Assemblée législative de l'Ontario

APPOINTMENTS REVIEW

ROSEMARY BROWN

ARNOLD MINORS

JOHN ANTHONY CARTWRIGHT

COMMITTEE BUSINESS

CONTENTS

Wednesday 2 June 1993

Appointments review

Rosemary Brown

Arnold Minors

John Anthony Cartwright

Committee business

STANDING COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT AGENCIES

*Chair / Présidente: Marland, Margaret (Mississauga South/-Sud PC)

*Vice-Chair / Vice-Président: McLean, Allan K. (Simcoe East/-Est PC)

Bradley, James J. (St Catharines L)

*Carter, Jenny (Peterborough ND)

*Cleary, John C. (Cornwall L)

*Curling, Alvin (Scarborough North/-Nord L)

*Frankford, Robert (Scarborough East/-Est ND)

*Harrington, Margaret H. (Niagara Falls ND)

*Mammoliti, George (Yorkview ND)

*Marchese, Rosario (Fort York ND)

*Waters, Daniel (Muskoka-Georgian Bay/Muskoka-Baie-Georgienne ND)

Witmer, Elizabeth (Waterloo North/-Nord PC)

*In attendance / présents

Also taking part / Autres participants et participantes:

Runciman, Robert W. (Leeds-Grenville PC)

Clerk / Greffière: Mellor, Lynn

Staff / Personnel: Pond, David, research officer, Legislative Research Service

The committee met at 1006 in room 228.

The Chair (Mrs Margaret Marland): Good morning. I'd like to call this meeting to order, the standing committee on government agencies, and I think the first work of the committee this morning is a motion.

Mr George Mammoliti (Yorkview): Madam Chair, I've got a motion to move here. I understand there's been some discussion about this and nobody seems to have a problem with it, and that's to move that Mr Curling be substituted on the subcommittee on business to replace Mr Grandmaître.

The Chair: Thank you. That motion is necessary, since Mr Curling --

Mr Mammoliti: Everybody agrees, right?

The Chair: I think everyone agrees. Mr Curling has replaced Mr Grandmaître on the committee, so it makes sense to replace him on the subcommittee as well. All in favour of that motion? That motion is carried.

Mr Alvin Curling (Scarborough North): That is the first time the NDP has voted unanimously to have me on anything.

Mr Mammoliti: It's probably the first time this has ever happened.

The Chair: Would someone like to move the report of the subcommittee dated Wednesday, May 19, which I think you have before you?

Mr Mammoliti: I'm sorry. Can you repeat that, Madam Chair?

The Chair: Would you like to move --

Mr Curling: So moved.

The Chair: -- the report of the subcommittee on committee business, which is dated May 19? Mr Curling is moving that subcommittee report. It's the report that sets forward our schedule for our next meetings. All in favour of that subcommittee report? That's carried.

APPOINTMENTS REVIEW

Consideration of intended appointments.

ROSEMARY BROWN

The Chair: I'd like to welcome Ms Rosemary Brown. Would you like to come forward, please, Ms Brown? We welcome you to the committee this morning.

Ms Rosemary Brown: Thank you very much.

The Chair: We have booked one hour to spend with you. If you wish to address the committee with some remarks at the beginning, you may, and then we will rotate through the three caucuses, which have an opportunity to talk to you about your appointment.

Ms Brown: I would like to say a few words just at the very beginning. I'll start out by saying that I was very honoured to have been invited to apply for the position of chief commissioner and that it is my intention to strive to continue in the footsteps of Dan Hill, one of my mentors and the first person to occupy this position, and certainly in the footsteps of other outstanding chief commissioners who have served in this post in the past.

In preparing for this task, I have taken the opportunity to spend some time with past commissioners Raj Anand and Catherine Frazee, as well as the present acting commissioner, Mr Alok Mukherjee, and as well to speak with and receive encouragement from Dr Hill.

Coming as I do from another province, I bring to this job profound respect for the work of the commission. The Ontario Human Rights Commission, Canada's senior human rights body, is perceived in other places as courageous and brave, willing to tackle the tough questions and to deal with the difficult equality issues of the day. In addition, it has a reputation for being relatively free of government interference. These two factors, its courage and its independence, were the ones which attracted me to the position of chief commissioner at this time.

Human rights, as you know, is a relatively young concept and an evolving one. Here in this province, we will be celebrating the 31st anniversary of the code in just 13 days. Indeed, as a society, we are designing a blueprint for human rights with every decision of the boards of inquiry or the courts. It is a concept which separates us from other members of the animal kingdom, because it is one which says that human beings have value and are worthy of dignity and respect regardless of their race, colour, creed, ability, sexual orientation or other consideration, worthy indeed by virtue of the one fact that they are members of the human race.

This is a concept which has driven my every action for many years, because it is one which is so much more difficult to translate into action than it is to articulate. It is a concept which, despite the fact that it is global, bedevils many of the cultures which share this planet with us. Indeed, the decision of the United Nations to schedule an international conference to include all of its member nations for later this month in Vienna has proven to be so problematic that it has been only the skill of the Secretary General, Mr Boutros-Ghali, and the commitment of countries like Canada which have ensured that the conference will indeed take place. Resistance to the conference stems from the fact that the concept of human rights, with its attendant components of justice, equality and fairness, is still an anathema to some countries in the world today.

Eleanor Roosevelt commented that human rights really begins in small places close to home. Fortunately for us, because of the work of the late prime ministers Lester B. Pearson and John Diefenbaker, Canada is recognized and respected as one of the nations in the world which is in the forefront of striving to protect the rights of all people in the small places where they live, where they work, where they play, where they pray and where they do business.

In this country, with the exception of a very small but vocal minority, the idea that people should have equal rights to the nation's benefits, as well as assume the responsibilities of the nation equally, is unquestioned, which is perhaps the reason why so many governments underestimate the financial cost of ensuring full equality for all of its constituents.

Canada, after all, has been designated by the United Nations as the world's first international nation and Toronto it's most multi-ethnic, multicultural city. This change in the makeup of the country has occurred relatively peacefully and without much fanfare.

Very briefly then and very quickly, let me say that I have three goals for my three years with the commission if my nomination is accepted:

One is to ensure that the commission protects the rights of all residents of the province, as mandated by law, through the continued development of policy aimed at exposing the root causes of prejudice and discrimination, the goal being to transform rather than simply to improve society. Two is to make human rights part of the lifelong learning process of everyone, the raising of consciousness about equity issues, if you will. Three is to use the commission's resources strategically; that is, cognizant of these tough economic times, to exercise skill and strategy in what is done at the commission so as to ensure that the broadest good will result from both its decisions and its actions.

Let me confess that I am prone to setting myself optimistic goals. That way, I am forced to stretch myself and others who work with me to reach beyond our level of capability. Often -- no, usually -- the goals are not achieved, but there is invariably some success and even surprise at what is achieved.

Let me also disabuse the committee of the belief that I am naïve, in rose-coloured glasses, walking blindly into what the Globe and Mail referred to as a pressure cooker. I bring to the job experiences that have allowed me an awareness of the many complexities and contradictions that exist in the fight for equality, wherever that effort is being made. I also bring insights gained from working in a range of public positions over the years.

However, recognizing the need to learn more about the many nuances and complexities of Ontario, as well as about the general perception and reputation of the commission, I have gone to some pains to speak with residents of Ontario from all walks of life and to peruse the media extensively in search of the local take, if you will, on the commission. As a result, I have learned much of the problems which beset the commission.

I have learned of the almost pathological preoccupation with the backlog, that in fact this has become the mantra which politicians and critics of the commission, and in addition people who use the commission, chant incessantly.

I have learned of the concern that the commission does not sometimes practise what it preaches, that there are accusations of sexism, racism and homophobia within the commission.

I have heard that the commission does not have a large enough budget to do its job, and I've also heard that the commission has too large a budget for the job which it has to do.

I have heard that the commission sometimes strays beyond its mandate, initiating action on controversial issues instead of avoiding them and confining its interests to the traditionally and more widely accepted definitions of what is a human rights issue.

The challenge which awaits me, therefore, as Judge Abella describes it, is to find solidarity in the tangled web of remedial pleas. But until I'm actually working at the commission, I'm not privy to much of the information surrounding the complaints which I have heard and I am therefore unable to either weigh or to judge their validity. But I come to this job with an open mind, a global perspective and an unshakable commitment to human rights, as well as a determination to push the mandate of the commission to its extreme in the pursuit of equality and justice.

Let me, in closing, repeat that I also come to the commission with respect and admiration for its history, that I look forward to working with the other commissioners and the staff as a team, that I accept and intend to be held responsible for the work of the commission, and that I come before you today eager to learn from you of your concerns about the commission, as well as willing to be examined as to my suitability for this formidable yet rewarding task.

Thank you.

Mr Curling: I get the honour first to welcome you before this committee, Ms Brown.

I was the individual, as they said, of the party that requested you to come before the committee. I do that with great pride because I am quite familiar with your career and your work in human rights and your work in various committees and communities too. With that, I think that it is one of the needed things, that especially a place like human rights needs someone with that kind of experience itself.

Your opening remarks address some of the concerns that I have. As a rather skilled individual, an understanding individual, I presume you did your homework and you anticipated some of the concerns that we would have.

My other reason for asking you to come before the committee is that I think there is a lot that we can learn from you by the questions we will ask you -- and I hope that my colleagues have many questions -- and from your responses, and also to share with you.

We are rather concerned, you said, maybe too caught up with this backlog, for the backlog, as you said, translates, and when we sit at our constituency office and an individual, without the statistics, says to us that, "In the last four years I've had a case before the commission and I haven't heard a word from it or I just heard that it's been an intake," that individual life itself and family sometimes is destroyed just because of that incident that happened within their lives.

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So I welcome you here and I will not be one of those who will expect the highest from you. We're all human beings and the fact is that without working together, I don't think we can achieve the kinds of goals we want in regard to the human rights commission.

You will hold one of the most important jobs, if not the most important job in Ontario. I think it's a higher job than the Premier of this province. I think you're dealing one to one with individuals whose lives are being destroyed because they've been discriminated against through sex or race or income or what have you. They've been shut out of the system and are not able to participate.

I'm passionately involved with human rights issues, so much that sometimes I'd like to step back so that my emotions do not get in the way. Therefore it is for those reasons I ask that you come, so I can share, maybe rather selfishly, some of those concerns. It is without malice at all but just with a sense of being able to understand the direction which you have initially stated, the direction you will go.

If I may just say this in my opening comment too, the former human rights commissioners I think did an excellent job, regardless of the criticism that we may have given them. I think they've done a wonderful job with this rather testy, I would call, experiment of our province with many, many various ethnic groups coming in here at that time, and we have to deal with their own individual needs because they're human needs themselves.

My concern, then, the first question to you, and you may be familiar with this and I don't expect you to know it all, is that the human rights commission itself, in its office, has been undergoing some rather testy times where even racism was said to exist within the human rights commission itself. That itself shakes the kind of confidence of the people who bring forth their concerns there.

A committee was set up some time ago, as a matter of fact, named the organizational health effectiveness committee, by the commission I think this last year, recommending the restructuring of the management of the commission. I just wondered, though, if you had an opportunity -- I don't think you would -- to read that report and the course it has recommended. Do you intend to follow up on that recommendation of the organizational health effectiveness committee?

Ms Brown: Thank you very much, first of all, for your very kind comments. I'm going to do what I can to live up to them, but your expectations are very flattering and at the same time very challenging. So I thank you for that.

I also want to comment on -- either you're psychic or I'm psychic, because the first thing I have in front of me of course is the OHEC report. In reading it through, I was really impressed by the kinds of goals which they set for themselves in terms of the health effectiveness of the commission and the work that they have been doing.

What I would really like to do, of course, is to sit down with the other commissioners as well as with members of the staff of the commission, first of all, to talk about the best way in which one can use the findings of this study. Even before looking at the recommendations, I think we have to look at the findings of the study and then see after that whether in fact the recommendations flow exactly from the findings in the way that we who work in the commission would want them to do, and where there is a difference, maybe go back to the committee and discuss those, but where there is similarity, then talk about how do we go forward from here.

I'm very impressed with the work that has been done so far. I intend certainly to study this much more in detail before I begin working at the commission if I am confirmed, but I think the idea of looking at the values and purpose and goals of the commission really makes good sense if we are concerned about any kinds of changes at all, and then going from there to look at the management and the structure and the delivery of programs. So I share with you admiration for this report, and certainly it's one that I'm committed to pursuing further.

Mr Curling: Yes. The reason I asked that question first is because before we can be believable as a commission outside, we have to practise what we preach. I know when you get into that report in detail and backtrack it to find out that visible minorities are not even in the senior management level -- I just wondered if that's just an accident or somehow deliberate. I hope that the report will reflect that and that if there are discrepancies, those would be adjusted.

Ms Brown: Of course. As I mentioned very briefly in my opening comments, I don't think there is anything as difficult to actually practise as human rights. I believe that we all respect each other and all believe in the value of each other, but when we actually have to put it into practice, then it tends to come into conflict with a number of different things that we do. That's where the dilemma comes. It's a challenge.

Mr Curling: On the wider scale, I'm going to ask another question in regard to the Cornish report. I don't know if I'm psychic, if that's the second one you have on your list.

Ms Brown: Yes, I do actually.

Mr Curling: Mary Cornish had submitted a report to the minister, and of course as politicians, especially politicians in the opposition, we are rather sceptical about the many reports that do come into governments and sit on shelves. I was waiting very anxiously for the government or the minister herself --

Mr Rosario Marchese (Fort York): Don't be so partisan, Alvin.

Mr Curling: It's not partisan; it's just being realistic -- to comment on the Cornish report, because I think within it there is something that could be looked at. I don't believe in it as much. When I say I don't believe in it, I mean that there are things in it that I would have to see fleshed out better. However, I didn't get any comment from the minister.

I have talked about it with some of the colleagues over there, but I just wondered too if you yourself will be following through on that Cornish report. Being a former politician yourself, I think here's a great opportunity for you now to say, "I will not allow any of these reports gathering any more dust on these shelves." Do you have any plans for that report?

Ms Brown: Let me deal with being a former politician first. One of the first things I learned, being both in opposition and in government, was never to make any kinds of promises which I wasn't absolutely convinced that I could deliver on. I'm going to practise that right now and I'm going to start out by saying that in a very selfish way I am grateful that the minister has not taken a stand on the report yet, because it gives us both some flexibility. It means that I would not be moving into a commitment which had already been made and which I have to implement even before I've read it.

Now that I've had an opportunity to read the report, I'm looking forward to discussing the report in some detail, again with the other commissioners, with the staff and with the minister, and I'm hoping that any decision around implementing it will be almost a collegial one, that the minister will permit us at the commission to make some recommendations to her, some suggestions as to how we would like to see the report dealt with.

I want to say that I was very impressed, certainly with the setting up of the study, the mandate which was given to Mary Cornish to review the procedures and around reinforcing the code. I was also very impressed with the premise on which she wrote, which was that we have a new model now in terms of looking at human rights remedies, based not so much on individual complaints as on groups to which people belong, because I think we now understand that prejudice or discrimination is often not directed at the individual but is directed at the group to which the individual belongs. To the extent that the report says, "Let us look at systemic change. Let us look at what happens to the group," I like that. I think that gives us at the commission the kind of support that we need to pursue developing policy in that area.

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Mr Curling: This is the first time, I presume and admit, that maybe a delay or lack of action on a report is looking for somebody more optimistic, that someone who's competent now will look after it himself, and maybe we have the real individual who will move on this. I'll be looking forward to see, as you move towards implementing or addressing the recommendations or making the recommendations to the minister or whatever direction it goes, that the coroner's report will play an extremely important role in how we see the human rights commission and other systemic discrimination being handled. Therefore, that delay itself, as you said, maybe comes to me as a welcoming strategy. I don't think the minister actually intended to do this. I think it actually just happened like that in action. Now that we have somebody of action, I hope that something will be done about that coroner's report itself.

Interjection.

Mr Curling: Well, it was never acted upon, so I was quite concerned about that.

I'm going to move to another issue that has been of great concern to me too, and it came up recently. I will just make a comment on it. It is with regard to the pornography in the corner store. The concern that I do have is that it is moving somehow to individuals who run these corner stores. They ask me to play a role somehow that they themselves are not targeted, and these are the Koreans who are running most of the corner store enterprises. I just want to raise that and to say to you it's one of the concerns that I have and I hope that it could be handled in a very sensitive manner, dealing with the pornography itself and somehow not -- and this is where the difficulty is, as you rightly said. Transforming some of those ideologies or intentions into reality or practicalities can sometimes be extremely difficult. I feel that somehow the human rights has a very, very important role to play in this. Do you have any comments on that?

Ms Brown: I think that's really a classic example of the kinds of dilemmas that we find. It seems to me that the rights of individuals who run these very small corner stores, especially if we're dealing with people who are immigrants and trying to build a life for themselves in this country, are something that we want to protect, and we want to encourage and support them in every way that we can.

The issue, though, of the impact of material which degrades women on women is something that we're really wrestling with. The pornography issue, as you must know, splits the women's liberation movement right down the centre. It also splits the human rights movement down the centre, because there's the whole question of freedom of speech and there's also the question of what hurts and what degrades me.

I have always found it really problematic or even curious that the same groups or the same people who would never tolerate material which treats black people in this manner, to be sold, to be distributed, to be broadcast, would take material like this if there were animals involved -- the entire country would be in an uproar if there were pictures depicting animals being abused in this manner, and they never raise the question of freedom of speech or the rights of people to sell what they want to do in those two instances -- somehow think it's okay when the victim happens to be women. I've never been able to reconcile the fact that people will defend my right as a black person not to be degraded in this manner but they will not defend my right as a woman not to be degraded in this manner.

So I personally have a problem with the issue of pornography. I'm interested that this issue is now before a board of inquiry, and I'm waiting, certainly, to hear what the decision is about that.

But for what it's worth, you asked me my personal opinion, and my personal opinion is that as a grandmother of young girls -- I have three granddaughters, one six, one seven and one nine -- I am not offended by this material; I am hurt by this material. Because for my grandchildren to see this material which depicts women being treated in this way hurts them and certainly hurts their image of themselves and the value which they will place on themselves as human beings.

So I, like you, am waiting for the outcome of this particular issue, but in the meantime, pornography is hate material. It's vicious stuff and it really is destructive to us as a people. I think that what hurts one group of people hurts all of us, and I'm really quite surprised that it's been such a difficult dilemma for us for so long.

The final thing I want to say about it is that the people -- the Koreans, the Vietnamese, the white Canadians, whoever it is that has the small grocery stores that sell this stuff -- are themselves victims too, because the people who benefit from pornography are not the corner stores that sell the magazines. Pornography is a billion-dollar industry around the world; it's not the little corner grocery stores. This is why I think that going after systemic stuff is so important, because when we go after it, we have to go after the people who really make the money on this stuff, and it's not the little corner grocery stores.

Mr Curling: I couldn't agree with you more about pornography, and I'm glad you made the comment about the individuals or the groups that run the corner stores who have now become almost the victim of these situations. It's important that the human rights commission itself, and I think they are, is sensitive enough to identify and realize this, because they are extremely nervous about it, that if it is illegal, it's supposed to be out of the store. But even at that -- I won't deal with that case, but the fact is that the attack now seems to be coming, they feel -- and I've not investigated that fully enough -- to them as individuals of an ethnic group, and I'm sure that what happens in California or what happens in New York has an impact upon Toronto or Ontario or anywhere else. We know that situation, and I won't --

Ms Brown: Can I just suggest that the dilemma we have is that in order to file a complaint, you have to do that where it's occurring. It's unfortunate that if you are unhappy about something that's happening everywhere, you can't -- where do you complain if you don't complain to the one place where you see the material? But certainly it shouldn't stop there. We have to have tougher hate literature legislation and we have to go after the systemic root of this whole issue. It can't stop with simply saying the corner grocery stores.

I just want to say one more thing. I don't know whether this is the Toronto experience or not, but certainly in Vancouver what we discovered when we started looking at it in the corner stores was that the magazine distributors said to the corner stores, "You take these magazines or you don't get those." The corner stores themselves were being victimized by the big magazine distributors, so they were caught on the horns of a dilemma, too.

Mr Curling: I was told my time is up.

The Chair: Yes, your time is up, only for --

Mr Curling: Only for this, I hope.

The Chair: Only for this. Your time would never be up. Mr McLean.

Mr Allan K. McLean (Simcoe East): Thank you, Madam Chair. How much time do we have?

The Chair: We were giving everyone 20 minutes.

Mr McLean: Thank you. Welcome, Rosemary Brown, to the committee.

Ms Brown: Thank you.

Mr McLean: Are you still living in Vancouver?

Ms Brown: Yes, my home is in Vancouver. My plan, of course, is to move to Toronto on June 20.

Mr McLean: You haven't had an opportunity to tour the offices of the commission?

Ms Brown: No. In consultation with the acting commissioner, it was decided that would be inappropriate behaviour on my part, because until this committee makes a decision as to my confirmation, I am a job seeker; the job is not mine.

Mr McLean: The committee, for your information, has never turned down one that's come before us, so you'll feel pretty safe.

Ms Brown: Well, there have been so many firsts in my life.

Mr McLean: I assure you this won't be one.

Are you familiar with the layout of the commission, the 16 offices across the province? Have you had a chance to review the mandate of the commission?

Ms Brown: I have had an opportunity to review the mandate of the commission. I have not visited, as I said, any of the 16 offices. I've really tried to behave as appropriately as possible and not make any assumptions about the outcome of this meeting this morning, so as to details about how the commission works, about its budget and this kind of thing, I only know what's in the public domain.

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Mr McLean: Were you sought out for this position?

Ms Brown: I was invited to apply.

Mr McLean: Good. Then you won't be aware of the backlog or any of the outstanding cases.

Ms Brown: I don't believe there's anyone in the world who is not aware of the backlog. Certainly, going through the newspapers, even reading some of the back issues, it's been brought to my attention very strenuously that this is a major concern of everyone.

Mr McLean: You haven't had a chance to read the book, Report on Human Rights Reform, which was put out on June 26 of last year? Did anybody give you the opportunity to review that?

Ms Brown: Which book is that? Who is the author?

Mr McLean: The task force released its report entitled Achieving Equality: A Report on Human Rights Reform on June 26, 1992.

Ms Brown: Is that the Cornish report? Okay.

Mr McLean: You never had a chance --

Ms Brown: Yes, I have it actually. Yes, I have had an opportunity to go through it very quickly. I dealt with some questions about it raised by Mr Curling.

Mr McLean: According to your résumé, you've had some experience in British Columbia. You were opposition critic on human resources. You would be familiar with the layout of a commission such as this.

Ms Brown: Yes.

Mr McLean: What is your first job going to be, to talk to all the people and find out what it's all about and familiarize yourself, I guess, with the surroundings? I don't know what to ask you this morning, because you're not familiar with the commission and you can't answer any questions that I know of that would pertain to the workings of this commission when you're not familiar with it.

Ms Brown: I can certainly talk about what I would like to do at the commission. I touched on it very quickly in my opening comments. Certainly, I agree with you that my first responsibility would be to meet with the acting chief commissioner and the executive director, with the other commissioners and with the staff, and to sit down and talk about the fact that I hope that we will work together as a team to deliver on the mandate of the commission, which of course is to protect the individual rights of every person in this province, and then start to talk about how strategically we can address the question that the commission not only now has a backlog, has had one in the past, but in fact, if it is perceived to be effective, will always have a backlog. Because if the commission works, people are going to use the commission. From what I have seen and heard of the statistics today, to date the use of the commission is increasing, not decreasing.

What I believe we're going to have to try to do is to use all of our skill and our talent to address the issues strategically, because we certainly are not going to be able to ever hire enough people to keep up with the work of the commission. We're going to have to make some strategic decisions about that.

Certainly, one thing that Mr Curling raised very early in his comments which I didn't respond to is that I know, from speaking to the chief commissioner, that the commission is looking at the business of what he refers to as better customer relationships, keeping people informed about precisely what is happening to their complaint.

That, I think, is something that doesn't necessarily call for a lot more money, that can be done almost immediately. Something can be put into place to make sure that happens. Not just the person who's complaining, but to be in a position so that when an elected member phones the commission about a particular client, the commission is in a position to say exactly the status of the complaint at the time, so that the elected member is then in a position to better explain to his or her constituent precisely what is happening.

Also, I would certainly see the commission trying to work much more closely with elected members in terms of the educational or the informational job of what's happening to complaints which come to us. I would like to see, for example, the elected members, when they're approached by a constituent, be in a position to say, "This is how the system works, this is what's happening and this is what you have heard so far; within a certain period of time you will hear the next thing," so that you are better equipped, as elected representatives, to do your job of representing your constituents.

Mr McLean: I'd love, in six months' time, for you to let us know how you're making out and what you've found.

Ms Brown: I would love to come back at some time and maybe get you all working even harder.

Mr McLean: That's right, and I would love to see in writing what you just told us, proposed how we go about looking at having some input. I welcome you and I wish you every success.

Ms Brown: Thank you. I certainly see elected members as being very important participants in the delivery and protection of human rights in the province. I know that the commission would like to work much more closely with you to see that this is done.

Mr Robert Frankford (Scarborough East): Welcome. Nice to see you here. I'd like to use this opportunity to get into an issue that I've been involved with over many years, which is breast-feeding.

Ms Brown: Breast-feeding?

Mr Frankford: Yes.

Ms Brown: Oh, yes.

Mr Frankford: This may not be obvious initially --

Ms Brown: It's been a long time but I'll see what I can remember.

Mr Daniel Waters (Muskoka-Georgian Bay): First time I've ever heard Dr Frankford totally speechless.

The Chair: Shall we go on?

Mr Frankford: Okay. In case people are wondering about the connection to be made, breast-feeding in public; I think people have been harassed or have been told not to do it. You may have come across cases in BC. I think there have been some in the past and I believe there have been some in Ontario, to show that this is not just some little, trivial problem. In Florida, within the last few months, there was legislation specifically permitting breast-feeding in public, and since then I have had people from the infant-feeding advocacy movement come to me and say, "Why don't we do the same here?"

I'd be quite prepared to try to introduce that legislation, but it seems to me that this may not be necessary, that one could be taking a human rights approach. It seems to me being told that breast-feeding in public is not allowed, or if people are asked to leave premises or whatever, I don't think this would ever come to police action or prosecution but I think clearly there is a human rights issue here. Would you like to elaborate on this?

Ms Brown: I think it would be really unfortunate if we needed to have legislation to deal with an issue like this. It seems to me that we should be becoming much more comfortable with the nurturing and rearing of children now that we can accept, if it is done in a discreet manner, that babies need to be breast- fed. We certainly are saying that is a much better and a much more healthy way of raising babies than using formulas or other things. We're encouraging this much more than we did before. As a society, it seems to me that we should be enlightened enough to be able to deal with that without necessarily legislating it.

The only concern I would have about it would be in terms of the health of the child. I don't know if you read yesterday's paper, and you probably don't read Dear Abby either, do you?

Mr Frankford: No, not usually.

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Ms Brown: Okay, but Dear Abby in yesterday's paper had quite a long discussion about whether women should be permitted to breast-feed their babies when they go to the hairdressers. The concern which was raised is that there are so many fumes and chemicals, everyone is smoking and the various things that we use to make our hair look so natural in fact is an unhealthy environment for a baby to be in. That would be my only concern, that this would be done in an environment which would be unhealthy.

But certainly in terms of accepting a perfectly normal process, I would be really unhappy if we would need to have legislation to say that that is permitted.

Mr Frankford: But it seems to me if a case arose, and I expect it will sooner or later, that that incident could be brought to the human rights commission.

Ms Brown: Yes. It would be an interesting challenge, and I can imagine that the commissioners would certainly examine it with some care and some thought and probably see it as an educational opportunity too to talk about the importance in our society of the care and nurturing of babies.

Mr Frankford: Thank you. I appreciate what you've said and I will take it back to my friends in the advocacy movements.

Ms Brown: Okay. Thank you.

Mr Marchese: Ms Brown, it's a pleasure for all of us to have you here as the prospective chair of the Ontario Human Rights Commission.

Ms Brown: Thank you.

Mr Marchese: I personally was very impressed with your goals. I find them very comprehensive and at the same time challenging. I think your first and third goals are something that most people are likely to agree with. I suspect you might have some challenges or disagreement with your second, which is the goal of trying to deal with the root causes of discrimination and a goal of transforming and not just improving society. I agree with that, but my suspicion is that some might not agree with you. But that's a comment rather than a question.

There was a point, and I think you've touched on it, but I'd like you to comment on this again. The task force talked about, "The enforcement model set out in on the Human Rights Code was outdated because it focused on the resolution of individual complains, and not the more serious and entrenched problem of systemic discrimination."

I believe you've said that's what we should be doing. My sense is that we need to work with individual cases, of course, but that we haven't done enough on the other. Do you agree with that, and what would do you about that?

Ms Brown: Of course the individual cases were the ones that gave us the basis for saying that what we really need to do is look at what's at the root of this, what is causing this form of discrimination, and try to deal with that rather than continually dealing with individual cases, because when we look at the root, what we find is that we're dealing with groups, discrimination against groups, much more so than discrimination against individuals.

We needed those individual cases and they have been very, very useful. Now it seems to me that if we can deal with the systemic thing, we not only have set a precedent, we've established for future individual cases that this is not acceptable practice or process or behaviour or whatever. Then we can start the business of changing behaviours.

Mr Marchese: You see philosophically how we don't disagree, and the challenge of course seems to be so enormous. When I think of the need to deal with the root causes of what causes violence against women and children, and we talk about needing to do prevention as opposed to dealing with the problem once it has arisen, I think of the enormity of the task. Where do we begin?

Ms Brown: We begin at the beginning, which is you start out, as we have done in the past, looking at the violence and saying that has to stop. I certainly agree that you have to say, "That has to stop," and then we say, "Now, what are the causes?" As you say, when we get into the causes, we suddenly are looking at the whole issue of race, we are looking at the issue of class, we are looking at the issue of discrimination based on place of origin. I mean, there are all of these other aspects that feed into violence, into this happening, and we realize that we have to deal with that.

We have to deal with protecting the right of people to work, the right of people to live in places where they can afford to live and want to live. We have to be protecting the right of people to promotions, to having opportunities, to having the education that they want, developing the skills that they want, all of these kinds of things. But we still have to have the rule that says, "Thou shalt not hit thy spouse." It's as simple as that.

But we can't stop there, because one of the things that happens, I have discovered, is that when you simply put legislation in place that stops behaviour and you don't attack root cause and attitude, all that happens is that it festers and it erupts somewhere else. I'm convinced that a lot of the sudden eruption, for example, of the Heritage Front and naziism in the school and this kind of thing is based on the fact that we used to think that you can't change human attitude and you can't change the way people think.

But we have to do that now. We now realize that it is not enough to say, "Thou shalt not." We have to now start saying, "These are the reasons why thou shalt not and these are the ways in which you have to rethink the way you live in this world and the way in which you relate to other people."

Mr Marchese: Okay. The Cornish report identifies some different way of reorganizing the commission. It talks about how the responsibility for the enforcement of human rights should be divided between three institutions, and it identifies them. I realize, through your comments, that you would want to talk to other board members --

Ms Brown: Yes.

Mr Marchese: -- and reflect on this report yourself, talk to the minister as well perhaps, and other people.

Ms Brown: Yes.

Mr Marchese: But I'm not sure. You might have a comment on it, because the division seems interesting. The Equality Services Board would "provide claimants with information and advice about pursuing human rights." A Human Rights Ontario would "play a strategic, proactive role to overcome systemic discrimination." An Equality Rights Tribunal would "provide timely access to trained, full-time adjudicators. These adjudicators should be required to conduct hearings as expeditiously as possible," and so on.

It appears to be a very interesting division of tasks. This seems to make sense. Do you have an immediate impression of that?

Ms Brown: The notes which I made to myself were that the recommendations were so innovative and sweeping that I would like to discuss and explore them with the other commissioners, with the staff, with Miss Cornish herself, as well as with particular groups, as well as with community groups particularly interested. I would be particularly interested in discussing this also with the minister and with the government in terms of the 88 recommendations.

This is not a Band-Aid recommendation; this is not simply reorganizing the chairs on the deck. This is a major kind of thing that she is suggesting here. I absolutely refuse to even think about it until I've gone through this process of learning how the people in Ontario who would be most directly affected by it would respond to it.

Mr Marchese: That's fine. It's a fair answer.

I wanted to touch on the backlog, because one of the task force's complaints on the backlog is that the delays in processing complaints had seriously undermined the commission's credibility in the community. You made an interesting comment which I didn't note down, but you talked about people's pathological concerns about this, or we "pathologized" the backlog. I find that interesting. Do you want to elaborate on that?

Ms Brown: That was an outsider's view, because every, single person to whom I spoke -- and I've spoken to a lot of people about the commission -- started out with the word "backlog." So immediately it clicked in my mind: pathology. That's it, and that probably is a result of living too many years with a doctor, but that was my particular word for it.

But I certainly agree with the acting chief commissioner that there are different ways of looking at that and that we can do that. We can actually sit down as a team and try to look and think strategically about that and address it, beginning by saying that if the commission is doing its work and if it's effective, there will always be a backlog. At the point at which there are no cases waiting to be dealt with or in the pipeline, then I would become really worried: Why is no one using this commission?

As difficult as it is, and I realize that it's not because of its effectiveness that we presently have the backlog, but it's because we may not have been looking at the cases coming in in a strategic way, I'm not pessimistic about it. I still think that we can address it.

Mr Marchese: Thank you very much.

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Ms Jenny Carter (Peterborough): I'd like to welcome you very warmly to this committee and to this appointment.

Ms Brown: Thank you.

Ms Carter: Now it seems to me that you have a unique background of experience in this field. You've travelled, you've held all kinds of positions and so on, and you mentioned that Canada has been rated the number one place in which to live. I believe we just lost that position to Japan for whatever reasons.

Ms Brown: They keep using different criteria for measuring it. When they measure the status of women, we win again because Japan loses.

Ms Carter: There have been other reports where we don't seem to show up so well, where we're criticized for continuing poverty for single parents who do not have everything they need to cope and so on.

Ms Brown: And certainly children --

Ms Carter: So I was just wondering if you could assess the general situation of human rights in Ontario and in Canada and see how you think we shape up comparatively at this moment.

Ms Brown: I think we talk a good line. I think we articulate really well. I think we know it and we understand it and I have every sympathy with the difficulties about putting it into practice. I know in my own life I have to continually monitor my own behaviour to be sure I'm always practising what I am preaching because it is difficult.

Some of the things that we are asked to do in terms of ensuring equality put us into conflict even with our friends and with our traditional network of supporters. It is difficult. I don't know of anything that's as difficult as really practising equality. To the extent that the government of Ontario is committed to this and is willing to support the commission and stand behind it and help it to do the job that has to be done, then I feel very optimistic about Ontario.

Ms Carter: It seemed as though the constitutional debate opened up a lot of cans of worms, and instead of saying yes to that and following through, we seemed to have backed off and almost avoided some of those issues. I found it quite scary what prejudices were opened up when we faced some of those questions.

Ms Brown: Yes. Coming, as you know, from another country to this country, because I am an immigrant, even though I've spent most of my life here, I am still amazed at how many different kinds of people live in harmony in this country. Nowhere else in the world does it happen. Despite the flaws that we have, and they are many, we somehow have managed to do really well.

To me, things like the human rights commission, like a commission on employment equity, like a commission on race relations, these other kinds of bodies are part of what makes us work. We have somewhere to go when we have a complaint. We have a commitment from government to listen to that complaint and we have a commitment from government that says to us, "You are a valued human being in this country and you will not be treated as less than that." I believe that these commissions are very vital to the survival of this country as one in which people can live in relative harmony.

There are going to be brushfires. I'm horrified by the incident that occurred in London, for example, where there were people burning a cross and dressed up like the Klan in sheets and stuff. We're always going to have those kinds of brushfires until we've actually been able to do something about root causes and systemic causes. But we're actually committed to do something about that, which is not the case in many other countries.

Ms Carter: That's right. We have a good start.

I'd just like to ask you something about budget. You have been a politician, so you're realistic. You know that no aspect of government can grow disproportionately and have all the funds it would like to have, and you have suggested already that you would never have enough people to deal with the cases that keep coming, so there has to be some kind of limit and probably a backlog as a result.

I understand that the budget of the Ontario Human Rights Commission is approximately, I take it, $12 million. I have something here that says $12 billion but I don't believe that.

Ms Brown: Oh, I think we could use $12 billion, actually.

Ms Carter: I'm just wondering whether you feel that is a reasonable amount or whether you would feel that more would be required, or most probably you would have to look into that and see what the situation is.

Ms Brown: One of the things that I've asked for, and I'm told that it's not yet in the public domain, is the estimates. I haven't actually seen them so I really don't know that. But I have a view on budgets, and that is, I believe that in these really tough economic times, we've passed beyond being able to do more with less, that we're now doing less with less and that we have to address that, in terms of people's expectations, up front and honestly. If we're going to live within our budget, we have to say that this is what we have to do what we have to do, so we cannot do everything that everyone wants to be done and we have to be very straightforward about that.

Ms Carter: Another point I would like to raise --

The Chair: You are down to your last half-minute.

Ms Carter: Okay. You were saying that elected members should become involved. Certainly, we should become knowledgeable and we should be able to advise our constituents what avenues are open to them, but I was just wondering whether there isn't a line there that we shouldn't cross. We can't become involved in a particular case, because then we would be interfering with something that --

Ms Brown: No, no, I was thinking and speaking of you primarily as educators.

Ms Carter: Right. Yes, there's no problem with that, obviously.

Ms Brown: No, no, no. I'm a firm believer in arm's length.

Ms Carter: Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you, Ms Brown, for appearing before the committee this morning.

Ms Brown: Thank you very much.

ARNOLD MINORS

The Chair: Our next appointment is Mr Arnold Minors. Is Mr Minors in the room? Good morning, Mr Minors.

Mr Arnold Minors: Good morning, Ms Marland, is it?

The Chair: Yes. Welcome to the committee. If you wish, you may make some opening brief comments, and then we will rotate through the three caucus's members to ask you questions.

Mr Minors: Thank you for the opportunity to make comments. I am appearing here at your request and I am happy to answer any questions that will help you in your deliberations to figure out about my competence to be a member of the police services board. So I'm happy to begin with your questions.

The Chair: All right. Thank you, Mr Minors. We will start with the third party.

Mr Robert W. Runciman (Leeds-Grenville): Welcome to the committee, Mr Minors. I have just a few questions in respect to how you were approached for this appointment. I assume someone in the Premier's office contacted you, or someone in the public appointments secretariat?

Mr Minors: That's right. I was approached by someone in the appointments secretariat.

Mr Runciman: You hadn't indicated an interest to anyone and they contacted you?

Mr Minors: I had not done that.

Mr Runciman: When you were contacted about this appointment, was there any discussion about your views in respect to policing in Ontario or what the government's views are in respect to policing, what it would like to see? Was there any talk about the government's agenda and how it lined up against your own feelings?

Mr Minors: There has been no talk about the government's agenda. My hunch is that in their discussions about me, people have been very clear that I am quite independent and so they probably thought that wasn't even a useful thing to talk about. But in any case that wasn't brought up, nor was my opinion about policing asked for.

Mr Runciman: Your opinion about what? Pardon me?

Mr Minors: About policing, which was your first question, I believe.

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Mr Runciman: Are you independent in a political sense as well? Have you ever had any ties to a political party?

Mr Minors: I am independent politically, yes.

Mr Runciman: And that's always been your history.

Mr Minors: That's always been my history.

Mr Runciman: I guess if the government didn't ask you, I'll ask you about your views about policing, especially the Metro police, since it's going to be your responsibility. One of the advisers to the government -- I'm paraphrasing; I can't recall the exact quote of Mr Lennox Farrell, who advises the government on race relations -- made some comments about the Metro police force being, I think, white shock troops in terms of the visible minorities in Metro Toronto. I just wondered how you feel about the Metro police and any general observations you might have, especially in terms of the relationship of the policing community and their relationships with visible minorities in Metro.

Mr Minors: My belief about policing is that what we need in this society from police is responsiveness to the community. The Metro Toronto police have released a report called Beyond 2000, which talks about community policing. I would extend that to mean community control of policing. When people talk about police and visible minorities or police and race relations, I would work to in fact turn that around to an issue of competent policing, that what police need to know how to do is to work competently with each and every member of the community that they are hired and are bound to protect and to serve, so that if they don't have knowledge about what that means, I think the board should make sure there is sufficient training to make sure they understand that and can do that well.

So often, the way in which I hear police and visible minorities or police and race relations, it sounds like public relations as opposed to police being effective. To the extent that it means effective policing, I am quite concerned about making sure that police and visible minorities and others follow through. To the extent that it's about public relations, I have no interest in that.

Mr Runciman: I appreciate your objectives and what you'd like to see happen, but do you have any views on the current situation? Do you think specifically the visible minorities in Metro are in any way, shape or form being badly treated, mistreated, not getting a fair shake from a sizeable chunk of Metro officers? Do you have any views right now, concerns, as you enter this role?

Mr Minors: It is my experience, personally and as a consultant, as a member of the Ontario community, as a citizen, and as a black person who is a member of the community, that the police, in the way in which they deal with various communities, are a part of the set of organizations that exist in this society, just as education, just as justice. It is no accident that there have been many reports about the way in which minorities are not well served in the education system, they're not well served in the criminal justice system, they're not well served in other systems. It is not surprising that they talk about not being well served by the Toronto police.

I'm not surprised at that observation and I think that in part it's to do with an understanding of dealing with various communities. It is in part a reflection of the fact, I believe, that employment equity has not been successful with the police, as it hasn't been with other organizations and that there needs to be a wider representation at all levels of the police by various members of the community so that this kind of knowledge and skill and experience and perspective is built automatically into the organization.

Mr Runciman: What you're generally saying, in your explaining why you feel this way, I guess, is that you don't think -- specifically I think you mention -- the black community is well served by Metro police authorities, and you mentioned the representation within the ranks of various minority groups and so on. I just wonder about the general view with which you go into this with in terms of the various communities not being well served. Have you or family members or close friends had personal experiences that would sort of cement those opinions and firm them up that make you feel this way?

Mr Minors: I remember -- and this is a metaphor for me -- one of my friends in a group of people saying -- she has three teenage sons and she and her husband are both black -- that until all three sons are at home she cannot sleep, until she hears that door slam behind the third one coming in and going to bed. She is very worried about that, and that story I have heard a number of times.

Mr Runciman: I've heard that.

Mr Minors: To the extent that story exists, it is a reality for those people who describe those stories, and to the extent that police behaviour based on whatever -- I think it's largely a lack of knowledge and experience.

I can talk about a program that I was part of designing called "Policing in a multiracial society; to serve and protect" that is being mandated to go throughout the province for all police forces. To the extent that the reasons for it are about -- I think a lot of it is -- lack of knowledge and experience, we will continue to have those kinds of stories and they are realities for people. To the extent that we don't hear or at least I don't hear similar stories, for example, from others, I say that is something that influences my perspective.

Mr Runciman: Okay. I guess that was a long answer to a question I asked in respect to your own personal experiences or family experiences. You're talking about these kinds of stories circulating. I've heard them too. I was talking about why you have this view and I guess you're not basing it on any personal experience that you've had or any family member or close friend has had. This is the sort of thing we've all read about in the media or heard in coffee shop discussions. There's no real experience on which to base the view you've expressed here today.

I was just wondering, another question -- do I have some more time, Chair?

The Chair: You have one minute.

Mr Runciman: Just another question in respect to your discussion with the Premier: Again, we have very limited time. I know Ms Eng, the current chair, has indicted she's not going to be looking for another reappointment by the current government and her term will expire, I think, next year; I'm not sure about that. But was there any discussion about the possibility of your eventually succeeding Ms Eng as the chair of the Metro Police Services Board?

Mr Minors: "Discussion" would be dignifying it by a large amount. There was a mention that I may be considered as chair at some point. I have not discussed that because I have no idea what that would mean. I would need to be at the board for me to even want to engage in that conversation.

Mr Runciman: All right. I suspected that sort of a conversation had occurred.

Mr Mammoliti: Welcome, sir, to the committee.

Mr Minors: Thank you.

Mr Mammoliti: You're going to be very busy, I would imagine, in the next little while.

Mr Runciman brought up the point about relationships, and your relationship on the board with others is going to be a big one. Can you give me an indication of what type of relationship you see yourself having with perhaps the police department itself, and the police and the special investigations unit, and of course the SIU with the board itself? What type of relationship would exist among those groups and yourself?

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Mr Minors: There are of course any number of people who have an impact on what the police do. My personal style is to identify who all those people are and to find out ways in which I can build those perspectives into what I know about, what I do, what I say.

Specifically with regard to the special investigations unit, I would expect to talk with those as I would talk with the other members of the police services board, as I would attempt to speak not only with the chief and the senior officers, but with, over time, a sample of people at various levels of the force, just to get an understanding of what it is that they do.

Mr Mammoliti: Communication is important. In terms of your experience with race relations and being an expert on race relations, I would ask as well what role you see yourself playing on the board with this experience. Do you see a role and, if so, what is it?

Mr Minors: What I talk more about is anti-racism rather than race relations or racism and systemic racism. The role that I would bring I think in my knowledge about this area is to help people to understand from that experience how systemic racism plays out in employment, in the ways in which police may behave with members of various communities and what kinds of specific changes or additions or subtractions may need to be made in order to have the police do what I call competent policing. The notion for me is, as I've said before, about competent policing.

Mr Mammoliti: In terms of police training, there has been some discussion in the past and even some criticism in terms of how police are being trained at present and wanting that to improve. I can remember a few people coming into my constituency office and talking about this particular issue. Where do you see the board playing a role in terms of improving the training, if it needs to be improved? What's your opinion on police training? Where should we be going and where does the board play a role in that?

Mr Minors: Probably, in terms of the board, I think the board needs to be very clear about what the priorities are, the principles are, that need to govern the quality of training, and that the training itself is then reflected in what the training content is and who delivers it. What I would do is to work very hard in talking about and working through with the members of the board what are the priorities, what are the principles that govern those priorities, how should training programs be designed to get results, as opposed to having people go through a number of training programs for the sake of going through training programs. I'm much more interested in results than I am in process.

Mr Mammoliti: Good luck, Mr Minors.

Mr Minors: Thank you.

The Chair: Dr Frankford, and Mr Marchese and Ms Harrington after you. You have about six minutes.

Mr Frankford: Okay, I'll ask them quickly. Could you give some thought to crime statistics? This is often put in terms of race and crime, but I think there are obviously many more things that can be examined if one is looking at the individuals, their socioeconomic status, sex, whatever. Do you think we should be trying to avoid the whole thing or should we be actually concentrating on refining what we're doing?

Mr Minors: I'm quite clear, I think, that statistics on the basis of gender or race or even class, if we could figure out a way to do it in terms of victims, is a very useful thing to do. In terms of who alleged criminals are, I am much less clear about it, in part because of my knowledge about statistics and how they can be used. We're clear about victims when that happens. If we lived in a society where every person who committed a crime was in fact arrested, if every person who was guilty of a crime was in fact convicted, then we could use the data about arrests and convictions.

In the case of robberies, for example, only about a third of the ones that occur are reported to the police, and of those, only about 30 get, as the police call it, cleared. So we're really talking about a very small percentage, and how we can extrapolate from that very tiny percentage to any kind of population is beyond me. The size of the error is bigger than the size of the measure. So I would not encourage that. I would be against it.

Mr Marchese: Mr Runciman had asked a very interesting question, one that I thought was paradoxical in many ways, but I also thought it was an entrapment kind of question, because he asked, "Did you have a personal experience?" and then you talked of another person's experience. I felt that if you had answered that you had a personal experience, you would have been disqualified because you would be too close to it and therefore too angry at the police, and that by not having that experience and talking about other people's experiences, that you weren't qualified because you were only talking about other people's experiences.

Do you think a personal experience would have disqualified you and do you believe having knowledge of how the black community may be treated disqualifies you as well?

Mr Minors: Absolutely not. In fact my belief is that each of us has all kinds of experiences with organizations, and as a consultant, what I do is to treat an experience as data to be used to follow up by: "What does this mean? How do we use it? What does it mean for policing?" If, for example, I get a ticket on my car, I wonder about who else gets a ticket. If I get stopped for speeding, I wonder about who else gets stopped for speeding. So I think that that perspective would not -- in fact I would say that maybe having experiences with the police should be a requirement.

Ms Margaret H. Harrington (Niagara Falls): Very briefly -- and thank you very much for coming -- one of the many challenges that every organization faces, its leadership faces, is how to manage in these difficult economic circumstances. Do you envisage any difference that should be happening in the future as to how we manage services?

Mr Minors: We have half a billion dollars that goes from public funds to the police, and it's pretty clear that it needs to be used well. One of the things that I would hope to bring is some thinking based on my consulting experience of what are the priority areas for the community and the communities and how we want to look at that in terms of results for policing in Metropolitan Toronto.

So often what we do is to spend money on activities without much thought about how those activities contribute to results that we want, and I think that we need in the budget, especially in these times, a much tougher look at what it is we want to do and how we want to use those dollars to make that happen.

Ms Harrington: So you're willing to look at a broader view of how efficiencies can be found and how to get the results that the community needs and wants.

Mr Minors: Both effectiveness and efficiency. I think that broader look has always been important. I think it's particularly important today.

Ms Harrington: Thank you.

The Chair: You have some time left.

Ms Harrington: Really?

The Chair: Yes, you have two minutes.

Ms Harrington: Okay, go ahead.

Mr Marchese: Let me ask a question on the whole issue of accountability for the individual board members, because there are no defined standards for conduct for the members. So in some ways there's no protection for the members, and at the same time there's no accountability to the public in terms of what their role really is, or could be or should be, for that matter. Do you think there should be some standard that is defined somewhere, both in terms of their own protection and in terms of how they might become accountable to the general public?

Mr Minors: Accountable to the general public: Probably the issue for me is, to the extent that we can build in community control and be clear about what that means, that may start to give us some ideas about what standards of accountability mean for the members of the board.

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In terms of protection of the board, maybe that does the same kind of thing. If we're clearer about what we expect from the board, then we can be clearer about what accountability means. I think that what we have over time developed is a set of behaviours that are a kind of concretion of all the historical experiences we've had.

Maybe this is as good a time as any to look at, aside from the Police Services Act, to build on that and to say: "What is this board really about? What do we really want it to do? What does accountability really mean and how can we make that public so that the public understands what the board's supposed to do for policing?" Maybe the same thing would be true for politicians as well, aside from the voting every so often that happens.

Mr Curling: Mr Minors, let me welcome you too to this committee. I'm really not concerned about how you got here, because basically your qualifications actually speak for themselves. Again, how people come to this committee is always a matter of how this committee is organized.

I'm going to be deliberate about this. I hope that one day we will have people before committee or commission and that as we see them we don't think that we have to ask them a race relations question, because police are far beyond racism issues. It's about policing for all our citizens. It is rather interesting; only Mrs Harrington had not raised a question about you and how you see racism.

My last comment about that is that when I hear about "visible minorities," not like my other colleagues in the Conservatives, who see that visible minority equals blacks as it is there, "visible minority" is about all other people, minorities within our community.

Let me ask you, though, because one of the things I am concerned about very much with the police here is the creation when they have the SIU, the special investigations unit, do you have any comment about how it should operate, what you think about it?

Mr Minors: Of course, as I get on the board and get more information about the police services board and the police department and the special investigations unit and all the other organizations that look at policing, the special investigations unit should in fact exist. I believe that there needs to be a competent, independent body that looks at incidents.

No matter how well intentioned people are in an organization, there will inevitably arise circumstances that need to be looked at. In a case for police, who have this enormous job to do that involves public safety, there are all those attitudes in society that are evoked by police fear, because of associations with crime and so on. We need to have some group of people who are independent of the police to be able to look at actions the public finds unacceptable, inappropriate, reprehensible, wrong, whatever, and to examine those and have the public know that when that examination happens -- and I think it should happen reasonably quickly so that people can have a good process, so that when people hear about the results of that, they can feel confident that whatever complaint has been brought forward has been responded to, dealt with well, so that they also feel protected.

Mr Curling: This is probably a difficult question for you and maybe quite unfair in a way. When Osler, who was then the head of the SIU at one stage, stated that the Police Services Act poses a basic conflict for police officers, do you believe that the Police Services Act does that?

Mr Minors: You're right, I'm not competent to answer that now. I'd be happy to once I have some more experience with it. If you can tell me the context in which he said it, I might be able to respond.

Mr Curling: That may be so too, but the fact is, not even knowing the context in which he said it, that's quite a statement. I would say to you, as serving on the commission, I think, take a very close look at that, whether or not the act itself poses a basic conflict to police officers.

Mr Minors: The one thing I'd add quickly is that if the act under which people are supposed to operate means they can't do their job, which is what I'm hearing about this basic conflict --

Mr Curling: I think that is, in some respects, what he had said and I can't understand it.

Mr Minors: --then to the extent that's true, I mean, obviously the act would need to be looked at but I can't comment specifically.

Mr Curling: Accountability is one of the most important things, especially in policing, and somehow there is some resistance all along about accountability in the police force. I think they're moving a bit toward that accountability situation, and I look forward to the improvement of the police force.

Use of force is one of the hottest issues around. Do you have any comment about the use of force and police officers?

Mr Minors: Clearly there are some instances in which force by an organization such as the police has to be used. Equally clearly, people who use that must be trained well. I mean, people talk about use of force and they say, for example, that the police should have bigger weapons and all those kinds of things.

My concern would be, having trained people a while ago in how to use weapons, making sure that police officers can use the weapons they have and use them well, that they know in their guts and in their heads and in their hands a variety of ways of dealing with situations so that the use of force is not always seen or is not in any way seen as the first option.

I'm not suggesting that is what's true for all police officers, but clearly the issue of training is a fundamental one of knowing when and how to use force so that if there is an exception it has to be a very, very unusual exception. It should certainly not be something that is an ongoing discussion and a worry, whatever, because then I'm worried about competence.

Mr Curling: If there's a word, Mr Minors, within the police force it's the word "training." It comes up more often than any other word I know, which is quite shocking to me because they are more or less a quasi-military force -- sometimes some hold on to it as almost a traditional military force, and when people hear that they need more training, it's quite surprising that they do have police officers who are enforcing the law and haven't got any training or lack training in many aspects of things. I'm not only talking about the use of force of training but talking about training in all other aspects of society and understanding society. Maybe you have not had an opportunity to look at the budget. Do you feel there is adequate training being done or adequate funds being given so that the necessary training can be done?

Mr Minors: I don't know the question about whether there's adequate funding. Certainly in my experience, in many organizations the question is not so much about adequate funding but what is done with the funding they have, to see if it gets the results they want to obtain. Then and only then, if it looks like there need to be more dollars, you look at that. But so often what gets done with training dollars is so loosely tied to results that almost any argument can be made for increasing the dollars. I think we need to look much more carefully at that.

Mr Curling: Thank you very much.

The Chair: Mr Minors, thank you for appearing before the committee this morning.

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JOHN ANTHONY CARTWRIGHT

The Chair: I would like to invite Mr John Anthony Cartwright. Good morning, Mr Cartwright.

Excuse me. Could we ask that you clear the room? We are running a little late, and you could have your conversations outside the room. Thank you for your cooperation.

Mr Cartwright, you may wish to address the committee with some brief opening comments or you may just wish for them to start in their normal rotation to ask you questions. Do you have any opening comments?

Mr Cartwright: No, I think I'd rather just respond to questions.

The Chair: All right, then. Mr Mammoliti, you are the first person.

Mr Mammoliti: Thank you, Madam Chair, and welcome, John. It's nice to see you again.

Mr Runciman: From your association?

Mr Mammoliti: Well, I've seen him in the Legislature from time to time.

John, in terms of promoting and developing tourism through the convention centre, have you got any ideas or any fresh new approach to looking at the increase in tourism dollars that might come through the convention centre? If so, can you share them with us?

Mr Cartwright: I think that the key aspect facing the convention centre right now is the issue of expansion of the convention centre. I sit, in my role as manager of the building trades council, on the Metro Jobstart Coalition. We've had a number of presentations made by the convention centre as well as by Exhibition Place and Ontario Place about the whole question of expansion and integration of the exhibit and convention aspect of the tourism industry within greater Metro. The figures that the convention centre shared with us show that quite a number of conventions are now being lost to Metro because they do not have adequate space for hosting some of the larger, international in particular, conventions. So that's an area that I'll be supporting, and supporting through the Jobstart Coalition, which we're on record as that. I think that will be key.

A number of the conventions that have been held at the convention centre over the last number of years, a number of the largest ones, are different national or international unions, a couple of them in particular from the construction trades a few years back. I think that I'll be able to use my influence within the labour movement, particularly the building trades, to act to some degree as an ambassador for the convention centre.

Mr Mammoliti: That was my second question. Can you elaborate on that? We've already touched on this. How are you going to act as an ambassador?

Mr Cartwright: My own personal union, the carpenters union, held a convention at the convention centre about five years ago and found, obviously, the facilities to be excellent, and we've had conventions previously in places like McCormick Centre in Chicago and Atlantic City. The Food and Commercial Workers International Union has a major convention coming up there this year, and those conventions take place, depending on the organization, every three to five years.

As well, there are national conventions more often than that, and others such as the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans, which I'm a member of, that are always making decisions as to where to hold conventions. Through my office I think we can reach out a little bit more to those organizations.

Sometimes Metro Toronto has to overcome some of the prejudice that is held against it within the rest of the country as thinking we have everything, so we have to try twice as hard to get the business rather than people looking to go elsewhere other than here.

Mr Mammoliti: I'll yield the floor, Madam Chair, to one of my other colleagues.

The Chair: Mr Mammoliti and then Ms Harrington was the order I had.

Ms Harrington: There are a couple of things I want to touch on. First of all, the process on how you were approached with regard to this position: Could you just give us how you found out about this?

Mr Cartwright: I was contacted by the Ministry of Tourism and Recreation to find out if I'd be interested in being involved with the convention centre. I've been involved in the Expo '98 bid committee and in particular in working with the Italian community to try and swing some votes in Europe in our favour, and dealt with quite a number of people in the convention and tourism business through that process.

Ms Harrington: With regard to tourism as a whole in Ontario, obviously I have some stake in this because I represent the city of Niagara Falls. We would like you to share all the good things from Toronto, of course, and we will share with you our tourists. We like to think of Niagara Falls as the entrance or the gateway to Ontario, and then we will let them go to Toronto, and you can put your people down to Niagara Falls, which I guess has always happened in the past.

To expand our facilities and to move ahead into another age, possibly, of tourism, how do you see the financing arrangements? Say we're talking expansion of facilities here, and/or probably the same thing applies to Niagara Falls, where we are looking at expansion of facilities, how do you think they should be financed?

Mr Cartwright: The convention centre is in rather the unique position among a lot of the facilities to be able to raise the capital necessary largely through its own means, although I think they are also looking for some money from the government to help carry that, but they have the ability to bring in a payback on the return for the expansion that's being talked about, virtually within a short number of years.

I guess that contrasts to some degree with the national trade centre, which is also a project which has the support of both the building trades council and the Jobstart Coalition and which we would like to see go ahead. But both the government and the business community, I think, are much more hesitant to give carte blanche to the national trade centre project because of some real concern about the market viability of particularly the national trade centre.

We'd like to see, obviously, both things go ahead, but the business plan that's being presented by the convention centre for that expansion has I think pretty well universally been accepted as being a model in how to bring about capital investment and expansion without strictly looking at the public purse.

Ms Harrington: Great. Mr Marchese?

Mr Marchese: Thanks, Margaret. That was in fact the question, or related question, I wanted to ask you, John. The government will have limited dollars in terms of what it can put into the Garrison Common plan, and so we're going to have a difficult time deciding where those dollars from a provincial perspective should go. You commented on the fact that the national trade centre is a large project, but some critics say, of course, that it's too large and it's too expensive, based on the return it would get, that the dollars that go into it would not be productive based on the return and that, rather than doing that, we should be doing something else. I think some of them say perhaps we should be doing an expansion of the Metro convention centre, which would bring a higher yield for the dollars that one would invest.

You commented on that earlier. You may not want to give an opinion one way or the other, but if you have an opinion on that, or are there other things we could be doing to build jobs that have a much more comprehensive advantage or good it would bring to the community at large?

Mr Cartwright: I don't want to place one against the other, and it's been interesting, because in the presentations made by both Peter Moore from the CNE around the national trade centre and John Maxwell on the convention centre, we questioned fairly closely as to whether or not we were being faced with one or the other and are we being asked -- again, I'm talking through the Jobstart Coalition, which is a coalition of the building trades' unions and the contractors' associations -- do we have to go with the one or the other? Are they mutually exclusive in the point of eating into each other's market? They're both quite emphatic in saying that they serve a different kind of market.

I think that the Garrison Common is a tremendously exciting plan for Metro, it's a very important plan for Metro, and when I look around and understand the level of unemployment that we have in construction, which has been 50% now for three years running, we would like to say to the government, "Build it all." So I'm not going to discourage in any way investment in any of the projects that are looked at through the Garrison Common.

I think we're at a time when in fact investment in capital construction makes a tremendous amount of sense because of the good costing that is being supplied through the tendering process at terrifically competitive prices and because it's much better to pay people to work than for them to be on welfare, which is where we're at right now.

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If I can expand a little bit more, the other aspect that I bring in my experience is through the convention exhibit and display industry, which is served by the building trades unions, the carpenters, the labourers, the electricians, in particular. That is very much a growing industry. There are hundreds and hundreds of people who work full-time in that industry, supplying the services for establishing convention exhibits and displays, and I think that is an important thing for people to understand economically.

Going back to Niagara Falls, if I can for a second, what happens when you have conventions in Toronto is that any major convention always has tour services that take place where the delegates or their spouses are offered tours, and they inevitably feature Niagara Falls as sort of a spinoff quite aside from Hogtown.

Mr John C. Cleary (Cornwall): We had a number of tourism people in to visit us a couple of weeks ago and they were very disgruntled over some of the cutbacks to some of their organizations, like our tourists not being able to get provincial rebates now. How do you feel about that?

The other thing, the same question, is, what kind of promotion would you do? I know you touched on it a bit. What do you think should happen in the Metro tourism convention industry to improve it this summer and in the future?

Mr Cartwright: If you look at the role of the convention centre within the tourist industry, it's a pretty specific role as far as bringing people in to attend a convention is concerned. The convention is booked by a major organization. That doesn't really serve the family driving over the border in the station wagon to come up and see Toronto. So it's a bit of a different dynamic.

I think the key really, and the process, will be expanding the convention centre so that it can host quite a number of the major conventions that it has outgrown. There's a list that the convention centre has of conventions that have been held in Toronto at the convention centre during the 1980s that have now been informed by those sponsoring groups that they are no longer able to book the convention centre because it's too small. What's been happening is that in a number of major North American cities, they have expanded their facilities so that they can take anything going, and we have essentially cut ourselves off.

I think the real answer to how to increase tourism through the convention centre is to have the expansion so that it can serve that growing market, and much more of an international market, that's taking place.

Mr Cleary: One other question I might have there -- maybe some know but I don't -- when you were approached or however you came about getting this position, full-time, how many years are you appointed for?

Mr Cartwright: This is not a full-time position.

Mr Cleary: It's not full-time?

Mr Cartwright: Goodness, no.

Mr Cleary: Oh, I'm sorry. I read that wrong.

Mr Cartwright: You scare me. Too many things to do for construction workers in Toronto right now. It's a three-year appointment and the board sits, I think, at most monthly. If the construction goes through, it'll be monthly, and if not, I think it's quarterly.

Mr Curling: I don't have many questions for you, but you made a comment here that -- I know you don't serve those who are driving over the border coming to conventions, but they do have an influence because what influences people to select convention centres are the activities around there and that's why it becomes a tourist attraction.

Are you concerned that the government itself, which actually actively campaigns against -- even sometimes a member of Bread Not Circuses and a couple of things like that, almost discouraging the industry to expand because they feel that they should have more bread than, as they call other things, circuses.

Do you feel that the board you would be serving on and the government that you are more or less responsible to from the board have changed their attitude in order to develop the trade aspects of Ontario so that the convention centre can then start to be receiving all those who like to have conventions in this city? I think the mood has changed.

Mr Cartwright: I'm not actually quite sure of the question you're putting to me.

Mr Curling: I'm saying that I wonder what support you have within the government in one respect. Firstly, if you promote all the activities here in trade and all that, people will of course have conventions. If people don't see Toronto as a place like that, they will not hold their conventions here. Do you think there's a change of attitude within the government now that would encourage you to expand the convention centre?

Mr Cartwright: The discussions that have been taking place in the last period of time around the convention centre, or for that matter the Garrison Common and the national trade centre and the whole upgrading, I think have been very positive. I don't know if it's necessarily people having changed their own positions.

I have to say that I think the role of David Crombie in the regeneration, trying to bring all levels of government together to say, "Hey, we have some common problems and how do we resolve those problems?" has been really quite vital. While the convention centre is not strictly within the Garrison Common, that approach he's been working on for the last number of years and in particular the last two in the implementation plan I think has had its positive effect at every level of government -- the feds, the province, Metro and the city. I think maybe all of us, as the economic situation has gotten a little tighter, have started realizing that turf wars or philosophical wars about things aren't nearly as important as sitting down and trying to come up with some common solutions. I don't know if that really answers your question.

Mr Curling: All right. At the end of the day, do you feel that the tourism strategy that has been expounded by the government now is very helpful to your convention centre and the expansion, or do you feel that the tourism strategy itself has got to change in order to respond?

Mr Cartwright: To be honest with you, I'm not totally familiar with the overall tourism strategy of this government. I sit on the city of Toronto economic development committee, where we deal with a lot of the issues that have to take place around tourism.

Mr Curling: Do you feel it's important, then, that they have a sort of tourism strategy to assist the convention centre?

Mr Cartwright: Yes, absolutely.

Mr Curling: Would that be one of your major goals when you get there, to see what kind of tourism strategies can complement the convention centre?

Mr Cartwright: I wouldn't say it will be a major goal. I think it will be part of how I see the mandate.

Mr Curling: Why would they come here then? Why would they have a convention here if they don't have --

Mr Cartwright: You're asking me about a tourism strategy, which encompasses a whole lot of things: people going to do fishing up north and coming to the --

Mr Curling: No, I'm talking about down here, the tourism strategy down here. There wouldn't be a tourism strategy -- if they want to go fishing, they wouldn't come to Toronto and try the harbour here, outside in the lake here. Well, they could but I wouldn't know what to do with that fish.

Mr Cartwright: I see the convention centre as a key part, I guess, of the broader provincial tourism strategy and I don't feel comfortable with commenting on what that broader strategy is.

I see within Metro it's important for us to have an aggressive tourism strategy in relation to the trade and convention business, which is a huge business and is growing. That ties into your point, if I can expand on it, around the other attractions that make that why people want to come.

Mr Curling: I agree.

Mr Cartwright: I think there's been some very solid support around the Garrison Common with bringing in an LRT down to Ontario Place, with having the Ex talking to Ontario Place so that they may look at a coordinated strategy to talk about those places being year-round tourist venues. I think that's really important and I'll be seeking to have an input on that and pushing for those kinds of things to take place.

Mr Curling: Good.

Mr Cartwright: I'm sorry, I may not have really been --

Mr Runciman: Mr Cartwright, I was a little curious. You seem to be on a first-name basis with the government members of the committee. Is there any reason for that?

Mr Cartwright: Well, George Mammoliti: Before I became manager of the building trades, I was a representative of the Carpenters and Allied Workers union, and he was the sitting member in the area where our hall was.

Mr Runciman: So there's no political reason for that. You don't have any ties to the NDP?

Mr Cartwright: No, I don't.

Mr Runciman: And never had in the past?

Mr Cartwright: No, not even the Liberals.

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Mr Runciman: I'm impressed by your grasp of the issues related to the operation of the convention centre. Just in respect to the process, I have a couple of questions. When you were called by, you said, a representative of the Ministry of Tourism, did this just come out of the blue? Had you expressed an interest to anyone in serving in this capacity?

Mr Cartwright: Not specifically in this capacity. Since taking over as manager of the building trades council, I've been very involved in a number of issues, as I've outlined, and have expressed my willingness to go out and serve and do whatever needs to get done --

Mr Runciman: I appreciate that.

Mr Cartwright: -- to build those kinds of --

Mr Runciman: You hadn't expressed a specific interest in this particular appointment?

Mr Cartwright: I hadn't requested it, no.

Mr Runciman: I'm just curious. This is no reflection on you; it's a reflection on the materials that the government provides when it talks about a candidate's search process. I think it's something of a sham when they talk about reviewing résumés and talking to stakeholders and so on. But in any event, that's no reflection on you. When you talked to the government in respect to this appointment, did it talk about anything that it'd like to see you doing in terms of representing its views, its interests, its agenda? Was there any discussion along those lines?

Mr Cartwright: No, not at all.

Mr Runciman: Looking at your labour background, I have no difficulty with that. I think it's appropriate that someone with your background serve on this board. I think it's a good idea. I was just wondering if you have any particular concerns in respect to areas related to your background in terms of the labour movement: the operations of the facilities, the part-time employees, the concessions. Do you have any concerns in respect to unionization, non-unionization, casual labour, those kinds of things that would necessarily, perhaps, have some interest for you?

Mr Cartwright: No. The convention centre is a unionized centre and I don't have any particular concern with that.

Mr Runciman: Even the part-time employees are unionized, as far as you know?

Mr Cartwright: To the best of my knowledge, they are.

Mr Runciman: Okay. So you don't have any specific agenda in respect to those kinds of things.

I'm just curious about when you're advised that you have to appear before this committee in terms of a review prior to the appointment being formalized, and that's all it is. Does the government provide you with any briefing materials? Is there any briefing session, any discussion related to issues? Are you provided with any information with respect to those things?

Mr Cartwright: It was suggested that I might want to go and talk to some people at the convention centre whom I'd met with before, as I've said, through the Jobstart Coalition. I phoned up and made an appointment with John Maxwell and sat down with him and talked about what the centre does.

Mr Runciman: I see. So that's perhaps a bit of an explanation in terms of your grasp of some of the current concerns and issues.

Mr Cartwright: Actually, no. I don't think there's anything he told me that I didn't know, because they have been involved in trying to garner support from the Jobstart Coalition in particular, as has just about every other organization with any sense of development or construction plan. We take a lot of time on those issues, because of the dire levels of unemployment in our industry. That's a joint approach between ourselves and the contractors' association.

Mr Runciman: You're not provided with any written briefing materials by government or anyone representing the government in terms of issues of concern?

Mr Cartwright: No.

Mr Runciman: You talk about expansion of the convention centre. I guess the board has recommended that the expansion occur.

Mr Cartwright: The board of the convention centre has, certainly, yes.

Mr Runciman: How does that process work in terms of moving beyond that? I think I saw the figure of $175 million as an estimate. I think I read that somewhere in this briefing note, that the $175-million subterranean project will double the size of the convention centre. How does the process work in terms of moving beyond the board saying, "We think this is needed and it's going to assist us and assist the city and assist the province"? What's the next stage?

Mr Cartwright: Well, they've gone to a number of organizations and agencies, in particular Jobstart and others, to say, "This is something we want to see on the hopper," which is there along with many others. I think the Crombie commission took a look at that, the national trade centre, Ontario Place, the LRT issue, and in particular was reviewing what made the most economic sense -- I guess the best bang for the buck, if you want to be crude about it -- in relation particularly between the national trade centre expansion and the convention centre.

I don't know that that study has been completed yet. I would assume that once it's completed it will be put before the powers that be and they'll have to make some decisions, and I guess that will be a cabinet decision. The other one that I guess is also in the hopper is around the O'Keefe. There have been discussions about all of those issues being expanded.

Mr Runciman: Your full-time job with the Instruction Trades Council: Do you get involved with these kinds of things? Are you approached in terms of a lobbying effort? Because it does mean jobs for your membership, obviously, if this kind of thing occurs. Do you get involved in that? Have you been approached? Have you taken a position in the past? Has the council taken a position?

Mr Cartwright: On the convention centre?

Mr Runciman: Yes.

Mr Cartwright: Oh yes, we've taken a very definite position that we want to see the convention centre expanded; we want to see the O'Keefe expanded; we want to see the trade centre expanded; we want the LRT in tomorrow; we want the Eglinton West transit going ahead yesterday; we want the Spadina LRT going.

Yes, we function; in fact we've established a coalition specifically to lobby for construction projects in Toronto, capital projects as well as cutting the red tape around some private projects. We have taken very strong public positions of saying that this is the time when everybody should be spending money in construction because they get the best value for their dollar, whether it be taxpayer or private dollar.

Mr McLean: Wouldn't there be a conflict of interest there with you sitting on the Metropolitan Toronto Convention Centre board wanting to initiate the expansion of that board or voting in favour of that?

Mr Cartwright: No, I don't believe so.

Mr McLean: You don't believe it would be?

Mr Cartwright: No, the position of the board is that they should have the expansion, so I'd be one other person saying "aye."

Mr McLean: And your membership would be benefiting, which you are a head of?

Mr Cartwright: I would hope so. Put them to work.

Mr Runciman: I have no further questions.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr Cartwright, for appearing before the committee this morning.

Before we vote on this morning's appointments, I wanted to advise the committee that Mr Cowan -- Mr Waters understands this because we discussed it in the subcommittee -- was an individual who had been appointed to three different bodies, and at the time the subcommittee selected Mr Cowan to come before this committee for one of those bodies, the subcommittee did not know that each appointment was contingent on the other. So by not selecting him for the other two, the other two appointments went forward automatically for approval.

We then were going to have Mr Cowan come back -- and I think this is the right individual, isn't it? We actually changed his appointment and then the next time he would have been scheduled to come before the committee, he was in fact working and was unavailable. So we decided -- I should say the subcommittee decided -- that they would recommend his appointment to the Health Facilities Appeal Board because of the fact that really it was contingent on the other two appointments which he already had, so it seemed rather superfluous to --

Mr Marchese: I would move concurrence in that report.

The Chair: All right, thank you, Mr Marchese. Mr Curling?

Mr Curling: Just on another point, I was looking at the process of selection and I have some concerns about that. The fact is that I know I was the one who had called Rosemary Brown forward and also asked for an hour, and therefore I am penalized in certain respects. Because I asked for an hour, I would not get another selection; I would miss my selection. However, when it goes around, it seems to me all parties get equal time in which to speak. I get penalized for the selection but they get the full participation that I would have participated in.

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The Chair: Mr Curling, the committee structure is established so that there is equal opportunity for all parties to participate equally.

Mr Curling: I like that, but I don't see why I should be penalized because we asked for the hour.

The Chair: Look how few appointments we can deal with in this process anyway, even with half-hour appointments.

Mr Curling: I understand that.

The Chair: I think there has been a historical precedent with the committee, where if you choose to spend an hour, then you're eliminating the opportunity to see two people rather than just one for that hour. That's why it's been handled the way it has.

Mr Curling: I understand, but as I said, I put the point that then when it comes, everyone gets equal time in which to speak, but I was penalized because I asked for the hour, which I thought was important.

The Chair: I think maybe we can discuss this again in the subcommittee. We understand the point that you're making.

Do you wish to vote on these appointments this morning individually? If so, would somebody make a motion to the individual appointments, or do you wish to vote? I'm waiting for a motion, in other words.

Mr Marchese: It depends. If the other members want to do it seriatim, that's fine with us.

The Chair: All right. Mr McLean, Mr Curling, Mr Cleary, do you wish to vote on the appointments individually this morning?

Mr Curling: I'd like to vote individually.

The Chair: All right. Would somebody move the appointment of Ms Rosemary Brown.

Mr Marchese: I so move.

The Chair: Moved by Mr Marchese. All in favour of the appointment of Ms Rosemary Brown? Thank you.

All right, now the appointment of Mr Arnold Minors to the Metropolitan Toronto Police Services Board.

Mr Frankford: So moved.

The Chair: Moved by Dr Frankford. All in favour of Mr Minors's appointment?

Mr Marchese: Mr Curling, we're voting.

The Chair: We're voting on Mr Minors.

Mr Curling: I'm quite mindful of what's happening.

The Chair: All right. Those opposed?

Mr Curling: I'm voting for him.

The Chair: Excuse me? Were you voting in favour?

Mr Curling: I'm voting for Minors.

The Chair: All right. Mr Cleary?

Mr Cleary: I'll vote against it.

The Chair: All right, thank you.

The appointment of Mr Cartwright to the Metropolitan Toronto Convention Centre board of directors.

Mr Mammoliti: So moved.

The Chair: Moved by Mr Mammoliti. All in favour? Opposed, if any?

Mr Marchese: You're consistent today, John.

Mr Cleary: That is true.

The Chair: All right, thank you.

COMMITTEE BUSINESS

The Chair: We haven't finished. We have two reports that you received in your agenda that are outstanding and they need approval so that we can adopt them. If there are any amendments, we have to send these for translation and to be printed. The first report is on Science North.

Mr Marchese: On Science North, I want to thank Mr Pond for the changes he's made and would move acceptance, if we have not done that the last meeting. Did we move acceptance of this report at the last meeting with these proposed changes? We'll move acceptance of this report then.

The Chair: All right. All in favour of the report on Science North? Opposed? That's carried. So we'll send it for translation and to the Clerk's table when reprinted.

Mr Marchese: Madam Chair, on the next report, I know Mr Waters wanted to make some changes, some suggestions of wording changes. Could we refer this to the next meeting in order to allow him to do that, or is that a problem for some people?

The Chair: I think the difficulty of deferring it is that if we want to get these reports translated in time to be approved in the House, we're already very tight in terms of the time frame. Maybe our clerk can advise us of what the time frame difficulty is.

Clerk of the Committee (Ms Lynn Mellor): The bulk of the reports that are currently at translation, it will be three weeks before they're finished and then they have to be printed, and the House rises on the 24th. That's the problem with the time frame.

Mr Marchese: That's fine. Could we pass it with an understanding that Mr Waters would speak to the Chair about some of those changes based on whether or not they're accurate?

Mr Curling: Change it after?

The Chair: No. I think if there are going to be any changes made to this report, they have to be made by the entire committee being in attendance. We can't handle side amendments outside of the committee structure itself.

If you would like, Mr Marchese, we have the option of passing it today without -- Mr Waters was here earlier. He didn't say anything to me about his proposed amendments. We can postpone it for a week, but there would be no guarantees then, of course, that we could deal with it in the time frame.

Mr Marchese: Okay, that's fine, Madam Chair. We can deal with it today.

The Chair: All right. Does somebody wish to move approval, or would you like Mr Pond to review any of this report on the Metropolitan Toronto Police Services Board?

Mr Marchese: I would have liked to have done that but I'm simply not clear on the changes that he would have liked to have made.

Mr Mammoliti: Can I ask a question in terms of the discussion?

The Chair: Well, you still have the choice. I mean, if you wish to postpone it for Mr Waters till next week, we can do that but, as I say, there's no guarantee then that we can get it translated and to the printers and back before the House rises, but we'll try.

Mr Mammoliti: I'd like to ask a question in terms of the discussion that took place the last time that we had spoken about this, and that's the statistics that are gathered.

Mr David Pond: I attempted to address the point you raised, sir, with the last paragraph on page 21, which is in shaded ink.

Mr Curling: So what's your question?

Mr Mammoliti: My question is, is this an end to the discussion or are we planning on discussing this a little further? I know I've had a chance to talk to some of my colleagues on this side and we were interested in hearing from some sort of an expert on this issue and perhaps being able to ask that expert some questions in terms of statistics in this area. Before I vote, I'd like to get an indication of where we're going to go from here on this issue.

Mr Curling: So you're postponing this now? There was a question --

Mr Mammoliti: No, not necessarily, Alvin. I just want to see some sort of a commitment. I think we should have a discussion.

Mr Curling: -- just got to accept it or not, and if not, you do discussion later. If you don't want to accept it, you don't.

Mr Mammoliti: So be it, but --

The Chair: I think the point is, George, that if you wish to change the wording on page 21, then this is the time to do that. This is a report of what the committee's findings are on this subject, and if there's some wording in the report that doesn't represent what you want the report to read, you may --

Mr Mammoliti: Would it be appropriate to suggest and to add that this committee have a chance to question an expert at one particular time? Would it be appropriate to include these remarks in the report?

The Chair: Some of that has taken place before this committee, but if you're saying that you want the committee to spend more time on this report, I assume that's an option of the committee. All I'm asking for today is whether -- as you see before you, it's a draft final report on the Metropolitan Toronto Police Services Board. If you wish to have more information before you approve this draft and make it the final report of this committee, that is an option of the committee.

Mr McLean: We have spent a lot of time on this Toronto police services board. We've had McCormack in, we've had Susan Eng in, we've had a lot of people in. People who were on the committee when we were dealing with this, some of them are not here now. This report, in my estimation, is finalized. It had been sent back for revision. I would simply say that those two reports now should have been received and ordered for printing, ordered to the House.

The Chair: There is another option too, Mr Mammoliti, and that would be that if this report is approved by a majority of the committee, individuals can submit a minority report.

Interjection.

The Chair: Pardon me, sorry, a dissenting opinion. I used the wrong word.

Mr McLean: I'd like to make a motion that the standing committee on government agencies report the two reports, the final report on Science North and the final draft report on the Metropolitan Toronto Police Services Board.

The Chair: We've already voted on Science North, so your motion is to approve this as the final report.

Mr Curling: I second that.

The Chair: We don't need a seconder. Dr Frankford, you had a comment?

Mr Frankford: I was very supportive of this possibility of bringing in an outside expert on criminal statistics. Just briefly, I was quite taken by the witness the response of the witness this morning about crime statistics, suggesting that one should also be looking at statistics on victims, which I had not thought of before. I think that this is a very interesting and important area which we seem to be --

The Chair: Okay. I hear what you're saying, Dr Frankford, and all I'm suggesting is that if that is the direction in which you wish to go, then you have to vote against the motion that's on the floor. Right now, there's a motion on the floor to approve this report that is before you as it is printed.

Mr McLean: I ask that the motion be put.

The Chair: We have a motion to call the question. All those in favour of calling the question on voting on the motion? The motion is to approve the report. All those in favour of calling the question? Opposed to calling the question? All right. All those in favour of the motion to approve the draft final report on the Metropolitan Toronto Police Services Board? All in favour of the report? Opposed? The hands are going up and down. Opposed? Thank you. The motion is carried.

We can move adjournment of the committee and we are going to have a meeting of the subcommittee.

The committee adjourned at 1222.