LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY OF ONTARIO
ASSEMBLÉE LÉGISLATIVE DE L'ONTARIO
Tuesday 18 June 2002 Mardi 18 juin 2002
Tuesday 18 June 2002 Mardi 18 juin 2002
The House met at 1845.
ORDERS OF THE DAY
HYDRO ONE INC. DIRECTORS
AND OFFICERS ACT, 2002 /
LOI DE 2002 SUR LES ADMINISTRATEURS
ET LES DIRIGEANTS DE HYDRO ONE INC.
Resuming the debate adjourned on June 17, 2002, on the motion for second reading of Bill 80, An Act respecting directors and officers of Hydro One Inc. and its subsidiaries / Projet de loi 80, Loi concernant les administrateurs et les dirigeants de Hydro One Inc. et de ses filiales.
Hon John R. Baird (Associate Minister of Francophone Affairs): On a point of order, Mr Speaker: I was going to suggest, and I look to all members of the House, that since Mr Wettlaufer has concluded his remarks, we would move into the next speech, if that had the consent of the House.
The Acting Speaker (Mr Michael A. Brown): According to our rules, that is what is going to happen anyway.
Further debate? The member for St Paul's.
Applause.
Mr Michael Bryant (St Paul's): Applause? Well.
Hon Mr Baird: I'm here for you, Michael.
Mr Bryant: Thank you. This is a bill that demands debate about who knew what and when, when it comes to the future of Hydro One.
Interjections.
Mr David Christopherson (Hamilton West): You already got them upset. It's been a while.
Mr Bryant: That is a while. The government is concerned because, whether they know it or not, what we've seen in the past few weeks has been the Common Sense Revolution succeeded by a very different kind of revolution -- a revolution which has abandoned every tenet of parliamentary tradition and convention known to this institution, whereby this government, and in particular the executive council, the cabinet, no longer feels it is responsible in any way, shape or form. I'm talking about the principle of ministerial responsibility, the principle that ministers must account for and explain what happens in their ministry -- not just to their person, but to their ministry; not just during their tenure, but at the very least to deal with what happened during the tenure of the government. You can be sure they'll deal with previous governments and explain what happened there as well. But the bottom line is that a minister has to stand up in this Legislature and say, "Here is why we did what we did. Here is what happened in our ministry," and if there is a problem, "Here is what we're going to do to fix it." The story of this bill is the story of a government that to date has refused to be held to account and to come clean with the people about what happened over at Hydro One.
I would remind everybody in this House and everybody watching that this story unfolded in this House, in this Legislature, in many ways. Although Hydro One had been incorporated as a government corporation for years, and while the government had been responsible for years for the actions of Hydro One, it was only in the last few weeks, I guess a couple of months now, that the story of what was going on at Hydro One came to light. But for the questions in this Legislature by Dalton McGuinty and Ontario Liberals, we may never have gotten to the bottom of how much the directors were getting paid, what the golden parachutes were or about the yacht.
Mr Garry J. Guzzo (Ottawa West-Nepean): Dream on. Dream on.
Mr Bryant: On the other hand, the government members say, "Dream on. We eventually would have found out." Then the minister will stand up and say, "Here are the checks and balances that we have in place to ensure that this in fact will always come to light." What's different about this case is that this is a company, Hydro One, like all the hydro successor companies, that is not subject to freedom-of-information-act requests, which means it is insulated from public scrutiny. That means, by law, it is only through this Legislature that we can get answers as to what is going on in Hydro One.
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That isn't that complicated, you might think. Why? Because there is one shareholder in Hydro One, the government, and in particular it's the minister. The Minister of Energy is really the representative of the shareholder, the people of Ontario. We, the people, own Hydro One. We're the sole shareholder and our representative is Minister Stockwell. He is responsible not only for that which happens to his direct knowledge, but he is responsible for everything that happens in Hydro One, ultimately. He is responsible for all that happens in his ministry, ultimately.
I'll also talk about, in a moment, the principle of ministerial responsibility. It does not mean that every error made within the ministry itself necessarily results in the firing or resignation of a minister. That's not the suggestion.
Interjection.
Mr Bryant: No, that's not the suggestion. I never said that. Nobody has said that. We've asked for the government to explain what happened, to hold itself to account, to say when it knew about the compensation, when ministry officials found out about the golden parachutes, about the golden spinnaker, Hydro One's Defiant, and when Minister Stockwell's predecessor knew. He of course is responsible for what happens not only on his watch but certainly under the watch of this government.
Nobody would suggest for a moment that a minister up in Ottawa right now, a federal minister responsible for HRDC, isn't somehow accountable for that which happened in previous ministries. Of course not; that would be an outrage. But here in this House, in Queen's Park, the government of Ontario has decided that it will see no evil, speak no evil and hear no evil when it comes to the actions of Hydro One and the Ministry of Energy. Minister Stockwell will not come clean and tell us when his ministry was aware. We know that Minister Wilson had problems with Hydro One. We know that because he was quoted in published reports. He said, "Yes, that board, we should fire the whole lot of them." He was the Minister of Energy. He had an opportunity to fire the whole lot of them when he was the Minister of Energy, and he didn't. The question is, why didn't he fire the whole lot of them if that's what he thought should have happened then?
How long did Minister Wilson know about the outrageous compensation packages? Did Minister Wilson know about the million-dollar sponsorship budget of Hydro One? Did Minister Stockwell know about the million-dollar sponsorship budget of Hydro One? Did the Deputy Minister know about it? Who knew what, and when? The minister will stand up, if he is fulfilling the principle of ministerial responsibility, and he'll say so. The people will decide whether or not this was an anomalous oversight, an omission of somebody in the Ministry of Energy, or whether it's something that somebody must provide some remedy for.
We've had other ministers in this government who have said that errors were made in their ministry and they, as the ministers, must step down. Minister Wilson -- remember? -- when he was the health minister, said, as a result of something that one of his staffers said to the media -- an inappropriate disclosure with respect to a physician -- he would step down during that investigation. Did Minister Wilson? Did he pick up the phone and call the journalist and mention the doctor's name? No, he didn't do it, but someone in his ministry did do that, and so he took responsibility and resigned.
Minister Runciman, same thing; Minister Sampson, same thing in the past. Why? In some cases a ministry official, in one case a parliamentary assistant, engaged in behaviour that resulted in investigations to look into whether or not the Young Offenders Act had been breached. They took responsibility for people in their office and their ministry, because that's how it works.
But that's not what is happening with Hydro One, and this bill is a scapegoat -- of course it is. This bill is about creating scapegoats, and because we started this in this Legislature, we're going to have to finish this in the Legislature. That's why we must support this bill.
But let's be clear: this is a mess that the government has created.
Mr Bill Murdoch (Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound): No.
Mr Bryant: The government thinks there's no mess. If there's no mess, why have we got a bill?
Mr Murdoch: We didn't say there wasn't a mess; we just don't know who created it.
Mr Bryant: The member says, "We didn't say it isn't a mess." The member says, "We just don't know who created it." You're the government, remember? You're the guys who are supposed to come and fix the government, and instead the government has fixed you.
What's happened? Here's a group who came in there to be the plumbers. They moved into the mansion. They took a look around. They said, "It's great here. Maybe we don't want to fix these pipes. Maybe we don't want to be the folks to fix the government; maybe we want to be the folks who move in." This is a government that is drunken from the elixir of power, this party, and they want to stick around even longer. So we've got this whack-a-mole Premier who, if you ask him a question, will stand up and say whatever it takes to get himself out of trouble. Thus, this bill.
Mr Bert Johnson (Perth-Middlesex): On a point of order, Mr Speaker: I think that a member of this Legislature deserves respect in the terminology that all members are due in here, and I think the member from St Paul's should apologize. He's not a wacko Premier.
Mr Bryant: I said "whack-a-mole."
Mr Johnson: He's not that either; he's an honourable member --
The Acting Speaker: Will the member for Perth-Middlesex --
Mr Johnson: I'm rising on a point of order.
The Acting Speaker: And I'm sitting you down. I don't think there was anything out of order.
Mr Bryant: I say to the member opposite -- whack-a-mole. It's not Latin; it's about somebody who refuses to give a straight answer. It's about somebody who'll do anything, say anything to get re-elected. That's what this Premier is all about.
Interjection.
The Acting Speaker: The member for Perth-Middlesex will come to order.
Mr Bryant: This government is responsible for providing direction to Hydro One. This government is responsible for determining the parameters within and around which compensation for the Hydro One board and Hydro One executive officers takes place. And this government was either asleep at the switch --
Hon Jim Wilson (Minister of Northern Development and Mines): Sit down and vote for the bill.
Mr Bryant: Here's the former Minister of Energy saying, "Sit down and vote for the bill." Shame on you. This is a House of debate. This is a Legislature where the opposition has an opportunity to hold this government to account. Because Lord knows, when you were the Minister of Energy, you didn't hold the Hydro One board to account. You were either asleep at the switch or you were conducting this gravy train, and shame on you.
Hon Mr Wilson: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: The honourable member doesn't know what he's talking about and he's imputing motive, and I think you should make some ruling on this.
Interjections.
The Acting Speaker: One moment; we're going to have to have a little bit of decorum in here. It maybe was a little bit too long at supper, I'm not sure, but something has happened. The member for St Paul's has the floor, and only the member for St Paul's.
Mr Bryant: I say again, this government represents the shareholder. They had the opportunity to ensure that we would not end up in the mess that we are in now. Yes, we've got a bill here which is going to hopefully correct it. But let's be clear: this is a mess of the government's creation, and the government won't take responsibility for it. I know it upsets the government. They're getting very upset. They're jumping up and down on points of order to try and distract the people from what's going on here. But this is a mess. This is a huge mess.
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Here's a government engaging in a bill that you might have expected, frankly, from some kind of a banana republic in the cancellation of a contract, I guess citing the doctrine of executive necessity or something, and inevitably affecting all contracts of the crown hereafter. I mean, do you think that an executive officer is going to join in a government enterprise corporation hereafter without expecting some kind of insurance, if you like, compensation, some kind of a premium for entering into a contract as an executive officer with a government enterprise corporation? Why? Because they might end up negotiating a contract and having the contract destroyed, nullified, removed, with no legal recourse whatsoever. That's what this bill does.
We have to do this, because that's the situation we're in right now, but if the government had been doing its job all along we would not be in this mess. It's very difficult to come up with examples by which a government would enter into a contract, would be the representative shareholder in a company, would be the contractee in the contract and would turn around after the contract was completed and pass a law to ensure that in fact the contract would not be observed. It is an admission of failure by the government. It's an admission of failure.
I certainly hope that the taxpayer doesn't end up with a massive litigation bill as a result of the fights that might ensue as a result of those who want to enforce their contracts that have been retroactively terminated or changed. I hope that doesn't happen. But if the Pearson airport precedent is any example, it's going to cost the taxpayers a lot of money to get out of this.
My great concern is that it's a pattern. The government refuses to provide an explanation as to what happened in the Ministry of Energy, who knew what and when, with respect to compensation of Hydro One board members and executive officers.
Similarly, we asked the Minister of Energy, the same person, to answer for what happened last week with respect to the water testing debacle. Water testing is in disarray in this province. What did the minister do? He didn't stand up and say, "I'm going to take responsibility for this. Here's what went wrong and I'm going to fix it." He said, "We're going to have an investigation. Some bureaucrat didn't pick up the phone."
The principle of ministerial responsibility is there not only for the purposes of democracy; it's there in order to ensure the anonymity of civil servants. Civil servants need to know on an ongoing basis that they can give frank advice to a minister, a succession of ministers, depending on the party -- it doesn't matter -- without being dragged on the carpet and being held publicly to account. Civil servants aren't supposed to be publicly held to account in the way that cabinet ministers are. Why? The minister represents the ministry. The minister has to take responsibility for its shortcomings. When it comes to what happened with the Hydro One board, this government didn't do that. The Premier didn't do it; the minister didn't do it. On the environment, they want to engage in another witch hunt looking for more scapegoats instead of taking responsibility, like ministers are supposed to do.
Dalton McGuinty asked a question with respect to when the Premier knew about the compensation packages, and the Premier said, "Well, at the time in question which that payment package came down, I wasn't an MPP at the time." Remember that? This is Mike Harris's right-hand man. This was the finance minister; this was the deputy leader of the Progressive Conservative Party. This was a man who was an MPP in the House for more than 20 years and he was the Premier-designate, and he was saying, "You can't hold me to account. I was in a boardroom at the time."
The purpose of having the executive accountable to the Legislature, and ministers standing up in question period and facing the music, is letting democracy work in this House. It's about letting the government of the day stand up and explain to the Legislature and to the people of Ontario what happened. That's our question: what happened over at Hydro One? What happened? How could this have happened? How could we get to the point where we have to bring in a bill that retroactively cancels a contract? By the way, the bill can disappear. There's a provision in the bill that permits it to repeal by regulation. Poof, it can just disappear.
This is a desperate act of a desperate government. Yes, we have to undertake this drastic measure because the government has got us into this enormous mess. But ultimately the principle of parliamentary responsibility, of ministerial responsibility, requires that the captain go down with the ship, which means that the Minister of Energy has to explain who in his ministry knew about this; why they didn't fix it. When did Minister Wilson know? Why didn't he fix it? How did we get to the point where in fact we have to bring in a piece of legislation like this, which normally would only be brought in under some doctrine of executive necessity, some extraordinary circumstance -- not governmental incompetence, but some extraordinary circumstance? The extraordinary circumstance here is just massive incompetence and a massive refusal to be held to account, a refusal to stand up and say, "We made a mistake. We should have, as the shareholder, as the government, fixed this, got this right." To be held to account is the purpose of democracy, and yet we get this.
I said it before and I'll say it again: the Minister of Energy is engaging in these energy emperor-terminator actions. Before it goes any further, he ought to do two things: (1) explain to this House exactly when his ministry knew about the circumstances leading to this, and (2) let everybody in Ontario understand the compensation packages of the other Hydro successor companies. Ontario Power Generation has a president who has earned as much money as the president of Hydro One, yet there is no accountability there. The charade has got to end. With this bill, we'll help the government get out of trouble, but ultimately the captain has got to go down with the ship, and this government has got to be held to account.
The Acting Speaker: Questions, comments?
Mr Christopherson: Let me say at the outset that I always enjoy listening to the member from St Paul's. He very much reminds me of the dean of this place, Mr Sean Conway, in terms of his ability to articulate a message and convey it. Regardless of whether you agree with the message or not, I think his abilities stand on their own.
In this case, I happen to agree with what he said. Basically, the honourable member from St Paul's was saying, in the image of the 30th anniversary yesterday of Watergate, "What did the minister know and when did he know it?"
The argument actually is pretty airtight. Either the minister knew, because it's his responsibility to know and therefore he needs to be held accountable for doing nothing about the exorbitant pay until it became front-page news, or he didn't know what was going on, which is equally difficult because it's his job to know what's going on in his ministry. One would think, when we've got a public corporation -- because as we speak tonight, that's what it still is. We've got senior executives in a public corporation making themselves instant millionaires. Family fortunes are being founded at Hydro One on the back of every Ontarian who pays a hydro bill. The honourable member from St Paul's rises in his place this evening and says, "Did the minister know? If he did, why didn't he do something? And if the minister didn't know what was going on, why didn't he know?" That's a valid point and it speaks to the very root of the bill in front of us tonight. I want to compliment him on the remarks he made this evening.
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Mr AL McDonald (Nipissing): In the area of the province I come from, which is Nipissing -- I know that the honourable member from St Paul's is very rude. He's pointing. I don't know if your parents ever told you that you shouldn't point. It's rude. He uses innuendoes and half-truths and insults the Premier and different ministers. It's just incredible. I stand here as an individual of this Legislature and understand that there are different points of view from both sides of the floor and I've yet to stand up and insult a member of this Legislature. For the honourable member from St Paul's to stand here and just yap about basically nothing -- and that's all we've heard from him for the last month. It just continues on and on.
What I'd like to say to the honourable member from St Paul's is that the people of Ontario might have a little more respect and understanding of you if you just took a role that says, "Do you know what? This is what I believe." But to stand here and point and do all your waves -- it's just incredible that you don't show respect for all members of the House, including the Premier and all the ministers. You keep saying all these innuendoes and half-truths. You've been saying that for a month now. I don't know who writes your speeches, but you might want to update them every once in a while. Frankly, I've only been here a month and I'm getting tired of them.
Mrs Leona Dombrowsky (Hastings-Frontenac-Lennox and Addington): First of all I would like to commend my colleague the member from St Paul's for the excellent points he made this evening. He does a fabulous job every time, certainly. The focus of his remarks of course was on the minister and what the minister knew and didn't know -- absolutely based on fact -- and what he didn't do and what he doesn't recognize is his responsibility.
Perhaps, before I say any more about my colleague the member from St Paul's and his very salient points, I'll say to the member from Nipissing that I suggest to you that you don't need to give us a sermon about being civil in this House and about calling other members of the House inappropriate names. I've sat in this chamber and listened to the Minister of Environment and Energy and there isn't anyone who pushes that envelope, in terms of disrespect, more than your Minister of Environment and Energy. So for you to stand here and suggest that the member from St Paul's was in any way inappropriate in the comments he made is in my opinion totally out of line. The member from St Paul's happens to be talking about the facts of this issue, the facts that have brought this bill to the House.
My leader, Dalton McGuinty, the member for Ottawa South; the member from St Paul's; the member from Renfrew-Nipissing-Pembroke: were it not for the hard work they have done, we wouldn't even be entertaining this bill here tonight. They have exposed what you failed to recognize. Your government created Hydro One. Now here we are tonight, dealing with the mess you didn't deal with when you should have. You appointed the board. You did not expect accountability from that board. Only when the members on this side of the House exposed that they were totally out of control there did you recognize that maybe something should be done about it. This bill is here because you people got caught.
I commend my colleague. I'm very proud to sit on this side of the House with someone who defends --
The Acting Speaker: Thank you.
Mr Johnson: I just wanted to make some brief comments about the former speaker. I did wonder a little bit about a couple of things. One was about the law training he has had that would allow him to make the assumption that the captain should go down with the ship, when he says, "We need evidence." I always thought that the evidence would come first and then a person would make the decision on what they were to do with it.
Maybe it's my night to disagree, but I thought comparing the speaker to Sean Conway was a little bit like comparing sheep droppings to cherry stones. I just wanted to say that I disagreed with just about everything the member said. I did want to put those things --
Interjections.
Mr Johnson: If I've said something that's not right, I would withdraw it. I just wanted to say that I disagreed with nearly everything the speaker said.
The Acting Speaker: The member for St Paul's has two minutes to respond.
Mr Bryant: I thank all the members for their comments. I would say to the member for Nipissing, in all seriousness, when it comes to decorum around here, I'm afraid that what comes around goes around. When the former Minister of Energy says to me to sit down and vote for the bill, you're going to get the kind of response that was sent his way. This is the minister who was in charge of a ministry that permitted the Hydro One board to engage in a power play that put us in this untenable position today. For that minister to suggest that we should just trust him, not read the bill, not debate the bill, not send the bill to committee but just trust him, of all people, and not continue to debate this matter and not try to hold this government to account, would in my view be a dereliction of my duty as a member of the opposition and of this Legislature. I can tell you that when it comes to decorum, your predecessor, sir, for your seat, was hardly the model of an Ontario parliamentarian. So live by the sword, I guess, and die by the sword, in that sense.
The point here is, the government can try and distract the people of Ontario all they want with respect to what happened, but we on this side of the House are going to continue to ask those questions. We are going to continue to try to hold this government to account. We are going to try to continue to ensure that the captain does go down with the ship. If the members opposite want to get to the bottom of this matter and find out all the evidence, then the government had better start standing up and answering for its ministries, not hiding behind the fact that the minister has been in office in his particular ministry for a few weeks. We will continue --
The Acting Speaker: Further debate? The member for Hamilton West.
Applause.
Mr Christopherson: I thank my friend from St Catharines, and others. I appreciate that. We'll see how you feel at the end of it. These things can change on a dime.
Mr David Ramsay (Timiskaming-Cochrane): Take it easy.
Mr Christopherson: Not "Take it easy on the government," I'm sure.
Interjection: No.
Mr Christopherson: OK. Fair enough.
Let me begin, if I can, as I've done before whenever we've talked about the Hydro issue, and although it's not directly related to this, it is nonetheless Hydro and therefore germane to the point, and that is that, in large part, the Hydro issue that's now before us wouldn't even be here were it not for the labour movement in Ontario and in particular the CEP and CUPE unions that quite frankly saw a broader vision of their responsibilities than just being at the bargaining table filing grievances and taking care of health and safety matters and other important issues. They saw beyond that and saw that to properly and adequately and fully represent their members, they need to be engaged in all aspects of matters that affect their members' lives. Certainly the provision of hydro is very much directly related to jobs, to creation and maintenance of same, as well as just people's ability to pay for the hydro and the air conditioning and the heating that have become a way of life for all of us, particularly in this part of the world.
So again, thanks. The government's sure not going to do it, so I'm going to make sure that the labour movement is recognized and given the thanks they deserve for taking on this issue and giving us in large part the democratic debate that my friend from St Paul's was referring to earlier.
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Now, the bill itself: first of all, it continues to be a valid question to pinpoint exactly what the minister knew and when he knew it, because I have trouble believing the full story is out there at this point. I have trouble understanding how it is that we can have people being paid at a level that causes this government to introduce legislation to reverse it, yet prior to it being on the front page of the papers, the minister knew nothing about it. How can that be? Somebody is asleep at the switch when you go from something being a non-issue to an introduction of legislation in the span of a few weeks. That's quite a gap, and yet there you are and the minister remains. So I don't think all the details are out there as to how we could be where we're at.
But let's deal with the fact that we now have Bill 80 in front of us here in the House. It's supposed to solve the problem, and I suppose from a Tory perspective maybe it does. But I've got to tell you that from the perspective of the average person in Ontario, it falls very short of solving the problem.
The problem is that we've got senior executives at Hydro One who did, it would seem, exactly what the government asked them to do. The government said, "We want you to be more like the private sector. We want you to conduct yourself the way senior executives in the private sector conduct themselves." So, being intelligent people, they said, "If that's what you want us to do, then the first thing we'll do is what senior executives do in the private sector," and that is to take care of themselves. They went out and looked around and saw how much money, how many millions of dollars, individuals are making in the private sector and they said, "We'd better do what the minister asked us to do. We'd better do what the government asked us to do. We'd better raise our wages." So, boy, did they ever.
I say to members in this House, I don't think the government quite gets the way the average person sees this issue in Ontario. They find it hard to believe that somebody leaves a job and they get six million bucks. They have difficulty understanding how it is that somehow these individuals are personally guilty when all they've been doing is following what the government told them to do, which was to act more like the private sector. The government wanted private sector discipline brought to Hydro One, and that's exactly what they did.
Suddenly it becomes front-page news. We don't know whether the minister knew or not, or when he knew, or when he found out, but anyway we've got these multiple millions of dollars being paid to people who were doing what they thought was the government's bidding. It becomes front-page news. There's a major kerfuffle across the province. The government realizes they've got a problem. So they say, "This is awful. We're going to do something. We're going to bring in a law; we're going to pass a law." You know the old saying, "There ought to be a law"? That's what this government said, "There ought to be a law," so they introduced one.
The problem is that it doesn't solve the problem, because all it says in subsection 8(1), under "Designated officers" -- and this is the core of the issue -- is, "The board of directors of Hydro One Inc. shall negotiate with each of the designated officers for a new employment contract that, in the opinion of the board, provides for a substantial reduction in the officer's remuneration and benefits." Obviously, it's very subjective as to what is "a substantial reduction," and when we look at who's going to decide it, the law says it'll be the board, and the board is appointed by the government.
I think most reasonable members of the government can understand why some of us on this side of the House and people out in the public are sort of standing back and saying, "Wait a minute. The Tory-appointed board approved the previous wages" -- or, to be accurate, I guess, the current wages, because I'm not aware they've gone down yet. That board that was appointed by this government was fired by this government, or they resigned the day the bill was introduced. It amounts to the same thing. Then the government brings in a bill that says there's going to be substantial reductions and the people who will decide what are substantial reductions are the members of the board that the government's going to appoint. Surely the government members can understand why some people remain a little skeptical about the intent here.
It's not as if these wages don't have a context. The CEO of Hydro-Québec makes $407,000 a year. I've got to tell you, ordinarily that would make my eyes bulge a bit. I mean, 407 grand a year is a lot of money. But compared to $2.2 million, that sure would constitute a substantial reduction in most people's minds. Any other examples in Canada? Yes, BC Hydro. The CEO there makes $446,000 a year. Again, a lot of money, but compared to $2.2 million, that is quite a substantial reduction. That's why our leader, Howard Hampton, introduced a private member's bill that would, if it were passed, limit the salaries to no more than 10% above those in comparable positions -- ie, the two I've just raised here this evening. That is a bill that we could support.
Our difficulty with this bill is not that it attempts to resolve the problem; it's that it doesn't deal with it. There are no limitations. All it says is there'll be new negotiations and there'll be a substantial reduction and that the opinion of whether or not substantial reductions have been achieved will be decided by a board that this government appoints. That's how we got into the problem in the first place.
You see, this government doesn't believe in interfering. They like to give the impression that when there's an emergency they're prepared to step in. There will be critics who will say they shouldn't do this, and there have been. But at the end of the day they like to stay as far away from these things as possible because they have an ideology that says that those things are to be decided by others. We in the NDP believe that the primary concern should be the public interest.
Can you find the best possible person for half a million dollars a year? I don't know. But Quebec and British Columbia don't seem to have had any problem, and let me just spend a second talking about Quebec Hydro. It just happens that last week I was at a conference on the Great Lakes and seaway cities. I was there as a Hamilton MPP because the Hamilton Harbour, a large part of the waterfront of that harbour, is in my riding. One of the things we did was tour one of the generating plants -- the conference was in Quebec -- and the speaker happened to be the CEO of Quebec Hydro.
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Two important things about that are directly related to our debate here tonight around Bill 80. The first thing is that this CEO said in his speech -- and it was a public speech -- that he did not support nor see any reason to privatize any part of Quebec Hydro. Interesting, particularly when you consider the second part of this, and that is that Quebec Hydro made a billion-dollar profit and that billion dollars went to the Quebec citizens and the Quebec taxpayer. I don't care whether you want to call it a left-wing idea, a right-wing idea, a centrist idea -- call it whatever you want -- I think it's a good idea. It's a good idea that hydro power is guaranteed in the province of Quebec in terms of its availability, its affordability, and at the end of the day it makes a billion-dollar profit that goes back into the coffers of the Quebec government.
There's only one reason you would step into a situation like that and say, "We're going to sell it," and that is that you want to provide somebody or some entity with some of that $1-billion profit that now goes into the public good and have it diverted into somebody's private pocket somewhere, whether it's through shares, dividends, salaries or just generating profits. That's the only reason, because if your primary concern was the public good, then you'd be making the kind of speech that I heard the CEO of Quebec Hydro make and that was, he didn't seen any reason why they'd want to privatize it.
Part of his speech was talking about the future and they were talking about the money that Quebec Hydro is investing and how they're making sure that not only do they have an adequate supply for Quebec citizens and Quebec business, but they do it in such a way -- and I won't get into details; time doesn't permit -- where they are actually able to sell some of their surplus. They generate it in the low times, sell it to the American market, to the American grid, at a huge profit, and then buy it back off that same grid when prices are way down. That seems to me to be using market forces, something this government says they support, but doing it for the public good.
They were talking about the future in terms of new technologies. You know what's really impressive about the Quebec Hydro system? There's so much emphasis on hydroelectric power as opposed to nuclear or coal or any alternative energies because it's an immediately renewable resource and there's no pollution to speak of, certainly not by comparison.
I don't think you have to have a degree in engineering to start to get excited about what you could do with your province and the provision of power, bearing in mind that there's a huge competitive advantage to the extent that Quebec Hydro, like Hydro One, is exempt from NAFTA. So Quebecers, like Ontarians, have the right to sell power domestically at one price and, if we've got a surplus, we can sell it, export it, at a higher price. That makes so much sense. It makes a lot of common sense. But no. We know the government is going to sell part of it. In fact, in the budget they tabled yesterday, in the background papers, if you take a look on page 57, it's all there under "Other Revenues: Sales and Rentals."
We go from the actuals in 2000-01 of $637 million. The interim for 2001-02 is $586 million, and the plan for 2002-03, the budget that was tabled yesterday, shows $2.4 billion of income. The last time there was a jump in that column was just before the last provincial election. Do you know what happened there? You will recall that the government sold Highway 407, which was bad enough, but they took all the revenue from the sale of that public asset and used it as revenue for that one year. They didn't apply it to debt, they didn't apply it to buying something else for the future or making any other investment; they sold it and used that money in their current-year budget so that it showed more money than they otherwise really would have had, and they used that money to put out an election platform that called for more -- wait for it -- tax cuts. This is the same thing. The numbers are almost the same. In the year I'm referring to it was $2.1 billion; this is $2.4 billion.
I don't know what happened in the last couple of weeks. I recall the Premier saying that the new board was going to meet and talk about the future of Hydro One and they'd be making recommendations to him, and all of a sudden this document gets tabled. We can prove the government is expecting the revenue from the sale of at least part of Hydro One, and now it seems to be a foregone conclusion that up to 49% of Hydro One is going to be sold. I don't recall that debate happening here and I sure don't recall that vote, so you still haven't learned your lesson.
I've got one minute. I do want to get at least one other thing on the record. It's something that's in this bill and it has been in a lot of other bills. I've got to tell you, I stand to be corrected, but I don't recall seeing these kinds of clauses as frequently: the last one under the explanatory note of the bill says, "No proceeding may be brought against the crown, Hydro One Inc., a subsidiary of Hydro One Inc. or any other person relating to anything done by the act." In other words, the government is going to do whatever they want and, "Oh, by the way, whether you like it or not and whether or not we've trampled on any of your rights, you can't do anything about this in terms of taking us to court."
There are lawyers in this place. Maybe they can comment. They're better equipped to than I. I don't recall, when we were in government, or other governments, for that matter, incorporating that clause almost as a matter of routine. It's something that needs to be looked at, I would suggest.
To wrap up in the final moments, yes, there's a huge problem. Yes, you should have known. Bill 80 doesn't solve it.
The Acting Speaker: Questions, comments?
Mr Bart Maves (Niagara Falls): It's a pleasure for me to rise and respond to the member for Hamilton West. The member said early on in his speech that this is about public perception. For the man at home the perception is, "How can someone get three or four times more for leaving a job than what he would get if he stayed?"
Indeed, that is the case here that we ran into and found out about after May 17, 2002, when the board of Hydro One directors decided to change the severance package for their CEO. We found out it was this gross amount of $6 million if you leave your job. We responded to the Hydro One board and asked them to act appropriately. We weren't satisfied with their response. We came to this House and the minister introduced this bill.
The bill removes the directors of Hydro One. The bill allows the Minister of Environment and Energy to appoint their replacements. The bill imposes restrictions on the payments that designated officers of Hydro One are eligible to receive. In other words, it adjusts those payments we just talked about. It requires Hydro One to negotiate new employment contracts and it protects the crown, the people of the province of Ontario, against suit for anything that occurs from this act.
In other words, it comes in and deals with the public perception, that people are right to say that $6-million severance is ridiculous. They said, "Do something." The minister did. You guys have done nothing, on the other side of the House, except delay the government from dealing with what the public have asked us to deal with. We're trying to deal with it. I've listened to two 20-minute speeches tonight. I haven't heard one of you say what your position is on the bill. We're here to talk about the bill. Do they want to deal with this problem or do they not want to deal with this problem?
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Mr Ramsay: It's interesting that in this debate and of course in question period, when we raise questions about Hydro One and the government's plans to privatize that, the Minister of Energy and the Premier usually give as a response that we need to bring marketplace discipline to Hydro One. That's really interesting, because how do you bring marketplace discipline to a monopoly? You really have an organization here that is a natural monopoly, as our energy critic would say. There's only one transmission line system in this province and there isn't ever going to be any competition to that. We're not going to have a parallel set of lines down through the transmission corridors here.
If you're talking about running it more businesslike, you have had that opportunity through the appointment of your board of directors since 1999, when you had the break-up of Ontario Hydro into the five successor companies. After that time, you appointed business-oriented people to that board to run it like a business. Yet now you say that this organization is still a failure and that you have to privatize to bring competitiveness to it and business orientation to it.
I think if you took charge of this and kept it in the public domain and asked that board of directors -- and you've got a fairly good board of directors now that you have appointed, a good cross-section of Ontarians of all political stripes. I think they could run it in a good businesslike manner and we could keep the entity in the public domain and have control of it, because it is the people of Ontario who own this entity. Taxpayers since 1908 have basically purchased all the assets of Hydro One. Ontarians are extremely proud of their transmission company, Hydro One. They want it to remain in the public domain. That's the message that Ontarians have been giving to this government and to the Liberal opposition and to our leader, Dalton McGuinty. That's what we're saying to you tonight: we need to keep Hydro One in the public domain. Ontarians love their transmission company.
Mr Gilles Bisson (Timmins-James Bay): The comments made by my colleague the member for Hamilton West, I couldn't agree with more. Quite frankly, for the government to come into the House and say, "Oh, we just found out about this in May, and my Lord, we've got to run to the House with legislation to fix -- oops -- something we found out in May," is preposterous. You're the guys who appointed the board. You're the ones who went out and appointed the board and said to the board that you want it to run with market discipline.
If I understand your argument correctly, you have one of two choices in your defence: either the board didn't tell you -- at which point, I'm telling you, you guys have a problem; that means to say, you've got a minister who's not under control as far as being able to control the board -- or you knew about it and did nothing. I've got to believe the Minister of Energy. The answer is (b), because he has said he's known about this for a long time. He has basically flipped his story, but if you listen to the latest story he says he knew. So the reality is, you guys are incompetent. There's no other explanation.
This board has been in place since 1999. They negotiated salaries and severance packages under the nose of the minister, and you guys did nothing about it. Then you come to the House and say that we, the opposition, are trying to hold it up. What poppycock. It makes no sense. You are the guys who have known about this and have done nothing. So now you're trying to do a little bit of damage control. Then you've got the nerve to come in here and say we're delaying the process? Where the heck have you guys been for the last number of years when you've known what's going on? You could have brought legislation into this House, you could have talked to the board directly, you could have exercised the powers of the Minister of Energy to deal with this issue, but you did nothing. So who has delayed the process? Not three days of debate at second reading; it's an incompetent government that chose to do nothing.
Mr Bob Wood (London West): I noted with interest that the member talked a lot about the context of Hydro restructuring. I think that was quite reasonable because this bill has to be looked at in terms of the whole context of the problems it's addressing.
I don't think I have to remind the House of the problems that Ontario Hydro and its successor companies had. We had escalating prices, we had $38 billion in debt, $21 billion of which was stranded debt. Under the NDP, when they hired some new management, the management laid off about a third of the people working at Ontario Hydro and there was no reduction of service.
I think any reasonable person is prepared to agree that there was a serious problem at Ontario Hydro. I think the question arises, how is it that this problem happened and what are the solutions, because this bill certainly should be part of the solution.
My suggestion to this House and to the member opposite is that the problems arose because there was no accountability to the lenders because there was a government guarantee, there was no accountability to the owners because it wasn't the politicians' money, and there was no accountability to the consumers because there was no competition.
What the government has put before the people of Ontario and before this House is a solution which actually solves those problems. I hope that the member in his response is going to share with us his analysis of why there was such a mess at Ontario Hydro and how he thinks those problems are actually going to be solved. I would invite him not to look at "more of the same, only we'll do it better." We've seen that for many years and it has not worked at Ontario Hydro.
The Acting Speaker: Response?
Mr Christopherson: I thank my colleagues from London West, Timmins-James Bay, Timiskaming-Cochrane and Niagara Falls. To comment on the last speaker, just the fact that you're inviting a different opinion is a positive step forward. Up till now -- and you've been very clever about it -- what you've done on every single issue is, you've been very good at articulating and identifying problems, which in and of itself is no great feat. In any kind or organization as big as the government of Ontario there is always room for improvement. But in the past, you always identified the problem and then said, "That justifies what we're doing," and it doesn't. Just like in this case, yes, we can all argue what the problem is, but to say that because you've identified the problem, your solution is the one and only that works is not correct. This is not the case.
Interjection: What's yours?
Mr Christopherson: I'm going to come to that. Give me a moment. I've only got a minute left and I'll come to that second part.
Let me also go to the member for Timiskaming-Cochrane. He echoed my thoughts on the whole issue of what it means for the government to give out a direction to be more businesslike. I'm glad to see that he's onside with that. It wouldn't be right for me to be on my feet without acknowledging and mentioning that it was the leader of the official opposition, Dalton McGuinty, who also late last year thought selling Hydro One was a great idea and had to be brought around to the idea that it's a bad idea.
Lastly, to the member for Niagara Falls, it's interesting that in your comments you said it's a gross amount that they're receiving and that $6 million is outrageous, and then you want to know what we've done. Quite frankly, Howard Hampton has done what this bill should have done. It should have said, "The wages are unacceptable and here are guidelines for what is."
The Acting Speaker: Further debate?
Mr Maves: It's a pleasure for me to rise and again talk about Bill 80, the bill that we're talking about tonight, An Act respecting directors and officers of Hydro One Inc and its subsidiaries. The member for Hamilton West at the end there did hit the nail right on the head. Quite frankly, we know every time on every issue where the NDP stand. They stake out a position on an issue and they pretty much always stand by it. There have been some times when they governed when they didn't do that -- for instance, the social contract, and there were others. But for the most part, the NDP stake out a position and stand by it. They don't apologize afterwards because, "Someone asked me too quickly for a response," which is something that Mr McGuinty did, which is a scary thought.
I do want to comment on the member for St Paul's. I didn't get a chance to talk after he spoke. He went on and on at great length about ministerial accountability and responsibility, and the minister should resign when something wrong happens in their ministry. Regardless of how it happened or whose fault it was, the interesting thing about that is that the Liberals profess to believe that, here in Ontario, for the Ontario government. If they applied that ministerial responsibility to their cousins in Ottawa, quite frankly, there wouldn't be a cabinet in the federal Liberal government. They've had so many screw-ups there, in fact scandals, that it surprises me that he doesn't stand up in this House and demand ministerial accountability out of federal Liberal cabinet ministers, especially when they have billion-dollar boondoggles.
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In this instance, the instance of Hydro One, we came across -- as I said, on May 17 the Hydro One board changed its severance package for one of their executives to something that we found and, as the member for Hamilton West said --
Interjection.
Mr Maves: May 17, I would say again to the member from Timmins-James Bay, who hasn't got the dates right, who hasn't quite got that figured out, it was May 17. That's when we had this enhanced severance package. As the member for Hamilton West pointed out, the average person at home just says, "How can I get paid six million bucks if I walk away from my job -- three or four times more than if I stay in my job?" When that came out, that's when the minister said, "Hold on a second here." He contacted the board, the board acted, wouldn't respond properly to the minister, and that's when we decided to act with Bill 80.
Let me tell everyone at home about Bill 80. Bill 80 is our answer to this public outcry over excessive executive compensation at Hydro One. This government viewed with great concern, as did many Ontarians, the extravagant compensation package of Hydro One executives, especially, as I said, an enhanced severance package which seemed to come out of thin air.
It was clear that the former board of Hydro One no longer shared our views on the best interests of the corporation or on its responsibilities to the people of Ontario. Dismissing a board that no longer reflects shareholders' interests is an appropriate business response. It's called good corporate governance, and Bill 80 deals exclusively with the problems of Hydro One and spells out the rules and procedures for making decisions that would put the people of Ontario first. The previous Hydro One board had strayed from the government's perception of how corporate governance should work. After all, good governance equals good business, and that's what Bill 80 would ensure: that any board of directors for Hydro One act responsibly on behalf of the shareholder. Our proposed legislation puts the people of Ontario first. It very clearly states that the people of Ontario are the shareholders, through their government.
We have appointed an interim board because, as everyone knows, once things hit the fan, the members of the board of Hydro One resigned. We have appointed an interim board which will serve until the next annual general meeting of Hydro One. I'm pleased to say that all of our new board members come with solid reputations and are well qualified to do a good job. They understand that an open, responsible relationship with its shareholder is an important part of their role.
I want to talk a little bit about this new board. I want to start with the chair of the new board, Mr Glen Wright. I know Mr Glen Wright personally. He's a gentleman. He has a great background. He's currently the chair of the Cowan Insurance Group Ltd. He was appointed the chair of the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board in 1996. He's a director of PrinterOn Corp, the Institute for Work and Health, a member of the Wilfrid Laurier University Foundation and a member of the board of governors of the Council for Canadian Unity.
I know him best as the chair of the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board, where he's been since 1996 and has done a spectacular job on behalf of the people of Ontario. The average workers' compensation rates in Ontario are down about 25% since Mr Wright took over in that position. They've done a survey recently of the injured workers. Something like 68% of injured workers are very satisfied with the WSIB in their experience.
Anyone will tell you that when you go back to 1995 and the years previous, everybody, whether you were an injured worker, an employer or a lawyer who dealt with the WSIB, it didn't matter who you were, thought it was a mess. It was an absolute mess. Rates were going through the roof and businesses just couldn't afford compensation rates.
I remember in 1993 in the region of Niagara we did a business survey and there were three principal concerns, two having to do with the high level of taxes, and the other one was with the workers' compensation system in this province. It was a major impediment; it was a major problem in keeping business and attracting business into this province. All that has been turned around, and at the head of that was Mr Glen Wright. As a pick for the chair of this interim board I can't imagine -- when I heard that I was absolutely delighted -- a better person. He is backed up by some very impressive people.
Geoffrey Beattie is currently president of the Woodbridge Co Ltd. He serves on the board of several companies, including the Thomson Corp, Bell Globemedia and the Royal Bank of Canada. He's a lawyer and he's got a lot of experience on boards of directors.
Heather Munroe-Blum has been a professor at the University of Toronto since 1994, where she's the vice-president of research and international relations. She has been named the 16th principal and vice-chancellor of McGill.
So you've got a good person who has led a board in Mr Wright. You've got Geoffrey Beattie, who served on several boards and has a great business background, and then an academic in Heather Munroe-Blum.
Rita Burak: everyone in this House will know Rita. She was here as the chief civil servant of Ontario for many years. She has a great deal of experience and would be great on any board.
Dr Murray Frum served as chairman of Frum Development Group before being appointed chair of the Ontario Arts Council Foundation. He's chair of the Ontario Cultural Attractions Fund and a governor of Mount Sinai Hospital. He was awarded, I might add, the Order of Canada in the year 2000.
Don MacKinnon has been the president of the Power Workers' Union since May 2000 and a lineman by trade since 1971. I haven't heard any of the members opposite compliment this Premier and the minister for appointing the head of the union at Hydro One to the board of directors. I think that was a great move and an appropriate move. Mr MacKinnon was vice-president of the union for 11 years prior to being elected president. He was appointed by the Minister of Energy, Science and Technology to the electricity transition committee and has been a member of the board of directors of the electrical safety association and the retail management board of Ontario Hydro.
I would just add to this, and I've said this before in the House, that I commend Mr MacKinnon for the direction he and the workers at Hydro One and his union brothers and sisters have taken, a very forward-looking direction, where they've actually advertised for the privatization of Hydro One. They believe very deeply that Hydro One needs some outside capital brought in, in order to maintain and upgrade the transmission grid in this province. Mr MacKinnon really was a brave fellow. He stood to be put down by other union leaders like Mr Ryan and Mr Hargrove, people who don't want anything to do with this type of forward-looking, "Let's improve the company. What do we need to improve the company?" when the company improves the lives of our workers and our union brothers and sisters. So I commend Mr MacKinnon and I think he's a great addition to the board.
Ken Taylor is the chair of Global Public Affairs Inc. He is currently chancellor of Victoria University and serves as director on the boards of Skylink Aviation Inc, Devine Entertainment Corp and J&H Marsh and McLennan. He's the former Canadian ambassador to Iran and former Canadian Consul General in New York. He's the recipient of the United States Congressional Gold Medal and is an Officer of the Order of Canada. Everyone knows of Ken Taylor and his background as a diplomat who brought a great deal of pride to this country through his actions when he was ambassador to Iran.
Who else is on the board? Another blue-ribbon business person is Adam Zimmerman, with an accounting background. Mr Zimmerman is a fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants and has served on over 43 private sector boards during his career. Now retired, his corporate experience includes chair of the board of Noranda Forest, chairman and director of Confederation Life, director of Maple Leaf Foods, Southam Inc and the Toronto-Dominion Bank.
2000
That's a list of some of the very impressive people who have been appointed to be interim board of directors of Hydro One, and I have to commend the Premier and the minister for that.
These are the ones who are actually an extremely impressive group of people but, too often in the media, get passed over, simply because there are three high- profile political people on this board as well. Who are those three high profile political people? Well, one is Murray Elston, currently the president of Canada's research-based pharmaceutical companies. From 1981 to 1994 he served as Liberal MPP in the Ontario Legislature, where he held the positions of Minister of Health, Chairman of Management Board, Minister of Financial Institutions and chairman of the public accounts committee. Mr Gerretsen, whom I serve on the public accounts committee with, just left the room. He's the current chairman of that committee, and he does a very able job. But Mr Elston has quite a background in politics. He's well known. He was thought to be, at one point in time, a potential leader in the Ontario Liberal Party. In fact, I think they tried to get him to come back in the 1999 leadership, and he said, I think, "No way." But he has quite a distinguished career, and he will be a good member of that board.
Darcy McKeough is chairman of McKeough Investments Ltd and McKeough Supply Inc. He was Treasurer of Ontario and Minister of Economics and Intergovernmental Affairs in the cabinet of Premier William Davis. He serves as a board member for several organizations, and is an officer of the Order of Canada and, if I'm not mistaken, did work with Union Gas and so has quite a bit of history and knowledge of the energy sector.
Lastly, we have Bob Rae, the former Premier and leader of the NDP for many years -- 1982 to 1996, I believe. Premier Rae is an interesting sort, and the Liberals were quite upset when it was rumoured that Mr Rae would be asked to serve on the board, and actually maybe some members of his own party were upset; I don't know, but I recall members of the opposition.
Mr Rae had a bit of a turnabout of his philosophy of the world and the economics of Ontario when he served as Premier and found he couldn't spend his way out of debts and deficits. I know they did try to make some changes at Workers' Compensation before we came in and tried to actually lower rates, and they heard from the business community and tried to make some changes there. They tried to stop their relentless spending with the social contract.
In his private life so far, he actually represented the lumber companies of Canada. I saw him on CPAC one night giving his speech in Washington and lecturing to the American audience about the benefits of free trade. So Mr Rae has moved a little bit from his socialist philosophies on economies. With his legal experience, political experience, experience dealing with people and his experience now as a lawyer and working on behalf of lumber companies in other parts of the world, he'll have something to add to that board of directors.
So that's the new board. It's an impressive one and, as I said, the three political people get all the attention, but there are a lot of very competent, highly skilled people on that board who are not mentioned.
I would say that the new board's commitment to good governance will obviously result in enhanced shareholder value. However, it is still necessary that Bill 80, the bill we're talking about here tonight, is passed in order to ensure that the people of Ontario are protected against excessive provisions in some current contracts of Hydro One executives. Under this proposed legislation, interim board members would have a mandate to negotiate to substantially reduce the total compensation for the top five executives of Hydro One and to review the compensation package of all other officers.
They've stood up, they've complained about the compensation packages of Hydro One, not just the severance packages but all the compensation packages of the executives at Hydro One. Yet this legislation mandates that the interim board negotiate to substantially reduce the total compensation of the top executives of Hydro One. Why won't they stand in their place and support that and say it's a good thing? I'm waiting to hear some member opposite say, "The public perception, the guy in the street is opposed to those compensation packages." Well, this bill mandates the new board to reduce them and negotiate reduced salaries. Why they're opposed to that is beyond me.
The review of compensation packages reflects Hydro One's need to attract and retain talented executives, balanced against the expectations of Ontarians for fair and reasonable compensation packages.
Bill 80 also provides that during the period of negotiation, any officer who retires, resigns or is terminated would receive only those pension or severance entitlements as defined by the legislation. In other words, you can't cut and leave quickly and get some of these enriched severance deals that have been put on the table. That's protection the bill provides. So again, why members opposite are delaying this bill and holding it up is beyond me. It's a surprise to me, quite frankly, that they rise in the House and complain so vociferously about this.
I do want to go back and say one thing. We don't expect that we're going to get these top five executives and other executives at Hydro One to work for $25,000, $35,000 or $45,000. It's unreasonable to think that's going to be the case. Executives in these positions in like companies all over the world and North America -- sometimes it's a very competitive salary base to have executives at this level. So these people will still make several hundred thousand dollars, I'm sure, because in order to attract good quality people, those are the salaries you have to pay. That's not a problem.
Mr John Gerretsen (Kingston and the Islands): It's like being an MPP.
Mr Maves: The member opposite is worried that MPPs need to get paid more in order to attract better MPPs. I do believe this is a competitive industry. If you look at all the big energy companies in the States and their salaries -- and I have; I've seen a table of all the salaries of the executives in these positions -- a lot of them are a lot higher than our people are making, I'll tell you that right now. You do have to pay a competitive wage and we want to pay a competitive wage, but we just want some of these offensive provisions, like the severance packages that were put in place, removed. Again, this bill mandates that that happen.
It's very easy for me to stand in the House tonight and support Bill 80. I was surprised and disappointed that the members opposite haven't seen fit earlier than this point to push this bill through quicker. Why? The bill does everything they've been asking for. I think we can all agree on the contents of the bill. The bill is what they've been asking for. It's what we've wanted to do for several weeks now. By holding it up, you're only hurting Ontario taxpayers. As the member for Hamilton West mentioned, the guy in the street is offended by some of these provisions. This bill deals with some of these provisions that the guy in the street is offended with. That's why we introduced it. That's why we're increasingly disappointed that we're just not getting co-operation from members opposite on this bill.
The Acting Speaker: Questions and comments?
Mrs Marie Bountrogianni (Hamilton Mountain): I'd like to congratulate my colleagues from St Paul's and Hamilton West for their remarks. I actually found the remarks of the member for Niagara Falls very interesting as well.
We don't have a problem with the new interim board. They're fine people. That's not the issue. The issue is why it took so long for you to see that there was such a huge compensation problem. We've gone on record as saying that severances should be open. I have a private member's bill on that which was unanimously passed by this House on second reading. Mind you, that happened once before on a previous severance bill, and that died the first time the House was prorogued.
The member opposite referred to another member saying the guy on the street gets very upset at these huge compensation packages. Of course they do. I guess my question to you is, why didn't you know about the $6-million severance golden parachute? That's an obscene amount of money for a severance package at any level, including the private level. But private and public are two different things. The shareholders make those decisions in a private company, and who are we to question that? Where it is obscene is when the public shareholders, in this case the taxpayers, don't even have a say in what these severance packages are, and that is what happened here. That is because there is a gap in the sunshine law that you brought out with respect to salaries where severances aren't covered.
I would urge you to consider expanding this, and not just for Hydro One but for all public sector executives, so that there are open and reasonable severance packages. Considering what a lot of people in the province have to go through to make ends meet, that's the very least we can do for morale in this province and in the public sector as well. I think there's nothing wrong with making severance packages in Hydro One reasonable; that's what we've been calling for. Two things: (1) Why did it take so long? (2) Let's extend this to public sector severances throughout the province.
2010
The Acting Speaker: Questions and comments?
Mr Bisson: Thank you very much, the Speaker from Manitoulin Island, I think it is -- anyway, Algoma-Manitoulin.
To the member for Niagara Falls: interesting conversation we heard here tonight because, if I'm to believe what the member is saying, they found out about these severance packages some time this May and then decided to do something about it, and he's mad that we, the opposition, supposedly are holding up the solution. That's the gist of the debate.
Let's take a look at that. First of all, I listened to the Minister of Energy, who said in the beginning, "Oh, I only found out about this some time in May," came back into the House afterwards and said, "Oh no, I've known about this all the time; everybody's known about this all the time." So I have to believe the Minister of Energy at one of his words and, for the sake of the argument, I'll choose that you guys always knew. If that's the case, if you always knew about these severance packages and you always knew about the wages and did nothing, then it means to say you guys were complicit in the decision and basically all this bill is about is trying to save political face. Or, you knew and did nothing. If that's the case, then you guys were asleep at the switch and basically are incompetent. Or, let's take the other argument from the minister: the minister says he doesn't know and didn't know anything. This board was appointed by your government in 1999, so if that's the case and if I'm to believe one of the minister's versions, that he knew nothing, then it means to say that you guys were asleep at the switch. So which one was it?
Howard Hampton and the New Democrats have said there is a solution to this. When we found out, we brought forward legislation that basically sets legislation at a comparable rate to other public utilities across the country, such as Quebec, Manitoba and British Columbia. We're saying to you, there is a way of fixing this. Accept the private member's bill that's been put forward by Howard Hampton. It'll deal with your issue and at the same time make sure that the taxpayers and the ratepayers of this province aren't stuck on the hook for a great big golden parachute that's being set up for Eleanor Clitheroe and others at Hydro One.
Mr McDonald: I just want to thank my friend from Niagara Falls for being so eloquent in his words about the new board that has been installed. The experience of these individuals who have been appointed by the Premier and this government shows that this government is on track and will straighten out some of the past decisions of that previous board which this bill is trying to correct.
It still surprises me today that the opposition, the Liberals and the NDP, are holding it up. On one hand they're advocating that there need to be changes; they're telling us this was a terrible thing. Of course when the government tries to introduce a bill, Bill 80, to say, "You know what? Let's correct this today and install these people," the opposition -- the Liberals and the NDP -- stand up and go, "Well, we're not going to support it now." They asked for it and now they're saying that they don't want it and they're not going to support it. I find that kind of confusing, but I've only been here a short period of time.
Sometimes you have to be careful what you ask for -- you might get it. Obviously this might be the case. They've come here and said that they want changes. The government's making changes and now they don't want changes.
I guess what I'm a little curious about is -- if the Liberals will tell us -- maybe they don't want to support Bill 80, because I haven't heard a stance that they're taking on this. They're basically saying, "No, we're not going to support Bill 80." Maybe in the next 10 or 15 seconds you might stand up and say, "Yes, we agree with the government. We don't want those people to get paid that money and we support this bill."
Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines): I want to get the support of my friend from Niagara Falls. First of all, I have to report to Gary Pillitteri, the federal member, what he was saying about the federal Liberals.
All I ask is this of my friend from Niagara Falls: if the news media ask these ministers the same questions they asked the ministers in Ottawa and they do the same FOI, freedom of information request, then we might see a similar pattern. But I'll put that aside, because I want to enlist the support of my friend, which I know I will get, for the Beck 3 project. That's to do with hydro, of course.
In Niagara Falls we have an opportunity to develop yet another hydroelectric power source. We can call it Beck 3. The Sir Adam Beck stations are very well known in Niagara Falls. Let me tell you the value of it, and I'm sure the member would agree. First of all, it would create jobs for people in the Niagara area. That's the early benefit of it. But the longer-term benefit would be that it would produce electrical power over the years at a competitive price, particularly when you compare what the environmental costs are going to be as reflected in the true costs of electricity as years go by. Third, speaking environmentally, it is virtually benign. It is certainly benign in terms of its air pollution, and virtually benign other than that. Much of the work has been done. One of his predecessors, Vince Kerrio, when he was the Minister of Natural Resources and Minister of Energy, certainly was a great proponent of that project. We saw some preliminary work being done. That preliminary work has progressed, and I am very confident that my friend from Niagara Falls would agree with me that proceeding with the Beck 3 project would be very good for Ontario.
The Acting Speaker: Response?
Mr Maves: I thank all my colleagues in the Legislature for their comments. To the member for St Catharines, I'm several steps ahead of you on this one. I've been working on Beck 3 for quite some time and it would be a good project. Actually, the Beck 3 power plant, the new power plant, is a little bit out of the question right now. However, an extra tunnel is something we've been after for some time, and that tunnel alone would cost $500 million.
The one problem we have at this point in time, it is my understanding, is that we want this to be in a proper business case. That project brings in power at about four and a half cents. As you would know, right now we can't continue to ask OPG to do something that's going to make them run at a deficit and add to their debt. If the power is going to be four and a half cents, right now the average price of power in Ontario has plummeted since we opened the market to about 3.25 cents a kilowatt hour. So at this point in time we still have to work on improving the business case of that project. Obviously, I would love to see that project go ahead in my riding.
Thanks to the member for Nipissing for his kind comments.
To the member for Hamilton Mountain, I know her bill will come before the committee on public accounts, at which I sit with her colleague Mr Gerretsen, and we will give that due consideration.
To the member for Timmins-James Bay, I will speak slowly. I have said several times now to the member for Timmins-James Bay that these excessive severance packages weren't actually put in place until May 17 this year, and it was those --
Mrs Bountrogianni: That's not true.
Mr Maves: Not the compensation packages. The minister said the compensation packages are a matter of public knowledge. It was the excessive severance packages that were the last straw. Those were negotiated on May 17. The minister found out about them, contacted the Hydro board and told them to act appropriately. They did not. On June 4 we introduced this bill. We still haven't passed it. Please help us out.
The Acting Speaker: Further debate.
Mr Gerretsen: I'm very pleased to join this debate tonight to give you my view of the situation. First of all, we on this side support this bill. Obviously, we support this bill. But let's go back a little bit and talk about how this bill was introduced here and how your government House leader basically tried to get us to vote on it sight unseen. You may recall that he brought the bill in after there was this publicity about the fact that the board wasn't going to change its mind about the compensation packages, and he expected us to vote on it the same day, without anybody having seen the bill. Nobody had seen a copy of the bill, other than the government House leader and presumably some other backroom people. He presented the bill to the House and wanted us to vote on it. We said, "Of course not. We want to know what's in the bill. We want to have the right to read the bill."
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We know quite well that you've been accustomed over the last number of years to putting hostages in bills, sections that people at first didn't think were going to be in a particular bill and that did something totally different than the bill was intended to do. That's point number one: we wanted to know what was in the bill.
Secondly, after we knew what was in the bill and it had been distributed to everyone, which I think was within the next 24 hours, our House leader gave your House leader a letter in which he unequivocally said, "We will support the bill immediately for second and third readings if you do two things. Number one, cancel the exemption of freedom of information for Hydro One and OPG." In other words, what the people of Ontario have to understand is that currently, Hydro One and OPG, Ontario Power Generation, which are the two companies of the original Ontario Hydro, are not subject to the freedom-of-information laws of this province. You'd ask yourself why. The sole shareholder of both of these companies is the government of Ontario, the people of Ontario as represented through the government. Why should these two large corporations be exempt from freedom of information? So that was the first condition he put on it.
The second was that once the bill was given second reading, there would be two days of legislative hearings right here at Queen's Park, at which time the committee members from all sides of the House -- and remember, on all committees you hold the majority -- would be allowed to examine under oath the people who had been involved in making these decisions; in other words, the president of Hydro One, various board members and perhaps some other senior staff people. Your House leader and your government, by their actions, said, "No, we're not going to do that."
Under those circumstances, do you expect us to just unilaterally give you the right to give second and third readings to a law that basically deals with a situation that you yourself as a government have created?
I've heard an awful lot over the last couple of weeks as to when the minister knew and when he let the Premier know, and everything that goes along with that. Quite frankly, I personally don't care whether he knew one day instead of the next day or instead of a week before that. The simple point of fact is that this information was known by a Minister of Energy as long ago as two or three years. Yes, the packages became extremely excessive within the last two or three months, but let nobody be under any impression that the salaries weren't excessive well before that.
I happened to be at one time the chairman of the Ontario Housing Corp, having been appointed by one government and reappointed by another government, and I'm a great believer in the notion that the government of the day should be able to appoint the chairs of its various boards and commissions. I really believe that through the various boards and commissions that a government operates by, it extends the policy direction of that particular government. I've always believed in the notion that the government of the day should be able to appoint the chairs of the various boards and commissions that are out there.
I can tell you that when I was the chairman of the Ontario Housing Corp from 1989 to 1992 and then extended for a while, and then later on as a board member until after I got elected here in June 1995, there were regular meetings between the board, or at least the chair of the board, and the minister who was responsible to that board. I for the life of me cannot see any other situation that could possibly occur. So if the Minister of Energy, whoever that happened to be from time to time, didn't know what was going on on some of the major decisions that were taking place within that board, in this case within Ontario Hydro, then I would say that minister was negligent, regardless of what government was in power. If the minister didn't know, he was negligent. I can't for the life of me see a situation where these kinds of excessive salaries that have been paid within Ontario Hydro over the last four to five years, and maybe well before that, were not known to whoever happened to be the minister of the day. I quite simply say this: if he knew, he should have taken action at the time -- or if she knew, action should have been taken at the time. If they didn't know, they were negligent in not getting that knowledge.
I don't get too hung up as to whether or not this particular minister knew on a given day or if it was a day before or whatever, other than the fact that he may have misspoken in the House or he may have made an incorrect statement here. I'll just leave it at that. But for the government to have the general public believe the notion that the minister took action right away but he didn't know anything about it until sometime in early May, quite frankly I totally and absolutely reject that, because he either knew or he should have known, and if he didn't know, he was negligent. That's the long and the short of it.
Having said all that, let me just say that some of the sections of this particular bill -- this has already been raised, I believe, by the member from Hamilton West -- to try to correct this act are pretty stern. To take away an individual's right to sue for compensation and their rights as a citizen -- I know what the government intended here; they were going to take stiff action, and the only way to do it was to take away that individual's rights -- to take somebody's rights away, I take very seriously.
I don't for a moment want you to believe I'm taking it up for the four executives who were exorbitantly paid; this bill is now going to cut back their salary situation. But if this becomes standard practice, if a government wants to correct the errors it has made by taking the kind of drastic action that is suggested in some of these sections -- by taking away the civil rights of individuals who may feel they have been wronged, not being able to resort to court actions in order to protect their own rights -- I would say we are rapidly on the road to becoming much less of a democratic society. I think that is something surely, in the larger scheme of things, we all wouldn't be in favour of, to say the least.
Let's talk about the larger issue. Why did Ontario Hydro even become an issue in the first place? Again, we've heard an awful lot about the stranded debt of about $20 billion, that there is about $18 billion worth of assets and the total debt is about $38 billion, so about $20 billion of the debt isn't covered.
I take a slightly different point of view. I personally believe that governments over the last 100 years, of whatever political stripe, have quite often or always used the electricity rates in this province as a method of economic development. If it wanted to get a certain business into this province that was going to provide a lot of jobs, no matter what sector we're talking about, particularly the kind of industry that was going to use a lot of electrical power, in those particular cases low electricity rates have always been used in order to get those jobs into this province. It has been done for 100 years. No wonder, after selling power at below the real cost in order to attract those businesses, you're going to run up debt. Yes, a large part of this stranded debt may very well be due to inefficiency, to mismanagement and all that sort of thing, but I also happen to believe a fair chunk of it is due to the economic policies that have been practised by governments of all sides. So to take the kind of harsh view toward this whole thing that maybe we've done I don't think is quite correct.
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In any event, back in early December Mr Harris decided he was going to sell the generation grid in this province, basically Hydro One, the grid that ties the generating capacity to the distribution capacity on the other side. The reason they're selling it, the only business case I've ever heard that the government has made for this, is, "We wanted to get rid of some of our debt." It always reminds me of a situation where in order to get rid of your debt you sell your house because you don't like the mortgage you're paying any more. Now, in this case I realize it was a lot worse than that, because the mortgage in effect was worth twice the amount the house was worth. But still, why would you want to sell the asset that supports the debt, which in effect you're doing by selling Hydro One? You'd be left, at the end of the day, with the debt and absolutely no asset to ever hope to even be able to cut into the repayment of the stranded debt situation.
By the way, we've heard that Premier Eves has now decided to take Ms Witmer's suggestion -- she made it during the leadership campaign that the Tories had -- of perhaps not selling Hydro One. Of course, when we take a look at the budget document, it doesn't quite work out that way. As has already been mentioned, and I think it's on -- what is it? -- page 57 of the budget, it's kind of interesting: when you look on the revenue side of things, and unfortunately most governments tend to take a look more on the expenditure side of things than on the revenue side of the equation, we see that sales and rentals under "Other Revenue" that the government intends to get this year has gone up from $586 million, which is quite a substantial amount, to $2.4 billion. In other words -- what is that? -- five times the amount that we sold in assets last year.
As was suggested by the member from Scarborough-Agincourt today, and I'm not quite sure whether the Premier confirmed this or denied it, or whether he gave any answer to it at all, a significant sum of money that is included in this $2.4 billion is from the sale of maybe not all of Hydro One but 49% of Hydro One. I would like somebody on the government side to address that. I mean, certainly the media have portrayed the idea that you're no longer interested in selling Hydro One at this time, and I'm sure there are an awful lot of people out there who somehow think the sale of Hydro One is off the table right now. Well, I think the people of Ontario should know that maybe the sale of the controlling interest of Hydro One is off the table but certainly not the sale of 49% of Hydro One.
I would like this government to take the further courageous step -- because they've taken a courageous step, they've changed their mind on the issue, and it takes some courage to do that. By the way, I don't think there's anything wrong with changing your mind. If we didn't change our mind about anything around here, you could very easily say, "What's the sense of talking about anything?" So they've already changed their mind. First they were going to sell the whole thing, and now presumably they're down to, "Well, we may sell 49%," and I don't regard it as a bad thing. People can make their own judgment as to whether that's a good or a bad thing. But I don't think the government changing its mind occasionally about a situation, particularly when there's an awful lot of public sentiment about it and no good reason has been given for taking a certain action, is necessarily a bad thing.
What I would like the government to do is to take that next step now and to say, "OK, we're not going to sell any of it. We recognize the fact that the hydro grid that's out there, which the people of Ontario have collectively built over the last 100 years, all those transmission lines that go from one end of the province to the other end of the province, will remain in public hands and will not be sold. By not selling it, we don't mean we're not going to sell the majority of it; no, we're not going to sell it at all." That's what I would like to hear the government say, because, as I indicated before, their budget document certainly indicates that they have included on the revenue side of things almost an extra $1.9 billion, and presumably a lot of that can be attributed to the sale of 49% of Hydro One, which of course leads you to the next question: OK, if they plan to sell Hydro One, or 49% of it, for $1.9 billion, and if they don't, what's going to happen at the end of the year? The spin the government members tried to put on the whole budget yesterday was, "We've got a balanced budget," but if you don't sell it, you don't have a balanced budget; presumably you're going to be $1.9 billion short at the end of the year, which is a fairly significant amount on a budget of about $63 billion to $64 billion. I would say $1.9 billion on $64 billion is probably in the neighbourhood of 2% to 3%.
I can tell you that we do support this bill, but I think you have to take some responsibility for the boards that you have put together, that you have appointed. Everybody looks at the old Hydro board as being the bad old board, but you appointed each and every member of that board in exactly the same way you appointed each and every member of the new board and you have to take responsibility for what the board does. Does that mean that a board is totally hamstrung by what a government wants to do on a day-to-day basis? No, but certainly a board has to take direction from the government in its overall philosophy, in its overall way of doing things, in its overall direction etc. For whatever reason, either through negligence or through straight lack of knowing -- or you did know and you're not telling us about it -- you did not have that with respect to the Hydro One board.
My own personal perception is this: if this had not become a public outcry from the general public and through the media six or eight weeks ago, nothing would have been done by now -- absolutely nothing. We'd probably either never know about it or we'd hear about it a year or two from now, when perhaps the company would have been sold. Maybe in a scary sort of way it's a wakeup call for the people of Ontario, that with this horrendous situation happening as far as the executive salaries are concerned, it was a method by which in effect the sale of Hydro One could be stopped.
I will wind up now, because I know there are other members who will want to speak on this as well.
I would simply say this to the government: you have the right to appoint particularly the chairs of the various boards and commissions that operate under your general direction and I, as one individual member who has been in that position for two governments in the past, simply will not accept the fact that you did not know about these excessive salaries that have been paid at Hydro One for the last two to three to four years, up until a month or six weeks ago, or whatever.
Mr Bradley: And OPG.
Mr Gerretsen: And OPG as well. They make a big deal over the fact that, "Yes, isn't it a horrible situation that the president of Hydro One made $2.1 million -- but on the other hand, the president of OPG only made $1.6 million," and that's somehow OK.
Mr Bradley: He got a bonus too.
Mr Gerretsen: And a bonus etc. All of that's not OK. I would think that the government has learned a lesson and hopefully the people's reaction to that lesson has been in the long run to save Hydro One from a huge mistake.
The Acting Speaker: Questions or comments?
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Mr Tony Martin (Sault Ste Marie): I just want to say that I appreciated the speech of the member from Kingston. He always has some insightful thoughts on issues before the Legislature. I have to agree with a lot of what he said tonight. I think this government likes to play games with a lot of what it has responsibility for and does not take seriously the leadership it is called to exercise by the people of this province when it is elected. There's a sense across the way, perhaps counterbalanced in some way by a sense on this side, I guess particularly in this caucus, that if the private sector does it, it's got to be right. There's this private sector discipline that they talk about all the time; there seems to be some high value out there that we should be able to measure everything against, and if we do that, at the end of the day we'll all be better served and it'll be OK.
Of course, on this side we oftentimes go overboard in saying that if it's run by the public sector, then it's the correct way to go. I think we've discovered over the years that there are things that are run best in the private sector; there are things -- certainly government services, the oversight of things like our health care system, water and the environment -- that are best left in the hands of the public, where government accountable to the people is called to account.
In this instance we have a body that is very much in the public realm overseeing the delivery of a commodity that is very important to almost everything we do in our daily life, and the government needs to understand that they will be and are being held accountable.
Mr John O'Toole (Durham): I am standing to achieve a couple of objectives. The first is to acknowledge the comments made by the esteemed opposition member from Kingston and the Islands. The second is to put the viewer on notice that I will be speaking in a very short time, so stay tuned. I want to say hello to my wife, as well. She is probably in the midst of doing her report cards, because it's nearing the end of the school year.
On a serious note, I am very pleased to see something on the record that hopefully isn't going to change radically when the next Liberal speaker gets up. The Leader of the Opposition, with all respect, has had several positions on this. One of the speakers earlier said to sort of date-stamp them. Some of those announcements have been time-dated or stale-dated.
I really feel, though, that each of us wants to have safe, reliable and affordable power. No one in this House would agree with the astronomical remuneration packages that have been set up in a relatively non-competitive environment, a monopolistic kind of job. They're not in competition with Ford or Chrysler or Duke Energy or whatever.
To say that those were appropriate salaries -- and I'll get into some more detail in the limited time that I'll have -- that those were appropriate compensations, somebody should have spoken to Ms Harvey or someone. Where did she get her expertise? I'm not too sure either.
I worked at a small company, General Motors, for about 30 years, for 10 in personnel, and I did salary administration -- at a very low level, of course; not at this level. There was always a comparator base. I'd like to hear what the comparator base was. Who were they in competition with? Of course, the opposition don't want competition. They want the monopoly.
Mr Jean-Marc Lalonde (Glengarry-Prescott-Russell): First of all, I want to congratulate the member for Kingston and the Islands for his speech. I just wonder, when I look at subsections 9(1) and (2) of the bill, are we not agreed on this agreement between the minister and the head of Hydro One? When I look at the content of this bill, I just wonder, how far can we go after this government has agreed? When I looked on March 23 at the minister who I believe signed the agreement with this Eleanor Clitheroe -- definitely this agreement has gone to a lawyer to rectify it and to agree upon it. Today we're saying, "No, we want to rescind the agreement that we agreed upon." I really believe that whoever is involved in this agreement is subject to be sued at the present time.
When I listened last Thursday to the member for Scarborough East, he said, "You people on the other side know the mess we are in. Hydro One got us $38 billion in the red and this is why we want to get rid of it." My position on this was always, if you don't have the proper management in place, just replace it. Today, this government is saying, "We've had the wrong management operating Hydro One." They want to sell the whole thing, after the court said, "No, you cannot sell it, because you didn't approach the citizens of Ontario." But today in the budget we're saying that we'll be selling over $1 billion of our Hydro One shares to the private sector.
The Acting Speaker: Questions or comments? Questions or comments?
Mr Bradley: I'm glad that the member for Durham was not able to secure a member to get up in time.
I want to compliment the member for Kingston and the Islands on his address this evening as well. What he has really pointed out is that the people on the other side, the government, have been aware for a long time that we have excessive salaries at both Hydro One and Ontario Power Generation, that these folks have been making a lot more money than the public was aware of. The government was well aware of this. The previous minister, Jim Wilson, as we would know him on a personal basis -- the Honourable James Wilson said he used to meet with Hydro officials on a regular basis and give them advice, and they gave him advice. So they were well aware of the salary structure. They were quite satisfied with it over there, because they're used to running with people who make that kind of money. Those are the people who show up at their fundraisers, so they're very familiar with those people.
They didn't take any action until the heat came on. That seems to be the way the Eves government operates: "We'll just coast along, and then if we get some heat, we'll just get up and say anything at the time, and the problem will be solved."
Interjections.
Mr Bradley: I always hear interjections. I'm very amused when I hear the other side talk about changing positions, because Premier Eves has had six different positions. He had one when he was running for the leadership -- everybody should have listened at that time to Elizabeth Witmer, who was a candidate; then after he became the leader; and then, to save the by-election, he says, "All off the table"; then it was back on the table; and then the heat built up again and it's off the table again. So there were six different positions. So when I hear people over there lecture about flip-flops, my friend Ernie is the king of flip-flops.
The Acting Speaker: Now we'll have a response from the member for Kingston and the Islands.
Mr Gerretsen: I'd like to thank the members from Sault St Marie, Durham, Glengarry-Prescott-Russell and St Catharines for their comments.
Quite frankly, I think we've got it all wrong in this place. I don't think the people out there care whether you change your mind or not; life is like that. As long as what you do in the long term is right for the people of Ontario, that's all that matters. And the right thing --
Interjections.
Mr Gerretsen: Oh, forget your excuses.
Look, the right thing is not to sell Hydro One. The right thing is to hold on to the electricity highway so that we don't get involved in the same mistakes that you did, for example, with the sale of Highway 407. Because you see, in this particular case, there is no other electricity highway.
Would somebody please stand up and give me one good reason why you want to sell it? Because no good reason has been given over the last six months. Would somebody also please stand up and tell me why the freedom of information legislation should not apply to Hydro One and OPG? There's only one shareholder: the government, the people, all of us. Why don't you want the freedom of information legislation to apply? Would somebody please get up and tell me what is so wrong with a legislative committee -- which you control -- meeting for a couple of days and interviewing and holding hearings and listening to what the board of directors, the senior management people of Ontario Hydro, have to say? What are you hiding? Why don't you want the truth to come out?
That's the bottom line. You must be hiding something, or else you'd say, "Yes, of course we have the right to have freedom of information apply to it. Of course we will have hearings so we can hear from these people" --
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The Acting Speaker: Thank you. Further debate? Here is the long-awaited speech from the member from Durham.
Mr O'Toole: It's hard to say where to begin. This saga, I believe, started long before this debate and long before the previous debate. I recall with some clarity the Macdonald commission report, which was really the start of the analysis in 1995. I believe the report was filed in early 1996. Donald Macdonald was the Treasurer, and Minister of Energy as well, in the federal Trudeau government, a man held in some respect in the business and academic community and in the world of trade and commerce.
I think that commission was really taken up as a result of some of the findings during the NDP reign of terror. During that period I believe it was Maurice Strong who set the most public record for his salary. I believe it was initially $1 a year and then it was $1 million a year. I think his most notorious achievement was the attempt to acquire a rainforest in Brazil to offset emission credits.
Hon David Turnbull (Associate Minister of Enterprise, Opportunity and Innovation): Costa Rica.
Mr O'Toole: Costa Rica, yes. The esteemed Associate Minister of Enterprise, Opportunity and Innovation is here listening and certainly taking notes.
I also want to go back as far as possible -- I just don't want to go back too far, but I'll start with Sir Adam Beck. I was walking down University Avenue earlier today. There's a bronze monument to Sir Adam Beck. I stopped and, reflecting on the fact that I would be speaking tonight, I sort of bowed or stooped respectfully to the monument. I think I perhaps perceived or noticed that he was grinning. It may have been a water stain or something. I thought, if he was only here, because his motto was "Power at cost." Cost is a complex little model. It certainly doesn't include the $6-million golden parachute stuff. It was a tribute at that time, making Ontario the great province it is. To a large extent, they were hard-working, dedicated, loyal civil servants who ran it.
Under the grand stewardship of the governments of the day -- there were 40-some years there continuous and uninterrupted, with the exception of that one 1937 Liberal government -- they burned that Premier in effigy, I think, at General Motors in Oshawa. But the history is that it did build the infrastructure that built the industrial heartland of this country, that is, this great province of Ontario.
Many of us in the generations born since the 1940s and forward, up until perhaps the 1960s and 1970s, enjoyed power at cost, really. What happened in the nuclear debate in the 1970s in my riding of Durham -- and I'm reflecting respectfully on my constituents, many of whom work at Darlington or Pickering and are knowledgeable technical people. It was unusual because the Darlington generating station came in initially I believe under the Bill Davis government and conceptually was scoped out as a project of around $4 billion. In fact, by the time it was finished -- these are public records -- I think it was something in the order of $14 billion. So there was already clear evidence of no management at the top. Whether the management was communicating with the government of whatever stripe is another issue. I think they become quite divorced. In fact, some would say that during the Peterson government it was really an economic tool. It became more an instrument of government economic policy causing the OPG to accrue some debt.
I really feel that the problems were evident when Maurice Strong was brought in as a turnaround management guy. The Macdonald commission, which I just outlined, recommended clearly that choices were there, the choices being generation as a piece, transmission as a piece, distribution as a piece, and getting rid of some of the non-core business assets that were really being funded or subsidized through the taxpayer.
There was always in the Power Corporation Act a very important component of the cost of power. That was referred to under the act as the SDR, strategic debt retirement. There were occasions that this was paying back the debt, which was capital to build the nuclear plants -- Pickering, Darlington and Bruce. Those plants, by the way, never operated at full capacity -- something in the order of around 60% to 70% of operating capacity. They were advertising power at three cents a kilowatt. In fact, the real cost was probably five cents a kilowatt. All of this, Macdonald concluded, was because of the lack of competition and accountability. That became more and more self-evident, I think.
After the Macdonald commission they had another plan, and I'm going to wrap up here on some of the history. They had what was called NAOP, the nuclear asset optimization plan. That was around 1997.
There was a select all-party committee: Sean Conway, I believe that Mr Bradley was on it, I believe that Mr Christopherson was on it, Floyd Laughren was on that committee, Helen Johns, myself and the esteemed Dr Galt. Basically, that approved an expenditure of around $4 billion to retube the nuclear assets. That's really what it said. They hired some guy, Andognini, who was a turnaround management guy in the nuclear industry, an American, at about a $1 million-a-year salary. The idea there was to turn it around. But still, clearly, that didn't turn it around. Bruce A still has not operated and the Pickering A still isn't operating. We see that they have run over cost there.
When it comes down to the Hydro One share op, even more recently, when they were trying to bulk up their asset value before the market opened up, they were buying customers' shares, again as part of a bond issue they raised, which was more debt.
I just want to show some respect for what this means to my riding. I'm going to avoid my esteemed member for Niagara Falls. I had copied the biographies of all the new interim board members, some of whom are known to all of us here as Orders of Canada, esteemed people from all walks and all parties.
If I read the bill, there are important sections that clearly mandate a couple of important requirements -- the term of office. But I think the most important part is probably section 8: the duties of the officers is to "negotiate with each of the designated officers for a new employment contract that, in the opinion of the board, provides for a substantial reduction in the officer's remuneration and benefits." There are other sections here with respect to termination. Sections 9 and 10 are worth reading in this small, little Bill 80, on which I believe some would say the government acted -- at least they acted. But in fact, Minister Stockwell told us he was told of this situation around May 17 and the bill was introduced on June 4. The board has been appointed; I see that has happened as well. The board has resigned. They realized the gig was up.
I really feel that you need expert people, but this isn't a truly competitive environment. The transmission: I've heard from experts, and I can cite their names, that this is not competitive. It's a natural monopoly. It's not rocket science. They have skilled people who are there, they have not changed -- the line people and the electrical people etc -- and they're regulated to the ends of the earth by the IMO and the energy board. So I'm not sure exactly what they were inventing to make $2 million a year.
In my remaining minute or two I want to pay respect to an organization in my riding, Veridian Corp, which is the local municipal electric association that was formed out of a partnership of Ajax, Pickering, Clarington and Belleville. It is referred to as Veridian. For the record, I want to pay some respect to John Wiersma, who is the president and CEO. I spoke with John this morning. Wayne Arthurs is the mayor of Pickering. He's on the board. Rick Johnson is a councillor in Pickering. James Mason is the president of Pefco Ontario, distributor of utility products. Nancy Maxwell is a business consultant. Jim McMaster is an Ajax councillor. John Mutton is the mayor of Clarington. Steve Parish is mayor of the town of Ajax. Doug Parker is a Belleville councillor. John Randolph is chair of Managing Partner, the Clinton Group. Pauline Storks, who has been with the Municipal Electric Association for many years, is past chair of the MEA. Ralph Sutton is a retired manager of Bell Canada. George Van Dyk is a real estate broker and a respected businessman. Jim Witty is the former chair of Durham region and owner of Witty Insurance.
These people assure me that local municipal electric authorities are accountable. Their main shareholders are the municipalities. They will deliver safe, reliable and affordable power in competition with Hydro One. I put to you that the local distribution systems should become part of the discussion of what part of Hydro One is being sold. I want to be on the record saying that this board change is fundamentally important and that this government has taken the action once and for all to deal with this decade of scandal.
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The Acting Speaker: Questions and comments?
Mrs Lyn McLeod (Thunder Bay-Atikokan): I wish the member from Durham had had a little more time than his 10 minutes, because there's nothing I personally like better than a little bit of discussion on the history of electrical energy development in Ontario, particularly the concept of power at cost, which the member began talking about.
Power at cost is something that I actually continue to believe in, although I long believed that what we had to determine was exactly what the cost was. In fact we, in the last year of our government, set up a class environmental assessment to try and find out what the true costs of electricity were in this province. It's unfortunate that one of the first actions of the New Democratic Party government was to cancel a class environmental assessment on electricity. I wish we had the benefit of that knowledge, then.
But power at cost today, under this government, would be something quite different. We'd have to take into the cost of electricity those outrageous salaries that this government has finally been pushed to acknowledge and deal with. We'd have to take into account these huge severance packages sitting there in the bank, ready to be capitalized on. All that would certainly inflate the cost of electricity.
Then the member touched on Darlington. I'm not sure exactly what that has to do with the bill in front of us today, but I can appreciate why the member for Durham wants to talk about Darlington. Even I remember something about Darlington. I wasn't here when the Conservative government decided to build Darlington, but I inherited some of the mess of the Tory government of the day that started and stopped and started and stopped and let this drag on and drag on until the cost became prohibitive. That is exactly why we have this huge so-called stranded debt that we're trying to deal with today.
I suggest that Mr Eves, who was there and is now our Premier, is still starting and stopping and starting and stopping when it comes to electricity policy.
This government in fact is not interested in power at cost any longer. They want to talk exclusively about private sector discipline. So far, all we've seen of private sector discipline is private sector salaries and severance packages without the willingness of the private sector to subject those to full public disclosure.
Mr Christopherson: It's always enjoyable to listen to the member from Durham. I thought it was interesting that he said the gig is up. I suspect that if you continue to treat issues the way you're treating this one, the gig will be up for all of you in the next election. I say that as someone who has experience in this area, so I know of what I speak.
I want to take great exception to some of the closing comments my friend made about the fact that this government is now dealing with this issue -- I jotted it down -- "once and for all." Quite frankly, the reality couldn't be further from what he stated. To deal with this once and for all would mean that you bring in legislation that says the board can only approve wages for the senior officers within a range. Then, if you state what that range is, you'd have a better chance of being able to argue that this is dealt with once and for all. But how can it possibly be, when all you've done is replicate exactly the same structure and process that got us where we are today? You appointed the board. The board approved the massive increases in the wages and benefits and severance of the senior executives of Hydro One. You then bring in a bill that fires all those people and says there have to be negotiations -- that's what's in the bill, section 8 -- to substantially reduce those wages. And who decided what is a substantial reduction? The board, which you appoint.
Were the member from Durham on this side of the House and we were proposing something that ludicrous, I know he'd be all over it. The fact of the matter is that you haven't solved the problem; you're hoping it'll just go away on its own.
Mr Maves: It's always a pleasure for me to rise and speak for a few minutes after the very learned member from Durham, Mr O'Toole, has spoken on any issue in this Legislature. He speaks with such a great background on so many issues and he's someone who does his homework very well and very thoroughly. His speech once again tonight was an excellent one. I do find it interesting that he talked about power at cost and about doing a curtsey or a bow at the foot of Sir Adam Beck's statue down on University Avenue.
The member from Thunder Bay said she believes in power at cost. However, I would say to her that your belief in power at cost seems to be that you have some feeling that power at cost in a monopoly is lower than power at cost when there are many competitors. It is a simple fact of economics that when you have many competitors selling a product, the cost of that product will be lower than if you have a monopoly.
Why? Year after year at the old Ontario Hydro, employees got hired and added on. When they used to come out with the salary disclosure, you could go through Ontario Hydro and see page after page of people making well over $100,000. When there is competition, when there is the benefit of the marketplace at work, those managers at Ontario Hydro start to say, "You know what? We can't hire brothers and cousins and uncles and everybody else all the time. We can't hire extra management, just hide people and make up for it with a higher price or higher debt." She may want that to continue to happen. It couldn't happen, and everyone in Ontario knew that.
Mr Dwight Duncan (Windsor-St Clair): I'm pleased to respond to the member for Durham. I think it's instructive, because he went through a long history about hydro. It's important to reflect on that, because Ontario, by and large, has a good history on hydro despite problems in the last 10 years. The long-term history is something I think we all should reflect positively on.
But in terms of the history of this month, I'll remind the member opposite and the government that this bill was never intended to be here. This is cleaning up a mess, an awful mess, and it's not a mess that this government or any other government should be proud of. The question before public policy-makers today is, what is the appropriate structure and framework for the operation of Hydro? The compelling case for Hydro One, the overwhelming evidence, is that it should remain in public hands. It makes a profit, a big profit. It's an important part of our economic infrastructure that ought to stay in public hands. There's no compelling business case for this.
The way the government has handled this bill particularly, and I'm surprised the member didn't mention it, has been nothing short of a joke. They have changed their position on Hydro One probably five times, as recently as yesterday. I say to the government, that kind of public policy is not going to serve anyone well, least of all the people of this province.
Keep Hydro One in public hands, 100% in public hands. It has made a profit. But you've got to deal with lots of other things in a consistent manner as well. I say to the member, I respect his point of view, I respect his arguments, but he made no case at all for privatization of Hydro One, and I remind him that this bill is not one the government wants to have to deal with.
The Acting Speaker: Response?
Mr O'Toole: With unanimous consent, I could probably spend another hour on that.
I want to thank the members from Thunder Bay, Hamilton West, Niagara Falls and Windsor-St Clair, and dwell for some time on the challenge that has been made with respect to price.
I'm just calling on the opposition, those few members who are here, and the third party -- and I think the House leader for the Liberal Party, Mr Duncan, has said it: that this thing is to clean up some issues. I call on the House leader: why are they holding this up? We could vote on this and get on with the important business of saving the taxpayers of Ontario, my constituents in the riding of Durham, hard-earned money. They want accountability, and I can tell you that this government, going forward -- if you were to look clearly at the explanatory notes in the bill, you would know that this is about making sure.
I'm going to read the concluding part. It says, "No proceeding may be brought against the crown, Hydro One Inc, a subsidiary of Hydro One Inc or any other person relating to anything done by the act."
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I think it's the admission that the board had acted unilaterally and informed the minister quite late of these changes, the golden parachute provisions. The minister acted. We're calling on the opposition and the third party to quit delaying this. Let's get on with this and let's vote for it. I could say right now that I'm encouraged, from the little I've heard tonight from them, that they will be supporting this. If they don't, they clearly are going to be on the side of supporting this.
I do want to pay one last respect to my riding. In the budget today there's a comment made on my former employer, General Motors, as being the number one plant. There's a plant that, through competition, has continuously improved. They're number one in quality and number one in cost, and it's attributed right here in the budget. It was front-page news this week.
The Acting Speaker: Further debate?
Mr Richard Patten (Ottawa Centre): I'm pleased to join the debate this evening on reviewing Bill 80, An Act respecting directors and officers of Hydro One Inc. and its officers; or, by another name, this government's attempt to finally deal with bloated salaries and compensation packages at the executive level of Hydro One.
At the outset, I would like to respond somewhat to the member from Durham who says, "Listen, get on with this." The government put forward a bill in haste to deal with what was generally perceived to be a system gone out of control and an attempt to very rapidly bring it back in line with reality. Tonight is part of that particular process.
I would say to the member for Durham that when the government asked us, as was pointed out by my colleague from Kingston and the Islands, quickly to pass the bill without even seeing the bill -- I would hope now as a result of debate there are number of things that can ameliorate this bill without question. It is deficient in a variety of areas. Although our party would support in principle this particular bill, I would hope the government will take the opportunity for some amendments that would strengthen the quality and the integrity of this particular bill. Be it for an afternoon or two, I think we'd be anxious to be supportive to make sure this bill goes through, but that it go through as strongly as possible.
It took this government long enough to figure out what was going on over there on Bay Street. Indeed, our leader, Dalton McGuinty, for several days over the course of several weeks continually asked the Minister of Energy and the Premier in the House when they knew about the nature of the packages, the salary levels and things of this nature. We asked when these packages had been amended, and of course now we know the answer to some of these because the information has certainly been shared with us. They tried to tell us, "Well, this was something that was up to the board," the same board that passed these outrageous salary and compensation packages. Of course now this bill is an attempt to provide somewhat of a rein on that, although it could be more specific, and that has been pointed out already by several members. My friend from Thunder Bay talked about that just a few moments ago.
When they said, "We'll leave that up to the board of directors," if that's not the fox in the chicken coop, I really don't know what is. The relationship between the government and this particular corporation, especially with the government as the sole shareholder at this particular point, obviously has been lax. The government has not been on the ball. I think the taxpayers of Ontario need to know the happenings over there on Bay Street and at Hydro One did not just happen over a course of a matter of weeks; they've been out of control actually for several years.
Where was the oversight back then and who was in charge? It looks to me like there really wasn't someone in charge.
Mr Murdoch: Remember Patti Starr?
Mr Patten: The members are pointing fingers.
The Acting Speaker: Order.
Mr Patten: The Conservative Party has been in power for 50 of the last 60 years. If we want to get down to responsibilities, we'd certainly be prepared to look at that.
But even when the government admitted something had to be done, they still kept saying, "It really is the board's problem." You can't have it both ways. I think now the government has recognized this and has assumed some responsibility -- for which I give you credit -- for now getting on with making sure there is some accountability for this public company.
We know that is not the case in some areas, that it's not just the board. We know they did have some information. I recall listening to Sir Graham Day and Dona Harvey on the radio in the morning as I was working away in my office. They've said publicly that this government, the former minister and the former Premier were kept apprised of what was going on over there since the beginning of 1999. Here's what Dona Harvey, a former director, said: "The company provided that information to the ministry and there were regular briefings with the minister." She went on to say, "To my knowledge, there were no objections" -- at that time -- "from the minister."
The fiasco over the departure of the old board and the announcement of the new board could have been amusing if it had not been so serious. Of course, the resignation of the board rather than responding to the government's directive is astonishing. It's more astonishing when you see how this board was made up of good Tory friends of the government.
The Globe and Mail on June 10 described the situation: "For its part, the government acted with astonishing lethargy in responding to information on Hydro One's executive compensation regime that has been in public circulation since at least March."
This whole fiasco can be summed up by, "You can't fire me, I quit," because that's exactly what happened. The board took the position that they would remove themselves.
What worries me and a number of other people in this province is that yesterday this government brought down a budget which they said is balanced. It's balanced because there are supposed to be some unknown, mysterious revenues the government hopes will keep it balanced. Those revenues will probably come from what the government hopes may be part of the sale of this particular company. We're going to hold hearings on another Hydro bill so that the government can get input from the public, the stakeholders and the owners, and I hope that indeed the government really does listen.
But tonight we're dealing with Bill 80. When it finally dawned on the government something was wrong, that the board wasn't listening, they introduced this legislation. We had hoped they would get it right this time; we're not sure that it is totally. We don't see anywhere in this bill that both Hydro One and Ontario Power Generation would be subject to freedom of information, which has already been raised tonight. Why not? Why shouldn't Ontarians be allowed to get answers to questions about public companies? Why didn't they write greater legislative accountability into this bill, for example, access for our Provincial Auditor to review from time to time this completely public asset? Surely the government should understand after this embarrassment that accountability should be the cornerstone from here on in. Now they've named a new interim board. Why there isn't a formal review process for this board to follow I don't know.
There's another thing we need to consider here. This government has decided that the salaries and compensation were too high. Fine, we all agree on that. But what are they going to do about the compensation packages over at OPG? The minister says, "I give full support to Mr Osborne," the CEO at OPG. "I think he has done a good job." That's what the minister said. But watch out, Mr Osborne. If he starts thinking you're not doing a good job, he might just bring in another bill to review your salaries over there.
We've got this bill now that says it can remove the directors as of June 4, when they've already resigned of course, so that's a redundant aspect. The new board will have the authority to negotiate reductions in salaries. The government could have been stronger in this bill in order to provide that particular guidance.
Lastly, in case the people targeted in this bill don't like what is renegotiated, it doesn't matter, because the government has an immunity clause for claims against the government, Hydro One and Hydro One subsidiaries. Well, is that good news or is it not?
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We learned through yesterday's budget that if this government needs to change legislation they just bring in amendments -- technical amendments. But how did we get to this point? In my view, this mess occurred due to a government that was not on the ball, a government that showed no common sense, a government that reacted only because of public outcry.
I want to close by reading from an article again from the Globe and Mail.
"Directors, however, say they cannot believe compensation is the only reason the government fired the board. For one thing, they note, Ontario's Conservative government has known all the salary details since Hydro One was spun out of Ontario Hydro three years ago.
"`There was no big deal. This was all reported to the government,' Mr Syron said. `Jim Wilson, he was there through the whole thing. He got annual information circulars, they were presented to him. They showed the compensation package for all the top senior people.
"`Although the board did not need Mr Wilson's approval -- '"
The Acting Speaker: Thank you. Questions or comments?
Mr Martin: I have to say at the outset that I agree with the member for Ottawa Centre when he makes the case -- this is the craziest piece of public business I've seen in my almost 12 years here. But it may be an indication of more things to come, and he outlined a few of those in his comments.
He backed up his perception of this by quoting some of the heretofore friends of this government in terms of the media and their querying of just exactly what is going on here. What is the real issue at the bottom of all of this? Why is the government all of a sudden taking this kind of very drastic action against some of its own? There must be a problem that perhaps we're not at this point understanding quite fully but that the government is quite aware of.
It's becoming more and more obvious now that the plan of this government, the agenda of this government, which was to turn over as much as possible of what we do by way of the delivery of public goods to the private sector, is falling down around their ears. This whole concept of private sector discipline that was supposed to kick in whenever you turned over the operation of some department of government to the private sector is becoming, obviously, a very difficult problem. It's presenting in a way that I don't think even the government expected it would. So we see in the budget of yesterday some backpedalling on some very basic tenets underlying almost everything this government heretofore felt was sacred.
Mrs McLeod: I appreciate my colleague's very clear identification of why this bill is before us: simply because this government was pushed to act, pushed to act yet again to bring about some change in its so-called electricity policy. We've had from this government electricity policy that has been in constant change because this government is simply running on the basis of sheer political necessity, changing from moment to moment.
This government started out this session with the full intent -- I should say prior to this session -- of privatizing Hydro One, of selling it off. Only the Premier found in the by-election he had to win in order to take a seat in the House that 67% of the people in his riding were opposed to the sale of Hydro One. So suddenly, the day before the by-election, there is a change in government policy -- at least a sort of change.
Then we had a bill that came in that was giving the government permission to sell. In the meantime, the Hydro One board of directors -- the board we're dealing with in this bill tonight -- was under the very clear understanding, given to them by the government, that Hydro One was going to be sold. That's why they put in place these giant severance packages, so they would make sure they had covered themselves when Hydro One was turned over to new ownership. That's what all the furor is about, and it's exactly what this government was also prepared to ignore. That's why this bill is here, as my colleague has said: because the government was forced to act.
The member for Durham asked, "Why are we debating the bill? Why don't we just give it second and third reading?" We forced them to act, so of course we're going to support the bill. Why won't we give it second and third reading right away? We would have done that conditional on the future salaries for the board of directors and the executive of Hydro One being subject to full public disclosure so that there could be public accountability brought in. The government, although they were forced to act on this particular board and these particular salaries, refused to have future salaries subject to full disclosure. That's why we're debating the bill tonight.
Mr Christopherson: The member for Ottawa Centre, as he often does, has nailed very precisely the key issue that's in front of us, and that was his focus on accountability. That really is what we're talking about here. We're talking about individuals appointed to boards by government on behalf of the government of the people. Therefore, they're being appointed on behalf of the people, and they are the ones who are ultimately accountable to this place for the conduct and actions within that organization. Let's remember that this bill doesn't solve the accountability problem. We've got exactly the same lack of credibility and accountability in Bill 80 as we had before.
My friend from Thunder Bay-Atikokan just posed the rhetorical question, "Why wouldn't we support this?" I can tell you why. It's because I don't think they have adequately dealt with the issue of accountability. The board appointed by the government sets the wages and benefits of the senior officers. That happened. It created a huge fiasco. Now there's a bill in front of us that's supposed to address that very problem, and what's the structure that's contained within Bill 80? A board appointed by this government that decides on what the benefits and wages are of the senior officers.
The one way you could make a huge difference is as Howard Hampton's private member's bill does, which lays out the fact that you can't have someone paid more than 10% of what someone else receives in Canada performing the same kind of duties. Now there's common sense.
The Acting Speaker: Questions or comments? Response, the member for Ottawa Centre.
Mr Patten: I would like to thank the members for Sault Ste Marie, Thunder Bay-Atikokan and Hamilton West for their responses and for adding their points to the debate tonight as well.
At the end of the day, I hope the government does listen to the points that are being made on this: that this bill goes partway to begin to address what essentially is a public accountability issue and, I suppose, an overseeing responsibility -- it addresses it somewhat but not completely -- regarding the role of government in terms of its public operations -- and in this case they are still public; they have not been sold off, OPG and Hydro One -- that they have some accountability through the government; and the access to information and, as I mentioned earlier, access for our Provincial Auditor to look at some of these operations.
If we want them to be as efficient as possible, as the government likes to say, to act in a more private-like manner -- and today, of course, when we think of Enron and one thing and another, the credibility is not so high any more. The most efficient operations or more honest operations or those operations with the most integrity are not necessarily going to be those in the private sector. We have evidence that was presented here by a number of members that there are other public hydro operations in other provinces that do very well, thank you very much. I'm sure many private companies or CEOs or presidents would be extremely proud to show the kinds of profits, meaning resources, that they generate in order to give back to government services or to the budget of the government to serve people in a variety of other fashions.
I hope this government will listen and will take this to committee for some amendments to ameliorate this particular bill in the name of public accountability.
The Acting Speaker: Thank you. It being 9:30 of the clock, this House stands adjourned until 1:30 of the clock tomorrow afternoon.
The House adjourned at 2129.