "I can't pay my taxes." The people are saying, "I can't find a job." The people are saying, "Fix this economy." They're not telling me to go to the Legislature in Toronto, Ontario, and argue through July about some social contract that, at the end of the day in 1996, will save practically nothing except a bunch of holidays for a bunch of civil servants. That's not what they're asking me to do. And they're not asking me to take some more time to meet with Sid Ryan, Liz Barkley and Fred Upshaw, because you know what? They don't care what they have to say either. Those are the people who pay my dues, those are my constituents, those are my union people. They're called the taxpayers and they don't want to hear from them any more either.
In closing, I would ask this government to do one thing. I have one amendment and this is my amendment. I don't speak for my caucus, I don't speak for anyone else but me. I would support an across-the-board 5% rollback on everybody: on you, on me, on teachers, on policemen, on firefighters, on day care workers, on everybody. If you've got a floor where you want to go below $25,000, pick the floor, but I would support it. I would support it because it's fair, it's equitable, it's implementable, it's reasonable and it shows leadership.
If you really have a problem, go to the people and be honest, be up front and tell them the truth: "We're broke, we're going into debt, we can't sell our bonds, and unless we tighten our belts, we are going to go broke. Everybody's got to take a 5%." They'd take it, they'd accept it, and in 10, 15, or 20 years, when all this gets sorted out, they'd thank you for it. But sometimes leadership doesn't turn on a day. It won't turn on a week and it won't turn on the next election. Sometimes, you just have to do what's good for the people and hope that the electorate understands, the message is heard and the votes are cast.
Mrs O'Neill: I'm somewhat confused by the statement of the member for Etobicoke West when he says he's supporting the legislation, because I was having a lot of trouble finding even one phrase let alone a sentence in his speech that stated that. In any case, I want to agree with him and congratulate him for picking up the words that are now being slipped into the Ontario vocabulary, words that no one knows the meaning of: "pay pause," "fail safe" -- what does that mean? -- "social contract," "compensation reviews." Those things do not mean what they have normally meant when people spoke.
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The grievance procedure that he pointed to I find extremely offensive in Bill 48. Anybody who has ever suffered either unjust or unfair dismissal, and in many cases had to go to court to prove their case, is going to have to find out that this legislation will never protect them again. They will have lost that protection. I cannot believe that an NDP government would even think of that, let alone write it down.
Collective bargaining has always been based, its history is, on clarity, on continuity and on trust. There isn't one ounce of that in Bill 48 and whatever will fall out of Bill 48.
The NDP government, as the member for Etobicoke West has stated, has been spinning its wheels in this whole mess now for days, weeks and months. They have created a dust-storm in this province and the province has been left spinning in the dust-storm.
The Acting Speaker: Further questions or comments. The honourable member for Simcoe East.
Mr McLean: I just want to take the two minutes allotted to me to say a few remarks with regard to the member for Etobicoke West's statement, and I want to pick up on one of the very strong points that he made. It's what I've been hearing too in my constituency. If you treat everybody equally and fairly, if you take 5% of everyone, they would be satisfied; and I think that is a point that's really worth discussing, because when I have had teachers, I have had policemen, I have had people who have worked in the society, with regard to the 5% there's nobody who is opposed if everybody is being treated equally.
But that is not what's in the legislation, and as I said earlier on this evening when I had spoken with regard to the contracts, that is one of the very issues that's the most disturbing to most people. It's disturbing to me and it's disturbing to the people who have negotiated a contract, who have a contract that they have signed. They have sat across the table from management and with their union leaders and they have negotiated a contract. I find it very unacceptable that this government would bring in this type of legislation that would do away with a contract that has been signed.
As I had said earlier, if this government was in opposition and any other government was in power, they would close this Legislature down because of that very issue alone. What our leader is saying is that we freeze the wages, we freeze the size of the civil servants and in that way you would get a $4-billion saving in three years.
The member who has just spoken has given you many reasons why this contract is not right, but we want to make some amendments that would make it right, and I congratulate him for speaking with regard to the 5% reduction that everybody in society would be happy to take.
The Acting Speaker: Further questions and/or comments.
Mrs Elizabeth Witmer (Waterloo North): I'd like to congratulate my colleague from Etobicoke West. As always, I think he's made some extremely valid points. I think he's indicated what all of us have certainly heard from our constituents. I can certainly tell you that my constituents, my teachers at home have indicated to me, and the civil servants that I have spoken to as well, would be quite happy to take a wage cut of 5%. In fact, some of them have even indicated they would be willing to take a wage cut of 10%.
I think what's causing the problems throughout this province is the uncertainty that this legislation has created, and there was the hope that this would be resolved mid-June. That hasn't happened. The uncertainty now is going to continue until at least August 1, and it's absolutely regrettable that this Premier and this government has created this type of situation.
Having bargained, myself, in good faith with unions in the past, I'm very, very surprised that this government is willing to gut the negotiated contracts that have been established, and it's certainly not something that I can support.
I hope the members across will give very serious consideration to the amendments that have been put forward by our leader -- the wage freeze -- and I think we need to give some consideration to the proposal from the member for Etobicoke West when he refers to the need for fairness, that everyone would indeed have a 5% reduction.
I think we need to settle this issue as quickly as we can. We need to end the uncertainty and we need to start putting in place some measures which are going to create confidence in this province. This government has done absolutely nothing to restore confidence. We don't see job creation; we don't see new investment. It's time to deal with this issue and get on and create jobs for our students and others in the province.
The Acting Speaker: We can accommodate one final participant. Seeing none, the honourable member for Etobicoke West has two minutes in response.
Mr Stockwell: Well, I didn't make my four, so it must have been a bad speech.
I would say to the members for Simcoe East and Waterloo, I thank you for your comments. I gave great thought to that 5% scenario and I think it's probably, compared to what we have before us, a far better solution.
The member for Ottawa-Rideau, I understand what you're saying. You didn't hear a lot of good things about this particular Bill 48 in my comments. As the Premier likes to say, I'll be very direct with you. I think it's better than nothing. I fundamentally believe that it's better than nothing.
Something has to be done. We're on a freight train that's going the wrong way fast. I don't think it's the greatest piece of legislation. In fact, it may even be the worst piece of legislation, but I think it's something that has to be done.
I say to the member from Hamilton, who hasn't listened in six months, I would ask you to listen for one minute and take this bit of information back to your cabinet. If you want to be fair to the people in this province, and reasonable, why don't you take the 5% solution back to your cabinet? It's quick --
Mrs Witmer: Hamilton East.
Mr Stockwell: I'm sorry, Hamilton East. Was it Hamilton Mountain I said?
Mrs Witmer: Hamilton East, yes.
Mr Stockwell: The member for Hamilton East.
Interjection: The Minister of Labour.
Mr Stockwell: The Minister of Labour. It would be far better to take this 5% solution back, because I think you would probably serve the people of the province far better, you'd serve the employees far better and you'd put certainty back into lives that are in a very uncertain situation.
If the members opposite don't want to listen to that solution, I'll say this: Three years out in your social contract in 1996, you'll have realized very minimal savings and you'll have taken a lot of pain for very little gain. When you get down to the bottom line, folks, if you're going to go through this pain and change your principles this much, you may as well get something for it.
The Acting Speaker: I want to thank the honourable member for his participation and his response. Further debate.
Mr D. James Henderson (Etobicoke-Humber): The first thing I want to say is that the chickens have come home to roost.
When this government brought in its first budget in 1991, promising to spend its way out of a recession, we saw storm clouds, we heard the hurricane warnings and we knew we were headed for trouble. That economic reasoning would have been laughable had it not been so tragic. It makes about as much sense as a destitute family thinking that by borrowing money from the bank and spending it all, they will somehow rescue themselves from their financial problems. That doesn't work for families and, not surprisingly, it doesn't work for governments. You can't spend your way out of financial problems.
What you will do, if you try, is gather a huge debt which will burden that family or that government for many years to come, perhaps to a time when its capacity to pay it off will be very, very limited. That is what the New Democrats have done, and that is why they are choosing now to take draconian action to take this lurching ship and get it back on some kind of navigable course. The important thing to emphasize here is that the draconian action is necessary at least in part because of the very bad economic course the government charted in 1990 and 1991 when it promised to spend its way out of a recession.
I think the government is right in feeling that tough economic measures are necessary now. But they might not be, or at least they might be much less draconian than is necessary now if the economic management of the province had been competent in 1990 and 1991.
The government can't get off the hook by saying that this is a drastic solution for a drastic problem, because the hook is one fashioned and the problem is one created by the very government that pleads its innocence. This is a draconian bill to correct a self-made problem.
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In medicine we have a word, "iatrogenic," to refer to illnesses that are caused by the physician. We need a similar word in the lexicon of elected assemblies. Ontario's fiscal woes are gubernogenic. Bob Rae and Floyd Laughren, the fiscal physicians of the province are administering shock treatments to correct a gubernogenic illness afflicting their collective patient, and they're not very good doctors. I worry especially about those new measures the Minister of Health has brought in to expand her powers if indeed her tutors are these two physicians, the Premier and the Minister of Health.
The history of all this, by now, is very familiar to us. In March, the government proclaimed its intention to negotiate a social contract -- a euphemism for a wage rollback -- to reorganize the public sector and save money, warning of a $17-billion deficit if it failed to act. Seventeen billion dollars, $1,700 per man, woman and child in the province of Ontario: A newborn baby, born into this province of Ontario is born into a $1,700 debt.
In April, the unions made it clear that they would have no part of sector-by-sector bargaining until the government set out more specifics, and not surprisingly, the government makes very little mention now of the collapse of British Columbia's social contract which had been held out as a model for the province of Ontario.
Public sector unions announced a boycott of the social contract talks while they drafted some counterproposals of their own. About that time, the federal NDP Finance critic got kicked out of his portfolio for criticising this social contract concept; so much for socialist democracy in action. Yet somehow, despite this lurching start, the government's chief negotiator managed to describe the beginnings as very positive, which is a bit like Julius Caesar telling Brutus that his trip to the forum that day had been a very positive experience.
In May, union denunciations of the social contract talks grew more strident. As the government's chief negotiator announced his conviction that agreement could be reached, the Ontario president of CUPE promised to "take this government down." Somehow, one feels that they were not seeing eye to eye, this chief negotiator for the NDP and the Ontario president of CUPE. One began to suspect that Julius Caesar and Brutus weren't so much in agreement after all.
The social contract talks descended into chaos and the government began to flounder as the president of OPSEU told his troops to prepare for a general strike. Yet the government's chief negotiator, irrepressible gentleman that he is, pronounced then, "We can almost see a deal." Brave words, "We thought we saw light at the end of the tunnel." It turned out we saw only more tunnels at the end of the light. Brutus and Caesar were in complete agreement, except that each was planning to destroy the other.
In June, somehow suspecting that all might not be well, the government lowered its social contract savings target from $2 billion to a little over $1.5 million and started talking more generally and more diffusely about such diluted and face saving notions as savings in pension costs, increased unemployment insurance benefits -- payable, God only knows how -- extended notice periods, retraining funds of unclear origin, and bribes to public sector health workers to eliminate competition from the private health care sector.
Not surprisingly, the unions abandoned the social contract talks in early June. The Premier held a press conference to slam the public sector union leaders for their rhetoric, and incidentally, bump the social contract savings target back up to $2 billion. After all was said and done, somehow much more had been said than done.
Somehow, one suspects that Stephen Lewis' comment that the social contract "was conceived in haste and... shabbily executed" was painfully close to the mark. Stephen Lewis was of course not the first, nor only, nor even the loudest New Democrat to raise questions.
So here we are, after the Canadian dollar has dropped in value and the Bank of Canada rate has climbed a little, with the Social Contract Act which sets out a complicated, layered system of negotiations to be completed by August 1. If that deadline is not reached, provisions will be imposed on employees to freeze their wages for three years and require 12 unpaid leave days each year in what the government calls fail-safe provisions: yet another euphemism, one suspects. About that time, the first NDP cabinet minister, not surprisingly, bailed out and resigned her portfolio.
There is no doubt, and the government is right in this, that tough fiscal measures are required, but the people of Ontario are rightfully very unhappy.
The city of Etobicoke, where my constituency is located, will have to cough up nearly $4 million for its share of the social contract burden. Etobicoke city manager David Deaves laments that Etobicoke won't have time to reach the figure through payroll deductions and says Etobicoke will have to find some portion of the nearly $4 million from other sources. Etobicoke is already dealing with a reduction in transfer payments of nearly $1 million, as well as an increase of $200,000 in benefits taxes. By the time the province's austerity program ends in three years, Etobicoke will have shelled out more than $15 million.
Where will that come from? Let's not forget that whether we are talking about federal revenues, provincial revenues or municipal revenues, the revenue-payer, the same taxpayer is going to pay the bill. It doesn't matter whether it's provincial or federal or municipal, the buck stops with the payer of taxes.
Peter Leiss, president of the union which represents Etobicoke's outside workers, says his members feel betrayed. The cornerstone of the NDP's labour platform has always been the right to free collective bargaining. Clearly, collective bargaining under this government proceeds, right now at least, under a sword of Damocles, governed by an hourglass which expires on August 1. The message is, "Kowtow by August 1 or the sword is surely going to fall."
Jim Robertson, the president of the Ontario Public School Teachers' Federation, Etobicoke District, claims the government is doing what it wants and leaving others to shoulder the responsibility. Robertson says that this NDP government has done away with the entire negotiating process and seems to dismiss the idea of future bargaining sessions as a futile notion.
I am in favour of tough economic measures, as are my colleagues, and there may even be times when checks and balances are necessary on the collective bargaining process, but the government has set forth an unworkable set of measures which are causing chaos in Ontario. However much we may applaud fiscal restraint, and most of us do, we are getting too little of it too late and the result may be catastrophic for Ontarians, and especially for labour-management relations in Ontario, for many years to come.
Metropolitan Toronto, not surprisingly, echoes these Etobicoke concerns. Metro observes that for years Metro has received no operating money from the province for its education system, and now under section 35 of this legislation the government can even require a reverse payment, a negative grant, paid from Metro to the province. What will happen to service levels given growing enrolment demands when that comes to pass?
Metro Chairman Alan Tonks predicts the destruction of Metro because the social contract will snatch nearly $70 million from the Metro government. Tonks calls the social contract "an act of hysteria on the part of the province" and insists that the government fails to recognize the harm that it is inflicting. "Forgive them, it seems to me," he says, "for they know not what they do." He calls the social contract a "desperate and frantic act."
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Furthermore, here is what citizens of Metro can expect as a result of the impact of the social contract legislation on Metropolitan Toronto: longer waits for ambulances, fewer police officers on the streets, fewer homes for the aged, the gutting of transit services. These are essential services. Could we not have acted so as to avoid this kind of cost-crunch, and now that it is upon us, partly at least because of the dismal economic strategy charted by this government, is this the best approach to correcting the disaster?
This constitutes an enormous economic turnabout in a jurisdiction which used to be the envy of the world. Of the $275 million that Queen's Park is going to snatch from Ontario municipalities, something close to half is going to come from Metro.
As the Etobicoke Guardian editorialized on June 16: "The NDP has to take responsibility for the solutions it is proposing, and by downloading to lower-tiered employers like the city of Etobicoke and constantly delaying any decisive action, they're making the $2 billion harder and harder to achieve. The process is...eroding what is already an all-time low in morale in Ontario," and a province which has reached an all-time low in morale will be a difficult jurisdiction indeed in which to impose the kind of fiscal restraint that now seems necessary.
It seems to me that to those NDP hopefuls who aspired to sit around the cabinet table and felt left out when the Premier shuffled his cabinet just a few months ago, we can say: "Take heart. In the fullness of time, it will become apparent that being left out of this layer- caked cabinet is by far the greater honour."
I am reluctant to close without finding some little positive thing to say about this government in what must surely be to date its darkest hour. Well, we can give it marks for bravery. The government proclaims that "everyone -- the government, employers, bargaining agents -- is committed to ensuring the impact of the fiscal reductions is distributed fairly." These must surely be brave words, if perhaps a little optimistic.
Brave words of feigned goodwill from a government that is legislating a sweeping pay freeze. Brave words of feigned goodwill from a government that is slashing its pension contributions. Brave words of feigned goodwill from a government that demands that public sector workers take time off without pay, that public sector workers accept a legislated layoff. Brave words of feigned goodwill from a government that is ripping up negotiated contract settlements in favour of draconian anti-people legislation.
Just in case the people of Ontario refuse to cooperate with sweeping pay freezes, slashing of government pension contributions, legislated layoffs, the so-called fail-safe provisions of this act, those provisions give employers the right to send the people home without pay until cost reduction targets are achieved.
Wouldn't it have been better if government had listened in 1991 to its critics from the loyal opposition who pointed out the obvious, that you can't spend your way out of a recession, that you can't spend your way out of not having enough money? Was the message so very complicated then? You don't have to be a financial wizard to know that having no money is not a reason to spend a lot of money. What kind of verbal sleight of hand is at work in telling the people of Ontario that somehow a spending spree is good treatment for indebtedness and insolvency?
I expect to vote against this social contract legislation, not because we don't believe that fiscal restraint and perhaps tough fiscal measures are now necessary, because they are, but because we believe that the specifics of this bill, the specific measures put forward to achieve the necessary savings, are unworkable.
We think the people of Ontario might be willing to forgive the government if it would own up to its mistakes. We think that the kind of fiscal belt-tightening that is going to be required would be easier to achieve if the government would come clean with the people of Ontario and say that it goofed back in 1991 and that free-wheeling spending was not, indeed, the solution to Ontario's economic woes.
We think this legislation is unworkable and we do not believe that it will achieve the targeted $2 billion in savings. We think this bill is deeply flawed. The deferred leave provision means that up to 36 days in paid vacation will be owed to an unknown quantity of workers with, in effect, simply a deferral of costs until 1996.
We think this bill undermines the philosophy of local bargaining and imposes unrealistic time lines for reaching agreement. We think the worker redeployment scheme is going to be impossible to implement and we worry about the absence of an exit strategy.
After three years of draconian, imposed curtailment, expectations from the people of Ontario are going to be very high. That legacy will be a tough one for the Queen's Park government of 1996.
Let's applaud the philosophy of this bill and agree that tough fiscal measures are going to be required. Once this bill is disposed of, and hopefully rejected by this Legislature, let's come clean with the people of Ontario and acknowledge that the NDP's fiscal management in 1991 was a mistake. Let's come clean and ask the people of Ontario to work with us to get this ship back on course.
Let's talk about getting our own house in order as a first step. Let's eliminate waste and duplication in government services. Let's draw up programs to get our young people back to work, and let's devise the kind of fiscal measures that will lead to business prosperity in the province of Ontario.
Ontarians are reasonable people. They know that a fiscal crisis is upon us. I think they are willing to tighten their belts and take the steps towards fiscal responsibility, fiscal prudence, fiscal restraint that must be taken. Let's show them a little integrity in government and let's get realistic in what we plan to do to meet the challenges of Ontario's current fiscal woes. Ontarians deserve no less.
The Acting Speaker (Mr Dennis Drainville): Questions and/or comments?
Ms Christel Haeck (St Catharines-Brock): I won't take all that much time to respond to the member for Etobicoke-Humber, because some of his final remarks are really what triggered my desire to say a few words.
The final offer for the social contract included what I think are some highly innovative initiatives, one of which relates to workplace efficiency measures, which have committees at the work site to work -- labour and management together -- to deal with the issue of waste. It seems that the member has not noticed this when he read the final offer. I would hope that he would take the opportunity to look through the final documents from the negotiations and understand that it is the commitment of this government to eliminate waste and to really include workers in that process.
As someone who worked in the public sector for many years and felt that I had a contribution to make to my management in how it ran the St Catharines Public Library, and as someone who had 13 years' seniority in that workplace, I was fairly sure I understood a lot of, shall we say, the expenditures that had to be made.
I know that workers out there in the public sector are very keen to participate in that kind of discussion. I've had OPSEU workers in my office, specifically, who are very concerned about some of the spending decisions that are made in London on behalf of an office in St Catharines. I know they can do it a whole lot better and I'm happy for their involvement in those kinds of discussions.
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Mr Charles Beer (York North): I want to rise and comment on the thoughtful speech made by our colleague the member for Etobicoke-Humber and perhaps to note, for a number of members who were new to this House after the 1990 election, that the honourable member has demonstrated in his years in this House a great deal of courage in the expression of opinions on key pieces of government business legislation.
In particular, because a lot of the new members wouldn't know this, he decided after his own reflection back when we were the government that he couldn't support the government of the day, the Peterson government, with respect to its policy regarding Meech Lake, nor did he support the policy with respect to free trade.
I say that, not to comment in a substantive way on those issues, but simply to note that the honourable member always brings to a major issue, I think, a great deal of thought and reflection, and doesn't just get up and speak for or against something without really trying to determine what would be in the best interests of his constituents within his riding and of those within the province.
As I listened to his reasoned commentary on the bill, on his criticisms of the bill and on his praise for certain attempts by the government as it seeks to deal with this problem, in my view, his conclusions are all the stronger for it and I would hope that those watching at this hour, as well as those who are in the House, would have listened well and I hope will have learned something from what he said.
Mr White: I'd like to congratulate my friend the member for Etobicoke-Humber, not only upon his thoughtful comments but of course, as his colleague mentioned, for his many and lengthy debates and considerations in the past. I believe the member was also responsible for a private member's bill in the past in regard to family mediation, something which I think is an exceptionally good idea, a very creative resolution to some of the very important crises that happen in family life.
It is to members such as himself that we should look in terms of that kind of leadership that he mentioned, and I think we can all look to the leadership our government has introduced in the last number of years in terms of our own pensions, in terms of the Premier's conflict-of-interest guidelines.
For example, we have had a salary freeze for several years. We have taken the lead in that regard. We have said the remuneration here is not the greatest, it's not the highest, but we are not going to increase it, because these are difficult times and we do share those burdens.
To take a look at those kinds of responsibilities, take a look, for example, at the conflict-of-interest guidelines I mentioned that the Premier put out, which clearly prevent members of the government, parliamentary assistants or ministers of the crown from being involved in controversial business arrangements or from what is referred to as "double dipping," taking a salary at the public purse while having a separate income.
The people of Ontario know we have taken responsibility in terms of that reduced income ourselves and that we are not here engaged in many other exceptional circumstances, exceptional incomes. Our dedication is entirely to the public service and to that public leadership.
The Acting Speaker: Further questions and/or comments? If there are none, the honourable member for Etobicoke-Humber has two minutes to make a response.
Mr Henderson: All these kind things being said leaves one a little speechless, I must say. I want to thank the member for York North for his kind words. It seems to me that in this assembly, in our speaking and voting, we attend to three masters: our parties, our constituents and our consciences. It seems to me that we ought to be attending a little more to our consciences and our constituents and that somehow our accountability to our parties has gotten a little out of whack.
To the member for Durham Centre, yes, thank you also for your kind words. I did put forward a private member's bill to do with family mediation, and I can use that as a bridge into the comments from the member for St Catharines-Brock, who spoke of what she called the very highly innovative measures contained in the Social Contract Act to lead to a more mediative, more harmonious and more cooperative and less adversarial approach to labour-management matters. I certainly applaud that. I think it's something we need to strive much more towards, both in this Legislative Assembly and in labour-management matters generally.
Two footnotes that I want to add to that: It's not so very innovative; it's something that the Japanese have been doing for a long time and I'm sure many other jurisdictions, but that doesn't mean it isn't a very good idea that we should get on with, and I think we should. Secondly, there is the note I think that, in order for this kind of non-adversarial, cooperative process to work, there needs to be something like a level playing field, and that's why I'm nervous about the sword of Damocles, the August 1 provision, that is built into this piece of legislation, because it makes the playing field a little less than level, in my view.
The Acting Speaker: Further debate?
Mr Murphy: I appreciate the opportunity to participate in this debate. I do want to pick up on some of the comments made by my colleague the member for Etobicoke-Humber when he talked about the three masters, I guess, that each member has, of party, of constituent and of conscience. I think that's a fine way to start approaching how we deal with things in this assembly, and I think those three masters in this circumstance all speak to one conclusion, and that conclusion is to oppose this bill.
I think we all agree that in the context of a large deficit and an ever-growing debt of a kind that is going to eat up a larger and larger proportion of the public moneys that we prefer to dedicate to valuable public goals, at the rate we're going now the interest alone on the debt could end up being more within the next few years than we spend on educating our children.
Clearly, that's not acceptable.
I and this party and my constituents and in fact my own conscience all speak to the requirement of restraint, the requirement that government get its house in order, that it get its finances in a condition that permits us to provide an opportunity for economic growth, provides us with the opportunity as a government, as a Legislature, to assist where that assistance is needed. But there are principles that should govern that restraint, and one obviously is fairness to the people who are going to be affected. Another is certainty. People have to have the ability to plan their lives, to know what they will be facing. There needs to be a sense of balance between the competing interests.
Finally, I think as part of that process of restraint we have to be attuned to the need to protect those who may not be able to protect themselves, not in a way that creates a dependency but rather that encourages people to get themselves out of situations, encourages them to participate in some of the wealth that is around us in this society. In that regard, I think the concept of restraint is one that can be applied and needs to be applied.
Unfortunately, this government has come to that conclusion a little bit late in its mandate. It started the train down the track of spending its way out of the recession, of spending more money, of saying, "If we throw money at this problem, it will give us the solution." Too late they came to the realization that that was not the right way to go. Its budget in 1991 was clear.
Hon Ms Gigantes: We never said that. You said that. We never said that.
Mr Murphy: I hear some of the members heckling and I hope they'll participate in the debate to respond, although they haven't in this circle.
If you look at the budget that came out just a few short weeks ago, one of the interesting items, for example, that I haven't heard much comment about is that government expenditure is a percentage of gross domestic product. If you look at the years the Liberal Party was in government, it ranged within the 15% range, never got above 15.7% -- I may have my figures a little off, but approximately that -- and never went much below 15.2%. It stayed constant. In the first NDP year of governing, it moved up to 17% and then went up to 19% and has stayed at those high levels.
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That's the kind of fact that speaks to the notion that they were going to spend their way out of the recession. The interesting thing, if you look at that budget, is that that number does not come down. It's the language of restraint without the substance of restraint.
Part of what needs to be done, obviously, is to do all of this in the context where we encourage the economy to grow, and I think the budget, that this act is part of, does not do that at all.
The $2 billion imposed in taxes I think will help kill the recovery. It takes money out of the pockets of people who were starting to think about spending it again, who had hunkered down to try and get through the recession, start paying off some credit cards, maybe getting their mortgage payments down. Working families, to use a phrase some of my friends in the NDP like to use, had spent the time trying to get their own house in order. They had done that, and then they were hit with these taxes.
My other concern is that one of the principles has to be certainty so that people can plan. This process has been characterized by chaos, frankly, and that's unfortunate. There are workers, employers, teachers, students in the municipalities, universities, schools, hospitals who don't know what's going on and haven't been able to plan their lives, people who are saying, "I have to cancel my summer holidays because I don't know what I'm facing in September," teachers who are saying, "What am I facing? Do I have a job?" and students who won't know because of the uncertainty, because of the time line involved in the way this bill and the way this issue has progressed.
I am concerned about the lack of balance, the lack of certainty involved in an August 1 deadline. That is just not sufficient time to negotiate the kind of agreements this government thinks can be negotiated within what is, in essence, five weeks. They're expecting thousands of collective agreements on the sectoral and local level to be negotiated. I think that's an entirely unrealistic expectation.
As to the principle of fairness, this bill does not provide that fairness. Chaos is not fair. Let's look at how some of the provisions in this bill apply; for example, section 24 of the bill as it applies to collective agreements. It's saying that as of June 14, your money is fixed. Therefore, it's related to a fluke, frankly, as to when your collective agreement expired and when it applied, as to what your salary is going to be.
Your neighbour, a member of a different bargaining group, may have been lucky enough to negotiate a collective agreement just a few short months ago whereas you haven't been able to -- yours expires in a few months yet it's not negotiated -- and therefore you are fixed at the sum of money you were going to paid on June 14, less than your neighbour.
I got a call just today from some firefighters concerned about the application, firefighters who are still on their 1991 wages, who are going to be frozen at the 1991 level, who've already done their part, yet they will remain frozen at that level while others are being allowed to take the increases. That's not fair to those workers.
There's a similar problem with the arbitration provision in section 40. No arbitration award made after June 14 can apply. So people who were lucky enough to get the arbitration done will get the application of that award to their salaries if it was before June 14, but others won't. Frankly, that is unfair to workers because workers have no control over the arbitration process. Before I was elected on April 1, I was lucky enough, I guess, to participate in some labour arbitrations, and those processes can be very, very slow and time- consuming, over which the workers have no power. Because of the fluke of that time, when the sword of Damocles, as my friend the member for Etobicoke-Humber said, comes down, they can be denied, unlike their neighbour. I think there's not fairness in that.
I think too about the application of pensions. My friend Florence Yaffe from the riding, a wonderful person, came to me and said, "I will be penalized in my pension, because they will take the best five years and I will be fixed for three." She's heading towards retirement, and she's saying, "I will be penalized not just for three years but for the rest of my life, because my pension will be affected by how much is fixed in this wage package," despite what was negotiated, despite what was agreed. That's going to be different for people who are older or younger in the system; that is not fair.
On pensions, on the same issue, there is some concern about this $500 million which is coming from a reduction in the pension contribution, because it seems to me to be promised in two directions at the same time: at one point to be directed to the cutoff level of $30,000 and yet it's also promised for the job security fund. The budget has been labelled as "fun with figures," but this is truly exceptional.
I think too about the application of layoffs under the social contract plan versus the expenditure control plan, where there is this job security fund. I'm wondering how the rules are going to be applied to social contract layoffs versus expenditure control plan layoffs. It's not clear in here. It's not fair.
I see the Solicitor General sitting here. I've been approached by administrative service clerks in the probation and parole department of his ministry who received their layoff notices on April 23, or at least an indication that those layoff notices would be provided on July 1. These are primarily women, and they've been provided layoff notices. Will they have access to that job fund? Will the employment equity plan apply to them? They have unanswered questions. They can't find out those answers because this process has been chaotic.
I think too about what this bill has in terms of exemption provisions in section 41. This government has the power to exempt whatever it thinks. They've done that, for example, in the case of Hamilton. The Premier was there some weeks ago and said: "Hamilton's done enough. We will give you an exemption." Who else fits in that same boat? It seems to me that there are a lot of people in municipalities, universities, schools and hospitals who can come and say, "We've done our share; you should give us an exemption." I don't see what the criteria are for providing that exemption.
I think there's an arbitrariness as well in this bill, an extraordinary power allocated to two different groups of people. I'll return to one, but one of them is the minister under the regulation power in this bill. It's an extraordinary allocation of public authority through regulations. That should be an affront to every member in this House. It takes away completely from the power of this institution. Each of the members, regardless of party, should be concerned about that in principle.
The other group I'm concerned about is that the adjudicators under this bill have an extraordinary power. Under subsection 29(3) of this act, an employee or an employer can file an objection that the section 27 criteria haven't been matched; there's a series of those listed. If you look at the timing of how that process of complaint works, there are 10 days from the deadline of posting to do a complaint, there's an employer response, then there's an objection to the adjudicator.
The adjudicator review under this provision can start, it seems to me, at its earliest at the beginning of September, which creates incredible uncertainty for teachers, who are saying, "What happens to me in the fall?" Yet the adjudicator won't even start considering whether this plan is appropriate to his or her job until the beginning of school. How can they have any certainty? How can they plan?
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I'm also concerned about the power these adjudicators have. It's an extraordinary power. If you look at what this act says, there's no time limit as to when an adjudicator has to come to a decision. There's no appeal provision, even. To make it an almost draconian, outrageous allocation of power to those individuals, section 46 of this act says the Statutory Powers Procedure Act doesn't apply. There is no natural justice, even, in this process. It's an absence of natural justice in a context where these adjudicators can decide, under the criteria provision, what is fair and equitable. They have wide-open powers to determine what is fair and equitable in each workplace. In the municipal, university, school and hospital sectors, in all of the sectors in the broader public service, these adjudicators have these powers to amend that plan.
Mr David Ramsay (Timiskaming): On a point of order, Mr Speaker: Can you check to see if there's a quorum here in the House?
The Deputy Speaker: Is there a quorum?
Clerk Assistant and Clerk of Committees: A quorum is not present, Speaker.
The Deputy Speaker ordered the bells rung.
Clerk Assistant and Clerk of Committees: A quorum is now present, Mr Speaker.
The Deputy Speaker: The honourable member for St George-St David has the floor.
Mr Murphy: I'm glad to see that some members are coming in to listen to what I hope is fair comment on the bill. I hope, more importantly, that the people of St George-St David are watching.
I return to my concern about the power of these adjudicators. It's a full and wide-open power to amend that plan. That creates incredible uncertainty, and the interesting thing is that it's in the context where employees are denied even the power to sue, under subsection 33(4). It's an outrageous provision. It's uncertain, it's unfair and it meets none of the principles which even this government says should apply. As I said, it's draconian and it creates incredible confusion.
One of the criteria by which you're going to judge the success of something like this act is whether it achieves the goals it's supposed to achieve. In this case, that is, are savings achieved? The problem is that the answer is no, it doesn't get that result.
I saw today in the paper, under "Rae may Bend on Deadline to Freeze Pay," that it says he's prepared to hold off on the implementation of some aspects of when this wage freeze kicks in until the end of contracts expiring. I don't see how that is going to be successful in achieving the goal of cutting the $2 billion this government says it wants to cut by doing this. If they wait, those wage reductions, in whatever form, are not going to be achieved. It's going to be put off again to a future year, so it won't even achieve it in that regard.
I talked earlier about the fact that it's going to relate, in terms of when those savings kick in, to the entire fluke of when your collective agreement expires. You may be lucky enough to have one that expires two years down the road or three years down the road. I realize those are rare collective agreements, but it may very well be that it could wait that long, so you'd be lucky enough to be exempted. I can't see how that is either fair or achieves the saving.
Of particular importance in this regard is the provision related to special leave under section 26, because I think this provision is the real problem with this bill. It's a provision that says, in an undefined way, that where certain people provide special services they are to take unpaid holidays instead of leave when they're to provide services, but they are to be compensated by providing days off in an equivalent amount after March 31, 1996. As a result, employees will have 36 days of paid vacation to take on March 31, 1996.
While the bill says it's not to be taken in pay, it's clear that employers in the broader public sector will have to provide the services, because those are essential services. Someone will have to be hired, likely on overtime, so the cost could be not just 36 days of wages but 50 days of wages or 54. If you take that as a percentage of the salary per year, that could be a cost of $15,000 to $20,000 per employee in those essential services. That could be billions of dollars of not restraint but deferred costs, the ticking time bomb that the next government is going to inherit.
That's not restraint. That's not the process of achieving the goal of cutting expenditures. That's hoisting that problem on to someone else, taking credit for it and, frankly, that is a style of governing that the public is fed up with. They're prepared to take restraint, but they want honesty in that restraint and honesty in how that is gone about.
I spoke previously, briefly, about the powers accorded to the government by regulation under section 41. It's extraordinary how much power is accorded. Essentially, by regulation, this government has the power to cut health care amounts, to cut OHIP amounts, to cut drug plan amounts, to set prescribed cuts in certain areas. It's an incredible array of powers and, as I said, that should be objected to in principle, to provide that much power to the ministry by way of regulation.
That should come to this House and be discussed in a forum where it's appropriate, because it takes away from the power of each member each time that happens. There's some respect that has to be accorded to this institution occasionally, and I think it's important, as a principle, that this be done here and not in the cabinet room or not by bureaucrats.
There are some other specifics in this bill I'd like to speak to, which I think are odd kinds of sections. I think of subsection 35(1), which allows an employer, who is going to be designated again by regulation, to pay a sum of money to the consolidated revenue fund. It doesn't say who, how, why or what for; it just says an employer may be designated by regulation to pay an amount to someone identified in the regulation, "or to credit the prescribed amount to the person or entity, in the prescribed manner and at the prescribed time or times." All power allocated by regulation.
I looked at that and I said, "What can that mean?" Can that mean, for example, that this government can pass a regulation and say: "Toronto school board, we don't transfer money to you because of the way the assessment base in this area works. You've got to pay us money." Is that what this is saying? Is this going to allow this government power to pass by regulation the authority that the Toronto school board pay this government money? What other institutions? There's no limit on this.
In theory, this allows the government the right and the authority to designate any employer in the broader public service as someone who should pay into the consolidated revenue fund. It's a nonsensical provision. It makes no sense as written, as I think too the following sections, sections 36 and 37, which deal with provisions related to the health care system.
There's another act in this Parliament which speaks to the issue of the draconian powers allocated to the minister to provide health by bureaucracy, and these reinforce that position. This is an outrage, to provide this much power to the Minister of Health to do things without the proper forum for the debate of these issues. You can reduce OHIP fees, reduce the amounts paid to independent health fees, to dispensing fees, reduce income limits under OHIP and the drug benefit plan. It's an incredible power allocated under this bill.
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The third provision I'd like to talk about is section 25, related to unpaid leave provided in an existing collective agreement. This provision says, "If a collective agreement provides for unpaid leaves of absence or other temporary layoffs, the employer must utilize those provisions before requiring unpaid leaves under subsection (1)."
The question I have is, to what does that apply? That's a fairly broad section. Does that mean every single collective agreement temporary leave program must be taken advantage of regardless of its impact on the employee? It can't mean that, but that's what it says. This is a bill drafted in haste, drafted without thought, drafted without consideration for its impact. It's clear on its face.
There's another one, and I think the one provision which speaks most to that drafted without consideration for what it means is subsection 33(2) which to me, having practised for a time as a lawyer, says nothing. It's the strangest section, subsection 33(2). "Nothing in this part interferes with any right to carry on collective bargaining so long as any collective agreement reached is not inconsistent with this act." It's saying this act doesn't contravene collective bargaining rights as long as those collective bargaining rights don't contravene this act. Well, that is a useless provision.
The question is whether there is an alternative. I think my leader, Lyn McLeod, has spoken to a sensible plan. She has been saying from the beginning, and it's a program I agree with, that we should do the Ontario public service first to set a context, to create certainty and to create an area within which we can set the ground rules and then apply those once we've learned those lessons. I spoke earlier of those principles of balance, of certainty, of fairness. We can apply those in an area where we have that concern.
In fact, I was speaking a few days ago with the president of the hospital in my riding, the Wellesley Hospital. He's an extraordinarily talented gentleman who has, over the course of the last number of years, made that hospital a fine example of a quality institution that has moved to provide a service to the community that the community wants. A tremendous outreach.
He said: "I want to be able to do this ourselves. We are best able to figure out how to do this. Don't force this on us, just let me deal with it." I hear that from all the other institutions in my riding, schools at the elementary and secondary level, the school board and the universities that touch on my riding -- Ryerson, a new university, and to a certain degree the University of Toronto. They are saying, "We want our chance to do this."
It seems to me that when you think about it, governments really only have a few things on the agenda that they can do well. One or two or three maybe, and you've got to try and do those well and let the rest take care of itself. This government has tried to head out in too many directions, figured out that it shouldn't have headed out in that direction and tries to draw back in.
This is an example. They headed off in that direction in the 1991 budget of an expenditure growth pattern, as I said earlier, that moved from 15% of gross domestic product up to 19% of gross domestic product and realized the problem. They are now trying to draw back in. They could have taken the time to consider this and to move forward in a more systematic, careful, balanced way at an earlier stage; they could have achieved these savings in a way that doesn't create the chaos and uncertainty, because there are other things that management by chaos has created.
I think, for example, of the expenditure control plan cuts in Community and Social Services which affect a great part of my riding. There are people who live in Regent Park, St Jamestown, Cabbagetown and other areas who are recipients of the services provided by Community and Social Services. They spoke to me during the campaign and afterwards and said: "We don't want to be dependants of the government. We want an opportunity to use our skills to move off social assistance."
Yet, for example, the expenditure control plan, because of the bad planning, is taking away some of the very programs that provide for that opportunity. I think of STEP, which was a program started by the Liberal government and maintained in part for a period of time by this government, yet is now being cut. It provided people with an opportunity to keep some of the income they earned, if they were employed, on social assistance. What they're proposing to do is reduce the amount that they can keep, including, for example, disabled people -- to reduce that amount. That strikes me as unfair, completely contrary to the ideals that I certainly espouse and I thought at one point the NDP espoused as well.
There are kind of silly things in that as well, for example, the minimum cheque amount in Community and Social Services for sending out drug and dental benefits to individuals who don't have quite a low enough income to get social assistance. That minimum cheque is now going to be one cent. It probably costs about $35 in administration to issue a one-cent cheque. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me. There are probably smarter ways of doing that.
Now, I know that there is another party in this House, the Conservatives, who have said, "We have some amendments to this bill and we'll support it." I don't think those amendments are going to make that work. They have moved back and forth in terms of whether they're going to support the bill or not. I think that really, at its core, reflects their concern with the bill combined with their support of restraint. I think that if you look at this bill, you'll see that supporting this bill won't achieve those goals.
A notion that somehow wage attrition, for example, which has been proposed by the leader of the third party, can affect that result, that doesn't work in achieving those goals either. I mean, for example, it assumes that there will be a 3% increase every year from now in the amount of wages paid to the public service. Well, that's clearly a false assumption but it's built into that option.
I think, finally, of some of the agencies and services in the Solicitor General area, for example, police. I was talking to police in the great northwest over the past few days. They're fed up. They say: "We've paid our share. We're out on the front lines trying to serve the broader public and we're being attacked. We're being cut. We've attempted, through the municipalities, to negotiate fair return. For example, Thunder Bay has dropped considerably in terms of its comparative pay. Yet it's being asked to take more."
There's an unfairness built into this which I think is unacceptable. We go back to the principles that I articulated at the beginning: fairness, balance, certainty and an effort to protect others who can't protect themselves. This bill does not live up to those principles.
Mr Ron Eddy (Brant-Haldimand): I appreciated the information submitted to us by the member for St George-St David. I appreciate him pointing out how complicated this legislation really is in all aspects of it. I must say I find it very difficult to understand. That may not amaze many people here of course.
I have learned over the years to decipher most of the statutes no matter how complicated they are and their regulations thereto. In searching through the statutes, of course, you get the statutes out and the revised statutes and the updated statutes and the annotated statutes and trace it through.
I must say many things are much too complicated and much too restrictive. I think those words apply to this bill indeed. Surely there are much simpler ways. We know there are simpler ways to accomplish what the government intended by this bill, because the member for St George-St David has pointed out some of those. I appreciate his efforts in that regard.
Surely there is time to make many changes to this bill yet that would benefit the people who are affected by the proposed bill, the government that has prepared the bill and is going to see it through, so to speak, and indeed all of us who have to work with it and are affected by it.
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Mr Beer: I want to commend the member for St George-St David for his speech. I think it's appropriate to note that, as a new member from April 1, he has now spoken on a number of occasions, both in question period, statements and debates on bills. I think he has shown, for any member but particularly a new member, a very quick grasp of some of the complex issues that we deal with. I think as one followed him through his analysis of the social contract, he was very much on track.
The member made reference to being up in the northwest last week. A number of us were up in a variety of places: Atikokan, Fort Frances -- I note the presence of the Minister of Natural Resources; it was good for us to have that opportunity to visit areas in his riding -- Thunder Bay, of course, where our leader is from, Dryden, Red Rock and Nipigon. We were talking to representatives of police forces, school boards, municipalities, conservation authorities and just people in those communities.
I think one of the points that was made and came out in my colleague's comments was the tremendous amount of confusion out there as to just what is the social contract. What is it going to mean? How does it impact in our communities? People were telling us, in the different areas, of things that had been going on over the last couple of years as they've tried to wrestle with problems around a lack of funds and cutbacks.
Here we have something that is now being brought forward where there is no clear plan, no real sense of direction. Indeed, the ends which the government says it's seeking are simply not going to be met by a bill which, as my colleague has said, is seriously flawed and unworkable.
Mr Dalton McGuinty (Ottawa South): It's a pleasure to rise and, first of all, begin by congratulating my colleague the member for St George-St David for his thorough analysis of the legislation about which we speak this evening. It's always good to get an analysis from a lawyer -- at a good rate, I might add -- in order to outline some of the difficulties which are not readily apparent to the rest of us, let me put it that way.
I think it's important to recognize, as the member outlined, that the seeds for this harvest, the seeds for this economic state of affairs, were sown when the NDP brought in its very first budget. The government decided, very deliberately at that point in time, that it was going to fight the recession and not the deficit.
Lo and behold, I think it was on March 30 that the Premier on his road to Damascus decided that he was heading in the wrong direction, experienced a conversion and now he's responding in what at best could be characterized as a chaotic manner; perhaps better described as jumping from ice floe to ice floe. That's created, unfortunately, a great deal of apprehension in the broader community.
Just to speak briefly on behalf of the sector that I bring special representation to, colleges and universities: Colleges, for the first time this year, have sent out notices of acceptance which are conditional upon results of these negotiations which are under way. Furthermore, 91,000 students will not be gaining access, will not be permitted entry into our colleges and universities this year, largely as a result of these negotiations and their ultimate outcome which would undoubtedly not be good.
Mr Ramsay: I'd like to commend my colleague from St George-St David who, as my other colleague had mentioned, has only been in this House really a relatively few months and yet has really gotten into all of the debates and responded well and brought forward issues like we will see tomorrow morning, issues on his own initiative and responded well to speaking on behalf of his riding and his particular causes and speaking on behalf of our party, which I think is really excellent.
We are here tonight to really finish up a debate on the so-called social contract. In a few more minutes I will certainly be speaking on that and trying to relate to people how we feel about this issue and why we won't be supporting this legislation. I think it's important for the people to realize that this sort of slash-and-burn approach to managing government is not the way to proceed, that there are other ways to do that, and I will be putting forward some very positive suggestions as to how we should be proceeding. In fact, how we should be proceeding is reorganizing government and not just somehow downsizing the type of government we have today but remanaging, reorganizing what we do and how we do it.
I think that's the way to proceed, and I am certainly glad to have the opportunity, later on, to speak to that because I think we have different demands today in 1993. Basically we have, I guess, a government structure that was established probably in 1893 and not for 1993. I think it's important that we talk about that, put forward some ideas rather than totally downsizing and taking away benefits that people have worked long and hard, over the years, to accrue for them and the people in their union. So I look forward to that opportunity in a little while. Thank you for this opportunity to bring my remarks forward now.
The Acting Speaker: The honourable member for St George-St David has two minutes to make a response.
Mr Murphy: I'm very pleased that it was four colleagues from the Liberal Party who stood and made comments in the House. It's unfortunate that the government members aren't prepared to listen to suggestions to change their legislation to even participate in the debate. I do want to say to the member for Brant-Haldimand that, although he's shy enough to say that it was too difficult to understand, not for a moment do I believe it. I know he has an almost lawyer-like mind and I've seen it in practice.
To the member for York North, I very much appreciate the compliment and thank you very much. To the member for Ottawa South, I thought the suggestion that it's always helpful to have an analysis from a lawyer is an interesting one, coming as it was from another lawyer.
To the member for Timiskaming, I appreciate his comments as well and I know he will speak quite eloquently about the issue of alternatives and about the issue of an institution, frankly, designed in the 19th century that we're trying to accommodate to this modern reality. I know there is an interesting book called Reinventing Government which has some fascinating suggestions in it in that regard about the alternatives that can be available for providing the services we want to provide in a way that's effective and efficient. I know he'll speak eloquently about that.
I finally just want to say it's an unfortunate thing that we are speaking at this late hour in an assembly that may not be paying quite as much attention to the content of the debate as would otherwise be the case, I hope, and I hope they will listen to what the people are saying and change this bill.
The Acting Speaker: Further debate. The honourable member for Brant-Haldimand.
Mr Eddy: I welcome the opportunity to speak to the bill which has caused so much consternation among the many members of this House and indeed citizens throughout the province of Ontario.
As you know, I arrived in April 1992 in a by-election, one and one half years after the general election held in September 1990, wherein for the first time in this province the NDP government, a large majority government, was elected.
It was not the first time in the history of the province that the voters of Ontario rejected the old-line parties and elected a brand-new party that had never served before, because that happened once before, in 1919, when the United Farmers of Ontario were elected and swept the province and lasted, I believe, an entire term, as I recall. With them came, of course, the late honourable Harry Nixon, who started his career at that particular time.
As you know, I arrived as a fresh new face to the Legislature, thinking that because there was a majority government, it would do everything possible to correct the many problems this province was facing in very adverse economic conditions -- a very serious recession, as it turns out.
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I would rather say that I felt somewhat like a duck out of water, because I'd been used to participating in a system of government where good ideas submitted by any member or any presenter were taken into consideration and, if not the entire idea, at least the best parts of ideas were taken and incorporated into reports and became the subject then of bylaws or rules and regulations. I think more of that should happen here. I would hope that we could start a trend that way, and indeed as soon as possible.
I rise to speak in opposition to the NDP government's social contract legislation because I feel it is unworkable and will not achieve the targeted $2 billion in savings. I am prepared to support a bill that is workable, makes sense and achieves real restraint but cannot support the muddled plan of a government that is desperate for anything that looks like a solution.
This bill will only create more turmoil and confusion. It is an incompetent piece of legislation produced by a government that has completely mismanaged the province's finances, and I say that simply because the government came in and experienced a large deficit the first year and of course proceeded with ever-increasing deficits and a larger and larger accumulated debt, and we know what that does to any business, any industry, any individual or any government. It catches up with you.
My leader has called the legislation a bureaucratic nightmare that renders locally negotiated agreements between management and employees virtually impossible to achieve. We support restraint, but the Premier's cure is worse than the disease.
A number of flaws in the legislation include the following:
(1) The deferred-leave provision means up to 36 days in paid vacation will be owed to an undetermined number of workers in essential services. In effect there will be no savings but a deferral of costs until 1996. I think that's very, very serious, and that's one of the things that must be changed about this bill.
(2) There is no true local bargaining, only cumbersome and unworkable layers of negotiation.
(3) The time lines for reaching agreements are unrealistic.
(4) The worker redeployment scheme in the government's final contract offer is impossible to implement and there is no alternative spelled out in the legislation.
So in opposition I will be voting against the legislation on second reading. Should it pass that stage, I'm sure that this caucus will try to force the government to hold public hearings on this dangerously flawed bill.
The need for a social contract could have been avoided had the Premier and his government properly managed Ontario's finances from the time it came to office two and a half years ago. Had the government recognized and dealt with Ontario's economic difficulties a lot earlier, the government would not find itself in the mess it is today, and that's because of the increasing deficits. That's what I'm talking about, and I think really the provincial expenditures, if they'd been controlled or constrained in many ways earlier, and I think we've --
Hon Howard Hampton (Minister of Natural Resources): Who governed Ontario in the rich days and left it with a deficit?
Mr Eddy: Well, we have given many examples. There have been many examples given in the House.
Hon Mr Hampton: Who called an election quick in order to duck the difficulty?
Mr Eddy: Well, elections are called at a time when the government in power decides it is the most opportune time, I suppose, and perhaps your government will be calling an election at what you would consider the most opportune time.
Mr White: Are you saying that Liberals are opportunists?
The Acting Speaker: Order, please.
Mr Eddy: Well, yes, of course, we're certainly optimistic. Optimism is eternal in the human. Optimists --
Mr White: No, no, not optimists; opportunists.
Hon Ms Gigantes: Robert Nixon was an optimist.
Mr Eddy: Thank you.
We support restraint and believe the government should set clear financial targets, negotiate with its own employees and give the public sector the tools to negotiate at the local level. I think it would pay off. It's good advice; it's sound advice. It's not just my advice; it comes from our entire caucus, but I certainly support it and think that it should be followed.
Mr White: I always respect your advice.
Mr Eddy: Yes, I agree with it completely.
As I say, I arrived, and I made the decision consciously, knowing that there was a recession, that things were very tough in the province at the time, but decided to come down, in a view of hoping that I could help my constituents.
Certainly, parts of my constituency have been hurt very seriously by the recession, and some parts long before this recession arrived. I'm thinking primarily of the Dunnville area that has lost industry over a period of, say, 15 years. It's very serious and it grieves me deeply to think of the unemployed in that area, although the people are doing the best they can in many ways, trying to develop the tourism industry that is there and has been there for many years, trying to further that and develop it as time goes by. But it is very difficult.
I had hoped to help solve the many problems of the province, endured by the citizens of Ontario, Canada's industrial, commercial and agricultural heartland. I knew that any government elected by such a large majority would be striving tirelessly to clean up the economic mess that was choking Ontario to a standstill and to restore Ontario to its primary position as the heartland in this fair country we call Canada. But what did I find? More and more industries downsizing, going out of business and moving south of the border.
Why are so many industries leaving Ontario? We hear many reasons given over time for what has happened. I guess one of the most important things is the inordinately high level of taxation at all levels: federal, provincial and municipal. We've just seen a very large increase of several taxes at the provincial level. I don't know what's going to happen at the federal level, but we certainly may be faced with that as well.
There are many other costs that are very high in Ontario, unfortunately, that are causing industry a great deal of problems. Of course, the cost of hydro-electric energy has been increasing, and it's very serious. Workers' compensation premiums have been cited by many industries as a real burden. More recently, some industries cite restrictive amendments to the Labour Relations Act and overzealous health and safety training programs, including clerical staff, and the list goes on.
Unfortunately, big governments don't react, it seems, quickly enough to control downturns in the economy, or not as quickly as they should. I guess it varies with the government, but they have to act more quickly to stop the haemorrhaging or it's going to be even more serious. I'm sure we all agree that Ontario has lost too many industries and jobs, too many businesses and jobs and too many farming operations and jobs. Equally unfortunate is the loss of all those growth industries and businesses that would have been started, that would have expanded and that would have hired our youth, our students and our unemployed.
In my area, with an unemployment rate of almost 15%, and I know in the southern part of the riding with an even higher rate, it's a great concern. Not only is the present rate of unemployment a tremendous concern to people, but of course it's the unknown of those who are presently employed, what they face. How long will they have jobs? We have many instances of one person in a family carrying family members at the present time who are unemployed.
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I realize that municipal governments react ever so much quicker to adverse economic conditions, even when confronted with mounting unpaid taxes and increasing requisitions from the many special purpose bodies, such as police services boards and school boards etc. We have to give them credit, though, because municipalities for a number of years, in order to bring in zero increases in their budgets and zero mill rate increases, have worked very hard at balancing their annual budgets. They've reduced services and made them much more efficient, in the face of mounting unpaid taxes, which is a very serious thing at present.
There's been considerable downloading over the years, and even recently, by the provincial government to the municipalities. That's a very serious thing, because it's costly. We must recall that the property tax rate produces a great deal of the money that the municipalities and school boards operate on, and that those taxes are paid by individual home owners, many of whom are out of work, and businesses, many of which are in considerable difficulty in the world today, trying to compete, although I must say there are some very bright stories.
I had the opportunity a week ago to tour the Westinghouse plant in Hamilton and see that it's producing gas turbines there that are being shipped all over the world. We learned how they had come to grips with their particular high costs and the phasing out of transformers and other things they had made there that there weren't any orders for any more, and how they have cleaned up and turned around a factory that was first opened, I believe, in 1903, producing turbines that are shipped all over the world and sold on any basis that the customer wishes to buy them on.
In other words, they'll sell the turbines at the gate, they'll deliver them, set them up, start them running and sell them. They will continue to operate them for the customers. It was a very enlightening experience. I think anyone who has the opportunity should visit that plant, because I was thrilled there. It's a complete success story except that you find that the staff complement is much less. It's an automated plant. Many things are done by automation that were done by people previously. This presents another problem.
I also had the opportunity, just a few days ago, of touring the Boise Cascade plant at Fort Frances, which makes some of the finest quality paper on the continent. There, again, you find an automatic packaging area that used to employ 27 people. I think there are two people there running the computer controls that do the work.
Coming back to municipal government, I will take this opportunity to congratulate what our municipal governments, the elected people of the province at the local level, are doing and have done. I think it's most unfortunate that after going through the agony and the throes of coming in with balanced budgets for this calendar year, with no increase in tax rate in many cases and giving the local taxpayers a break, and indeed using up reserves that were built up for specific purposes over the years, they now find themselves facing a whole new round of reductions and paring of services. It's very serious and I wish we could do something about it.
The Municipal Act of course requires that municipalities have balanced budgets. If they have a surplus or a deficit for any given year, that becomes the first item of revenue or, conversely, of expenditure in the next year's budget.
Unfortunately, the province of Ontario, the provincial government, indeed the federal government, are not so regulated. There are no limits on annual deficits nor accumulated debt. That's unfortunate. Some, of course, would advocate that there should be laws. Of course, if you have laws of governmental body they can be amended and changed. But it is awfully important because we realize that as the accumulated debt gets larger and larger and larger, it uses up more of the revenue that's collected through the many types of taxes the province has.
It ends up that the cost of credit becomes higher and higher and higher, and one day, as we know, the credit door can be slammed in your face: slammed, and there is no credit, and that happened in New Zealand. I'm sure it will not happen here with the determination of the opposition to see that does not happen in Ontario.
I take this opportunity to congratulate the municipal governments in this province, and I must say I did realize that the government has said that the amount it wanted to reduce in this fiscal year --
Mr McGuinty: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: I do not believe that the government is fulfilling its responsibility to maintain a quorum.
The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Will the table determine if a quorum is present.
Clerk Assistant and Clerk of Committees: 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 Speaker: The honourable member for Brant-Haldimand may resume his remarks.
Mr Eddy: Thank you, Mr Speaker. That certainly revived me. I do appreciate at this hour -- as you know, it gets on and I was here and sat through till midnight last night. I enjoyed it very much because it is an educational experience. I'm utterly amazed at the ability of some of my colleagues in explaining the act and going into the details of it, and it certainly has helped me considerably.
I was saying about the municipalities doing a good job, and I know they're certainly going through the agony of looking at budgets all over again, and here we are at June 22, which, of course, is half the year.
I believe, as I was speaking before, I was saying that I noted that the government has announced that the amount that was to be saved by the social contract in the province's fiscal year -- that is, April 1, 1993 to March 31, 1994 -- will be spread over, I believe, the same period for the municipalities, which is a little help, but I don't know that it's really going to help very much.
Leaving municipal government, I won't speak about my favourite subject this evening, the London-Middlesex situation. Although some of my colleagues have asked me to include that particular subject in my speech, I think I will leave that for another time. I want to turn just briefly and talk about the agricultural industry too, and speak about the many things that are so adversely affected by the present economy.
It grieves me that the budgets of OMAF regarding agriculture programs have been cut so drastically at least two years in a row since the government has been in. It's a very serious situation. Agriculture is very seriously affected.
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The farm tax rebate, of course, has been frozen, and that's going to be very serious, especially where municipalities are going on market value assessment and where there are increases in the mill rate. It means that everybody, all farmers, will share in that reduction, and I assure you most farms can't bear any increases. They're seriously affected now. It grieves me that so many family farms are going out of business. They're finding it very, very tough.
The great labour saver of this province, of course, was the introduction of hydro-electric power. I didn't share in that as early as some of the farmers in the province of Ontario. We got it as soon after the war as it was possible, but of course supplies were rationed. As I recall, the barns and the home were wired, and we waited for some two years till we finally got hydro. So you might say I was raised in the dark to a certain extent, but I've tried to overcome that.
It seems to me in talking about agriculture that no matter how hard farmers work, they're facing a losing proposition. I'm thinking of adverse economic conditions, adverse weather. We experience this.
Coming back to Bill 48, which is the subject of the evening's discussions, I've stated why we oppose it in its present form, why we have hopes and indeed pray there will be changes that will be made to make it more acceptable to all the people whom it affects.
There have been many things left out of the bill that we feel were important elements of the social contract proposal. How they will be dealt with, I don't know, but there are such things as openness and accountability.
The one thing we note is that the government proposed to update the major stakeholders in each sector on a quarterly basis and to provide them with access to ministry-level financial information, and there's no provision for that in the bill.
The bill does not establish sector task forces to review procurement, contracting and organizational structures.
The bill does not provide whistle-blowing protection to the Ontario public service or the broader public sector. I think that's a very important thing. That's been discussed many times. I won't go into it in detail, but it is a serious matter.
There's the restructuring, reskilling and redeployment provisions which are very serious and causing great concern.
Capital infrastructure investment.
Reforming collective bargaining: The bill does not provide that public sector labour relations legislation will be harmonized with the Ontario Labour Relations Act, but an act to amend the Crown Employees Collective Bargaining Act has been introduced at the same time as this bill, and that of course is largely implementing that proposal.
The financial adjustments are very serious, the pension payment savings. The $400 million or $500 million per year in pension payment savings to the government will not be allocated to the reduction of the overall $2-billion social contract target as originally proposed. Indeed, instead, this money will be used to make up any shortfall resulting from the reduction of an employer's target under the incentive provisions described above.
Joint trusteeship of public sector pension plans is not mandated by this legislation, but it is suggested as a possible provision of the sectoral framework.
This bill does not freeze progress through the ranks as the proposals did. Benefit improvements are not mentioned and were to be postponed under the proposals.
Implementation: The bill does not establish sector task forces to discuss issues such as labour adjustment and training, procurement and contracting systems, organizational structures and procedures, portability of benefits and efficiency and productivity initiatives, but they are suggested terms of a sectoral agreement.
Joint workplace committees have not been established to address workplace training, efficiency and cost-savings measures and the organization of work, but there are also suggested terms.
A dispute resolution procedure -- mediation and arbitration -- was not established.
There are many things that we find are a problem with the bill. As I say, we'll be looking forward to the many amendments that should be made to this bill. Thank you for the opportunity to speak.
The Speaker: I thank the honourable member for Brant-Haldimand for his contribution to this debate and invite any questions and/or comments.
Mr McLean: I wanted to take a couple of minutes to comment briefly on the member for Brant-Haldimand. I left the member for St George-St David and I see he has left the House. I thought I could do the two of them at once, but I know that's not allowed.
I wanted to comment briefly on the aspects that he brought into the debate with regard to some of the legal entanglements that he anticipated may be taking place within this legislation. I listened to him intently. I wasn't in the House for all of it, but I listened to it and I know that the member for St George-St David added a little different aspect to the debate totally.
I want to say to the member for Brant-Haldimand that he mentioned in his remarks some 15 years over which neglect has taken place with regard to the riding he's from. He mentioned something about Dunnville, the problems it's having. Well, I find it hard to read him when it was the Treasurer of this province who represented that riding and I find it hard to understand how that riding could be so hard done by being represented by the Treasurer.
I haven't heard much from the member for Brant-Haldimand as to whether Earl's Shell is still in business or not. I do know, though, that when I float through Gingersnap Junction and get to Orillia and see Connor Tire, on Friday mornings mostly, that's where I meet the boys and we discuss what's taking place within the province of Ontario. They bring me up to date pretty well with what's going on in small-town Ontario.
I was intrigued by the member for Brant-Haldimand with regard to his comments and I appreciate the different aspect that he brought to the debate.
Mr Murphy: I appreciate the opportunity to say thank you to the member for Simcoe East. I must say that every time I go and visit my parents, who live in Horseshoe Valley, I pass by his fine farmhouse and see his name up on the side of the barn, which I always am quite jealous of because it's the largest sign location in the area, and one of the better ones, I must say.
Having grown up in Barrie, not far away, just in the next riding, and having spent the first 18 years of my life -- I know the member for Simcoe East is a fixture in that community, almost not as someone who's thought of in any party way but as just the MPP. They're not separable concepts, almost.
Let me say that I think the member for Brant-Haldimand will attain that same lofty status on the basis of the kind of quality contribution he's made to the debate on this Social Contract Act. It was cogent, intelligent, insightful, as in fact I think his contributions always are. I appreciate the opportunity.
I thank the member for Timiskaming for his intervention on my behalf. I just hope that we'll be able to continue to hear that kind of contribution in the course of this debate and I hope the government is listening to the representatives of the community at large. They're out there watching television, I hope, just in the few minutes before prime time comes on. I know that they're listening, they're concerned, they're watching, and they're judging the actions of this government and I think, frankly, they're judging those actions quite harshly.
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Mr Cleary: I would like to compliment the member on his statements and I'd like to just briefly talk about the agricultural part of it where he commented about the farm tax rebate and how provincial funding had diminished to the agricultural community over the past few years in land stewardship and farm-start programs.
The other thing I'd like to mention too is the closing down of the government's foreign trade offices. We don't know how that's going to affect agriculture also. The other thing that I would like to mention there was something that's on everyone's mind, the cutting back of dairy inspectors all over Ontario. I think food safety is a big factor in everyone's mind and I know that the only people who can do the proper job on that is the dairy inspection branch.
I'm a little bit leery of what may eventually come out of this if these inspectors are cut back. I'm just a little bit leery that maybe the cost and extra burden will be placed on farmers themselves. If they have to pay for this inspection, it'll be just as bad or worse than the government cutting back on their programs.
I know the member mentioned about rural Ontario, Ontario Hydro, being in the dark about 1946. I guess he wasn't alone on that, because many of us in other parts of Ontario were the same. Anyway, we have Ontario Hydro now and I hope we can afford to keep it.
Mr Hope: I noticed that very interestingly the member said, "the past two years," and I guess if he comes from a rural community he'll know that the agricultural community's been suffering for about 10 years, if not more. If you took that proposed package that is before you today, that the government is presenting under the legislation, and talked to your farmers about that proposed package, they'd probably tell you it's too rich a program for the public sector unions. They'll say, "What do you mean, subsidizing their wages for 95%?" because I've heard that from the farmers. "What are you talking about, putting $300 million before that package?"
If you're talking to the farmers, they'll tell you that they've been feeling the effects since the early 1980s under a different government. They're feeling the effects of the free trade agreement. They're feeling the effects of the subsidizing of the products they manufacture, that not even half of the product they produce is for human consumption. That's a cheap food policy. If you're listening to the farmers most appropriate, the farmers are talking about farm-gate pricing, and that's where they're indicating your aspects of it.
I find it interesting that you talk about the farm tax rebate. I question the previous government, why you even tapped into it to begin with. You brought it forward. You're the one who tapped into this process. You were a part of the process that brought it forward. Why did you even tap into that farm tax issue, taxing agricultural fuel for education?
Then I pose some other questions which I think are very important. I'm just curious about the opinion of where you stand, if you're talking about rural communities, on the issue about unionization of farmers, because that's a bill that's going to be coming forward very shortly.
I just wondered, because you talk about the rural communities and I think it's appropriate that you currently reflect those communities, because I represent a large -- I guess you'd call it God's country in southwestern Ontario, where Chatham is located, around those communities, at Dover and Chatham township, because I hear my farmers very clearly and they aren't saying what I just heard.
The Speaker: The honourable member for Brant-Haldimand has up to two minutes for his reply.
Mr Eddy: I want to thank the member for Simcoe East in drawing to our attention that the riding was represented by the former Treasurer of Ontario, the Honourable Robert Nixon. Indeed, the Dunnville area was represented prior to that by another Treasurer, the Honourable James Allan, of course, who was a member of his party, as I understand. I didn't know him quite as well, of course. So thank you. The member for St George-St David has overwhelmed me, and I'm sure that my relatives who are watching tonight, who stayed up to watch, will have as difficult time identifying me through his description as I do, but thank you.
I want to thank the member for Cornwall for his comment about the agricultural industry, because I know how heartfelt his thoughts are about the agriculture industry and what it's been going through. For many years I acknowledged that, and I know you feel that very deeply.
The member for Chatham-Kent, thank you for mentioning your farmers and what they feel, and indeed it is a cheap food policy that's the problem. But it's not just a cheap food policy; it's a too-cheap food policy, perhaps. The farm tax rebate program was brought in as a matter of survival. Farms would not have survived without the farm tax rebate. There is perhaps a better answer to that, and I'll be pleased to present something along those lines and discuss it with him prior to bringing it in if he has some thoughts on that matter.
So back to Bill 48, and that's why we're here, I would hope we can bring some very important, serious amendments to this bill to make it workable.
The Speaker: Is there further debate?
Mr Ramsay: I'm very pleased at this late hour to have so many of my colleagues behind me. I'm not sure; yes, they're behind me. They're doing very well and very are wide awake, by the sound of them. I'm very pleased to follow my colleague the member for Brant-Haldimand. In fact, he mentioned that some of his relatives are watching. I know my mother is watching, because I called her about three minutes ago to tell her I'd be on. I'm concerned that we spend a lot of money here with the legislative service, the electronic Hansard, and I am not sure how many people watch at this late hour, but I know my mother is a dedicated watcher and she is watching, so be assured that somebody is at least watching and this is for some good.
Just to remind the folks here, especially those watching at home, what we're here about tonight is to conclude our speeches on the social contract legislation, Bill 48. There has been lots in the news about that. It is the government's expenditure control legislation to grab back $2 billion from the budget, and in this piece of legislation they are attempting to do that from the public service. As we know, there's been lots of controversy about this. The unions are unsettled and somewhat troubled, if I may use slightly mild language, about this because these wages and benefits have been hard-fought-for over the years; they have bargained through the collective bargaining process, a process that I think all of us in this House respect and support and of course are loath to let these go because they have been hard-fought-for over the years.
But we also are concerned, as most of the general public is concerned, about the deficit. I think I'd like to start there and talk about why we have this problem. I'd like to talk to the government members and say that this isn't all their fault. What concerns me about the process they are embarked upon now is that with this sudden zeal they have taken upon themselves, to me it seems they somehow feel that this is all their fault, and of course it's not all their fault. I think they certainly added to the problem in the last two and a half years for which they have been responsible, but our government was a good-spending government, very healthy expenditures in our budgets -- we were able to do that, though, because we had some very healthy times to do that -- and the government before us, when the Tories were in government for 42 years, had many deficits, so they've contributed to this too. We have had the last 100 years really to come up to this particular level of expenditure and this accumulated debt that we find we've inherited.
I say this because I've been very concerned about some of the methods employed by this government in how they want to grab back this money. It has done some terrible damage across this province. My particular riding has been particularly hard hit, and I'm going to talk about that a little more.
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It's not any one particular party's fault, though I think we have been critical in the last two years, consistently so, about the budgets of this particular government. We have seen a record number of deficits from this government exceeding the $10-billion mark, so that this government, being in office only two and a half years, has now doubled the accumulated debt of this province. That's what the problem is, and this government now has finally realized, like the rest of us have and the people of Ontario, that we cannot continue in this way.
Mr Murphy: It's entirely true. Argentinian in proportion.
Mr Ramsay: Well, that is the case. We're at that point, and we know we can no longer have an increasing percentage of our revenues being paid towards servicing the debt. That's where we're going. The government has finally seen this.
I suppose there's a lot of anecdotal talk around Queen's Park about what caused this conversion of Robert Rae, the Premier of Ontario, and the government party, as this certainly wasn't the pattern of the first two budgets. Some will say that somewhere during the winter, Mr Rae maybe had a conversation with New York bankers or the bond rating companies in New York that actually rate Ontario on its fiscal health and decide how much money we have to pay on our interest and what interest rate Ontario has to pay in order to service its debt. We think it could be that: It looked as if the situation was that if we continued in Ontario to have increasingly large budget deficits and accumulated total debt, finally the world would stop lending to Ontario.
That's certainly one scenario, and that maybe comes together, coincidentally, with the show W5 on CTV, which showed back in February of this year a documentary on the so-called bankruptcy of New Zealand that happened about eight years ago. I think that really shook up a lot of people too. As I said, anecdotally around here, people feel that certain cabinet ministers and the Premier himself watched this show over and over and were really taken aback by this and certainly didn't want this to be happening in Ontario.
Well, nobody wants this to be happening in Ontario, so we agree with the government that the deficit is a problem and that we've got to be concerned about it. I guess the reason we've got to this point is the really high expectations of the people of this country and the reluctance of politicians in this country over the last 20, 30 or 40 years to say no to people when they have asked for more and more goods and services from government. I'm going to suggest later on some positive examples, I think, of what we should be doing in government, but part of this exercise has got to be that politicians are going to have to start to say no to people. When people, my constituents, people who vote for me and vote for the rest of us, keep coming to us and asking for more and more services, we're going to have to start to say no and we're going to have to start to lower people's expectations.
I think we're going to have to start to make a whole cultural change in our society, because I think what we've done in the last 50 or 60 years is move away from individual initiative and self-reliance and self-sufficiency to a dependency upon government. We haven't, when a neighbour has lost his barn or her house, come together as neighbours and rebuilt those facilities for our neighbours, helped that family in a community that's found itself in tough times. The community in the old days gathered together, rounded up resources and food and clothing and built them new shelter and got that family back on its feet.
For the last 50 or 60 years, basically, we've relied upon government to do that. We've lost that sense of not only individual enterprise but community enterprise, and I think we have to go back to that. We have to somehow return to those days of understanding that it's not, "What can the government do for me? What are my entitlements from government? What can I expect from government?" but, "What can I do for myself, for my family, to keep ourselves above water and supporting ourselves?" and also the next step of, "What can we do for each other and for our community?" If that's maybe brought more to an individual level and a community level, I think we'd be far better off. I think that's what we have to change, too: We have to be looking at how we govern and what's happened. I'm going to talk about that a little later, about how I think we can move that way and what we need to do.
But what I've been very concerned about is this piece of legislation and what preceded that: the other $2 billion that the government took from the people of Ontario in this slash-and-burn process of closing institutions, changing the relocation jobs where we were sharing some of the wealth of the government to people right across Ontario.
One of the things I'm very concerned about and that I know my colleague from Northumberland, Joan Fawcett, who's also here this evening, is very concerned about as one of our co-Agriculture critics -- John Cleary from Cornwall is the other ag critic and is also here this evening -- is the two agricultural colleges that were closed by this government in the process that just preceded this $2-billion clawback.
One of those was in my riding, and I certainly want to talk about it because it's had a devastating effect on the people of my riding and I feel very concerned about that. But it also has had a devastating effect on the agricultural community not only across the province, because in New Liskeard we did agricultural research for some sectors of the agricultural industry, right in New Liskeard for the whole province, but especially because New Liskeard is really the only northern outpost the government of Ontario has had for 75 years for agriculture in this province.
With just a swipe of the pen, this government, on April 23, a day I will never forget, April 23, 1993 -- we euphemistically call it Black Friday in Timiskaming, and I'm sure in other ridings too it is referred to as that -- this college is to be closed one year hence from April 23. This has had a devastating effect in my riding and it's been a very sobering awakening to the agricultural community not only in northern Ontario but also in southwestern Ontario, where Centralia College, located in Huron county, has also been closed.
It's interesting that the member for Huron is here tonight. I, with my colleague Joan Fawcett, have been speaking on behalf of Centralia College also, because we feel that even though that's not in our ridings and even though we don't have any personal involvement with that, it's part of the agricultural infrastructure of Ontario and it's very necessary that these institutions remain open to do the work of research and development for agricultural technology in which Canada is a leader, expertise in which these community colleges shared, but also to provide our young people with the training they so badly need, not only in farm-oriented agriculture but other industries and occupations and avocations that can come from agricultural training.
There's a lot of different courses we need to be developing in Ontario, and here we have a system of five colleges, community colleges, if you will, with the agricultural bent that could be integrated into other areas of expertise, moving on to technology, maybe being converted into polytechnicals. Now that we've graduated Ryerson Polytech into a university, here was a wonderful opportunity to expand for Ontario a whole network of polytechnical institutions right across this province. I think that would have been a good idea.
What I and my colleagues are asking for is not this slash-and-burn approach that happened on what's euphemistically called "the lost weekend" around here, when cabinet ministers and deputies basically took the slashing pen to institutions and programs right across this province. But sit down and work together, because it's not just your problem over there; it's all of our problem. We all created this problem together, so let's take responsibility collectively for it and work together on finding a way to get ourselves out of this mess. We all want to get out of this mess and I think we can do it constructively, but to do that we need to take a bit of time. It took us about 120 years to get here, and we're not going to do it overnight. We're not going to do it in six months or over this next remaining fiscal year, the nine months that are left, and we're not going to do it in the three years over which the social contract legislation takes an effect by just freezing salaries, taking back maybe 12 days a year.
This is not going to be good enough. This is not the type of reinventing government, that I want to talk about in the concluding statements, that's really going to do it. This is just tinkering with it a little bit, this is just fine-tuning, and we're at the point where now we need to do more than that. We need radical surgery. We can work together in doing that instead of this slash- and-burn approach.
The other thing that got changed with the announcements of the first $2 billion in cutbacks that happened on April 23 was the cancellation of most of the relocation of government jobs that were scheduled to happen right across this province. Mr Speaker, as you know, the previous government had announced quite a bold and innovative program that started in northern Ontario. Basically the Peterson Liberal government had said, why should all the government jobs, as good as they may be, be centred primarily in Toronto and the GTA, the greater Toronto region? Why shouldn't all the taxpayers of Ontario benefit more directly and more equitably from the jobs that accrue from the tax revenue that we bring in as government?
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So we started in northern Ontario. We moved the Ministry of Correctional Services to North Bay. We moved the Ministry of Northern Development, which, gee, was a kind of wild idea, to northern Ontario -- not a bad idea; kind of made sense. That's in Sudbury. We moved a great section of the Ministry of Natural Resources that deals with forestry research and technology to Sault Ste Marie. We also moved some aspects of the Ministry of Colleges and Universities to Thunder Bay.
So what we started to do with the major centres of northern Ontario, with Timmins we moved some jobs of the Ministry of Transportation, basically the five major centres in northern Ontario got sort of a piece of the action, if you will, of the Ontario government so that we had some of that payroll that all Ontarians contribute to the civil service to keep those services coming to the people of Ontario; these were distributed a little more fairly, starting to give back some of that resource to the people of northern Ontario.
One advantage, also, that accrued from that was not only just getting a sort of a solid underpinning to the economy of some of these towns, but what we had also for the very first time was a new layer of bureaucracy that lived and breathed in northern Ontario. People who experienced the north in their daily workings understood the problems and the concerns of northern Ontarians. As these people moved around, and many of them as they went to other head offices in Toronto later on had developed that northern Ontario experience. So it made it much, much easier for the 15 to 16 of us, who are representing all three political parties, from northern Ontario, when we come down to Toronto to deal with the ministries and the civil servants that work in those ministries, that these people had northern experience.
So the same idea was decided, that we would do this with the rest of the province. So we decided to move a ministry to Windsor and to move an agency of government to Chatham and do the same to St Catharines, Niagara Falls, Brantford, Peterborough and to one in my riding, Haileybury, that had been very hard hit with the closing of mills and mines in my area about four years ago.
So we had a even distribution of government jobs out of Toronto right across the southwest, the east and, again, into the north. Unfortunately, on April 23, 1993, most of that program was cancelled. That's really hurt the province of Ontario very, very badly. That's a dream that I'm certainly not letting go. I hope some day when the government does change that this dream can still be alive, and maybe some of those job relocations won't be as big because government won't be as big, and that's okay. It would be nice to have the number of jobs that were out there before, but as we downsize government, future relocations, if they are to happen, won't be as big also. But I hope we can continue with that dream and get that fair distribution of government jobs right across the province.
One thing I've noticed that so far in this House people haven't talked about is the position of the Conservatives. I'm glad to see that my good friend Al McLean, the member for -- Simcoe West, I believe, Mr McLean?
Mr McLean: Simcoe East.
Mr Ramsay: -- Simcoe East is here, because I certainly want to talk about the Tory record on the social contract, because it has sort of been flipping and flopping all over the place, and we're certainly going to be interested to see what the Tories do tomorrow, actually, which way they go on this piece of legislation.
Mike Harris, the leader of the Tories, has been all over the map on this thing, and I've got a few quotes here to say where he started off. He was very much in favour at the start. On April 14, and this is recorded in Hansard, he said, "I applauded the initial announcement that you were going to talk with public sector employees and with the representatives of a million of them." So he thought this was really good. He said: "I will support," -- he went on -- "you to go even further;" -- government, as he said to them -- "you know that as well. I want to state clearly today that I will support legislation -- " -- and here comes the famous quotation, colleagues, he said -- "bang, bang, bang," remember that?
Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines): Who said that?
Mr Ramsay: Mike Harris said that.
Mr Bradley: Was he supporting it?
Mr Ramsay: Well, we don't know, I say to the member for St Catharines. He's asking me if the Tories are going to support this. We're not sure what he's going to do.
He said, "Bang, bang, bang, first, second, third reading -- one day past a realistic deadline."
Mr Bradley: Well, I think Stockwell is against it.
Mr Ramsay: Well, that's what we're going to see, if all the Tories support this or not. It's going to be interesting. But then he said legislation isn't needed. He said this, now, on June 7. So this is only about two weeks later and this is what Mr Harris said: "I presented you and your Treasurer with a fourth option...There's a three-year plan and natural attrition, with a hiring freeze. It would mean a permanent downsizing of government, no unnecessary layoffs, enough flexibility to ensure priority services are maintained, and quite frankly, no legislation is even required to implement that one."
Mr Bradley: So what happens when a fireman retires?
Mr Ramsay: Well, that's what we have to know and that's part of the problem. Unfortunately, the Tories have some very simplistic answers to some of this, saying, "All you have to do is completely freeze the hiring of the civil service."
Mr Bradley: Well, you have to replace the fireman, surely.
Mr Ramsay: It sounds kind of good, but as my friend from St Catharines says, "What do you do when a firefighter retires?" -- I like to use that expression "firefighter" for my colleague -- and a police officer, what do you do when that person retires? You can't necessarily move these people around from city to city and town to town, and I think that's very important. It sounds very good and somehow simplistic that you create no harm to civil servants by just allowing their natural retirement through attrition and, therefore, by freezing that you can downsize in some natural pattern.
It's not the way to do it because it's impossible to control it and to revive those essential services, because a police person, a firefighter, nurses in hospitals, people like that who retire, especially providing those essential services, they have to be there; you cannot control the change of person power when it comes to that. That simplistic solution is not on.
Anyway, that's what Mike Harris was saying on June 7, but two days later back in the Legislature, and this is on Hansard of June 9 of this year, Mr Harris said: "We told you that your contract talks could not possibly succeed. The union leaders had no chance with credibility to keep their jobs and negotiate rolling back contracts unless three commonsense things were put on the table, unless you were firm on three areas. One, the amount: $2 billion...Secondly, the deadline...the legislation, the hammer that you plan to bring in." This is Mike Harris on June 9.
On June 14 he said: "I'm serving notice today as well on this piece of legislation that I and my caucus colleagues will be putting forward amendments to this bill." Five days later, bang, bang, bang was back on the shelf and he said: "...retroactive rollbacks, gutting the negotiation process, creating the chaos out there is not the right way to go." Again, that's Mike Harris now on June 14 commenting on the social contract legislation.
It's going to be very interesting to see where the third party, the Progressive Conservative Party, stands on this issue.
I'd like to talk a little bit about why the Liberal caucus will not be supporting this legislation, because I think it's very important to get this across to the public because, as I said before, we're all very concerned with the deficit. I think what's paramount in all of our minds is that we've got to control government expenditure, but it has got to be done in a fair and realistic way and it's not going to be done overnight. This can't be done overnight if you're to maintain the essential services and you're to maintain the morale of the public service.
In this legislation there's a bit of a ticking time bomb because there's one aspect where 12 days a year are to be basically taken away from these employees in the public service. Maybe some of the people in different ministries are going to be able to survive on 12 days without pay, and maybe in some ministries we're going to be able to survive with maybe some of the services that some of those people provide. We can maybe get away with that on that particular day of the month, but what about firefighters and people that work in the police force, the nurses and all the various essential services out there? What are we going to do with those people?
Well, the legislation addresses that. What it says basically is that those people are going to be able to accumulate that time. They're going to give it up in those years and, in a sense, they're going to have this credit. So over three years they're going to have a credit of 36 days because, of course, the expenditure is going to have to happen this year, next year and the year after that, because, of course, the hospitals have to keep nurses on the go, the fire stations are going to have to keep their people there, and the same with police departments. We're still going to have to have people on the job providing those services.
Meanwhile, those other folks who are supposedly giving up those days have now got this credit they've accumulated of 36 days. After the third year, when this legislation expires and this government, I think, is long gone, this ticking time bomb will now explode, because all these folks out there are going to start to demand those days back, either as days off or, again, we're going to have to be hiring other people to take their duty on those days and, therefore, it's going to be double expenditure, or they're going to be looking for the money. It's probably going to be done by just hiring other people.
We've got this sort of ticking fiscal time bomb out there, it's absolutely irresponsible, and that's one of the main reasons we cannot support this legislation. It is not fair, it's not right to build this time bomb for the future citizens of Ontario and the future government of Ontario. That needs to be, I think, sung loud and clear throughout Ontario so that people understand what's in this legislation. It is terribly flawed. It's going to only start to take care of a bit of a temporary problem but build a bigger problem down the road. I think it's very clear and I would hope that the Conservative Party voices its opposition to this bill when we vote tomorrow afternoon.
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I've outlined the problem a little bit and been fairly negative about this legislation, but I'd like to put forward some proposals right now. I always like to do that since, in public office, even in opposition, it should not be my part just to be negative and to be critical but also to be constructive when one can. I think here is the time to be constructive.
I think the way to be constructive here is to say that we should start to remodel this 18th-century model that we still have of government and many institutions we have in the public sector in this province and this country. Now is the time to do that.
We don't have to look at foreign countries, though there are some good examples. I'm going to talk about that in a second. All we have to do is look down the road and down the street here right here in Toronto at one of our other big institutions in this country: the banks. Here we have some of the most conservative institutions in this country. But the banks use 21st-century technology in their services. You don't necessarily have to line up at a wicket any more to bank. You can still do that if you want, but all you have to do now is use the bank machines. You can use those digital highways that connect those bank machines with the central computers in order to do all sorts of financial transactions today.
All sorts of institutions in our country have moved with modern technology, but government has been one of the slowest to move. That's what we have to do. We have to move with the times. We have to revamp totally our organizations. Government is the place we need to start.
There was a very good book written a few years back by an American, David Osborne, called Reinventing Government. From time to time, many members in the House will quote from this book, will quote that phrase. I know many of my colleagues have read this book. I believe very strongly in the process of reinventing government.
Where this came from really started in California about 14 years ago. As you know, in California citizens, through petitioning, can have questions put on a ballot. A referendum can have all sorts of different issues decided upon by the people directly. There was a very famous proposition on the ballot called Proposition 13 that said municipalities must freeze their tax revenues at that rate at that particular year and do with what they had at that particular time.
That's what really gave the impetus, the challenge to communities, starting in California. As most trends in the United States do, it started in the west and moved right across the east, where local, state and now federal governments in the United States have really been challenged with trying to do more with less.
This book, Reinventing Government, is really a compilation of many of the ideas and the successful formulas that have been forged by American legislators and public servants over the last 14 years from the schoolhouse to the statehouse, to city hall, to the Pentagon, as the book says. I wanted to read one little part from this, because I think it applies very directly to the social contract legislation. It's one of the founding principles in this book. It's the third principle they have. It has to deal with public servants.
The author says:
"Third, we believe that the people who work in government are not the problem. The systems in which they work are the problem. We write not to berate public employees but to give them hope. At times it may sound as if we are engaged in bureaucratic bashing, but our intention is to bash bureaucracies and not bureaucrats. We have known thousands of civil servants through the years and most, although certainly not all, have been responsible, talented, dedicated people trapped in archaic systems that frustrate their creativity and sap their energy. But we believe these systems can be changed to liberate the enormous energies of public servants and to heighten their ability to serve the public."
I believe that too. I believe that's possible to accomplish here in Ontario. I would think it would be a very constructive process for this government to start to maybe invite the opposition parties to join it in some sort of committee of reinventing government. I think that would be a great way to get all three parties working together, something that really in a way is quite non-partisan, and maybe start that sense of cooperation between all three parties, because we all agree there's a problem.
I think we all have a sense of where we need to go. You have a bill called the capital corporations bill that I happen to agree with. I think that's the start of reinventing government. You're proposing some capital corporations that could do some new and very creative and innovative ways of providing public service. That's a good start. I for one in the opposition support that. Why don't we work together on some sort of all-party committee where we could look at other ideas for that? I think that's the way we bring parties together and maybe bring some of our ideas together.
We've got to start to look at government that's driven by the customers and not by bureaucrats or just by politicians. We have to realize the taxpayer out there is also the shareholder here. We owe her and him the benefit of all that we can do and all the best we can do here in government.
I think by working together that's what we're going to do. I think what we need to be doing is not worrying about necessarily all the flaws we have here but let's start being positive. Let's start saying, "We will work together to build better government here in Ontario." I put out that invitation to the NDP government. Let's start working together to build better government for the people of Ontario.
The Speaker: I thank the honourable member for Timiskaming for his contribution to this debate and invite questions and/or comments. The member for St Catharines.
Mr Bradley: I was very pleased to hear the member for Timiskaming deal with these matters in such a reasonable way. He's recognized that while most of the province is in favour of restraint, efficiency and cooperation in terms of finding better ways to deliver services for government, he recognizes that this bill is a very impractical bill and that the consequences of the legislation at the end of three years are such that many people are going to be very concerned in terms of the dollars and cents that are going to be accumulating at that time.
I, of course, am still interested in seeing how the Conservative Party is going to vote on this. I've been waiting. I know there's been some considerable discussion in the Progressive Conservative caucus. My friend the member for Simcoe East is here this evening. I'm sure he'd like to oppose this bill. Even though all of us are in favour of the general restraint that we see in the province, I think many in the Progressive Conservative Party see the deficiencies in this particular bill and ultimately will be voting against it.
They will also see that with the number of members on the other side who, in principle, are opposed to what we would find in this bill, we're likely to see those people stand up on principle and oppose this bill and vote against it. So the opportunity is there for the Progressive Conservative Party to help defeat this government, something that many people in this province would like to see happen.
I'll be watching very carefully to see tomorrow, when the vote takes place or whenever it takes place, how that will finally turn out. But I thought the speech by the member for Timiskaming was very reasonable, very balanced and presented, for members of the assembly and those who are staying up late tonight to watch this, the kind of arguments that are very compelling and very relevant to this case.
The Speaker: The honourable member for Ottawa Centre.
Hon Ms Gigantes: I understood the member from Timiskaming to say that his mother was watching this evening. I also understood him to say, while his mother was watching, that the debt of the province had doubled in the last three years. That is incorrect. I would not like the mother of the member from Timiskaming to go away with a false impression. In fact, she will be able to add up, if he cannot, the deficits that have been incurred by this government since we came to office.
It started at a level of $40 billion, I'll remind the member from Timiskaming, when we took over from the party he represents, as government. We had a deficit of $11 billion in 1991-92. It was $12 billion in 1992-93. It is projected to be $9 billion this year. This does not a doubling make.
Mr McLean: I wanted to say a few words with regard to the comments the member for Timiskaming made. I want to commend him on some of the aspects of his remarks, especially those related to: Perhaps we should be thinking of not what we can get out of this country but what we can put back in to make it a better country to live in. He referred that back to some 40 or 50 years, but I don't think he has to go back that far.
From the rural community that I come from, when the neighbours helped one another when you had a disaster such as I had on June 2, 1964, when I lost my barn by fire, the neighbours helped. It put me back on my feet again. Those are the types of things that communities did.
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I think that was what he was referring to in his remarks, although I didn't hear too many referrals made to how we should change this legislation that would make it better, that they would appreciate it and that they would be able to support it. From what I've observed, it's strictly that they're going to oppose it, not really giving any alternatives.
My leader has said -- and he's wondering how we're going to vote -- that what he wanted to do was to freeze the wages and freeze the hiring. He wanted to make sure that those who had agreements and contracts signed would not be dealt with until they ran out and then they would be three years after that.
We want some amendments to this legislation and we look forward to some of the ones which my leader has put forward, and there are six of them. What they were saying was we believe that there's got to be restraint. We know there's a need for restraint. I think every member in this Legislature knows there's a need for restraint. How you go about doing it, we probably have different ideas of how we should do it, but we have alternatives. Bang, bang, we have alternatives. But I haven't seen the Liberals give us any alternatives, and that's what concerns me when you get up and just oppose without having something as an alternative. I say we need an alternative and my leader is willing to put that forward.
Mrs Joan M. Fawcett (Northumberland): I want to commend the member for Timiskaming for his fine words and certainly agree with him as far as his remarks referring to agriculture. I too can commiserate with him. He knows very well the New Liskeard scene where the agricultural college has been removed, and I guess I can't say it was a pleasure to attend the rally at Centralia where that college is also being wiped off the map and to listen to the various students whose education is now in jeopardy and those who were planning to go.
Really, it's inconceivable to understand why this government would cut out something that really -- graduates from the college at Centralia, and I'm sure this is the same for New Liskeard, are 85% assured of a job when they leave that college. This government pretends to say that it really is interested in jobs, and yet we really wonder if it is.
I also have to agree with the member. I too find it absolutely amazing how the members of the Conservative Party are going to seemingly support the government in this social contract and really help them to pass this legislation. In my riding the number one worry is jobs, and really, the number one question is how much longer we have to put up with this NDP government and how we can get rid of them.
I've said that should a non-confidence motion occur such as the social contract might provide -- and here we have the Conservative members who will support them and help them pass it. There we go, another chance passed.
The Speaker: The member for Timiskaming has up to two minutes for his reply.
Mr Ramsay: Thank you very much, Mr Speaker, because I guess I owe it to my mother to comment on what the member for Ottawa had said, and I must thank her. I've added up all the figures and I must say, the member's probably right, it's not exactly double. It's very close. We're looking at about from $38 billion to $40 billion.
Hon Ms Gigantes: We're working on it.
Mr Ramsay: Yes, you certainly are working on doubling it. You'll be there soon. You've probably added about $35 billion to it, so it's pretty close, Mom, and that's what I had to say anyway, so it wasn't that far off. But I appreciate the member bringing that to my attention for sure.
I appreciate the comments on this debate and I appreciate members recognizing when members are trying to be constructive at times. I would really take seriously that offer I put forward that I think reinventing what we do is really the way we need to start to approach government for sure and starting to be facilitators. As the people in the book say, be steerers rather than rowers, rather than always providing services.
I think you're starting to see that too, as I said, with some of your legislation that I support. Capital corps are a good start. We can work together and find other methods of starting to facilitate in society rather than always having to provide the service directly.
I think there are a lot of services that maybe we could start to look at, and maybe we don't have to provide any more and we should start to look at those things. Maybe there are some services that are still essential that maybe other people can provide, and maybe those services we feel are so basic and fundamental to government that we are going to remain providing those services but maybe that's the area we need to look at, providing those services in a new way, maybe a new, creative and imaginative and cost- effective and efficient way.
That's what we have to start to look at. It's really a tremendous challenge there for us, and I think just saying we're going to cut back on this or slash on this without sort of, I guess, applying some creativity and some new ideas is really the wrong way to go. We're entering a new technological age. There are a lot of tremendous new methods that we could be applying to administer government in this country, and I think that's the challenge that's before us.
The Speaker: Is there further debate? I recognize the honourable member for York North.
Mr Beer: Thank you.
Applause.
Mr Beer: I suspect the clapping is because we are getting close to the magic hour of midnight.
I would just like to make an announcement at the beginning that I'm practically 100% sure that my mother is not watching, and if she is, Mother, go to bed, where the rest of us should be.
Mr Speaker, it is late, and we are, I suspect, nearing the end at least of part of this debate, and I think it is important to recognize that in, I think, the vast majority of the presentations that have been made by members on both sides of the House and among all three parties, there has been an attempt to put forward the various arguments both for and against the bill and I suppose for some of the viewers sitting at home, particularly at this late hour, trying to sort out what this is all about?
It seems to me there are three major things that we've been dealing with this spring. One is the social contract, and we now have the bill before us. The other was the expenditure control plan that the government put forward, and the third has been the government's budget.
I think it is clear that all members in this House support the direction that this government wants to go in terms of reducing the deficit and moving towards cutting back on the debt.
But I think it's also important to underline that in the role of Her Majesty's loyal opposition, one of the things that we need to do is to look very carefully at the means by which these ends are going to be realized and that, in our view, as has been stated by my leader, Mrs McLeod, and by various others, when we look at what it is that this bill is intended to do, when we look at what it is supposed to achieve, in our view it can't achieve those objectives and indeed it is an unworkable bill and what it will leave at the end of the three-year period during which it is supposed to work is a situation for whatever party forms the next government, whether it's the present government, the Conservative Party or the Liberals. It is going to leave an extremely difficult situation where, in our view, there will be many, many deferred costs, with a potential cost overall of billions of dollars, that simply are going to mean that the cure that the government is offering is in fact worse than the disease.
I think when a political party comes to that conclusion, then what one has to do is to say, "Look, these are the reasons why we can't support the bill." It is, I hope, going to be going to committee, where we're going to be able to hear from witnesses, to go through it very carefully on a clause-by-clause basis and to set out some of the things which my leader has been setting out in terms of her questioning to the Premier and to the Treasurer, the flaws of the bill and some of the things that simply don't add up.
J'aimerais aussi, ce soir, suggérer quelques commentaires en langue française, parce que je pense qu'il est très important aussi de mettre devant la population les arguments que nous avons sur ce projet de loi. Nous avons dit que nous nous opposerions au projet de loi sur le contrat social parce qu'il est d'abord inapplicable et qu'il ne permettra pas de réaliser les économies prévues de deux milliards de dollars.
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Nous étions prêts à donner notre appui à un projet de loi sensé -- c'est ce que Mme McLeod a dit à mille reprises -- qui permettrait de négocier au palier local et qui réaliserait de véritables compressions. Mais le projet de loi qui a été déposé hier n'atteint aucun de ces objectifs. Tout ce qu'il fait est de créer plus de bouleversements et de confusion.
Alors, la question qui s'impose est : qu'est-ce qui ne fonctionne pas ? Selon nous, le projet de loi contient toute une série de lacunes. D'abord, les dispositions concernant les congés non payés signifient qu'un nombre indéterminé de travailleurs dans les services essentiels pourront accumuler jusqu'à 36 jours de vacances. En fait, il n'y a pas d'économies, seulement un report des coûts jusqu'en 1996.
Deuxièmement, il ne permet pas de véritables négociations locales. Il établit seulement de nouveaux paliers de négociations encombrantes et encore inapplicables.
Troisièmement, les échéances pour les négociations sont irréalistes.
Quatrièmement, le plan de redéploiement de la main-d'oeuvre contenu dans l'offre du contrat final du gouvernement est impossible à mettre en application, et le projet de loi ne contient pas de solutions en rechange.
Alors depuis avril, soit au début des négociations du contrat social, Mme McLeod a, maintes fois, demandé au gouvernement de se fixer des objectifs financiers précis, de négocier avec ses propres employés et de donner au secteur public les outils dont il a besoin pour négocier au niveau local.
Nous ne contestons pas la nécessité des compressions, bien que nous ayons exprimé -- et nous continuerons de l'exprimer -- notre frustration face au fait que deux ans et demi de mauvaise gestion financière nous ont amenés au point où le gouvernement se sent obligé de reprendre ce qu'il a donné avec tant de prodigalité au cours de sa première année.
Alors, là je présente quelques observations pourquoi nous avons dit que nous ne pouvions pas appuyer ce projet de loi que vient de présenter le gouvernement.
There have been a number of documents that have come forward from many of the different sectors, from our transfer payment partners, whether it is education, the municipalities, hospitals, conservation authorities, and again every one of those sectors has said: "Yes, we must cut back. Yes, we must try to exercise restraint." I think many of them have demonstrated that over the last couple of years, because they've been facing cutbacks and they've had to act with those cutbacks.
I was intrigued to see in the publication Municipal World, the June 1993 edition, where they had put together a special group to look at the municipal position on the expenditure control plan and social contract proposals. Here we are talking with one of the major sectors of our transfer partners, the municipalities, that argue, and I think can argue with a great deal of strength, that they have been demonstrating the kind of restraint and care with their budgets that this government has not with its.
The first statement this group of municipalities makes is: "We do support the government's determination to reduce its deficit. Secondly, we are strongly committed to working with the government to reduce total public sector expenditures through fundamental restructuring that will relieve the burden on our common taxpayer on a permanent basis." But the third point they make is, "We do not accept the timing, magnitude and approach of either the expenditure control plan or the social contract cuts to the municipal sector."
They then go on in this article, and indeed in the publication, to set out a number of proposals and to make suggestions to the government much in the same way that the public service coalition had also proposed some optional proposals to the government. We might not agree with all of them, but none the less they put those forward.
The public boards and the separate boards have made proposals in terms of what they believe could be done. The conservation authorities have also done the same thing. I think the concern that all those sectors have had is that nobody was really listening.
Here it was within the process of the whole social contract that there was a sense that the participants were being devalued. I don't say that the government set out to do that, but that was the sense. For anyone who walked by that room, with all of the different employer and employee groups that were there, there was just a sense that this was not really a collective bargaining process that in fact could lead anywhere.
As my leader said on so many occasions, what we needed was a plan that had begun far earlier, probably last fall, and was going to focus on a sector-by-sector basis, where the government would begin with its own employees, where the education sector would deal with itself and the municipal sector with itself, by all means having broad parameters set out by the provincial government in terms of where it was felt, and where it was thought we had to go. But that wasn't done, so now we're in a situation where we have a bill, which as has been mentioned by many people, has a hammer, has a gun, has a sword that comes into play on August 1.
Will it in fact bring about the very ends that the government has said it will? I think this is where we take issue with the government's proposal. Whether I'm talking in terms of my own area of York region, or if I go around to my municipalities in Newmarket, Aurora and King township, whether I'm talking about the two boards in York region or the various hospitals or the south Lake Simcoe conservation authority, having talked to all of them, what I see are people who want to work together but who simply have a feeling that this act will not permit that kind of cooperation, that kind of dialogue or that kind of discussion.
I have a number of other points I would have made, but I understand there has been an agreement by the House leaders that we would complete the debate this evening and that there would be a vote deferred until tomorrow. By prior agreement, I will at this point move adjournment of the debate. I will do whatever will work out, what people have sorted out, so I will just sit down.
The Speaker: A wise move. I thank the honourable member for York North for his contribution to the debate and invite any questions and/or comments. Is there further debate on this bill?
Mr Laughren moves second reading of Bill 48. Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry?
All those in favour will please say "aye."
All those opposed will please say "nay."
In my opinion, the ayes have it.
Hon David Christopherson (Solicitor General and Minister of Correctional Services): Mr Speaker, before you call in the members, I believe we do have unanimous consent to defer the vote until following routine proceedings tomorrow.
The Speaker: Do we have unanimous agreement to defer the vote on second reading of Bill 48 until tomorrow following routine proceedings? Agreed. Accordingly, the vote on Bill 48, second reading, will occur immediately following routine proceedings tomorrow.
Is there a statement of business?
BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
Hon David Christopherson (Solicitor General and Minister of Correctional Services): Before I move adjournment of the House, I'd like to indicate the bus- iness of the House tomorrow: government notice of motion number 5 to extend the sittings beyond June 24; Bill 102, pay equity; Bills 32 and 34, vehicle transfer; all Pr bills; Bill 29, second reading, to eliminate the commercial concentration tax.
With that, Mr Speaker, I move adjournment of the House.
The Speaker (Hon David Warner): It being 12 of the clock, this House stands adjourned until 1:30 of the clock tomorrow.
The House adjourned at 2400.