LIQUOR LICENCE BOARD OF ONTARIO
CONTENTS
Monday 11 February 1991
Agency Review
Liquor Licence Board of Ontario
Bacchus Canada
Concerns, Canada
Commission membership
Adjournment
STANDING COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT AGENCIES
Chair: Runciman, Robert W. (Leeds-Grenville PC)
Vice-Chair: McLean, Allan K. (Simcoe East PC)
Bradley, James J. (St. Catharines L)
Frankford, Robert (Scarborough East NDP)
Grandmaître, Bernard (Ottawa East L)
Haslam, Karen (Perth NDP)
Hayes, Pat (Essex-Kent NDP)
McGuinty, Dalton (Ottawa South L)
Silipo, Tony (Dovercourt NDP)
Stockwell, Chris (Etobicoke West PC)
Waters, Daniel (Muskoka-Georgian Bay NDP)
Wiseman, Jim (Durham West NDP)
Substitutions:
Ferguson, Will (Kitchener NDP) for Ms Haslam
Johnson, Paul R. (Prince Edward-Lennox-South Hastings NDP) for Mr Frankford
MacKinnon, Ellen (Lambton NDP) for Mr Silipo
Clerk: Arnott, Douglas
Staff: Pond, David Research Officer, Legislative Research Service
The committee met at 1449 in room 151.
AGENCY REVIEW
Resuming consideration of the operation of certain agencies, boards and commissions.
LIQUOR LICENCE BOARD OF ONTARIO
The Vice-Chair: I call the committee to order. It is the standing committee on government agencies dealing with agencies, boards and commissions, a further review with regard to the Liquor Licence Board of Ontario. Today we have with us Ms Cimicata and Jeff Dockeray. If you would like to take a seat at the table in front, I am sure you probably have a short presentation. We have allowed three quarters of an hour in total, so use whatever portion you like for your presentation and we will use the balance of the time perhaps for some questions. You may proceed.
Mr Stockwell: Can I ask a point of order? It is on the information received about the Fair Tax Commission for tomorrow. Am I correct that we received this information from the --
The Vice-Chair: You got that from the clerk.
Mr Stockwell: The clerk of the committee?
The Vice-Chair: Yes.
Mr Stockwell: Can I ask whose is this? Who released this?
The Vice-Chair: It was released by the clerk's office. That was from last week's deliberations in the committee, and it is going to be dealing with the appointments to the Fair Tax Commission.
Mr Stockwell: Who wrote this? That is really what it comes down to.
The Vice-Chair: Maybe the clerk can answer.
Clerk of the Committee: I do not know who wrote it. It was supplied to me through the public appointments secretariat, who gathered the material that is required under paragraph 10 of the standing order requiring basic material to be presented to the committee once intended appointees are selected for review.
Mr Stockwell: Okay. I am sorry to take up the time of the people.
The Vice-Chair: You are not. We will allow them their full time.
Mr Stockwell: Okay. I would just like to get a clarification. It is terribly slanted and biased, and so I am just wondering, is this a government document? I mean, is this what the government has told somebody to write and send out, or is this a document done by our research or clerks' division?
Clerk of the Committee: It is certainly provided to the committee through the government, yes. It is not a committee document, and if you wish, I will try to find out who provided it.
Mr Stockwell: Okay. The other question I would like answered is, there are a lot of assumptions in here that were made -- I do not know by whom, I suppose by the party in power -- and my difficulty is there seems to be a lot of debate over what in fact this committee does when it in fact interviews these people who are recommended by the government. I will just make one quick point for the clerk and the research people so that they can examine it.
Under "Specific Issues to be Examined by the Commission," it said, "(a) What changes to, or restructuring of, existing tax-delivered assistance would increase the fairness of the overall tax burden on low-income individuals and families?" Am I assuming then, considering this is a document by the government, that if someone comes in and does not believe that in fact to be true, he cannot sit on the Fair Tax Commission? That is the question I want to put out. Does everyone who sits on the Fair Tax Commission have to buy into this doctrine here? And if they do not, how does that --
The Vice-Chair: Okay, I think what we will do is have the clerk do some research. He will find out where the document came from and come back with some answers to the committee so that we will know where we are going. Perhaps we can deal with that after we have dealt with the two delegations.
Mr Stockwell: That is fine. I would just like to get to the bottom of it, and if it is after the deputants that are here today, that is fine.
The Vice-Chair: Thank you. You may proceed now.
BACCHUS CANADA
Ms Cimicata: Good afternoon. I am the executive director of what is currently the only alcohol education program for post-secondary students in Canada. Our existence began in Ontario, started at Ryerson Polytechnical Institute after a well-known death took place in this province in 1984 involving a high school student at an orientation event at Ryerson. Shortly thereafter we were also exposed to the liquor licence board when we were lobbying against raising the drinking age to 21, or at least the organization, Bacchus Canada, did.
Since that time we have been working nationally from coast to coast. Within Ontario, there currently is one major provincial organization, known as Alcohol on Campus, which has been dealing with a number of issues revolving around the service of alcohol on campuses in Ontario, and of course the educational message that is being delivered to post-secondary students. We wanted to take this time to address the committee to talk about what would be, I guess, our exposure to the liquor licence board and some of the dealings we would have had with them and to possibly make two recommendations with regard to some of the things that we see coming up.
I should also start by saying that because I work with so many of the bar managers who are in the business of selling alcohol on campus, I wanted to ensure that you would hear from someone who does, on a day-to-day basis, deal with students and drinking on campus and that is why Jeff is here. Jeff is the events programmer and bar manager from Lakehead University. He also represents the bar managers in Ontario through an organization entitled the Association of Campus Bar Management, so he can give you more of the meat and potatoes of selling alcohol on campus.
I wanted to bring up two points. I think the feeling that you would find that goes quickly right across the province, and we wanted to ensure that we were not coming here today as whiners, but I think our major problem has been and continues to be that we constantly get different opinions from different inspectors in different areas of the province. And again, I will get Jeff to address some of that. That has been our major problem.
Also, with server intervention programs becoming mandatory in this province, we are hoping that the server intervention programs that are developed do not necessarily only come from the Addiction Research Foundation in Ontario. Again, we can talk about that. I would like for you to hear from Jeff, who does deal with the liquor licence board far more than I do.
Mr Dockeray: I presently am the acting steering director of ACBM, which is the Association of Campus Bar Management. It is about five years old. It is not as in-depth as Bacchus or Alcohol on Campus in Ontario. It is more, as Carmi said, meat and potatoes. It is on the bottom level.
The pub managers, liquor service managers and food managers from around Ontario primarily gather once a year to talk shop. At no time ever is the LLBO on the hot seat. What we try and do, though, is to criticize as much as possible the Liquor Licence Act and its effect on us and how to make our job better.
Server intervention program training is one aspect of a bar manager's job which is essential. We would like the apparatus to submit our own programs instead of SIP, from addiction research, monopolizing, I would say, the most important element of alcohol policy on campus, which is the training part of it, the other parts being education and awareness programs.
Broad licensing is another topic which has been brought to my attention which most campus pub managers and liquor services managers have a problem with. The licensing in Ontario right now is very general when it comes to campuses. It is a one-blanket licence which used to be called a canteen or dining lounge licence and now covers an entire campus. This is not unanimous, but a lot of pub managers and administrators would like the autonomy of licensing each individual facility. Again, that is not a unanimous or a majority opinion, by any means.
We would like to see more official changes of legislation to the Liquor Licence Act; that being, we need a reference guide at all times. We see updates every two or three months, a lot of those updates being very general language to a pub manager, a lot of "will usually include but not always" type of phrases and, to a lot of pub managers, leaves us hanging in the balance as to what we can do and what we cannot do in terms of inducements, in terms of serving alcohol or providing alcohol in any way. We need a reference guide at all times. We need it for students and we need it for our administrators who sign our licences.
We are very concerned right now about our general responsibility to the general public as providers of alcohol and occupiers of facilities. We know presently that we do get together once a year and we do basically ask ourselves, "What kind of business are we in?" It is a no-win situation. There is no way we can win serving alcohol. We base our job on the basic premise that alcohol was brought on campus to manage on campus and we tend to live from that. We would rather have our students going to our campus pub where we can manage it effectively and keep an eye on them rather than their having to drive down to a Keg or a Casey's or any generic roadhouse and coming back in a car.
Another aspect of the LLBO which was brought up to me in the last couple of days was the language of the liquor licence board, as I just mentioned. The which-fors and why-nots are not good for pub managers to understand. We need a common language and I think there should be some time spent developing a common language that we can understand.
I think the most important factor the ACBM would like the LLBO to recognize is that we are doing something to cover our rear ends at all times. As Carmi said, Bacchus, AOC and ACBM are three essential components of alcohol on campus in Ontario. We are there for a purpose and we are there to address the growing concerns of alcohol consumption and the problem drinkers on campus and how people have to balance the books and the bottles.
These groups are not together as crying sessions. They are together to accomplish something, and I think I can speak for Carmi, for the most part, that we do accomplish something different every year.
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Alcohol is a serious part of campus life, there is no question about it. We are there to minimize its effects. We do 10 times what a regular licensee or any local tavern you see in any of your cities does. As far as I am concerned, we do 10 times more than they do in training, awareness projects and in support. We have a group of peers in one place and no other facility, no other community within a city or a town has. We have a group of peers that is almost a small city. Some of our universities obviously get up into the 20,000 range and that is a small city.
We as ACBM, the bar managers, want to be taken seriously in what we are trying to do here. We want a hotline. We wanted to deal with one person at the Liquor Licence Board of Ontario from whom we can get answers. Basically the sense of negativity we get a lot towards the LLBO sometimes is because we can compare to the GST hotline. New legislation can come out in one week. We can get three different answers in one week to one question, and it becomes very frustrating because we have pub managers, food managers and liquor servicing managers standing back serving a general campus and asking, "Should I do this or should I not do this?" And we do not do it for fear of getting our hands slapped. We can talk to a provincial inspector versus our local inspector and get two or three different answers, and that has been a chronic problem for the last two years.
We would like the LLBO to be involved at all times with our associated groups. I think it is imperative. We can be steered the right way by one person through the LLBO. I think that is imperative. We want uniform opinions, essentially, and I think we wanted to start with our conference this year in May with -- I am sorry, to have the provincial chair or vice-chair at the conference to see what we are all about.
I think we have our wits about us about certain things, but as far as we are concerned, AOC, ACBM and Bacchus are starting to amalgamate their efforts because we all have a common goal, and that is to see alcohol served properly on campus.
I think the LLBO can be a great steering factor in our organizations and I would like to see a close-knit relationship in the upcoming years, because as liability and tort law become more and more of an issue every year and the word "prohibition" comes up on some campuses, we are seeing more and more problems and it is essential that the LLBO does get involved with our groups.
The Vice-Chair: Thank you. Anything further?
Ms Cimicata: Yes. I imagine there are many organizations that come forward and everybody seems to always want special recognition. I think that the campus market, however, does have to be recognized as a very different kind of organization that does serve alcohol in this province.
I think Jeff brought up a lot of points, that we are doing a great deal. I think again part of the resentment that is stemming towards the LLBO right now on campus, while no bar manager in particular would come forward, is that the campus establishments are getting inspected quite frequently, far more frequently than the establishments that are popping up just on the outskirts of the campus. I can give you a direct example.
For example, the University of Guelph, which had a well-publicized incident several years ago, went through a coroner's inquest and an inspection and it almost lost its liquor licence. They have been inspected numerous times in the past year, yet three very, very fantastic bars opened up on the outskirts of town and have been violating liquor licence acts for the entire year. The sales at the University of Guelph have dropped $720,000, but you can just imagine where that money went if the bars off campus -- one in particular, the Animal House, is doing very well -- are doing things like advertising on campus in a way that we would consider would be completely inappropriate for a campus bar to advertise. The campus bars are reluctant to continually call in and cry about the establishments out of the campus; however, I think it has to be looked at.
Mr Bradley: If this is known, why would not someone, some way or other, report them? I was about to say it is a simple procedure. It is not a simple procedure. I understand that. But you know it exists. Then why does not someone take it upon himself to report it? Maybe they have and nothing has been done about it.
Ms Cimicata: I think part of the problem is that anybody who reports the off-campus establishment ultimately has to deal with the inspector on their campus, which is why we would prefer the hotline approach, where we could call into one central number in the Toronto office. I have often said, "Well, why don't you call Andromache up and ask her to come on a pub-crawl and see some of the establishments off campus?" but it has not been done. I think some of the board members should go on some of these tours, because I think the on-campus establishments, for a number of reasons, are doing 10 times the amount of work that is being done off campus. Because they are doing all this work, the server intervention programs, awareness programs and everything else, they lose out when the bar in town gets to do a special beer promotion that they are no longer in the position to do.
Mr Dockeray: Legally, or within campus policies.
Mr Grandmaître: Jeff, you are part of this bar management association. Have you ever requested a meeting with the LLBO to discuss your problems?
Mr Dockeray: A letter is actually on its way this week. I am hosting this year's conference in Thunder Bay, and we are requesting the chair of the LLBO to come up and see the meat and potatoes of our organization and, at that time, address the problems that perhaps she would be able to answer. Last year, we had a provincial inspector at our conference and the year before we had an inspector; I am not sure if it was provincial. We got absolutely nothing accomplished.
We do not want everybody to get the idea that someone from the liquor licence board is going to come and be on the hot seat for two hours. We just want our questions answered thoroughly.
As I said, the liquor licence board updates provide us with language that is so hard for us to understand, usually but not always. There are a lot of those. Well, where does the "usually but not always" come into play? It is very difficult. This year, consulting with Carmi and other associations, we felt it worth it that we finally get the "top dog" to the conference. Perhaps we cannot go any further than that. Maybe that would help.
It is not a full-time group. We are in no position to lobby, by any means, but we do have our concerns, and we get together once a year after the school year is done, mostly to reflect on the problems we had run into and the problems we are going to be running into. I thought this might be an appropriate year to have Andromache up.
Mr Grandmaître: What kind of business are you doing at Lakehead? What is your total take?
Mr Dockeray: My pub is actually about 20% of my job. I am an events programmer also. I take care of all the special events: speakers, theatre, music, everything, in the university community. The pub has held its own. The school is growing. The school grew to about 4,200 full-time this year. We do not do a terrible amount of business. In food and beverage alone at the pub we do about $500,000 business a year. There is liquor services, which is run through the administration, which signs the licence. They run all other licensed rooms on campus. They do not do much at all; you would be lucky to see maybe $50,000 or $60,000 gross come out of that a year.
Where you get into the larger campuses, a campus pub anywhere in the neighbourhood of a capacity of 400 to 500 could probably easily gross right now, with the prices the way they have gone and the taxes, probably $1 million to $1.5 million a year, without blinking. That is even including the declining sales from people going off campus.
Mr Grandmaître: You mentioned the licence covers the whole campus. Can you explain this to me? That licence is not specific to this room where I need sinks and washrooms and so on and so forth. In other words, you can operate a pub or a bar anywhere on your campus or campuses.
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Ms Cimicata: If I can answer that, on the one hand, that is a good thing because that keeps the entire campus on its toes. However, the problem is that, for example, the student association runs its own bar, the grad association runs its own bar, the university faculty association may have its own bar, but they are all under one licence, which means that if the student association bar screws up it would affect the licence for the entire campus. That makes it really difficult for the bars who are more responsible, better organized, to deal with the other bars on campus which might not be.
Mr Grandmaître: Do you think this is fair? If I own a bar, if I am a private operator and I have a hall upstairs where, let's say, you might want to get married, I have to apply for a special permit, just to transfer that permit upstairs. It is a licensed place, not 24 hours a day. Do you think this is fair, that you can transfer your licence anywhere on campus and the private sector cannot?
Ms Cimicata: I do not know so much if it is an issue of fairness, because the rooms were licensed a long time ago. For example, U of T has well over 100 licensed rooms per se that it can do events in. That means that if they allow that room to go out to someone who is getting married, if there is an incident at that event the entire licence would be affected. The students on that campus have their own establishment which is called the Hangar. They would love to be separately licensed. They would like to hold their own licence.
Mr Grandmaître: What is the cost of your licence, the annual fees?
Mr Dockeray: I am not sure, because I do not sign the licence and I do not pay for it. The vice-president of administration for the university signs it, being the top administrator, and it is forwarded down through the levels of the administration to a general services person and then I am given my licence. I represent the licence of administration but I also work for a student union which financially runs the establishment.
Mr Waters: Last week we heard from some people about lifestyle advertising. I was wondering if you had any comments -- because it is basically directed at your age group -- about that type of advertising.
Ms Cimicata: Well, big surprise. Our organization, Bacchus Canada, recently took a stand against the ban on alcohol advertising, so that puts us in a very unique position as a youth organization. We do not support the bandwagon that most people are joining right now. The Bacchus organization has been lobbying the federal government for four years to do educational programs on campus. To date, we have not seen any programs. All of the programs currently being organized for post-secondary students are being sponsored by the alcohol industry. For Bacchus Canada, 90% of our funding comes from the alcohol industry. All of our materials, all of our travel, everything is being sponsored by the industry.
Mr Waters: I guess the ads I am talking about are mainly the TV beer commercials. Those are basically the ones they were bringing up last week. I was just wondering about your perspective on those particular ads. Some of the on-campus things maybe they sponsored, and that is one thing, but what I am looking at is these overall ads.
Ms Cimicata: My target market is well known for partying, and if even some of the parties came close to the standards in the alcohol commercials we would be very lucky. You do not see century clubs, 100 drinks in 100 minutes, portrayed in a beer commercial. You do not see boat races in a beer commercial. Our students do not wait till the end of the day, as in the beer commercial. The beer commercial portrayals are a whole lot better than what our students are generally doing. They are very tame in comparison to what we would have to deal with on a regular basis.
Mr Waters: Basically, what you are saying is that the beer commercials really have no effect. That is a far more gentle lifestyle than what actually exists.
Ms Cimicata: Oh, yes.
Mr Waters: What about labelling on bottles? Do you think that would be of any value? Labelling the contents of the bottle and maybe a precautionary warning?
Ms Cimicata: We have never discussed labelling as an issue, unfortunately.
The Vice-Chair: Would you like to have some closing remarks or have you pretty well finished?
Mr Dockeray: I would just like to say that what we knew about alcohol and its relation to the campus environment 10 years ago and what we know now is tenfold. The present associated alcohol groups are doing their best; I can say that, being a Bacchus board member and also the director of ACBM. The days of toga parties and the days of century clubs are over with. By looking at several campuses, you will get an indication of just what is happening -- they are only doing it to cover their own rear ends -- and that is no pitchers, no shooters, one drink per person, no rounds. This is what campus pubs are doing right now. It is for one reason and that is through their administration to protect their own licence. The days of century clubs and boat races and toga parties and frat house parties are over, for that simple reason. I think it gives you a pretty good indication of where our associated groups are heading and probably 10 years from now will be headed.
The Vice-Chair: Is that the same across the provinces, you anticipate?
Mr Dockeray: I do. I cannot speak for other provinces. I know Ontario is definitely in the forefront of alcohol awareness and definitely in the forefront of alcohol legislation.
Mr Waters: On that topic, you were talking before about the pubs that are just off campus. On campus you are cleaning up your act, but I got the impression -- maybe I am wrong -- that that type of party has just moved off campus.
Mr Dockeray: This is internally a big issue I just discussed last week with my board of directors. I recently took signs down out of our hallways which were not authorized to be up. Somebody, obviously knowing they can grab a group of peers in one place, like a university, says "Let's go advertise there." "Party at Elk's Lodge, free tequila," hand-written "sponsored by Labatt's." I know for a fact it was not sponsored by Labatt's. I know for a fact there was not free tequila. But there was illegal activity happening at that party.
They will go there knowing we are more conservative at our campus pubs and our campus licensed rooms than they are. That is what is dragging people off campus. We want to provide a relaxed atmosphere as much as we can, not letting them know how much legislation is being put on us, and at the same time keeping in mind that alcohol is on campus to manage on campus. We cannot control them from going off campus, unfortunately. If you have a rugby club that wants to hold a party, two years ago they would have held it on campus. Now they are going to go down to a licensee that is going to flip them a few bucks at the door, take a buck off a beer, give them a few free shots, the board members or whatever. That is generically what is happening right now. We cannot stop that in any way.
The Vice-Chair: Thank you very much for appearing before us today.
CONCERNS, CANADA
The Vice-Chair: Our next delegation is Concerns, Canada: Karl Burden and Alan Staig. Take a seat. We can have some opening remarks. You have three quarters of an hour.
Mr Burden: Thank you very much. I am Karl Burden, the executive director of Concerns, Canada. I have brought with me Alan Staig, who is our chairperson of social action and legislation. We have submitted a copy of our brief and I hope you have that in your hands. But we will go through it in some detail and perhaps allude to other issues.
Concerns, Canada welcomes the opportunity of being part of this agency review process. It is our sincere wish that our comments will be helpful to the members of this standing committee. We have no doubt that the committee members are well aware of the immense responsibility that rests with them as they contemplate the mandate of the Liquor Licence Board of Ontario and examine its effectiveness.
This submission is brief, not because the subject is peripheral to our interest but because, first, we will confine our comments to matters on which we have direct knowledge and opinion. Second, we will avoid repeating much of our submission to the Advisory Committee on Liquor Regulation, the Offer committee of 1986 and 1988; our report to that committee is dated July 1986. Finally, we would value the opportunity of meeting with the standing committee as we are doing at this point.
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Concerns, Canada is an independent community agency funded by voluntary donations from thousands of citizens, service clubs, churches, industries and commerce. The present national charter dates from only 1987, but it replaces an earlier provincial charter of 1943. The organization, however, traces its roots back into the 1880s, with links to groups which even then were concerned about society's misuse of alcohol.
We should tell you that the work of Concerns, Canada is primarily preventive education, and we have submitted in our portfolio a list of the kinds of programs we are regularly engaged in. Most of them have a feature that they address issues related to youth or those who relate to youth.
The area we are dealing with here is a smaller part of the work of our organization, but nevertheless important. Since we have become a national organization, we have found it much more important for us to be aware of what is going on not just in Ontario but across the country, and as a result of that probably our relationships with the Liquor Licence Board of Ontario here have been less active than they may have been in some previous years.
I would like to talk first about the alcohol use in Ontario in a general fashion. The review of the work of the LLBO cannot be done without consideration being given to the widespread consumption abuse and misuse of alcohol in this province. So much has been written on this matter that it seems unnecessary and unhelpful for us to summarize the matter.
In many ways, the effects of alcohol consumption lead to all kinds of disasters that have a permanent and disastrous effect on the lives of citizens of Ontario. Both historically and currently, this is the reason for the Liquor Licence Act and regulations, the enforcement and administration of which is the responsibility of the LLBO. Although the LLBO is a part of the responsibility of the Ministry of Consumer and Commercial Relations, the effects of alcohol use touch virtually every ministry of the government, especially Education, Transportation, Attorney General, Solicitor General, Community and Social Services, Correctional Services and the Treasurer.
Concerns, Canada has an ongoing working relationship with most of these ministries as they deal with their specific concerns. Despite this, we have been unable to detect any attempt on the part of the government of Ontario to create a policy on alcohol use. So we repeat here one of our recommendations which we made to the Offer report. We recommend that the government of Ontario initiate the preparation of an overall statement of policy with respect to alcohol use in this province in such a form as to be a mandate for action by all ministries of the government. We really feel this is an important step forward and would help unify the efforts to control and oversee alcohol distribution and use.
Looking now at the question of legislation in a general fashion, the function of the LLBO is to administer the Liquor Licence Act. We have believed for many years that the act and its regulations, which comprise some 70,000 words, have become poor legislation, inadequate, unenforceable and in places even unintelligible. To the Offer committee we recommended that the act be repealed and replaced with brand-new legislation. We still firmly hold to this view.
As the standing committee examines the work of the LLBO, the members will be aware of the immense task the LLBO tackles, because of the cumbersome legislation under which it has to operate. The standing committee needs to know that Concerns, Canada recommended to the Offer committee the combining of the Liquor Licence Act and the Liquor Control Act and the subsequent combining of the LLBO and the LCBO into one agency, which might perhaps be called something like the alcohol board of Ontario. There is widespread confusion in the public by the similarity of the initials LLBO and LCBO, and the semantic parallel between the words "licence" and "control." We emphasize that we believe that by combining the efforts, not only simplicity but also clarity would be given to the public.
So far, the government has not adopted our recommendation and we still have the two, LCBO and LLBO, and only one of them of course is being examined today.
Mr Staig: I am on page 8 of our submission and there really are two areas of concern that we bring to you, but as Karl has mentioned, our recent hands-on contact with LLBO has been less than in the past because we find ourselves as a national organization now having to watch over a dozen equivalent LLBOs across this land. But I do want to emphasize that the contacts that we have made with LLBO staff -- board and employees -- have indicated a constant sense of respect and courtesy to agencies such as ours and we are grateful for the concern and interest that LLBO officers give to the work that we do.
There are two areas on which we have specific comments. Special occasion permits have concerned us for many years for a variety of reasons, not least of which is the fact that there are apparently 400 a day issued and the mind boggles at the administration that must be behind that, and worse than that, the mandate that is with the LLBO to attempt to police and watch over the activities the SOPs are intended to cover.
We do not have an easy answer to this, but there has to be a way. It seems to us, examining the application forms for SOPs, that the work the LLBO staff must do, and the responsibility that rests with the temporary licensee to whom the document is issued, all seems to us to require fairly major overhaul.
I would like to spend a little time, if I may, dealing with alcohol advertising, which is an area that Concerns, Canada has been active in and concerned about for many years. It is the policy of Concerns, Canada to recommend a total ban on alcohol advertising in all media. We have held that policy for many years. We made that as one of our recommendations to the Offer committee.
As we sit here this afternoon, we still have alcohol advertising and it is still the responsibility of the LLBO to administer and control it. We recognize that as an unenviable task. We do detect a rising clamour by citizens, agencies and juries for a total ban and we feel sure that in the course of time alcohol ads will go the way of tobacco ads and become history. Until that happens we have to accept the reality of the LLBO creating and enforcing regulations and guidelines for all alcohol advertising in Ontario in association with similar regulations of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission of the federal government.
The standing committee needs to know about two reports compiled recently for Health and Welfare Canada. The first of these is entitled Alcohol Advertising on Canadian Television, February 1989, and the second a report entitled Young People's Perceptions of Alcohol Advertising on Television, dated October 1990. The following quotations are from the summary recommendation of the reports.
From the first report, the February 1989 report:
"(i) Up to half of all alcohol ads on Canadian television violate the CRTC code in some way." The CRTC code is not identical but is very similar to the guidelines of the LLBO.
"(ii) Alcohol beverage ads should be assessed at the final stage of production, not as storyboards.
"(iii) Agencies...should conduct research to determine the conditions under which viewers associate the consumption of alcohol with activities involving skill, alertness or danger.
"(iv) `Collage' or `mosaic' ads should not be permitted when they depict proscribed activities."
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From the second report:
"(i) 69% of young people" -- of this province; actually of Canada of course because it is a Canadian report -- "(15-17 years old) report using alcohol.
"(ii) Alcohol advertising communicates positive messages about alcohol use.
"(iii) The main message centres on the association of drinking with having a good time.
"(iv) Alcohol advertising is perceived to reinforce or sanction alcohol use in such a way that contributes to high-risk drinking behaviour."
The CRTC and LLBO regulations and guidelines while not identical are similar in detail and philosophy. The studies made by Health and Welfare Canada indicating widespread violation of CRTC guidelines would almost certainly be a comment on the violation of LLBO guidelines. Our own observations of TV beer commercials reinforce that conclusion.
Therefore, we have a recommendation that pending the complete prohibition of alcohol advertising:
(i) The LLBO advertising guidelines be modified to correct weaknesses that are common to both LLBO and CRTC guidelines;
(ii) The LLBO approve or disapprove of TV commercials in final form, not storyboard; and
(iii) Collage or mosaic ads should not be permitted.
We also recommend that the LLBO provide adequate staff and facilities to ensure that advertising guidelines are strictly followed.
Mr Chairman, maybe the last page, 12, we could use as a wrapup following any questions that your committee may have.
Mr Grandmaître: I was very interested in advertising, especially in the 1990 report where you say that 69% of young people between the ages of 15 and 17 years old report using alcohol. I was reading a very interesting article in the Ottawa Citizen of yesterday on advertising -- tobacco advertising and also alcohol advertising -- and the effect on young people. They did not have a good answer or a reasonable answer and I do not expect you to have a good or a reasonable answer, but strangely enough 69% of our young people are affected by this advertising.
When you look at tobacco, tobacco advertising right now is forbidden on TV, and yet 30% of our adults apparently have quit smoking but there has been an increase in our young people of 55%. Due to the fact that they do not see tobacco advertising on TV, how come they are picking up the habit and adults are getting away from it?
Mr Burden: If I might just attempt an answer to that, the first thing I would say is that tobacco advertising has not been removed throughout the lifetime of those young people. They have been influenced. Influence of advertising, I think, begins as soon as young people begin to watch television, read newspapers and look at magazines. The impact on youth has never been properly measured for a number of reasons. One is the difficulty, if not the impossibility, to use children as subjects for experimental research. We simply cannot use control groups and other groups and try to influence one and let another group go without an influence because of the long-term effect upon those young people. It is immoral, really, for us to do that kind of research. Not that we are researchers.
The other aspect, I think, that is involved here is that young people, particularly female young people, are seeing tobacco use in particular as a way of identification -- it appears at the present time -- and I think that is again one of the factors the tobacco industry has concentrated on for decades -- or perhaps that is not quite right; for the last decade anyway -- looking at the role of women in relationship to tobacco use, and I think that has had its effect upon young women today.
It is also a way they rebel against the system, and that has nothing to do with advertising, but I think is a factor as well.
Mr Grandmaître: You were present when we heard from Jeff and Carmi a little while ago about what is going on on their campus and other campuses throughout the province. Do you think we should ban drinking totally on campuses?
Mr Burden: That is a very difficult thing. I went to university -- well, I have been in the university a good part of my life actually -- and when I was an undergraduate I can remember we did not have campus bars. Anyone who was using alcohol had to go off campus. There are definite problems with regard to that. There is -- I think they identified it in the previous report -- travel to and from as one of the major ones. I am not sure whether just simply banning any single group of that nature is going to do anything more than get the ire of the group you are targeting, and probably it will not be effective. I think whatever you apply has to be applied generally across the population.
Mr Staig: If I could add to that, I agree with the previous group that was submitting from Bacchus and I agree with Karl that the process is not so much a legislative one of enforcement of rules as an educational one. Prohibition of alcohol consumption on campus would not help, because the young folks would just go off campus to an uncontrolled or less-controlled environment than if it were on campus, in our view. So we side with Bacchus on that particular subject.
Mr Grandmaître: I was also surprised to hear Jeff tell us of their universal licence that is applied to 100 rooms or 250 rooms in one university. I thought that was a very strange licence, a portable licence. I call this a portable licence. Yet the LLBO is responsible for 400 special permits a day.
Mr Staig: Yes.
Mr Grandmaître: That is quite a revealing factor, and yet these people can transport this licence all over the campus.
Mr Staig: Yes. The strange thing is that, as you know, sir, the regulations and the act itself spell out very precise requirements of licensees -- washrooms and tables and space in square feet -- and yet as you say there seems to be a carte blanche there that is a bit boggling.
Mr Grandmaître: It is.
Mr Burden: We have just sent out a letter -- at the beginning of this year, actually -- to every university in Canada, to the senior administration and to the presidents of student councils, alerting them to their legal liability regarding the distribution of alcohol because we felt that was a concern.
Mr Sola: On page 7 of your brief you mention that the present act is unenforceable, yet you do not really expand on it. It is a quick once-over. I would like to see if you could expand on that, because I had a meeting on Friday with a group that has been trying to get the act enforced in order to get a dangerous situation out of its local community, and I would like to get some suggestions from you, if I may, in that respect.
Mr Staig: I think it is unenforceable in a number of directions, because the present act and its regulations are so immense and detailed and complex, and because this province is an enormous hunk of land with a large number of people on it -- we will be back to the 400 SOPs a day that are being issued -- that it is obvious that regardless of the number of employees the LLBO has, in practice much of the requirements of the regulations are going to be on trust; they are going to be with the citizens to self-police.
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I do not think it is feasible to even contemplate an organization that across this province is going to uniformly apply and enforce the regulations and legislation. Therefore, and this is probably a dangerous statement, the act and its regulations need to be much briefer, more concise and yet adequate so that a greater attempt can be made at enforcement. A law that is unenforceable is a poor law, in my observation.
Mr Sola: In other words, until the law is rewritten you would consider it unenforceable?
Mr Staig: Yes. Not in all aspects, of course. I rush on to say that the LLBO, in our observation, is doing a wonderful job with what it can.
Mr Sola: But there are situations where things have clearly got out of hand, and I am talking about the Oceans 11 Club in my riding, which backs on to a residential area, lots of high-rises, and during the summer the noise is unbearable. During the winter it is not the noise that much because the windows are closed, but the after-hours activity that goes on. In the last two years, there have been over 80 gun and knife violations at that place. It has got so bad they have had to padlock the shortcut to the plaza that this locale is located in.
I was called in on Friday to have a meeting with the citizens because they are at their wits' end. They have tried going to every enforcement agency, every politician. Now they are going to the provincial level. I guess if I cannot help them out, they will probably go to their federal members to see what can be done. Could not the act be enforced in such extremely vivid instances of abuse, rather than the small meanderings from the intent of the law? Maybe that would have some effect on policing and on the self-policing aspect of it.
Mr Burden: I am not sure whether I can exactly identify an answer to your question. Perhaps, though, I could just step back one part. It has been some months since we have gone through an examination of the act, but we did do it as part of a procedure for our committee. One of the things we noted was that the present act is almost like a patchwork quilt. It was created -- I am not sure what the date was, but you can find that way back in history and there have been revisions on that act, revisions of parts, not the entire sections, and revisions upon revisions.
When we are talking about it being unenforceable, it is because in some cases if you are using logic you find that the revisions almost contradict something that was stated in another part earlier because it was written in another time and another day. It is that kind of dilemma that we have found. You can always find loopholes in it because of the fact that there are these contradictions. I am not exactly identifying the question because you are looking at a specific issue, but we feel it is very difficult to enforce it simply because it is not a logically put together document that was written at one time with one focus in mind. It is multiple.
Mr Sola: Have you noticed or have you made a study of pubs that become after-hours clubs, non-alcoholic after-hours clubs that go way into the night? This is one of those situations, and I have read of others throughout the Metro area, where the problem becomes more severe once the 1 am closing time arrives. Because they have had liquor on the premises before the 1 am deadline, the police can come in at 3 or 4 or 5 o'clock in the morning and they will just say they did not have time to clean up the premises. Have you made a study to see if that abuse has transpired with this sort of add-on to the existing clubs?
Mr Burden: We certainly have been in touch with the police and we know they are concerned. It has been impressed upon us on numerous occasions that their hands are frequently tied because of the loopholes within that legislation that allow for an after-hours club, and we support the police in which I believe is still their position that they would like to see an end to such after-hours clubs.
Mr Sola: One thing I have noticed is that pub owners or operators are liable for the safety of their clientele if they take the wheel and drive home inebriated, and yet the same club owners can get off scot-free if they get inebriated to the point where they have a knife attack or a gunfight in the parking lot outside their premises, just because according to the ownership of the premises they stopped serving drinks half an hour or an hour before the incident occurred. It seems to me incongruous that you can be responsible for what happens behind a steering wheel as a result of what you did in a pub, yet you are not responsible for a gunfight or a knife fight right beside your premises as a result of what went on in your club.
Mr Staig: I think the courts of the land are taking a wider interpretation of that. It is criminal law rather than statute law. It would appear as we look at coroners' inquests and jury recommendations that society is placing a greater responsibility on servers, whether it is a person or whether it is a company, on whatever happens once the inebriated person leaves the premises. It would seem to us that pinning down the precise circumstances for responsibility, litigation and so on, is probably less desirable than letting the process of criminal law and case law fall into place, whereby the server and the corporations behind the server have to accept responsibility.
Mr Waters: I was wondering about the labelling aspect. Do you feel that labelling of the bottles is going to change anything, or if there is an education process that would help in the immediate future?
Mr Staig: There are two kinds of labelling, and I would like to address them separately, if I may. The labelling I suspect you are talking about is warning labels such as are appearing on cigarette packages. We believe very firmly that should happen. Almost every consumer product, whether it is a food or a drink or a household cleanser, must have regulations on it as to how these things should be used. One of the few exceptions is our alcoholic beverages, which are not so labelled, so we strongly advocate that there should be rotating warning signs on containers.
There is another interpretation of labelling that is as important in our view, and that is content. The requirement of the federal legislation that products we take into our bodies have their containers labelled with ingredients has very few exemptions. One of the exemptions is bulk foods, fresh meat, fresh fish. Almost everything else we ingest has to be labelled with ingredients. There are a few problems with that, but at least that is required. One of the few exemptions to that legislation is alcohol. We have had discussions with the Allergy Information Association, which is very concerned about the number of legal additives that can be added to alcohol products, particularly to wines. There are some 16 products that may be legally added to wines and some of these are highly allergenic. That is another area we have a concern about.
Mr Waters: On the education aspect, do you think there is anything immediately that we could do with education, let's say with the young people on the campus that were in here just prior to you, to assist them with that type of thing?
Mr Burden: The concern we have with regard to education is that in order to be effective it has to be multifaceted. There is no one educational program that will work with a target group, no matter what age group you are looking at, completely. What we are putting our support and our faith in these days -- by "we" I mean any of those of us who are involved full-time in preventive education in the area of addictions and substance use -- is a focus on education that beams messages to the target audience, particularly young people, from a wide variety of audiences and ways in which to meet them. In other words, we would have programs for the school system, we would have programs that would come through the media, we would have programs that would come through corporations, messages that might be contained on packages of other materials, slogans, signboards, a whole variety of things. We see all of this as part of an educational package, which can be effective.
1550
The Addiction Research Foundation has done enormous studies of individual programs in prevention and almost without exception it finds that a single program by itself fails to accomplish its objectives, which is to change perception and to change practice. However, what they have learned and what is demonstrated in Ontario, particularly over the past decade, is that something is beginning to work, because alcohol and other drug substances are on the decline among adolescents in high schools.
What we feel is the answer to this is the fact that our society is becoming more aware of the problems related to abuse of chemicals. The messages are coming through impaired driving concerns. Even a change in the media attention. Our humour has even changed. If you notice, jokes today about drunks are not popular; a decade or so ago they were. All of this is part of an educational process and it is beginning to have its effect. Definitely education is important but look at it in the larger picture.
Mr Waters: Do you see that as part of the responsibility of the LLBO, to be involved with education?
Mr Burden: Not really. There probably is some place where messages can be effectively communicated through something the LLBO has responsibility for, but I do not really see that as the mandate of the LLBO.
Mr Staig: It comes back to what I said a few moments ago, that in our view the government of Ontario should be creating an alcohol policy so that the entire emphasis of the government, through whichever ministry is appropriate, can be cohesive and make sense. In some places it may be the Ministry of Education, of course. Some of it may be Ministry of Transportation, some of it may be -- well, you can name the ministries off. I do not think it is the mandate of the LLBO primarily.
Mr Wiseman: As this has taken a direction in education, I spent 15 years in the education field before I came here and on more than one occasion I had to go to a funeral of one of my students who had died after drinking and driving. I am a little concerned about the message we sent when we allowed the change in the act that allowed motor car events to be associated with drinking, for example the Molson Indy. I would like you to comment on that.
Mr Burden: We strongly disapprove of that change in the act that has allowed that to happen. There is no doubt any sport or any activity that involves certain risks because of speed or handling of a machine or anything else should not be associated with the use of alcohol products. We definitely do not agree with advertising that allows such things as the Molson Indy to take place.
Mr Wiseman: Can I take it that you would like to see it changed back to the way it was before?
Mr Burden: I certainly would, if not further back.
Mr Johnson: I could not agree with you more that if they labelled the ingredients of some of the alcoholic beverages we drink we would be a little more concerned about drinking them, either drinking them at all or how much we consume.
But with regard to the responsibility and liability of the servers or the bar owners, while I think there should be some liability, without a doubt, I am not sure how you would proportion the liability if someone should come into a bar who has consumed a large quantity of alcohol previous to coming to a particular establishment. How does the server know whether that person has consumed a large amount of alcohol, a medium amount of alcohol, just a little alcohol? Do they serve them the remaining proportion or do they not serve them at all? Would you agree that it might be wise that we train the people who serve patrons in bars, establish some kind of training program so that they can become familiar with identifying people who have previously consumed alcohol?
Mr Burden: We would go one step further. We would feel that the servers of alcohol should be required to have training for server identification, so that they can recognize the signs and symptoms of a patron who has overindulged before he arrives or who has, while he is there, taken too much. It is not easy, as you are saying, particularly when a person is sitting at a table and perhaps just talking with people around the table. It is much more difficult to measure the effect of that alcohol than it is if they are walking around or dancing on the floor. It is very difficult but we do believe that server training will help to reduce the incidence of abuse. It will not totally remove it.
We have been concerned on another issue. It does not technically come under this concern but we are concerned about the serving of free alcohol on airlines. Again, you have the same problem. You have a patron who is sitting pretty well motionless and has the opportunity to consume. It is extremely difficult for those who are serving the alcohol to measure the effect, yet that person may get off a plane and a few minutes later be behind the wheel of a car. While it is not a foolproof thing to train servers, we do believe it is a move in the right direction and it should be required.
Mr Johnson: I agree. I think that would be a super thing. I am not sure how reliable that training might be, given the real life circumstances. If I owned a bar I probably would not serve alcohol, because given the laws today I would think that continually people must be in liable positions and either know it and take the risk or do not care.
Mr Staig: One of the directions that is going is through insurance. Corporations that operate taverns and hotels and restaurants and so on buy liability insurance; that, of course, covers or protects or umbrellas them against litigation. The insurance industry is getting more and more concerned about the potential for massive litigation with respect to alcohol consumption, far more than, for example, a hotel without an alcohol licence or a restaurateur without alcohol. I think what is going to happen and should happen is that the insurance companies should be requiring server training as a condition of insurance.
Mr Johnson: Given the potential for, I believe, some major lawsuits, it must be a substantial cost to bar owners to obtain this insurance.
Mr Staig: Yes.
The Vice-Chair: You indicated you had a wrapup you would like to make at this time.
Mr Staig: I would like to thank the committee for this opportunity of meeting with us, spending valuable time on a vast subject. We appreciate very much this opportunity of doing that.
It seems to us, in conclusion, that the government of Ontario, be it through the LLBO or any other ministry or agency, must not be seen to be promoting, marketing or even encouraging the promotion of a product that is fraught with such potential and proven health hazards as alcohol. While it may be true that governments are unlikely to succeed in legislating human behaviour, they do have the power, and the duty to exercise it, to educate, encourage and persuade citizens to a standard of conduct or a way of life that does not depend on the use of alcohol. Thank you.
The Vice-Chair: Thank you very much for your time.
Wednesday's meeting is in committee room 2. We will not be here tomorrow.
1600
COMMISSION MEMBERSHIP
Mr Bradley: Just a procedural point, perhaps, or a point of information, Mr Chairman: We are having people in tomorrow from something called the Fair Tax Commission. I object to the use of the words "Fair Tax Commission." I think it is a tax commission. "Fair" is the political adjective used by a government, not by anyone else. It is a tax commission. It is looking at the taxes. The government can say it wants to make them fair, in its opinion, but I think it is ludicrous that we keep calling this the Fair Tax Commission. I would hope that some members of the media would not be taken in by this calling it a Fair Tax Commission. I am sure they will not be, because they are intelligent and perceptive people; nor should the members of this committee. So I object to the use of the words "Fair Tax Commission." It is a tax commission.
Mr Stockwell: That was part of my comments in the beginning. I take great exception to the fact that it is called Fair Tax Commission as well. I think it is anything but the Fair Tax Commission. Maybe it would be better to label it the slanted tax commission or the NDP doctrine tax commission, or something, but "fair" is certainly not the word that comes to mind when I review the information before us.
The other thing I would like to talk about is this brief outline we received today, I guess, and I assume that the people who we are asking to interview have in fact read this. This looks to me like some kind of terms of reference for the NDP-slanted tax commission. What I would like to know is, why is it set up in this fashion? If they have agreed with it, then really they are not coming in with open minds, and I think rather than go through the charade of interviewing these people after seeing this -- I apologize for not being here last week; I was going through a charade on another committee.
Why are we going through this charade when as you can see, under "Specific Issues to be Examined by the Commission" -- I assume the commissioners of this tax committee have read this, it is so slanted -- it says, "What changes to, or restructuring of, existing tax-delivered assistance would increase the fairness of the overall tax burden on low-income individuals and families?" I would hardly say as a term of reference that is coming at it with a purely objective view.
The second one is, "What viable options does Ontario have for introducing a wealth tax to improve tax equity?" Therefore, we are assuming there is no tax equity and we will need a wealth tax to create tax equity. "What type of corporate minimum tax would be most effective at improving the fairness of the tax system by ensuring that all profitable corporations pay a fair share of the corporate tax burden?" That is assuming that now they do not.
We knew this was a charade to begin with. This has absolutely confirmed the charade. It has confirmed the charade of the commission, because I assume that the commissioners read this and agreed with it. It is slanted NDP doctrine. It really begins to grate on my nerves exactly how slanted, how boldfaced and obvious this government is with respect to its tax commission. So I am having serious problems with continuing it.
I would ask the committee tomorrow to think this through in their minds after reading what they have been given, which is again slanted NDP doctrine, and decide in their own minds whether they want to waste a lot of taxpayers' money going through the charade of interviewing these people who probably agreed to the manifesto here.
It is going to waste a lot of time of government members. It is going to waste our time. It is going to waste the time of these commissioners who have been handpicked by the Treasurer. It is going to cost the taxpayers a lot of money. Why do we not go on to something a little more productive, maybe a little less partisan than this tax commission, because clearly the announcements in the very recent past, and now this bit of dogma that we get today, have clearly outlined the total commitment this government has to, not the Fair Tax Commission, but changing it against certain segments and certain people within our society today.
The last point I would like to make is also included in this package and I would like a correction on this, or I would like the clerk to determine if this is in fact accurate, that one of the people on this tax commission resides in Quebec. I have great difficulty that out of nine million people or so in this province -- I could be corrected on the population -- we are striking 10 to strike a new and improved NDP tax policy and we cannot find 10 people in this province to staff this committee. If I am wrong and this person does in fact live in Ontario, then I withdraw the remarks, but she included as part of her curriculum vitae that she in fact lived in Hull, Quebec. I believe fundamentally that if anybody is going to comment to this provincial government on what makes our system fair or unfair, she should at least have to pay taxes in this province.
I think that is the minimum requirement we could ask for, and even those members across the floor here, no matter how much they buy into Treasurer Floyd's arguments and no matter how much they will have to march to the government drummer, even they should be able to buy into the theory that this person, or all people, should have to reside in the province of Ontario. If I am wrong, I will retract it.
The only information I have is that her address is somewhere in Hull, Quebec, and the person is Susan Giampietri, 6-208 Des Trembles Boulevard, Hull, Quebec. I would ask that if that person does in fact reside in Quebec and does not reside in Ontario, she be immediately struck from the commission and a new search be put out to supply another person. I would ask for all-party agreement on that. Even the deep thinkers across the floor could see the logic in that.
Mr Hayes: Speaking of charades, I get a little tired of these people who just happen to drop in and put on their big show so they can get their Hansard out to their people and say, "Look at all the good little things I said."
Mr Stockwell: I was in finance last week.
Mr Hayes: I listened to you very patiently there, Mr Stockwell.
Mr Stockwell: You said I happened to drop in. I was in finance last week.
Mr Hayes: So you happened to drop in. I think I am getting the impression that he is probably not going to be here tomorrow. I could be wrong on that.
Mr Stockwell: No, I will be here tomorrow.
Mr Hayes: You are going to be here? I am glad to hear that because you interrupted another group here earlier. As far as the fair tax system is concerned, I think that is what we want. Do we not want a fair tax system? That is what we want to put together. I think you made comment about things being slanted. I think if we are going to appoint people to any agencies and boards, I am sure you do not expect the government to say, "Here are the negative things about the people I want to put on the committee," do you? I do not think we want that. I think what we want are the positive notes that have been given to us regarding these people.
Mr Grandmaître: Mr Chairman, I would like you to refresh my memory, or any member of this committee for that matter. When this committee was given additional responsibilities like looking after or reviewing appointments, that added responsibility was discussed in the House. It was a three-party agreement, if I can call it an agreement; it was voted on. I remember the Treasurer talking about this commission in the House. I am just wondering, was this accepted by all three parties, that this commission would be in place? Did we vote on this in the House? I cannot remember.
The Vice-Chair: I do not know. I am not sure what the situation is, but I do know that what we are trying to do is to --
Mr Grandmaître: I know what they are trying to do, Mr Chairman, I know, but I am just trying to compare additional responsibilities, for instance, the appointments that are going through, the review of appointments that are going through this committee. I want to be fair to the Treasurer. I remember the Treasurer mentioning in the House that he intended to put a commission through, but I just want to find out, was this accepted by all three parties or what?
The Vice-Chair: We will have the clerk check that out. The agenda for tomorrow: Somebody had some concerns about it. Is there a problem with it as it is set up?
Mr Hayes: No problem.
Mr Waters: Yes, we took care of it.
The Vice-Chair: Okay, fine. No further business of the committee?
Mr Stockwell: I just have a question. I did not understand the point Mr Hayes was making. You want to put positive things forward. Can you clarify that for me? Thank you so much.
Mr Hayes: My question would be, to you of course -- I do not know if we have to ask one another questions back and forth --
The Vice-Chair: Through the Chair, of course.
Mr Hayes: I think it would be foolish for a government to say: "Here are some people whom we want to appoint to an agency or a board. Now here are all the negative things." I think we should be certainly looking at the positive points and why we would like these people appointed. When you say that we have, when we have --
Mr Stockwell: You consider living in Quebec to be a negative point.
Mr Hayes: I am not even questioning that. What I am saying is that we certainly want to get the right people on the board with good qualifications and it appears that the Minister of Revenue feels that way towards these people.
Mr Bradley: The other point that would be raised, and perhaps this can be raised when the people are before the committee, though I think it is not theirs to answer, it is the government's to answer, is that if you look at this committee, I do not think anybody on the side that is the governing side, and on the opposition side with the exception of the member for Etobicoke West, is from Toronto. I think the commission is dominated by people from Toronto. We have, I would guess, 70% of the people from Toronto, and it has another person from Hull, Quebec. I could stand to be corrected on that, but I think what has happened when the commission is set up is it does not truly represent all of the province of Ontario.
I guess that says that perhaps in Muskoka there is no expert that could be put on this committee, or that in Lambton county they do not have a person who would qualify to be on this commission. I do not know that. Prince Edward-Lennox certainly has a lot of people who are eminently qualified, and Essex county, I know, has some wonderful people. I look at the commission and say that it is in fact dominated by Toronto people.
This is something this committee may want to look at, overall, when it looks at commissions, because I do not know how you ask a person, "Are you from Toronto, and therefore are you biased?"
Mr Stockwell: That is a good start.
Mr Bradley: But one of the things all governments run into -- it is a difficulty -- is do all the experts reside in Toronto? It is more convenient, I understand that, to have Toronto people for meeting purposes. I often wonder if when governments, plural and generically, set up commissions, they do not really consider that there are lots of parts of the province of Ontario that should be represented. That is something perhaps when the committee gives its final report on these people, it may make some note of, the fact that if the committee feels that to be the case, that it does not geographically present itself as a commission representing Ontario -- we may not draw that conclusion at the end.
The Vice-Chair: Thank you. That will conclude our deliberations today. The committee is adjourned until 10 am tomorrow morning.
The committee adjourned at 1612.