Assemblée législative de l'Ontario

SUBCOMMITTEE REPORT

ONTARIO HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION

CONTENTS

Tuesday 1 February 1994

Subcommittee report

Ontario Human Rights Commission

Rosemary Brown, chief commissioner

Mark Frawley, acting director, legal services

Neil Edwards, director, regional services and systemic enforcement

Scott Campbell, executive director

STANDING COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT AGENCIES

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

*Acting Chair / Présidente suppléante: Witmer, Elizabeth (Waterloo North/-Nord 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)

*In attendance / présents

Substitutions present/ Membres remplaçants présents:

Conway, Sean G. (Renfrew North/-Nord L) for Mr Bradley

Cousens, W. Donald (Markham PC) for Mr McLean

Klopp, Paul (Huron ND) for Mr Mammoliti

Perruzza, Anthony (Downsview ND) for Mr Waters

Clerk / Greffière: Mellor, Lynn

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

The committee, following a closed session, met at 1035 in the Trent Room, Macdonald Block, Toronto.

The Chair (Mrs Margaret Marland): I call this meeting to order, to commence the review of the government agency known as the Ontario Human Rights Commission.

I bring to your attention that one of the selections, Mr Winston Hollis, an appointment to the Niagara Escarpment Commission, was a selection made by the third party and it has been withdrawn because it was a municipal appointment, not a provincial one, which makes sense.

SUBCOMMITTEE REPORT

The Chair: Just before we start the review and my welcoming the people who are taking part in it, we do have a subcommittee report to approve, and it was moved by Ms Harrington. Is there any discussion on that subcommittee report?

All in favour of the subcommittee report? Opposed, if any? That is carried.

ONTARIO HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION

The Chair: Good morning, Ms Brown, and welcome to the committee. We're happy to see you here this morning. Do you wish to make an opening statement?

Ms Rosemary Brown: Yes, thank you very much. Good morning, Madam Chair and members of the committee. I want to start out by apologizing that I have fallen victim to Ontario's flu, so if my voice sounds a little bit more sexy than usual, it's not that I'm trying to seduce you but that in fact I have a cold.

Thank you very much for inviting the commission to appear before you again for the second time in seven months, because we're very anxious that you should hear what we've been trying to do over at 400 University Avenue and all of our other commission offices.

The Ontario Human Rights Commission, as you know, exists for one purpose: It exists to ensure the primacy of human dignity. Although public sector agencies in general acknowledge the need to provide good customer service, the commission has a specific accountability for placing people first. This flows from the preamble of the code, which recognizes the inherent dignity and worth of every person and enacts as public policy "the creation of a climate of understanding and mutual respect for the dignity and worth of each person so that each person feels a part of the community and able to contribute fully to the development and wellbeing of the community and the province."

In essence, this quasi-constitutional legislation affirms that each member of our community is essential and that no one may be treated as a mere means to an end. Rather, it states boldly that all of us have an inherent dignity which must be nurtured and expressed in all forms of social interaction. It is the business of legislators and public servants alike to ensure that the primacy of dignity is given force and effect in public policy.

The Lieutenant Governor, upon the recommendation of this committee and the executive council, has conferred upon me the awesome form of accountability for the preservation and advancement of this public policy. I appear before you today, and through you to the people of Ontario, to speak of the innovative ways in which the commission's purpose is being discerned and fulfilled.

The people of Ontario expect the Human Rights Commission to preserve their rights and to do so in a just and effective manner. The Ontario Human Rights Commission was created to be the anvil against which a culture of personal dignity could be formed. It is a place where competing interests collide, where people who have been silenced, whose communities may have been silenced for generations, come forward to assert their intrinsic worth.

Issues which define the scope of our humanity and the maturity of our civilization are confronted daily throughout the agency, and what is true for all public sector professionals and agencies is especially true for the commission and its staff, namely, that the interests of the agency reflect, respect and uphold the dignity of the people we serve.

As of December 31, 1993, the commission was carrying a case load of 2,156 files, 808 of which were pending investigation. The parties to these files have a right to expect a timely, fair and thorough investigation of their complaints, but it is clear that their expectations are frequently unmet. Various attempts have been made to make immediate and radical changes in the way human rights is enforced in this province, but the circumstances which confront us have not admitted to any instant solutions. Also, there has been concern about the integrity of the commission itself, about the quality of its investigations and the quality of its working environment.

The commission has itself acknowledged that it is a creature of society and that it is not immune to the insidious effects of intolerance. Persistently, attempts to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the commission from the outside in have met with limited success. However, as a gardener myself and a former politician, I know that the only changes which last are those which happen from the inside out. This is the secret of all quiet revolutions, which is why I believe that there is cause for optimism in the deliberate and methodical agenda for change which has now been initiated at the commission.

The commission has articulated and commenced the implementation of a series of eight organizational improvement initiatives. These measures are intended to effect meaningful and tangible reforms in the way that the commission conducts its business. Specifically, the commission is (1) implementing a quality and quantity assurance system; (2) establishing a coherent and meaningful customer service program; (3) streamlining and enhancing its enforcement procedures; (4) using technology to become more efficient and productive; (5) creating a lean and rational organizational structure; (6) defining and preserving clear standards of accountability; (7) supporting all staff through relevant and respectful training and development; and (8) acting decisively to ensure organizational health, including the use of sound anti-racism principles.

These measures are being implemented concurrently and are intended to complement and support each other. This agenda for change is fundamental and it is dramatic, because it will provide the tools that we need to serve the primacy of human dignity. But it will not yield results overnight. Instead, it is the beginning of a rigorous path to a more effective and efficient agency and it is the best and most reliable form of change -- that is, change from the inside out.

For example, the commission's new quality and quantity assurance system establishes clear standards for the investigation and analysis of human rights complaints. The system places a clear emphasis on the maintenance of high standards of quality throughout each phase of the commission's procedure. Intake guidelines have been developed to ensure a consistent approach to all facets of the intake process across the province. The use of a formal investigative plan is now mandatory in all cases. This ensures a rational and methodical approach to a complainant's allegations and must integrate all relevant issues of a public policy or systemic nature. Our offices have also received clear guidance to enable them to make more effective use of warrants and other relevant provisions of the Human Rights Code.

In order to ensure that the emphasis on quality does not cause an inordinate delay in the processing of human rights complaints, the commission has developed rigorous standards for the quantity of case work produced by our staff. For the first time, each regional manager is accountable for the closure of a specific number of cases in the fiscal year.

This fine balance of quality and quantity forms the basis of the accountability of the commission's staff. The commissioners and I receive a comprehensive report as to their progress every six weeks, and it's here in our staff report. Over the past several months, we have noticed an appreciable improvement in the quality of analysis, information and advice concerning cases which have been presented to us for disposition under the code.

Secondly, the commission's customer service program involved a clarification of our duty to place the dignity of the people we serve above all other considerations. This is set out in a document entitled Commitment to Service, and you have carbon copies of it, I think. This document is posted in our 16 offices throughout the province. Itself a product of consultation with the staff of the commission, the Commitment to Service provides an unclouded, understandable declaration of each staff member's expected commitment to service. Each member of the commission staff has been given clearly documented direction concerning the application of the Commitment to Service to their specific roles and responsibilities.

The Commitment to Service reflects our best efforts to provide excellent customer service by, among other things, being sensitive, aware and knowledgeable about the realities of prejudice and discrimination, and recognizing and accommodating the diverse needs of our many client groups.

In a related development, front-line staff of the commission have been trained to provide service to customers with special needs, emphasizing the need to be respectful of the fact that many people who come to us may be justifiably angry and frustrated and under a great deal of stress. This training had a strong cross-cultural component. It was aimed at sensitizing staff to the issues as well as to promoting their own sense of security as they deal with challenging situations involving customers who may for any number of reasons be upset.

Although this measure is integral to the commission's agenda for service, it is also crucial for the health and safety of our staff. Consider that the front-line staff of the commission in the last fiscal year -- that's March 1992 to March 1993 -- addressed 116,308 inquiries and made 28,723 referrals to other resources. Answering this demand requires stamina, skill, knowledge and a keen mind. In more personal terms, it requires patience, sensitivity and empathy. I am pleased that we have begun to provide our front-line staff with meaningful support. We have recognized as an agency that taking the time to serve people well and with respect when they first meet the commission eases the stress of an adversarial process. It encourages trust, fosters clear communications and makes very good use of the commission's resources.

In my experience, the most tangible aspect of the customer service program is the emphasis placed on taking seriously the concerns that people have about their experiences with the commission. I am aware of the considerable amount of time which staff have spent in hearing complaints of people who feel that they have not been well served by us. For example, in exceptional situations involving allegations of professional misconduct, the executive director will himself intervene to direct an impartial review of the matter by commission staff.

Measure number three: The commission has endorsed a number of changes to its enforcement procedures which do not require amendments to the code. For example, the agency has streamlined its investigations and established clear time lines for each distinct activity in the resolution of a file. Officers are accountable for using their time well, and for some time now the commission has been resolving the lion's share of matters brought to its attention before the filing of a formal complaint by the means of the early settlement initiative. Actually, 67% of the cases which come to us never become a formal complaint because they are resolved at this stage. This procedure allows the parties the opportunity to resolve their concerns prior to or instead of -- many of these are withdrawn -- initiating formal proceedings. It makes sound strategic use of the commission's limited resources.

Very often, however, the process has been sluggish. In order to improve the situation, a 90-day limit has been imposed on the use of the early settlement initiative. Now our officers are held accountable for their performance within that time line.

The commission is also making more rigorous use of its discretion under section 34(1)(a) of the code to decline carriage of complaints if they are complaints which could or should appropriately be dealt with under another act.

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Initiative four: The commission has begun to make aggressive use of technology. This has required some fairly basic first steps, but for the first time in the history of the agency all of the commission's officers have use of reliable computers. A peer support program has been implemented in order to ensure that the officers receive training in the use of technology which is geared to the actual demands of their workday. The agency is also using technology to monitor the movement of its files through the investigative time frame. A great deal of effort has been invested into assuring the integrity of the commission's case load data. We're beginning to explore ways in which technology may be used to enhance our level of service through such avenues as periodic bulletins advising parties of the status of their files. As this work continues, the commission ensures that the confidentiality of all personal information is still strictly preserved.

The fifth initiative involves the redesign of the organizational structure of the commission. Previously, the agency was composed of seven units, each headed by a director. This configuration blurred the lines of accountability, did not make strategic use of the commission's resources and resulted in a secondary emphasis on the need to provide good customer service. In fact, in the reports of both the organizational health and effectiveness committee and the anti-racism committee, the commission's staff expressed a consensus on the need for change in the structure of the agency. This call for change has been echoed in the communities that are served by the commission and it has been clearly articulated by the members of the Legislative Assembly themselves. It was my privilege and that of my executive director to meet earlier with the critics of the Liberal and Conservative caucuses to brief them on this very crucial development.

The agency has now been organized into four new branches, from seven:

There's a regional services and systemic investigative branch, which has been created to make the best use of the commission's enforcement resources.

There's a public policy and public education branch, which has been created to provide the people of Ontario with clear and accessible expertise in human rights principles. This requires a balance of vision and utility, an ability to provide useful and uncompromising guidance in human rights.

The commission has developed a new legal services branch, which houses the office of reconsideration and preserves its ability to audit the work of officers in the regional services and systemic investigation branch.

The corporate services branch will act as a catalyst for change at the commission, leading its efforts to become a model employer and ensuring excellence in customer service. The new structure of the commission is sound and relevant because it has been developed thoughtfully. It shows the commission has listened and paid careful attention to the concerns of the people we serve. It shows the wisdom of making change happen from the inside out. To date, all efforts to work in the opposite direction -- that is, from the outside in -- have failed to inspire such comprehensive renewal. Where others have worked against the grain, the commission's senior management committee has succeeded in developing an organizational structure which entrenches the commission's orientation to customer service, consolidates and strengthens all enforcement functions, clarifies the lines of accountability, enhances the ability of the commission to become a model employer, and ensures the commission's effectiveness in the promotion of human rights by integrating policy development and public education.

At this time, the staffing of these branches has proceeded only to the director level. The reorganization of each branch will proceed below the senior executive level once each directorship is filled. I would like to underscore that the recruitment of the commission's new directors has used and will continue to use sound human resources management practices, including employment equity. At present, two of the four new directorships have been filled. The commission has found within its ranks a director of regional services and systemic investigation, Mr Neil Edwards, and the commission's director of corporate services is someone new to the agency. I look forward to the fresh and innovative leadership that she will be bringing with her.

The selection process for the position of director, legal services branch, is still under way and the agency has begun an unprecedented outreach throughout the province to identify candidates for the director of public policy and public education. This includes the publication of the competition in the Globe and Mail and 30 newspapers which serve designated groups in addition to conveying information about the competition through 231 community organizations. Consistent with the values of a model employer, this process will progress in an open and equitable manner. It has been and will continue to be rigorous, comprehensive and objective.

The commission's sixth initiative involves a clarification and enhancement of the accountability of all staff. The commission's quality and quantity assurance system and the customer service program have set out clear standards to guide the performance of staff. These measures provide the staff of the commission with sound direction as to what is expected of them. At the same time, an exceptional effort is being made to provide staff with the resources which they need in order to do their job.

Close attention has been paid to ensuring that all of our staff have ready access to important corporate information. The staff of the commission have consistently expressed in the past concern about the flow of information at the agency. It has been criticized for being selective, exclusive and sometimes inaccurate. This problem has been corrected through the periodic publication again of the Staff Report. The Staff Report is itself a tool of accountability, since it provides all people responsible for the enforcement of the code, from front-line staff to the commissioners and myself, with current and comprehensive information about all of the commission's activities.

This report enables the staff of the commission to see with greater clarity how their work relates to the work of their colleagues and to the health of the agency. In addition, because we have acknowledged to all the staff the importance of their work and assured them that they will continue to receive meaningful support, we are confident that a culture of service and professional pride will be fostered in the commission.

Since my appointment as chief commissioner several months ago, a full 74 person-days have been invested in devising new training programs for the staff of the commission. This agenda has included two basic investigative skills conferences, a technology mentoring program, course screening which enhances the referral skills of support staff and a course workshop on serving challenging customers. The results have been encouraging. Over the last seven months, the staff of the commission have received a total of 308 person-days in training and development. This marks the beginning of a series of training initiatives which will reinforce essential skills in the execution of the commission's functions.

There has also been a fundamental change in the way training is being done. For the first time, adult learning principles are being applied in a cohesive manner. Hence, we are well on the way to becoming a learning organization, one which fosters continuous improvement and encourages staff to support and to learn from each other as they encounter and resolve the many challenges in their field.

The commission's final, eighth, organizational improvement initiative implements the agency's commitment to organizational health, including the use of sound anti-racism principles. The commission's senior management committee is concluding a painstaking review of 67 recommendations made in a report of the agency's Anti-Racism Advisory Committee. It is important that this work be done well so that anti-racism principles are defined which advance the basic tenets of justice. The senior management committee will also ensure that these principles are included in each and every aspect of the commission's program of organizational renewal.

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We have also dedicated considerable care to the development of a series of guidelines intended to assist in the investigation and analysis of cases based on race. The sophistication of the subtlety and pervasiveness of racism is only now being acknowledged publicly. We now know that the crudity of signs saying "whites only" has been replaced by various and insidious restrictions which ensure that regardless of accomplishment or merit, the whites-only policy still applies in many circumstances, keeping doors closed to persons because of the colour of their skin.

Therefore, to root out and expose this fine screen of illicit limitations, the commission is exercising particular and close scrutiny to the way it addresses complaints based on race. The staff of the commission have worked together to develop tools which are both just and sensitive to the reality of racism. This month, the commission will consolidate this work in a body of guidelines which will refine its approach to cases based on race from intake through to the boards of inquiry.

Integrating anti-racism principles in the overall renewal of the commission is an important development because it helps us to ensure that we put all people first.

As I conclude my comments about the eight organizational improvement initiatives, let me observe that there are no simple or quick answers to the difficulties which confront the commission. I believe that the only way to ensure the stability, effectiveness, health and compassion of the commission is to lead it through this agenda for change, which is stable, effective, healthy and empathetic, and to do this from the inside out.

The organizational improvement initiatives constitute a beginning, a point of departure. They may even raise more questions than they resolve, but often the best solution to a problem leads to a host of new issues. I have no doubt but that the commission will continue to be challenged and that its successes will lead to an increased demand for its services, so carefully and pragmatically we are watching to ensure that the organizational improvement initiatives bear fruit.

Let me share with you a citing of some of the early results. It is projected that on March 31 of this year of our Lord, 1994, for the first time in five years there will be less than 250 files older than three years of age in the commission's case load -- a minor miracle, I'm sure you'll agree. Sixty-seven per cent of all the cases closed, as I mentioned earlier, thus far this year were closed in less than six months -- another minor miracle -- and the commission will close all remaining files from the original case load reduction task force by the end of this fiscal year -- another minor miracle.

We have also undertaken initiatives to encourage voluntary compliance with the code. The staff of the commission successfully concluded negotiations with the Ministry of the Attorney General and the Ministry of Government Services to ensure that people with disabilities have access to the province's courthouses. The agency is currently providing information and advice to the city of Toronto concerning the recruitment and selection of firefighters.

The commission has also published two useful and instructive documents. One, Teaching Human Rights in Ontario, will be providing the province's public and private secondary schools with this resource. It is my hope that this material will help teachers to feed the optimism of youth and the instinct of most young people for tolerance and social justice. The second is a policy statement on the subject of sexual harassment and inappropriate gender-related comment and conduct.

This marks the beginning of what I hope will be a long and fruitful exploration of new ways in which a commission can be of assistance to public sector agencies, to private enterprise and to trade unions. I look forward to many such cooperative ventures, since they make strategic use of the commission's resources and advance the principles of the code in innovative ways.

Ontario has established an honourable tradition of spelling out in law the practical implications of the primacy of dignity. This tradition is evident in five recent cases which I would like you to consider.

It is a well-established principle in human rights laws that employers, unions and service providers have a duty to accommodate needs arising from grounds enumerated in the code. This was reinforced in the case of Marnie Elliott. Miss Elliott uses a motorized wheelchair and a van with a lift for mobility. Physical barriers denied her access to a restaurant in a strip mall. A board of inquiry has ordered the mall to ensure that its facilities are accessible to people with disabilities and awarded Miss Elliott $1,000 for damages to her dignity.

Our society is just beginning to grapple with the issues arising from an aging population. Mr Allan McKee alleged discrimination on the basis of age when, after 32 years as an employee of a corporation, he was told that there would be a permanent staff reduction. A board of inquiry found that Mr McKee was forced into early retirement because of his age, and he was awarded $246,362 in damages, representing the eight years of lost wages.

In the case of Michael Leshner, a board of inquiry found that a pension plan which denied survivor benefits to the partners of lesbian and gay employees was discriminatory, even though the Human Rights Code defines "marital status" to include only couples of the opposite sex. The board found that the definition of "marital status" in the code in fact violated the equality guarantee in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

In a separate development, Elizabeth Clinton complained to the commission that her employer had denied her group insurance benefits because she is a lesbian. A board of inquiry ruled that Miss Clinton was discriminated against because of her sexual orientation. Contrary to the decision involving Mr Leshner, the board found that it was not necessary to revisit the definition of "spouse" in the code in order to establish that gays and lesbians have the right to equal treatment in all employment benefits.

The last case which I wish to report concerns the experience of Garnet Angeconeb. Mr Angeconeb, a native Canadian, was assigned inadequate and inferior accommodation at an inn in Red Lake, Ontario. A board of inquiry concluded that the inn did in fact discriminate against people of native ancestry by making them stay in special, second-rate rooms. The board ordered that Mr Angeconeb be paid restitution for damage to his dignity and sense of self-worth.

Recognizing that the protection of human rights is not constrained by geographic boundaries, let me add that the commission is also contributing to Canada's international reputation as a stalwart advocate of human rights. The country of Bermuda has twice sought the commission's assistance in establishing and administering its own human rights commission. Our discussions have included such matters as separate enforcement and advocacy functions, especially with regard to racism.

Recently also, the commission received a delegation from South Africa. This visit came at a crucial time in the history of that troubled nation. The fate of its new democracy depends upon the correction of its human rights imbalances. The commission has been able to assist in this regard by sharing its experiences in administration and promotion of human rights.

We are also active observers, courtesy of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, to Canada's role with the United Nations human rights commission.

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Let me end my introductory remarks by saying that this morning I have attempted to present the clear course of action which the commission has established to set its house in order, to indicate the commission has paid close and respectful attention to the many people who have called for change and that it has responded by initiating a conscientious and decisive program of reforms.

The secret to the commission's renewal is that it is fundamental, comprehensive, sustainable and painstaking, and that it is a transformation which is taking place from the inside out.

The challenge of a diverse society is to have its members live side by side in harmony and mutual respect. History is filled with examples of societies which have failed to meet this challenge. All of Canada's social institutions are committed to achieving this miracle.

We at the Ontario Human Rights Commission are not so arrogant as to believe that our efforts alone can eliminate prejudice and intolerance from the life and culture of this province, but all of our efforts, everything that we do, is dedicated to making this goal a reality through the protection of human rights and the ensuring of the primacy of human dignity.

The Chair: One thing I want to clarify. On the very bottom line of page 16, it's printed in your speech, "the board found that it was not necessary to revisit the definition of `marital status' in the Human Rights Code."

This morning you actually used the word "spouse" there instead of "marital status." I just want to be clear which it is you want. Obviously, Hansard now records "spouse" and yet the code itself refers to "marital status." I just want to be sure whether you intended to change that wording to "spouse" or not. It's "marital status" in the code.

Ms Rosemary Brown: I think it's safer to actually follow the text of the speech than my reading. I tend to take liberties with the text, but it is "marital status."

The Chair: All right. I just wanted to give you that opportunity. Ms Brown, you brought with you a lot of people this morning, and I'd like to give you the opportunity to introduce everyone who came with you.

Ms Rosemary Brown: I would like to do that and also begin by inviting my executive director, Scott Campbell, to join me, and I gather that after the lunch break an attempt will be made to accommodate the rest of the party.

The Chair: Actually, Ms Brown, if you wish, the first two seats here this morning, although they're sideways on, which isn't ideal, may be used by other people with you this morning.

Ms Rosemary Brown: Can we turn it around? Maybe we could turn those chairs around.

The Chair: No, because of the microphone, but we are getting it changed at lunchtime and we apologize for the inappropriate configuration at this point. You may invite people into these other four seats if you wish for the balance of this morning. Welcome, Mr Campbell.

Ms Rosemary Brown: I prefer not to disrupt the proceedings and to wait until after lunch; then we can have the time to do it properly. I want to introduce you to our new director of regional services and systemic investigations, Neil Edwards, who is with us this morning. Our new director of corporate services has not actually started yet so she is not present, but I wanted to introduce the word "she" before anyone started mentioning the all-male look of the senior management. It's not going to be that way.

Also present are the acting director of public policy and public education, Calvin Bernard, and the acting head of our legal services, Mark Frawley, as well as the director of communications, Alan Shefman. They're going to be joining me after lunch at the table, but also present with me are Maureen Brown, who is a senior writer and information officer, and Chris Duignan, who is the executive coordinator and who should actually be held responsible for organizational improvement initiatives. If you have any complaints about how it's been done, please address them to Chris, not to me.

Also present is Steve Crossman, who is a program analyst with a compulsion for detail, which makes sure all the information which comes out of the commission is accurate. We really feel quite lucky to have Steve.

Present also are my own executive assistant, Dora Nipp, and Scott's executive assistant, Michael Markwick. We'll both tell you that neither of us would get very much done without their vigilance and support.

The Chair: That's everyone who came with you?

Ms Rosemary Brown: Yes. I want to thank you for your patience in allowing me the liberty of those extended opening remarks, but I thought it was important to tell you what we've been doing in the commission over the last seven months so that when you frame your questions you will have some kind of infrastructure from which to work.

The Chair: We thank you for those opening comments. They were important to have on the record at the beginning of this review.

We're going to start the rotation now with the official opposition. Does the committee wish to rotate in 20-minute parcels as usual? Is that agreeable?

Mr Rosario Marchese (Fort York): Fifteen minutes, Madam Chair.

The Chair: Maybe we'll do it 15 this morning, because that's what we're right on.

Mr Alvin Curling (Scarborough North): I want to thank the commissioner for coming in and making a presentation. As a matter of fact, as you mentioned bringing us up to date, it was so important, because the fact is that I was going really on the last annual report. Some of the questions I had were answered to some respect in your updating, and also through the briefing we got from the research department. I greatly appreciate that you have taken the time to bring us up to date on this.

I know too there are questions that are asked saying, "Here we are again, the second time around in the last seven months," or some comments of the sort that were made. But many changes have been happening to the Human Rights Commission, directly and indirectly.

One of the most important changes that has happened over the last year or so was you coming to the commission. The fact is that I personally felt that was a good move on behalf of the government. I still have great concerns about the resources they've put into that place. To just have a single individual to make all those changes is not enough, but also to have the resources available, and when the changes come about that you do so with such limited resources.

I just want some clarification, though, on certain things I was going through. I'll start with the organizational chart. In the report here, it has you as the chief commissioner and there are no vice-chairs. In the briefing note that was submitted to us by legislative research, it has the chief commissioner and in the same box we have a vice-chair. I'm a bit confused as to where the flow of the chart is going. Do both of you share the same responsibility, or is it another flow that I'm not aware of?

Ms Rosemary Brown: No, we do not share the same responsibility, honourable member. As chief commissioner, as set out in the act, I have certain responsibilities. The vice-chair fills in in my absence and assists me in any way that's necessary. For example, I was down with the flu last week when the commission was meeting and the vice-chair took over responsibility for that. The vice-chair also takes on a number of speaking commitments, because I believe all of the commissioners should be part of the public education process, but certainly he is the first person I think of when an invitation is extended to me that either I am unable to handle or I think he would be a better person to do.

In a number of different ways, mutually agreed on by both of us, the vice-chair's responsibilities are decided. But we do not have the same responsibilities.

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Mr Curling: So the vice-chair does get directions from you as the commissioner?

Ms Rosemary Brown: Yes, and I don't know if we would call it directions. We're mutually respectful of each other, so I wouldn't like to use the word. I guess it's directions, yes.

Mr Curling: I presume the buck stops at you.

Ms Rosemary Brown: Oh, the buck stops here.

Mr Curling: Yes. So you would not in any way change this organizational chart? It's correct as it stands?

Ms Rosemary Brown: No, the organizational chart is not correct as it stands, but how else would you design it? Would you put the vice-chair beside me? If you were to do that, the vice-chair and I would share. In terms of how you explain the vice-chair and the commissioners, that's as good a way of doing it as any.

Mr Curling: My feeling is that if I see one who is a vice-chair coming up, that person would be reporting to the chief or to the chair itself. You spoke about delegation, in other words, speaking engagements and other things that you were unable to do because of pressure of time etc. That individual would report to you what they've done and what you'd like to see done, because there is a structure there and a mandate to follow.

Ms Rosemary Brown: We can clarify this in terms of another chart for you, but really the role of the commissioner is very clearly stated in the act and the role of the commissioners is also stated. The vice-chair simply operates as the person who is there when the chief commissioner is unable to carry out or perform a task.

Mr Curling: I just wanted an understanding. Let me continue to deal with it. There's a section that you call "Legal" in there. In the past, I presume you used to get your counsel -- I don't know if in the present it still happens -- from the Attorney General, if you need any kind of legal advice. Do you still use lawyers?

Ms Rosemary Brown: No, no, no. Actually, I think what you're exploring is the history of the commission.

Mr Curling: I just want an update. That's why.

Ms Rosemary Brown: The commission has its own legal services. We actually have an acting director now and if you really would like to put some more questions to our acting director, maybe you could address them to Mark and he could clarify for you.

Mr Mark Frawley: Mark Frawley, acting director of legal services. Up till 1988, sir, the commission used counsel at the Ministry of the Attorney General. In 1988 it decided to have its own legal branch and it now has approximately eight lawyers. The lawyers do all of the litigation, the vast majority of the litigation, on behalf of the commission and boards of inquiry and on appellate matters.

Mr Curling: When I was reading I did see a bit of that, where the changes were about to come about. I maybe missed it in my reading; I didn't see when it was transformed and got to that point where you have your own lawyers in there. It's still the matter of process I was asking. If this is happening now, if all that is in full force, and this legal branch fully has its own lawyers and doesn't need to take from the government, because gradually, as you move away and you should move away from being -- as a matter of fact, even away from the ministry.

I would love to see and I think our party would like to see a Human Rights Commission that is separate and apart from ministries and government and maybe one day reporting like the Ombudsman to a legislative committee. I just want to know that process. You said now you have your own lawyers. That is fully in force and operating accordingly.

Ms Rosemary Brown: Yes. We actually have an arm's-length relationship with the government and our main contact with the ministry is to speak through the ministry to the Legislature and to the people of Ontario. But we do have an arm's-length relationship with the ministry.

Mr Curling: Commissioner, I'm always concerned about the words "arm's length," because I'm not quite sure how long the arm is at times.

Ms Rosemary Brown: Some arms are longer than others, that's true.

Mr Curling: Yes, and sometimes I wonder with the Human Rights Commission and this minister how long an arm's length she has with it. I have quite good confidence in your carrying out the role itself, but we could pursue a manner where maybe the Human Rights Commission one day answers to a legislative committee instead of a minister. That is something else we can get into later on.

Ms Rosemary Brown: I just want to say that my experience with the ministry has been that at no time has the minister tried to violate our arm's-length relationship. She has been very respectful of it.

Mr Curling: I don't, for one, think that the minister would ever try to violate things within the Human Rights Commission. But we're in the optic game, and people want to perceive that here is a commission, an agency, that is independent and not only is independent but is seen to be independent of a ministry.

The other area in the organizational chart that I would like some comment about is the systemic area. I won't go into details of asking anything of the director today, but having the systemic area there and now that we have a new Employment Equity Commission which takes away quite a lot of the systemic discrimination in employment, does it have an impact, actually the formation of the Employment Equity Commission, on the systemic area within the commission?

Ms Rosemary Brown: I think you actually almost answered that question yourself with the use of the word "employment."

Mr Curling: Yes.

Ms Rosemary Brown: Systemic discrimination occurs in areas other than employment.

Mr Curling: That's right.

Ms Rosemary Brown: We anticipate that our systemic investigation unit is going to continue to be very, very busy.

Mr Curling: I did, in asking that, know that of course the reduction of cases and what have you was reflected in your report and your opening statement, but I'm just saying here too, was most of the systemic discrimination found in the workplace, in employment?

Ms Rosemary Brown: Yes.

Mr Curling: Therefore there is a great reduction in systemic cases coming before the commission.

Ms Rosemary Brown: We're certainly looking forward, once the Employment Equity Commission is up and running and actually working, to the number of systemic cases involving employment that will come before the commission being reduced, but that has not occurred yet.

Mr Curling: Okay. The formation of the Employment Equity Commission which we went through, the long hearing and eventually the legislation, we had hoped, actually -- when I say "we," our party had hoped, and I presume my colleagues here on the same committee had hoped -- that a presentation by the commissioner would have somehow been beneficial to the committee on employment equity. Did you make a presentation before the legislative committee on the employment equity bill when it was going through?

Ms Rosemary Brown: No.

Mr Curling: Do you feel that you should have, because of the importance of that bill; that a commissioner who deals with things like the systemic discrimination area, and here is an agency that is being set up to deal with systemic discrimination in employment; that you could have contributed very much to this legislation, which is not yet proclaimed, of course? We remind the government members here who are going around and talking about what a great day it was that the employment equity legislation has not been proclaimed yet. Do you feel that it would have been helpful to us, because we were, I would say, grappling at times to get some --

Mr Anthony Perruzza (Downsview): What are you saying, Alvin? You didn't like it.

The Chair: No interjections.

Mr Curling: You will learn a lot, Tony, if you listen.

The Chair: Mr Perruzza, we do not wish to have any interjections. Thank you.

Mr Perruzza: You voted against.

Mr Curling: I'm just ignoring him, actually.

Ms Rosemary Brown: In fact if the legislative committee had invited me, I would have been quite happy to attend. But we worked very closely in terms of the development of the bill, in monitoring from the human rights point of view to ensure that the employment equity legislation and human rights legislation worked together to achieve a common goal, which we have, which is the reduction of discrimination in the field of employment. There was really no need for me to appear before the committee unless the committee had wanted me to do so. Then I would have been very happy to do so.

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Mr Curling: I may be wrong, but I thought that we had requested the commissioner to come.

Mr Marchese: Alvin, you asked for it.

Mr Curling: You didn't honour it when you were the chairperson?

Ms Rosemary Brown: It's possible that the invitation is in the mail.

Mr Curling: It could be, with the legislation all finished by now. We're not quite sure. It is not yet law. Maybe it is itself.

The Chair: One minute.

Mr Curling: I'm just going to give notice of a question, since there's one minute. This is in regard to actually those who come before the Human Rights Commission who are not quite sure if their case is systemic discrimination to employment or whether it's a personal discrimination.

My concern is that the individual could lose a lot of time to them if they come to the Human Rights Commission waiting for it to be dealt with and really it's supposed to have gone to the Employment Equity Commission. I'm not quite clear with that. I'd just like to know later on how would you handle a case like that.

Ms Rosemary Brown: Sure. Thank you.

Mr W. Donald Cousens (Markham): The problem in opposition is that we're so busy opposing and criticizing that we just don't take enough time. So before I begin my remarks, I just want to say that, number one, I appreciate the approaches that you are trying to take and the kinds of things you said this morning in your presentation. I think you've brought good expertise and you seem to have excellent support from your staff and the team around you. You're never going to do anything unless you have a good leader and a commitment from genuinely well-trained professional people.

I have to say that what you say and the kinds of things that you're moving towards are really in the kind of direction that we all want to see, certainly from our caucus. I personally have appreciated your personal availability and that of Scott as well. I mean, there's a sense there that I think you've really been in a pressure tank for a long, long time. The whole commission has and the whole staff has.

I think we want to make sure that we understand that we have a commitment as a caucus to the same fundamental objectives of the code and very, very much want to support those initiatives. Your emphasis on the racial intolerance and the problems that we've got to address that are endemic to society are commitments that Mike Harris and our caucus have as well.

When I start getting critical now with some of my questions and other things, I feel that you have made an impact and I think that your staff also have to understand that we recognize that the intentions you're talking about are certainly the kind of thing we support.

But you know, it can't just stay that long. I mean, I begin with that, and please know that the fundamental desire for a better world for all people, and especially in Ontario, is something that is our goal as well.

Ms Rosemary Brown: Can I just add, though, that the commission welcomes criticism, because it helps us to see where the spots are that need improvement. It's not going to be accepted with hostility at all.

Mr Cousens: That's good, because it's not an easy job you people have had, and I think that just to go along with that, you know, it's the 80-20 rule; there's going to be that percentage of incidents that you're involved with that really will grab the attention of the media and the politicians and other people, the more difficult-to-solve situations, some of the statistics that require addressing as well, but that shouldn't reflect on all the work by all the people within the commission. I just have to put that on the balance sheet.

There's one thing that came out -- and there are going to be others that I touch on this afternoon -- and I hadn't thought about it in my own prepared things: The early settlement initiative I find one of the troublesome things. Is that not where you come along and someone will have established a complaint and then, in order to get a quick settlement, you'll come back from the Human Rights Commission and say, "If you pay $5,000, we'll drop all the charges"? Is that the one that I'm thinking of?

Ms Rosemary Brown: No, no, no. I'm sorry, Mr Cousens. We would be most distressed if we believed that our human rights officers would behave that way. In fact the early settlement initiative grew out of the desire of both respondents and complainants to have their complaints dealt with, with all deliberate speed.

Mr Cousens: But just on that one, you don't sort of put a pricetag to get a quick settlement on it?

Ms Rosemary Brown: I should probably let --

Mr Cousens: I don't want to go too long on it. Is there sometimes a pricetag on it?

Ms Rosemary Brown: No, no, no. It's a negotiation based, first of all, on an understanding of whether there's a legitimate complaint or not.

Mr Cousens: My only point is, is a pricetag sometimes put on it, that the problem will be solved if there's a certain dollar amount?

Ms Rosemary Brown: No, we do not conduct ourselves that way. This is not the way in which the settlement process works. Really, what we're trying to do is to effect a negotiated agreement, and we do not start out by saying, "Give me $5,000 and we'll close a deal." That would be very, very bad negotiating technique, and any human rights officer who behaved that way would be very, very severely dealt with.

But I think, in all fairness to you, you really do need an explanation of the early settlement initiative, and I'll tell you why. It's because it's so important to the commission that the members of the Legislature understand clearly what we're doing, because you are our voices, our eyes and our ears in the community. When your constituents come to you, you have to have the information so that you can deal with them in a straightforward way.

Mr Cousens: I'll come back to that one later on this afternoon, because there are some other subjects. But you've helped clear up part of my concern immediately, and I had to just come out at that one.

One of the things that we're concerned with is the number of cases. What we're seeing is that by year-end 1993-94 there were 2,156 outstanding cases, compared to 1,877 outstanding cases in 1992-93. Can you give us an indication of why the number of cases increased?

Ms Rosemary Brown: I'll tell you, first of all, that we're dealing with new cases. We're not dealing with the same cases. There are always more cases coming through the door. There's a continual turnover; 67% of the cases turn over in six months, as I said.

What happens is that when the commission is perceived to be doing its work, and people have respect for it, the case load increases. Also, the economic times put some pressure on the case load. So there is never going to be a time -- never -- if the commission does its work effectively, when we're not going to be carrying a large case load.

What we have to do is to change our perception of the case load as being in some way a measure of the ineffectiveness of the commission. It isn't. It actually measures other things. It measures the respect in which the commission is held by people out there.

What measure the effectiveness of the commission is the speed with which we are able to resolve these cases successfully. Don't worry about the fact that last year there were 1,800, and this year there are 2,000, and maybe next year there may be 3,000. What you should look at when you see that is --

Mr Cousens: I'm sorry. I think that --

Ms Rosemary Brown: No, no, no. Just a minute. I just want to finish this, Mr Cousens. What I'm saying is that what we have to then start to look at is the resources that we have to deal with this pressure which the community is putting on the commission.

Mr Cousens: I think that raises quite a serious question, and that is, are we seeing more racial intolerance? Are we seeing certain kinds of issues that are coming up?

Ms Rosemary Brown: Okay. So now we're analysing the cases.

Mr Cousens: When I open it up, it really shows the fundamental problem in society. I think you read something into my question. I'm saying there are more, so are we seeing certain problems? Mr Harnick and I brought in two private members' bills, which we have both withdrawn, that had to do with the propaganda problems we're having and some of the systemic situations where people are perpetrating hate on other people. So we have issues in our society. Are you identifying a growth in some of those issues? That is part and parcel of what the question's all about.

Ms Rosemary Brown: Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you were looking at the numbers.

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Mr Cousens: The numbers are part of it. You're not advertising any more for more cases, but there are more cases. So are there certain things you see out of that?

Ms Rosemary Brown: Yes. I can give you the breakdown as to what are the areas that our cases --

Mr Cousens: I guess really, Ms Brown, are there any major trends, just one or two major trends?

Ms Rosemary Brown: Most of our cases still have to do with disability. That still is the number one issue that we deal with, disability, and race. Those are the two big ones. But we're beginning to see more cases around sexual harassment, for example, and more cases around sexual orientation. But most of the cases still deal with disability.

Mr Cousens: On page 5 in our notes it indicates that in 1992-93, 202 cases were referred to boards of inquiry. In 1991-92, there were 73 that went to boards of inquiry, and in the year before it was 28 cases that went to a board. Could you explain why there is such an increase in the number of cases going to boards of inquiry?

Ms Rosemary Brown: The 202?

Mr Cousens: Yes, 202 most recently, down back a few years ago to 28.

Ms Rosemary Brown: Just a second. I'll give you our latest figures, because there has been a dramatic decrease. Part of it has been a different philosophical approach in deciding what cases go to boards of inquiry and which ones don't. I see that in 1993-94 so far we've only had 43 that have gone to boards.

The Chair: Excuse me, Ms Brown. Is that an internal, that yellow-bound --

Mr Scott Campbell: Yes, it is.

The Chair: So it wouldn't be available to the committee.

Mr Campbell: No, that's correct.

Ms Rosemary Brown: There are only 43 that have actually gone to boards of inquiry. We're trying to be more strategic in terms of how we utilize the boards of inquiry.

Mr Cousens: Let's deal with a little bit of history. When you had 202 cases, that was a dramatic increase from 1991-92. What was the rationale for that?

Ms Rosemary Brown: I'm going to turn you over to the historians, because I use history just to move forward. I don't dwell on it myself. Do you want to do that, Scott, or should I give it to Mark?

Mr Campbell: I think there are a couple of issues, Mr Cousens. One is that, as you know, the commission had a task force in that fiscal year, 1992-93, therefore there were more cases going through. We had allocated to the commission, essentially throughout almost that entire fiscal year, an additional 46 personnel to push forward the task force. Therefore, there were more cases just going through the mill and therefore, relatively speaking, there were going to be more boards of inquiry appointed, because there were more cases being processed.

Mr Cousens: There are quite a lot of ramifications through a board of inquiry. You're now moving to a smaller number. What are the guidelines for moving to a board of inquiry?

Ms Rosemary Brown: As Scott said, the task force cases are gone.

Mr Cousens: But when a case is referred to a board of inquiry, what would be the rationale for sending it to a board of inquiry at this point?

Ms Rosemary Brown: Failure to effect a settlement. The early settlement initiative didn't work, for one thing. There is a legitimate complaint which we feel should be decided at that level, rather than dismissed under section 34, because it is a legitimate complaint. The board of inquiry then takes it to its final stage.

Mr Cousens: What's the average length of time for a board of inquiry?

Mr Campbell: Sorry, Mr Cousens. In terms of the previous question, the code under section 36 indicates that it must meet two tests: the evidence warrants and the procedure is appropriate.

Ms Rosemary Brown: I really wish Mark would answer these questions, if it's okay with you, but I can tell that within 30 days after a board is appointed by the minister, it has to have had its first meeting. Mark, if you want to take over from there in terms of the legal ramifications.

Mr Frawley: First, the chief commissioner is correct. Within 30 days of the appointment by the minister, the board must convene. Typically, that's done by a telephone conference call to set the dates. The length of the actual hearing: In Barrie sometimes it can be a one-day hearing; others have stretched into many, many days. I think the longest on record is a board that spread over some five years of hearing, but typically it's in the range of three to perhaps 10 days.

Then there'll be a period of time, of course, before those days can actually commence, depending on scheduling problems with the counsel involved. Then there's another period of time in which the board has to write the decision. So there are various components that you'd have to add up to get your total answer.

Mr Cousens: I want to follow up because I want to deal with a particular board of inquiry that has been going on for some length of time, not unlike what my colleague Mr Curling did in just sort of letting you know the question.

It has to do with the new investigator who was assigned to mediate the claim of Marty McKay and Patricia Findlay against two neighbourhood variety stores that sell adult magazines. I understand that last October a board of inquiry determined that the commission had not followed its own procedures, conciliation between the two parties prior to appointing a board of inquiry. I guess what I wanted to know is, why could this happen?

Ms Rosemary Brown: Let me start out --

The Chair: Excuse me --

Ms Rosemary Brown: Oh, you have served notice.

The Chair: Yes.

Mr Cousens: I think so, because we've got a very rigid Chair.

The Chair: Yes, a real miserable Chair. Ms Harrington, you're next.

Ms Margaret H. Harrington (Niagara Falls): Thank you for coming, Ms Brown, and all of your staff. Do you have any other members of the commission with you?

Mr Campbell: No. There are no other members of the commission with the chief commissioner.

Ms Harrington: In your opening statement on page 13, you made some very interesting remarks. You said that the subtlety and pervasiveness of racism is only now, at this time, becoming evident. You talked about some special efforts that are being made to root out and expose this, some special procedures and guidelines that you and your staff are using.

What I would like to ask you is, what changes in this particular area have you made? What can we do, as legislators, to help raise this issue? I think it is very important to expose an issue before it can be dealt with. Also, with the public out there in our ridings, how can we encourage them to maybe not take some of the treatment that normally people have become accustomed to taking over years and realize that they are equal and do have equal rights?

Ms Rosemary Brown: I think what I said was that it's not that we're just recognizing it but we've now put it on the public agenda, that in fact we realize we're not looking for the crude expression of racism; you know, the door slammed in your face or someone saying, "Sorry, I don't hire whites." We know that no one does that any more. They've become much more sophisticated, so we have to develop more perceptive ways of recognizing this and the tools to deal with that.

Internally, again, because I believe in starting from the inside out, we have been working through our own anti-racism committee in developing guidelines to help us to better do that. These guidelines, as I indicated in my speech, are going to be ready by the end of this month, and they will be circulated.

But we have been moving very slowly and very carefully and very deliberately, using all of the various reports which have been done for us in the past, really trying to bring ourselves into the 21st century. Because racism is in the 21st century now, and we have been tending to address it the way it used to manifest itself in the 19th century. We haven't kept up with it.

We're trying now to bring ourselves up to snuff. We certainly intend to share that with the schools, with the educational institutions, with community groups and certainly with the public in any way possible.

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Ms Harrington: Just to finish off my question, would you have any specific advice at this time or thoughts that you could pass on to us as to how we, as legislators, or others could raise awareness of this subtle type of racism?

Ms Rosemary Brown: I always believe that the very first place to begin is by respecting a person's complaint. The tendency in the past has been to dismiss it and say, "Oh, you're just imagining things," or "You've just got a chip on your shoulder," or "That couldn't possibly happen."

If you begin by treating the complaint with respect and listening to it carefully and with some kind of empathy, maybe that would be a good jumping-off point to start with. It's when a person files a complaint and they realize that they're not being listened to with respect or the person listening to them doesn't even believe them to start with that their frustration then begins to boil and we run into difficulties with them. So I would begin by being very respectful of the person's complaint and the person who is filing it or making it to you, and then examining it and analysing it, again, with respect.

Mr Marchese: Ms Brown, I just want to congratulate you and all of the other members, commissioners and staff, on the work that you have done. Quite clearly, from the initial remarks that you have made, there has been a great deal of work that you've all been engaged in, and I think that helped us in terms of the questions that we're about to formulate to you.

We sometimes, as Mr Cousens mentioned, underestimate what people have to do. We look at statistics as a way of formulating opinions, and at times that does tend not to give a clear picture of what people are actually engaged in in their daily work. So it's good to be able to have people like you and others comment on what exactly you've done and what change you're engaged in.

I'm going to begin questions on the whole issue of complaints, because Mr Cousens touched on that. We do have the chart that speaks to complaints received by ground and provision, and one of the interesting observations that I make is that only 474 complaints relate to race or colour, out of a total number of 2,317 cases.

What is interesting to me is that the myth or misconception is that the Human Rights Commission deals with race-related issues or visible minorities as they relate to human rights. Quite clearly from the chart, we have 558 cases dealing with people with disabilities, 245 cases dealing with sexual harassment, 392 cases dealing with sex and pregnancy, 156 dealing with age, and so on.

Out of the 2,400 cases, obviously we're dealing only with approximately 20% as they relate to race and colour. I think it's an important statistic to speak to or highlight, because quite clearly the Human Rights Commission deals with many other people of colour and of age and everything else that the categories speak to.

Ms Rosemary Brown: Yes, but I think that in part has to do with the whole history of human rights. When it was first conceived, the focus was on race and creed. Even issues around gender are quite young issues. Certainly issues around disability are very young issues. Sexual orientation is still fighting to become an issue. So it's evolving, but at the base of it were certainly concerns around race and creed, and there is this tendency to think still that this is the only thing that human rights concerns itself with.

As a society, our rights are evolving and they're moving into different areas. I'm sure it's not so long ago, as you and I would remember, that if someone were to say, "I have a right despite the fact that my sexual orientation is different to yours," the response would be: "Of course you don't. Where did you get that idea from? Who ever heard of disabled people demanding the right to have access to public buildings and those kinds of things?" Even around poverty, class rights and those kinds of things, they are evolving.

Part of the difficulty with administering human rights legislation is recognizing these new rights that are coming on to the public agenda and also getting the education out there that, yes, this is not choice any more, this has now become a right, not because the commission says so and not because the legislation says so, but because society has decided that's how it should be.

Mr Marchese: Of course, and you can't control those emerging issues as they relate to society and individuals in that society. I would appreciate a chart that you probably, or a staff person, would have with respect to the numbers as they relate to the categories in the last four or five years. I'm not sure whether you have it now, but in the next day or so if you do have it, I would appreciate having it.

Mr Campbell: Yes, that can be provided.

Ms Rosemary Brown: Yes, we have that.

The Chair: So you would provide it to the clerk and we will give it to all the committee members.

Mr Campbell: Yes, that's correct.

Mr Marchese: Thank you. One of the things that you have spoken to in your remarks interests me a great deal. The philosophical approach you take to change as coming from the inside out is, I think, an important one. I support it strongly because change should happen that way. Then, of course, how that change happens is a matter of discussion as well.

That is what I want to talk about, because you also talked about adult learning principles, and I think Ms Duignan is the person who connects to this issue. I support adult learning principles because I believe those are the ones we should be using when we're dealing with organizational change. I'm not sure that many organizations are doing that effectively, so what you're doing interests me.

You talk about a learning organization. That interests me as well, because a lot of organizations are not learning organizations; they're very hierarchical and information is passed on, and that's how people learn. That is a mistake, in my view, in terms of adult learning principles.

What I want to ask you is, how are you involving the staff at all levels, including anyone who works in the building, around this organizational change that you have spoken to around many of the issues? We don't need to break them down because the categories are very interesting in themselves, but I'm interested to know, in this inside-out process, from the bottom up, how have people been involved in that change?

Ms Rosemary Brown: I think that probably the most interesting one has to do with the structural changes. Scott would be the best person to describe that procedure to you, and maybe Chris after.

Mr Campbell: I think to take the restructuring issue of the commission first, as an example, but there are many other examples as well, what we chose to do -- this goes back to the late spring, early summer of last year -- was rather than bring in a consultant from the outside to redesign the organizational structure of the commission, we chose as a senior management team to work together to come up with a variety of options in terms of how the commission should be organized. You see before you in the material that Mr Pond has put together the new organization structure for the commission. What we had was a highly inclusive process where every single individual who was involved in the senior management team at that time was involved in the redesign of the executive ranks of the Ontario Human Rights Commission. So that's point 1.

Staying with the same notion in terms of restructuring, we have just begun, as the chief commissioner said in her opening remarks, to begin the restructuring below the director level. We will do that as each director is appointed. As the chief commissioner said, Mr Neil Edwards has been appointed as director of regional services and systemic investigation. Once he gets his feet on the ground, as we say, he will start working with his staff to do a similar process down throughout his organization.

However, we have established a set of draft process guidelines as to how this should happen. Before we even begin that process, we are going to discuss that with the management excluded personnel on the commission plus the OPSEU personnel in the commission to say: "All right, this is how we think this process should work. What do you think should happen in terms of a restructuring process for the staff of regional services and systemic investigation?"

I guess those are two examples. I can give you many more examples, but those are two. They are grounded fundamentally in adult learning and how organizations change, and that is that organizations change fundamentally when the people within them are involved in that change process. We feel very strongly about that as a philosophical construct in terms of how we are currently managing the commission.

Mr Marchese: Scott, let me ask you this. Every organizational change is obviously very difficult for everyone from the top down. Some people find it difficult to accept different approaches, different ideas, or perhaps even the point that in changing, it means that they've been doing something wrong. So there's at times resistance, at times anger, at times dissatisfaction, morale problems and all of that. What have you encountered in this organizational change that has been difficult that you are dealing with and that you can talk to us about?

Mr Campbell: All of those, I guess, is the answer to that question. I think the way you deal with situations like that is you deal with them first from a process point of view in terms of developing a process and implementing a process that involves people, that is inclusive. If we want to personalize this for a minute, there were at the time we started the restructuring process, at the executive level, seven directors in the Ontario Human Rights Commission. Now, as you know in terms of the evidence before you, there are only going to be four director positions. So people being involved in a process tends to reduce the anxiety level.

Secondly, people being informed about the process: Keep the information coming so that there aren't deep, dark secrets. I think that is also a key element.

Thirdly, I think you have to meet with people. I think you have to meet one on one. Some people have a different concern than others. Some people are angry; other people are sad. Some people are confused; other people are depressed. So you have to keep working with them both on an individual basis and also on a corporate basis.

Mr Marchese: Thank you, Madam Chair.

The Chair: All right, thank you. We will adjourn now and start again with the official opposition at 2 o'clock.

Mr Curling: Is there any way we can try to set up some scheduling after in camera?

The Chair: Well, if you're asking for a meeting of the subcommittee, you can make that request.

Mr Curling: Can we have just a short moment in subcommittee?

The Chair: We don't have a Tory.

The committee recessed from 1203 to 1405.

The Chair: I'd like to call this afternoon session of the standing committee on government agencies to order. We will continue the review of the Ontario Human Rights Commission. In rotation, actually, we were next in order with the official opposition. I wonder, just before we start, Ms Brown, now we have a decent seating arrangement, if you could introduce the people again for the sake of Hansard.

Ms Rosemary Brown: Okay, I'd be very happy to do that. Seated on my immediate left is our new director of systemic investigation, Neil Edwards. On my immediate right is the executive director of the commission, Mr Scott Campbell, and on the right of Mr Campbell is the acting director of policy and public education, Calvin Bernard.

The Chair: Mr Curling, would you like to do 20-minute rotations this afternoon? Okay.

Mr Curling: And if I give up a time within the time -- I give up my 10 minutes if I didn't use it or so, is that it?

Mr Cousens: You'll never run short of things to say, Mr Curling.

Mr Curling: Well, with an interesting agency like this, you don't, you see. There's so much you can learn.

I was about to ask you about the process of one putting an application in. I think Mr Cousens had asked it in a different way and I think you had answered that. I said I was going to put you on notice to respond to me on that, so I won't go through that again, because I think somehow you have dealt with it and we don't need to go through that kind of exercise.

One of the things I found in your presentation, Commissioner, is that no mention is made of the Mary Cornish report. The Mary Cornish report itself had put forward some recommendations. I know that the government of the day, the present day too, had sort of hurried Mary Cornish to complete that in a time, which we felt she was doing a good job, but not that I agreed with everything that is there. But some of the recommendations were something of rather great interest.

I'm not quite sure if the minister got around yet to reading it or to assessing it or analysing it, but I know that you had somehow looked at it, and in your restructuring, I just wondered if you had addressed any of those recommendations. Some of them are excellent recommendations. Were they addressed in there and has it been that as you go along redesigning or restructuring, you will take into account the Mary Cornish recommendations?

Ms Rosemary Brown: First of all, in response to your question about the minister, she has in fact indicated that after she has reviewed and made decisions about the report recommendations would be then put forward to the House, and I would imagine that prior to doing that she will sit down with the commission around some of those recommendations. So I'm not sure what the status is at this time of her work on it, but we are anticipating that we will be part of any decisions that come out of her reading of the report.

What we have done, however, is to take some of the recommendations which were made in the Mary Cornish report which could be implemented without any amendments to the code being necessary -- we refer to them as non-legislative options -- and a number of these did in fact influence some of the decisions that were made in terms of reorganizing the commission and did in fact show up in some of our organizational improvement initiatives.

Some examples of these would be, for example, the streamlining of investigations, the identifying of closure times for ESIs, and her recommendation that section 34 of the code should be used more rigorously to screen out complaints which are either outside of the commission's jurisdiction or could be better dealt with by some other agency. But as you know, most of her recommendations require legislative changes for implementation and on those of course we will just have to await the government's pleasure.

Mr Curling: You were quite forthcoming with some of the observations of the Human Rights Commission itself. Let me talk about the morale and some of the problems that were happening in there. I think one of the reports that came out of that was the Young report, Donna Young, who had made some of -- I never thought it was a report, I always thought it was a letter in itself. But comments were made and a lot of kerfuffle went on about it and people were rather concerned about the things that were happening in the Human Rights Commission. Out of the commission I have seen some policy being developed, like in sexual harassment, but is there any policy being developed about racism, a racism policy?

Ms Rosemary Brown: As I mentioned earlier in my speech, we are working on guidelines for the staff, certainly in terms of dealing with investigation on race-based cases, and as I indicated, those guidelines should be ready by the end of the month. We'll certainly be sharing them with the members, with you as the critic and of course with other members of the committee, if that is your wish.

But what we've also been doing in terms of addressing allegations of racism within the commission itself is that we've established a committee composed of staff from all levels of the organization to review the issue and to advise us on what should be done, and one of our commissioners, actually, Commissioner St Clair Wharton, sits on that committee. The committee developed a report after consulting with the staff throughout the organization, and this report was actually tabled with the chief commissioner and the executive director. It was then passed on by us to senior management who have been reviewing it and its recommendations.

I have to confess that we've probably not moved as quickly in terms of dealing with this report as we should have, but there's been a real reason for this, and I think I touched on that earlier when I said that in an issue of this nature, we want to move very carefully and properly, and so we don't see it as something that can be rushed. But what we are determined to do is to integrate our anti-racism strategy into all of the organizational change which is taking place in the commission, whether it's in improved customer services, in organizational restructuring, in training -- everything that we do. We don't see it as being an add-on. It's not something that you do "as well" or even "in lieu of." We see it as being an integral part of everything that we do in the commission, and that is one of the reasons why we are taking our time and moving very, very carefully in this direction.

Mr Curling: I was concerned that most of it was slow-coming because, as you mentioned in your opening remarks, when the Human Rights Commission was established, basically it was on race and on colour and creed, and sexual harassment was rather new to bring this forward, but which was long overdue to address that issue. I always found it was slow-coming in the fact of having a policy on racism inside the Human Rights Commission, but what I'm hearing, too, is that of course you want to get it right and want to move it properly.

Ms Rosemary Brown: Yes.

Mr Curling: When do you see this coming about, that we would say, "Here we are, a little glossy book of policies here"? When do you see this happening?

Ms Rosemary Brown: The guidelines are going to be ready by the end of the month. That's not a problem. The problem about developing our own anti-racism plan of action, again, because it is an integral part of the organization and the culture of the organization, that's going to take more time and actually I just don't see it as being something that we're going to be able to race through.

We really want to examine ourselves. We want to be sure that not just our practices but our policies actually are in line, that we're not just a model in terms of what we say but in terms of what we do. We want to go beyond tokenism in terms of our practices inside, whether it is in employment or promotion and those kinds of things. We're genuinely trying to make equality a reality, and this is not easy. This is not something that's going to happen very quickly.

One of the reasons we have so much sympathy with complaints involving both complainants and respondents is because we realize that if you really are serious about this job, about anti-racism and you really want to make it work, that you have to be deliberate in your approach. You have to take the time to do it properly, and it has to be integrated, not only what you do but in how you think and how you speak and in every aspect of what you do.

Any additional effort this might entail we think is worth it in light of the tremendous benefits which will accrue to us, as an organization, of becoming a genuine anti-racist organization, and indeed for other organizations in the public and private sector that look to us for leadership and guidance in this area.

Mr Curling: Yes. I appreciate the fact that if you want to do it, you might as well do it right at the beginning, or as near as possible, to get it right and have an effective policy, but I just feel it is really long in coming in an agency that's supposed to be dealing with that and not having a policy in place before. But I want to leave that a little bit.

Ms Rosemary Brown: In closing this off, though, I want to disabuse you of the idea that we're talking about the future. Because we are practising or trying to practise what we preach, that makes us more careful in terms of how we articulate our policy, but I would like to think that as an organization we are really doing everything we can to be as anti-racist as we can in our practices.

Mr Curling: But that's the problem. They weren't practising what they preached. There was evidence of racism within the Human Rights Commission.

Ms Rosemary Brown: Right. We are addressing that really seriously, and the first step in addressing that was to stop denying. You won't hear anyone denying that any more. We've said, "Okay, it's here, we've looked and we have to address this."

Mr Curling: Let me go back to the Cornish report a bit. The Cornish report also criticized the lack of independence of the commission.

Ms Rosemary Brown: It also criticized what?

Mr Curling: The lack of independence of the commission. Does the commission view this as a problem? What about the allegation that the commission has not dealt really strenuously with the claims filed against the government? They feel they weren't as active. These are accusations that were made that they don't feel it was active enough.

Ms Rosemary Brown: As I said earlier today, my experience of the commission is that it's operating independently and at arm's length. We do have to do business with the ministry. The executive director has to report on administrative and financial matters to the ministry. Those things have to happen.

I do keep the minister, in the same way as I keep you as the critic in opposition and Mr Cousens as the critic in opposition, up to date on the things that we are trying to do, because we see this as our route through to the people of Ontario. But our experience has not been that our independence has been breached in any way.

Mr Curling: You don't really see that the present association or the present arrangement through the ministry, not having that, and then that having the commission reporting to the Legislative Assembly would be more effective -- you don't see that there would be a difference or you don't think that it could be more effective that way? Not that I'm saying that the minister interferes in any way, because of course if she does, we would be in the House calling her to that task.

Ms Rosemary Brown: Right.

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Mr Curling: But I'm asking, though, would you see that the commission reporting to a Legislative Assembly committee could be more effective and be perceived to be more effective if it does so?

Ms Rosemary Brown: I think that is a debate that our elected members need to have and also a discussion that the commissioners at some point need to have. It's not really something that we have exercised ourselves over at this point but it's certainly a debate that I think the elected members need to have.

Mr Curling: There are people you had mentioned when you were speaking about the -- I even hate to use the word "backlog" now because I think you have --

Ms Rosemary Brown: It's case load.

Mr Curling: The case load. Some of the case load that more or less people have found themselves in -- in other words, those who put in their complaints to the commission get rather frustrated and withdraw their cases. I have a gentleman in mind who had written to me and had withdrawn his complaint against the ODI; this was on a disability issue. He was so frustrated with the time frame that was given to deal with his case that he couldn't be bothered to go through that and gave up on this process. Are you having many people withdrawing when they put their case forward? Because I, as a member of Parliament, receive quite a lot, and I can say to you too, when I do call the Human Rights Commission, I do get assistance and support, so I'm more eager to give empathy towards the staff.

I'm going to ask two questions in this. Do you find that a lot of people are withdrawing because they can't be bothered to wait this long or feel they're not being attended to; although you're saying that you're going to have people reporting back a couple of months afterwards, they withdraw their case and they can't be bothered because of the time frame?

Ms Rosemary Brown: According to our statistics, in terms of formal complaints, the withdrawal rate is about 10%, but I don't think you should conclude that everyone who withdraws is as a result of frustration. In fact, in some instances it is that there's been resolution and people have decided that it's no longer necessary to proceed any further.

Certainly our experience with ESI is that again sometimes the two parties just sitting down and talking to each other resolve it, and so they say, "Okay, there is no need to go any further." A new process before going to the board of inquiry is pre-conferencing. At that stage 70%, I think is the figure, of the people involved with that talk it out, come to a resolution and decide not to proceed any further.

But it is important to us at the commission that you know and have a clear understanding of time lines, so that when your constituents speak to you about time lines you are better able to assess whether they're accurate in terms of their perception. So I'm going to ask Neil to go over again, in terms of walking through a complaint, the time lines which we have now established.

Mr Neil Edwards: In terms of the ESI, which is the first step in the process, we're now required to complete an ESI in 90 days. If we cannot obtain a resolution within 90 days, it then becomes a formal complaint.

Mr Curling: ESI is what?

Mr Edwards: Early settlement initiative. Where there is no formal complaint, the parties agree they want to resolve it and they do that. Of course, clearly we do not coerce parties into attempting to resolve the complaint. They understand what the process is and they decide whether or not they want to go along with the process. So it's an agreement between the parties in terms of coming to a resolution. As I said, if it's not, it then goes into the formal process and that could take anywhere from I would say six months to up to two years to be resolved.

Mr Curling: It was rather interesting. I looked into the annual report, 1991-92, and you had a case on the system, in case resolution, and it was in connection with the Attorney General's office and the Ministry of Government Services. I think it was in regard to access for those who are disabled. It was reported at that time that the case had been discussed. It seems to me it had taken a considerable length of time. I'm going to guess: It looked like it took about two years, because the briefing notes that I got from the research office were saying that the matter has now been resolved.

One would believe that a government that wants to set an example would have come very easily to a resolution for this. Did you find this painstaking? Did it take an unusual length of time? Was there some sort of reason you feel that there should be more cooperation? Because a matter like that, talked of among brothers and sisters, I thought would be easy to resolve.

Ms Rosemary Brown: Systemic cases take a little bit longer, but then, again, that's Neil's area of responsibility. But systemic cases, because they deal with the whole group rather than just individuals, of necessity are more problematic.

Mr Cousens: Proceeding with the point that I had touched on before we moved to the other parties, it has to do with the Marty McKay and Patricia Findlay situation in which a board of inquiry determined that the commission had not followed its own procedures, and that is to require a conciliation between the two parties prior to appointing a board of inquiry. Could you explain how this could happen?

Ms Rosemary Brown: Yes, we take full responsibility for that error, the commissioners as well as the staff. We blew it on that one. What we have done is learned that lesson the hard way and put into place systems to ensure that it won't happen again. Everyone has now been made fully aware of the legal requirements for this step to be taken before any board can be recommended. I said the commissioners as well as the staff take responsibility for missing on that one, because it actually comes before the commission before it goes before a board of inquiry. We should have asked the question and we didn't. So we blew it as well.

This awareness has come about by a combination of directives and training directed at both front-line investigatory staff and at ourselves as commissioners. We certainly link this to some of the accountability and organizational changes that are taking place. We take full responsibility for that.

Mr Cousens: How much has the commission spent on this case to date and how much more do you anticipate that this case will cost in the future?

Ms Rosemary Brown: We've spent $60,000 to date, as of December 31, 1993. In terms of any other information about the status of the case, again I want to turn you over to Neil, who is responsible for case load management.

Mr Cousens: Just mainly on the question of cost, what do you expect this to cost? I mean, you've got to have a sense of the time that's going to be involved.

Ms Rosemary Brown: No, because we have no idea at this point as to whether the case will actually go back to board or not.

Mr Cousens: Why has this case, which was filed in 1985, proceeded for nine years, when the variety stores have complied with municipal bylaws regarding the display of adult magazines and the material is not considered obscene under federal law? Why has the claim not been dismissed?

Ms Rosemary Brown: Because it is possible that this case will return to board, because it is now back with the commission and in its investigatory stages, it would be really inappropriate for me to be dealing with any detailed responses to your question.

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In the broad, generic sense, though, the issue at stake here is not the legitimacy of selling magazines; the issue at stake is a poisoned environment which contravenes the code. But other than that, I really can't get into any other detail.

Mr Cousens: Since the case has been outstanding since 1985, would you not agree that it is highly unlikely that conciliation between the parties will be successful?

Ms Rosemary Brown: We're certainly not going to make any such assumption now. We're going to try to follow the direction of the code, which is that we have to try for a settlement.

Mr Cousens: I'll just make a comment that this is, to me, one example of where I believe the commission has gone into an area, spent $60,000 at least, plus more, plus time, plus energy, which I say, at the very minimum, through screening, the grey nature of the situation, I personally question the extent of the involvement of the commission in it, the length of time it's taken and the cloudiness of the jurisdiction. But I can see that you're not able to discuss it further because of the situation which you explained, and I accept that. But I just want to go on record that I take strong exception to the way the commission has spent time and money and effort on that particular issue, when in fact it's been handled by other areas.

I move to another question. In 1991 Catherine Frazee, the former chief commissioner, launched a new case management system to deal with the backlog of outstanding cases at the commission. The minister allocated $6.4 million over a three-year period and 58 new positions were added to the commission. Yet today we still have a backlog of 2,156 cases. In your estimation, was Ms Frazee's case management plan successful, and if so, why are there still 2,156 outstanding cases?

Ms Rosemary Brown: I think I'll start out by clarifying that the 2,168 cases that I think you said we're talking about is our case load. Some of those cases may have actually walked through the door on December 30. These are not necessarily cases which have been with us since 1985 or whatever. In fact, there are only 250 cases in our case load that have been with us for more than three years. All of the cases that were in the task force at the time when that money was released to Catherine Frazee are going to be closed, finished, done with, by March 31 of this year. There are only 202 of those cases left to be closed, and they're going to be closed by March 31 of this year.

Mr Cousens: Do you think that case management that was introduced at that time plan was successful?

Ms Rosemary Brown: I think the case management plan was certainly a step in the right direction. In fact, we have built on that and we are improving that. I notice that Scott wanted to add something to it. But certainly, as I said, nothing is perfect, and we are building on it and improving it.

Mr Campbell: I think that in terms of the case management plan it was good as far as it went, but what we have done in the last year is develop a whole set of organizational improvement initiatives that are not just related to case management. The chief commissioner talked this morning about restructuring the organization, about technology, about training people etc.

So we have not just dealt with case load and case management. We've dealt with it in a much more fundamental way in terms of, in a sense, re-engineering our workplace. We think that is a much better way to go in terms of dealing with the case load that's before us.

Mr Cousens: I accept what you've just said. I think, in the spirit of trying to find progress, that you're doing things better. In 1991, when Ms Frazee made the investment and it was announced in the Legislature, I criticized it then and I criticize it now. I thought it was not the most wise way of addressing some of the backlog and the concerns that people had with the commission. Inasmuch as your comments now lead us to believe that you're trying to find other ways -- the point we were making and continue to make is that you don't necessarily always solve problems by throwing money at it. You've opened up educational programs and you've got quality control programs and other things. It all has to be a concerted, wholly rounded, complete effort that does it. Money isn't necessarily the solution to it.

Certainly when we saw that as the panacea -- well, it wasn't painted as a panacea, but it was certainly pointed out that it was going to solve a lot of things -- we were satisfied then that it wouldn't work and are still satisfied.

Would the chief commissioner explain why, as the Ombudsman pointed out in a July 1993 report, that despite hiring 33 additional staff "the case load stood at 1,877 on March 31, 1993, 574 above its target of 1,303 for that date"? The Ombudsman pointed out in her July 1993 report that despite hiring 33 additional staff, the case load stood 574 above the target that was to be set for that date.

Ms Rosemary Brown: First of all, when that report came down, we pointed out that there were some errors in her calculation, that those figures are in fact not correct. But it comes right back to the initial statement that we made, that the history of the commission is that there have been real problems in dealing with case loads. We have tried to dissect this, to look at it under a microscope to find out what it is that's not working here and how we can work it better.

We now know, for example, that on average we can expect one of our officers to deal with approximately 28 cases in a year. We know that. So when you divide 28 into, I don't know, 2,000 cases or whatever, it's easy for us to tell whether we're going to be able to make our target or not, based on the number of officers we have, if they are working full-time.

So even though I agree with you when you say that you can't throw money at the commission in terms of solving some of our problems, I don't want you to go away thinking that money isn't going to help, because money is going to be a great help to us, and we are certainly hoping that this committee is going to be very supportive in terms of helping us get budget increases if that is possible.

I've met with the Ombudsman. We've talked about it, and I think that having shared with her, as I did with you and with Mr Curling, the organizational changes around dealing with case loads and other things in the commission, she also is doing what we're doing and monitoring very carefully to see whether we're going to get some positive results from this or not.

Mr Cousens: I think my conclusion is that you have to continue to ensure that there is an improvement in output. It has to happen and we have to find ways.

Ms Rosemary Brown: Absolutely.

Mr Cousens: I see you're spending money on technology, you're spending money on people.

Ms Rosemary Brown: Training.

Mr Cousens: Training. You're putting a personal effort into it; your senior staff are. I can just tell you that the emphasis has to make sure that you succeed in getting that productivity up. We're all looking at you very, very carefully, and that also adds pressure, which makes it maybe even more difficult to perform, but I can assure you that our interest is sincere.

Ms Rosemary Brown: Can I just say that I agree with you 100%. We know that we have to improve our productivity, and this has been really the main thrust of the changes that we're bringing about, because I believe that, like justice, human rights deferred are not human rights protected. So we certainly agree with you.

Mr Cousens: I know you would, and I think that you just have to understand the urgency in pursuing that.

Ms Rosemary Brown: Absolutely.

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Mr Cousens: I submitted an order paper question, and your staff indicated that the average length of time that it took to resolve a complaint, from intake to final settlement, was 637 days in 1990, 740 days in 1991, 692 days in 1992, and 661 days in 1993. Why has the amount of time needed to resolve a formal complaint not decreased more substantially in light of all the additional resources and personnel specifically targeted to improve case management?

Ms Rosemary Brown: This is where we're really going to have to ask you to be patient, because I am convinced, and we all at the commission are convinced, that once these changes that we're making inside the commission, the eight changes that I mentioned in my opening remarks and that we've been talking about this morning, are on stream and functioning, you will begin to see an improvement in those figures. But it is not going to happen overnight. It is really going to take time.

But when the change comes, it's going to be endemic. It's going to be rooted change, and I think that's the best kind of change, I'm sure you will agree, to go for. We've tried the cosmetic stuff. It's been tried, and it just doesn't work. There's a limit to what powder and lipstick can do, really.

Mr Cousens: Do you have an average cost for cases that reach each of the following stages? Do you have a costing of what it is? I can outline the stages. Do you have it worked out what the costs are at different stages?

Ms Rosemary Brown: No. Would you like us to do that for you? I'm not quite sure if we could.

Mr Cousens: I wouldn't want it to consume all your energies when there are other important things to do.

Ms Rosemary Brown: Well, there you go.

Mr Curling: The backlog again.

Mr Cousens: I don't want to be the excuse why the backlog gets bigger. There's got to be care. But, to me, it would be one of those things I would have thought that your management would have addressed in seeing what you could do on it. I won't pursue that question.

Ms Rosemary Brown: I think we can do it. There are some people, like Mark, who like to play on the computer and come up with facts and figures like that.

Mr Cousens: I know you're proud of that Mark.

Ms Rosemary Brown: So we might be able to come up with those figures.

Mr Cousens: I think he's got more security than some of the rest of us have around here.

Mr Curling: Speak for yourself.

Mr Cousens: I don't have much, I'll tell you. I live in Markham. They're after one politician.

Mr Marchese: There are 70,000 people on your hiring committee, is that it?

Mr Cousens: I just keep my head down.

The one thing that I want to come back to, and I was talking over lunch with a couple of people who agreed with me, is that there is a concern that in your early resolution approach to solving situations, in fact corporations are almost held to ransom. Your answer earlier was the answer I wanted to hear, so therefore in my challenging your answer, please don't see it as a challenging of yourself.

I do know of instances where, in order to get the problem out of the way, dealt with early, what has happened is that businesses have been offered a chance to pay up and then have the thing shoved aside. What they've done is to say, "It's almost easier to pay $4,000 or $5,000," and that's the number I've heard several times from different people who have been involved with people in your commission, rather than pay the cost of the lawyers and their time and their staff and the energies to go through the whole process. For them, it's an easier out than the battle that could go on and on, and then when it's finished and done, they might not have won anyway. They can say: "It could cost us $15,000 to fight it out with the Human Rights Commission. We might just as well take a hit for the $5,000 and then let it go."

In that way, what you've done is you have been able to have an early settlement, but whether you couched it in the right terms or not, you in fact left the person who was being charged or challenged or brought to the issue very angry at the way the system works today.

Ms Rosemary Brown: That's a really serious charge and I'm actually quite disturbed by it because we have a legislative mandate to endeavour to effect a settlement in every case, but our investigators cannot take sides. They cannot either coerce one party or the other into settling a complaint. They have to remain neutral throughout this entire process. They cannot force a complainant to accept an offer made by a respondent or vice versa. They cannot coerce. They're not supposed to. They must not.

Mr Cousens: But, Ms Brown, and agreeing with you there, there's still a way in which that when it is tabled, "Okay, this can go away if you have this." How do you not cause that doubt to be created that they're being held up for ransom?

Ms Rosemary Brown: Because one of the things that the investigator should and must make absolutely clear at the beginning and throughout this process is that at any time either party, respondent or complainant, has the right to go to a formal case, that they don't have to settle in --

Mr Cousens: But you see, that in itself becomes such a threat because of the cost and time and the very issues why they say: "Well, look. It's easier to buy out of this process by paying up this amount of money."

Ms Rosemary Brown: The investigator must not and cannot say that. If you as a complainant or you as a --

Mr Cousens: I don't think anyone would have said it just as I did.

Ms Rosemary Brown: Okay.

Mr Cousens: But I think the intent would be much the same by virtue of the holdup, "On the one hand I can end it with a cheque and on the other I go through the process," and the confidence that the process is going to take time, it's going to take money, it's going to take lawyers and it's going to take all the other things out of running their business and getting on with things, so therefore it's just a balancing act so, "It's easier to go and pay this amount."

Ms Rosemary Brown: I know, but I think it's --

The Chair: It's going to take your next turn to carry on this particular part of your debate.

Mr Cousens: Oh, what a ruthless --

Ms Rosemary Brown: If I can serve notice that maybe Mr Cousens should rethink whether "coercion" is the correct word here.

Mr Cousens: It's hard to know the exact words. It's the effect --

The Chair: We now move to Ms Carter.

Ms Jenny Carter (Peterborough): I'd like to say that I certainly agree with your emphasis on the inside-out approach and I think this is what is bearing fruit and that you have achieved and are achieving a great deal.

We were just talking about productivity and how much each member of staff can achieve. In the notes that we were given we have a table of the number of employees; it's on page 12. What is remarkable is just how stable that picture seems to have been. The commission seems to have gone down from 11 through 13 to nine; office staff, 48 right the way through.

Part-time office staff, seven all the way across; full-time professional support staff, 131 to 130 -- that's all the variation there -- and part-time professional support staff, three, three, four, four. I presume the extra task force was not included in that in any way; otherwise there would have been a bulge, so that's the regular staff.

If I compare that with table 1 on page 4 where it shows us the inquiries from the public going from 60,000-plus in 1988-89 to 116,000, and the cases closed going from 1,345 in 1988-89 to 2,659 in 1992-93, it looks to me as though as there is already a great deal more productivity in there. I'm just wondering if you could comment on that.

Ms Rosemary Brown: I think maybe you should also factor in table 8 on page 12, that the expenditure in terms of the budget we've had to work with hasn't changed either. So we have been dealing with a larger case load pretty much with the same number of people and the same amount of money, almost.

Ms Carter: Are they in most cases actually the same people or have you had a lot of turnover within that?

Ms Rosemary Brown: Not necessarily, no. I would say it's a pretty stable environment, yes.

Ms Carter: So the difference presumably has come from all those things you listed that you've done, including particularly training and development --

Ms Rosemary Brown: Mostly, yes.

Ms Carter: -- and I suppose better technology and so on.

Ms Rosemary Brown: Yes, it's beginning to happen. There will come a point at some time, of course, where we'll hit the wall and we won't be able to keep up with the pressure.

Ms Carter: That's what I was wondering, what your projection for the future is. We did touch earlier on how different kinds of discrimination are traditionally hidden. They're just part of life and people don't notice them or do anything about them and then we kind of unearth them and say, "Hey, this isn't fair; women aren't being treated equally; people of different colour aren't being treated equally," and so on. Then when they've come into the light of day, as it were, the complaints start.

Hopefully as this process that we're getting into here continues, we should achieve some sort of success, and I guess you're not working completely in isolation because the employment equity is coming on stream. We've got the Advocacy Act, which will help people get their problems looked into before they go too far, that kind of thing.

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Do you see this whole thing just escalating or do you see it reaching some kind of equilibrium or even diminishing or do we have new kinds of discrimination that we haven't even unearthed yet?

Ms Rosemary Brown: Oh, good grief. I'm hoping there are no new kinds of discrimination that we haven't unearthed yet. I'm hoping we're becoming a more enlightened society rather than the other way around.

Interjection: We've got more subtle discrimination.

Ms Rosemary Brown: Yes, more subtle forms of discrimination, so our techniques have to be improved.

One of the commitments that we've made as a commission, since you raise this around productivity, is that we recognize and appreciate the fiscal restraints that the government is operating under and we're going to do the absolute best that we can with the resources we have, but we recognize that there may come a time when the resources are just not going to be sufficient to make us improve our productivity in any way, that in fact --

Ms Carter: Obviously productivity can't improve indefinitely, although I sometimes think business thinks it can.

Ms Rosemary Brown: Yes. At which point then a decision has to be made. The community has to decide that it is willing to accept less because there is less to work with or else there has to be some way found to improve the resources.

Ms Carter: But does not the more systemic approach that we have with, say, employment equity mean that hopefully there will be fewer individual complaints as that gets under way?

Ms Rosemary Brown: We're certainly hoping that in the employment field employment equity will deal with a lot of the systemic complaints, but there are other systemic complaints that are not --

Ms Carter: They aren't all employment equity.

Ms Rosemary Brown: -- that haven't got to do with employment that we still have to deal with.

Ms Carter: Okay. Now what about the role of the Human Rights Commission with respect to the other equity commissions? I think the Cornish report did suggest that they be more or less amalgamated and I do understand that there is an evolution going on whereby you're sharing resources; you're becoming closer together. Is that correct?

Ms Rosemary Brown: We certainly cooperate. You're speaking of other groups like the anti-racism and pay equity and other commissions. We're very supportive of each other's work and whenever it's possible we do share resources, but until employment equity's actually on stream and we've worked out a protocol for relating to each other, all we can say is that we are cooperative and we want to work with each other but we're not sure how that's going to happen.

Ms Carter: Yes. So there is a process of evolution going on there. Just one last point. I did hear the question raised as to whether there were any business representatives on the commission.

Ms Rosemary Brown: Yes. The commission actually is very reflective of the community in which we live. There are nine commissioners. Robert Milbourne, who certainly would consider himself to be a representative of the business community and is one of the top executives with a large corporation, sits on our committee. I gather his corporation has a workforce of 7,000 people. He's actually with Stelco in Hamilton. Certainly he brings that perspective to bear on the commission and it is very respected and very useful.

Ms Carter: So you don't see any obvious gaps in your representation.

Ms Rosemary Brown: Well, we certainly need, I would imagine, more commissioners who are bilingual. Because we sit as three-member panels in deciding some issues, sometimes it's not possible unless we have at least three commissioners who speak and understand French fluently. We've also been trying to encourage the first nations community to suggest someone to sit on the commission. Other than that, it seems to be pretty reflective of the diversity of the community.

Ms Harrington: I'd like to take a few minutes to look at a little bigger picture. I believe the quality of your organization is very important to the fabric and quality of life in Ontario. I don't have a background to know a lot about your organization, but just from what we've read so far, it seems to be a key part of making sure we have the quality of life here that we want.

I think what we're involved in -- I believe most of us who were elected and your organization as well -- is trying to change attitudes. You talked about rights evolving. It's not the commission that does this and it's not the Legislature that does this, but it's actually society that does this.

I was looking through your booklet that you gave out here. It talks about how to deal with different situations and it talks about sexual harassment here, being able to say things like, "That's not appropriate," or "That's not funny." Would you see part of your commission's role is to encourage people to speak up and speak out, whether it's just a joke or a pin-up or the rest of these things that so often people don't say anything? It's much easier to be quiet than to say, "I don't like that."

Ms Rosemary Brown: One of the things we're really pleased we are able to do is to prepare material which people can use to speak up and to speak out, and to prepare such material not just in English but in any language that they request. For people who are sight-impaired, we also have audio tapes. I know there's material here which I can make available for you later.

We see the public educational component of the work that we do as being very important in terms of having materials people can actually have that they can use in terms of their own empowerment in these kinds of --

Ms Harrington: I'd like to take that a step further. There are many things I'm sure that are underlying causes of discrimination, that enable discrimination to take place more easily. Two things that come to mind are the issues of pornography and non-gender-neutral language. How would you see your commission aiding the province in changing these types of underlying causes?

Ms Rosemary Brown: In terms of gender-neutral language?

Ms Harrington: Or pornography.

Ms Rosemary Brown: One of the things we've done in the new department that Calvin is acting director of is streamline the structure so that we amalgamate public policy and public education. Those are the kinds of issues that, when they're dealt with as public policy then we can prepare the tools and take the message out in terms of public education.

The commission -- and I guess I have to be careful how I say this now, but I said it earlier -- we are not making public policy. I firmly believe that public policy is made out there and those people who are supportive of the public policy of the day get elected by the electorate and then they make the legislation which directs the work that we do. But we don't make it.

You raised two very contentious issues which the community is still grappling with. At the point at which the community resolves that, then I can see us being in a position to prepare all of the material and to get all of the stuff out.

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Ms Harrington: I see the commission, though, as part of a much broader structure, of --

Ms Rosemary Brown: Raising the issue. Sure.

Ms Harrington: -- raising the issue as part of this, because what you do is get it into the press, then there's the press and it gets people talking about it in their workplace, in their home environment, in the schools. Then of course it gets into the movies and everything else. People do change attitudes. When you think of smoking and drinking and driving, within a decade or so, people are much more aware of things they weren't before.

Ms Rosemary Brown: Yes, and as Scott just pointed out to me, the sexual harassment, I think, is a very good example of the way in which this issue was raised first in the women's community, became a public issue, then when the commission had to deal with it the board of inquiry, through some of its decisions which it brought down, actually enshrined it.

Ms Harrington: So you are a key to bringing things forward and having it dealt with visibly.

Ms Rosemary Brown: Right. Yes.

Ms Harrington: In the research paper that we were given, there is a quote from the Donna Young report, and I found it interesting. It said, "The author alleges that there is a general lack of understanding that the law sustains racial discrimination through its basic premises and interpretive framework." If that is the case, that in fact the law sustains, in some cases, an ability for racial discrimination to take place, then obviously it falls on us as lawmakers to deal with that.

Ms Rosemary Brown: I think actually an example that would probably be easier to understand at this time would be the same-sex issue around spousal benefits where even though the charter says one thing, the code says another thing and we're waiting for the legislators to clear it up for us.

Ms Harrington: So we do have a definite role --

Ms Rosemary Brown: Oh, absolutely, a very important role.

Mr Paul Klopp (Huron): This is maybe something to do with what Mr Cousens sparked -- maybe I'm on a different subject altogether -- but the issue is process. I think everybody I've talked to in the industry and whatever says, "Of course I want human rights and I want to treat my workers fairly," and believe me, that's where I have no trouble standing. But then, of course, you go through a process and then it frustrates and the red tape gets people argumentative and frustrated. Of course, when it comes to human rights, it's such an easy target for everybody to quickly have motives.

I'm going to run this process through you very quickly: An employee who felt he or she was done unduly wrong by a person goes to the commission. The commission goes and investigates. This is the way I understand it: The commission then puts a dollar value on it, if the worker got laid off or lost her job or whatever.

Ms Rosemary Brown: No.

Mr Klopp: I'm just going to run this through and then you can show me what's wrong with it, and that's fine.

Ms Rosemary Brown: Okay.

Mr Klopp: The employer sees the dollar figure; mentally, it goes in their mind, "Do I pay the bill, even though I swear I'm -- ?" Because they usually phone me, they're swearing that they've been wronged. You're not hearing both sides -- or not even hearing any side -- but they say in their mind: "Well, do I pay the bill or do I go on and fight it? I need a lawyer and it's going to take time." So they pay the bill.

That's the kind of scenario I've seen. No one coerced anybody; it's just that this is the employer phoning me. They agree when I say to them, "Are you treating people right?" "Oh, yeah," all that good stuff, but that's what they tell me.

Could you repudiate that there's a process here that I've been missing or that this owner's been missing -- or owners, because I met a couple?

Ms Rosemary Brown: If it's a straight employment issue where someone has applied for a promotion or someone has been released from employment for some reason and they have said, "I was laid off because of my race," or disability or whatever, usually what the complainant wants is their job back. That's usually what they want. The highest percentage of times, they want their job back.

Then the negotiation begins: "No, you can't have your job back." "Yes, but this means to me a loss of employment, it means a loss of wage, it means a loss of benefit." But throughout the entire process the investigator is neutral. The investigator at no time can take sides either with the respondent or vice versa.

Mr Klopp: Totally agreed. But how do you stop that mental thing where they see $3,000 will fix the problem or I have to have a lawyer? I guess one of the questions is maybe why they need to have a lawyer to go to fight a case if they truly believe they have a problem. Why do I need to hire a lawyer to go to a case in front of a commission? If I'm an owner, surely I must be fairly intelligent enough -- he or she. If I've got that far I can go in front of the commission, because my time is only my time if I want to fight the case. I just throw that out to you.

Ms Rosemary Brown: And there is absolutely nothing in the legislation that would suggest to them that they have to hire a lawyer. That is a decision that they've made: "Hey, maybe I'd better hire a lawyer. This looks as though it's getting serious."

But if you wanted to use a specific example, one of the five cases I mentioned might be a good example, and that's the age case. I could ask Neil again, who is responsible for case load management, if you wanted to talk about that case where this person was forced into early retirement and filed a complaint and said, "I was forced into retirement because of my age." Do you want to deal with that?

Mr Edwards: I need some clarification, Mr Klopp, as to what exactly your question is regarding the process.

Mr Klopp: The process seems to be that, no, nobody is accusing anybody of forcing someone to make a mental deal, "I'll make the payment and then this will be off my back." When they phone their member of Parliament, they're saying, "The dang process is no good." Then they start flagging that they don't like the Human Rights Commission.

It gets into that, and that isn't what they're arguing about. They're just having this feeling that's got out there in the community, and maybe you can take this back and help turn that feeling around, that you don't need to have a lawyer to go and fight a case if you have an employee who brings something up to the commission. Because that is a feeling that comes right off the bat, "I need to hire my most expensive lawyer." This is an employer of four people in this particular case. He -- it happened to be a he -- has to go and hire a lawyer.

Well, right off the bat, I know what lawyers charge even out in good old Huron county, and $3,000 isn't going to go very far. So they feel they'll just pay it off, even though they swear on a stack of bibles that, "That person was wrong. I deserved to fire him. I'm not a bad employer," and all these other things they start dragging into it.

Maybe there's some way that we can get back to the employers that you don't need to hire the highest-priced lawyer in Ontario to go and argue a case at the commission. I'm just throwing that out to you. The process is fair but somehow or other it's getting out there that "I need to hire the best lawyer in the world." That's unfortunate, because it's getting the issue confused.

Ms Rosemary Brown: Yes, because in fact after the investigative process is over, there's disclosure. They can see what the investigator has come up with, and if in fact they're willing to negotiate in terms of giving a person their job back, then that closes it. If they're not, then that is the point at which they probably feel, "In this litigious day and age, maybe I have to go and hire myself a lawyer." But the commission has no option. Under the code we have to try to effect a settlement.

Mr Curling: Employment equity legislation is supposed to have been in place, but it's a false hope that the government has driven into the people because the regulation has not yet been completed and therefore we have no legislation really. It's not been proclaimed. I presume that --

Mr Perruzza: Are you happy or sad about that?

Mr Curling: Our bright light came back again.

I presume that this more or less adds a bit of strain on the commission from this respect, Commissioner, that people felt that this would be dealt with, and when this was brought into place, the Employment Equity Commission, that cases like those would be looked after through there. Instead it's not there.

Do you find that there's a bit of a strain on the commission right now of expectations, false hopes are there, and employment equity is not in effect and people are still coming to you to resolve employment equity cases that are in regard to systemic discrimination?

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Ms Rosemary Brown: Nothing's changed. If someone walks through the door or makes a phone call and files a complaint around an employment issue, it's dealt with. Nothing has changed.

Mr Curling: You'll be dealing with systemic discrimination now until the government gets its act together and puts the regulations through. In other words, right now, if someone come in with systemic discrimination in regard to employment equity, would you be dealing with that?

Ms Rosemary Brown: They would be treated no differently than anyone else who comes through the door and files a complaint.

Mr Curling: If the Employment Equity Commission was now in place, you would then transfer that over to the Employment Equity Commissioner?

Ms Rosemary Brown: It's hard to deal with hypothetical stuff. As a matter of fact, one of the only things I've probably learned in my 14 years in politics was not to deal with hypothetical stuff. I'm going to wait until the commission is in place, until we've worked out protocol about how we relate to each other, and I'm going to answer that question at that time. How is that?

Mr Curling: I didn't think that was hypothetical really. I thought that the anxiety and the urgency of employment equity was there that they touted around so much; I felt that if it had been in place people would be knocking at the door because they've been discriminated in that sense. Again, maybe a year after this, we will see how many cases go to the Employment Equity Commission and how many cases actually, within the time of now and then, when the government gets its act together, have been held up through that process.

Ms Rosemary Brown: The assurance that we can give anybody with a legitimate complaint is if they come through the door or make a phone call or file a complaint in any other way, it'll be dealt with by the commission.

Mr Curling: I'm going to go on to a new topic. There was a new ruling that came about to disallow landlords to refuse any tenant the right to rent a place because of his income level. This was applauded in some respects. Some people felt they were being denied, because it determined if they can afford the rental of their accommodation. Do you see this coming within the banks where one goes to get a loan and the bank refuses the customer, saying, "I don't think you have enough income to borrow so much"? Do you see that coming in denying one's ability to pay back?

Ms Rosemary Brown: I was just told that the banks are federal and the trust companies are provincial and credit unions are something else. I believe that as long as criteria are established in such a way that exclude people, that discriminates, they can come and file a complaint with us.

Mr Curling: But the banks do that every day. As a matter of fact, those who are low-income seem to pay more interest rates than those of higher income, so they do that.

Ms Rosemary Brown: We can't deal with the banks because that's federal. They would have to go to the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

Mr Curling: That's an interesting case, because this is the problem we have too. Here comes our bright light again. It is very interesting, because the fact is some people are discriminated and they don't feel that they're being discriminated, federally or provincially.

I know what you're saying, and people are caught in this kind of confusion, that this is not my jurisdiction. Enough frustration comes, even with people in my constituency office, when they have a case and they say, "Who sent you?" Even the municipalities said, "It's a provincial matter, you see," and by the time we're finished with them we send them federally. There's a lot of confusion there.

Mr Perruzza: You've already blamed someone else.

Ms Rosemary Brown: I think it's the Fathers of Confederation we have to blame for that one. They're the ones who started all of this. It has been pointed to me that we do make referrals to the Canadian Human Rights Commission, so if you have problems with the bank --

Mr Curling: Always, with the bank.

Interjection: Call up Chrétien and get him to do something about it.

Mr Sean G. Conway (Renfrew North): I've enjoyed your presentation today and I just wanted to quickly go through a couple of issues. The Donna Young report certainly attracted a lot of attention. A lot of people, myself included, read the reports of the report. While I think we understood some of the underlying hope and expectation of the reporter, in this case Ms Young, we were really shocked at some of the line of argumentation that was advanced. There was of course much ado about that report.

I guess my question for you today is, just from the point of view of the commission today, what is your view about that report and some of the rather breathtaking and unsettling recommendations that were contained within it?

Ms Rosemary Brown: The report was prepared for the commission. It was an internal document to assist us in terms of developing some of the issues around anti-racism which I mentioned earlier. It has been reviewed by senior management staff and we have looked at some of the recommendations from the report in terms of how to deal effectively with cases involving allegations of racial discrimination.

Some of the recommendations in the report have assisted us in the development of guidelines for staff in investigating race-based cases. Those guidelines, as I pointed out a couple of times this morning, are going to be ready by the end of this month and they will certainly be made available to all members of this committee at that time.

Mr Conway: You mentioned in your submission this morning, and I'm quoting now from page 13, "We have also dedicated considerable care to the development of a series of guidelines intended to assist in the investigation and analysis of cases based on race." Then you go on in that paragraph to talk about how the "subtlety and pervasiveness of racism" is something which is only now coming under public scrutiny.

I'm not sure I agree with that assessment, though I think I understand where you're coming from. Again, I don't think there is anybody in the Legislature or I hope not too many in the broad community who would dispute the notion that we have to do something about the systemic issues here.

Having said all of that, when I look at -- and I just have the reports of the Young report; I have not read the full report. I don't even know whether it's available. The background paper that was supplied to the committee by the legislative research department provided, I thought, a pretty good summary of that report. That is, I submit to you, the kind of thing that has the potential to drive the moderate middle of this province and country away from you in a more dramatic fashion than you might even imagine.

I guess my question is, I expect that the initiatives to which you make reference on page 13 are certainly not going to be building on what seem to be some of the central, core arguments that Ms Young advanced in her paper. I say that because there will be a number of people out there who will read the report of the Young report and it will confirm for them their worst suspicion.

Ms Rosemary Brown: Can I just start out by correcting page 13? As I said before, I did take licence with my prepared notes. What in fact I did say, because I did change that, is:

"The sophistication of the subtlety and pervasiveness of racism is only now being acknowledged publicly. We now know that the crudity of signs saying `whites only' has been replaced by various and insidious restrictions which ensure that regardless of accomplishment or merit, the whites-only policy still applies in many circumstances, keeping doors closed to persons because of the colour of their skin."

I think there is a difference there between what I actually said and what I attempted to say. I'm sorry; I corrected this last night before going to bed. That's the reason why it's not in here.

The Donna Young report is a document which was prepared for the internal use of the commission. There was never at any time any feeling that everything in that report was going to be accepted as gospel and implemented. It's the same as the Cornish report; the same as any other report that's been prepared for us: We take it, we analyse it, we pull it apart, we debate it, we discuss it, and out of that, over the period of time, now is being crafted very carefully a series of guidelines to assist us in dealing with this really problematic area of our lives, the question of discrimination based on race. I don't think we should give the Donna Young report any more power than that.

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Mr Conway: Let me just take you back to Alan Borovoy, someone I have known for a long time and someone whose opinion, while I don't always agree with it, I certainly have to respect. Borovoy, I think, on the case of the corner stores and pornography, was quite upset, as I remember his position, around what he thought was the misplaced enthusiasm of the Ontario Human Rights Commission.

I've heard Alan over the years come to this Legislature, and as I think about what he said about just the orientation of the Human Rights Commission of Ontario in that case, I'm sitting here thinking, "What would anybody who professes any regard for civil liberties think of the Donna Young report?" I accept that it's only an internal report, but that this report got written that way by anybody in 1993 is really off-putting and quite frankly upsetting.

I understand what you've said by way of response, but when I listen to people who want to see the world change out there, they understand that there is a significant problem, they are extremely suspicious of those people in government who imagine they've got social engineering capacities that are going to be of a very significant and intrusive kind, that are going to fix a whole series of problems that may not be quite as fixable as some of these social engineers imagine.

When I read the Donna Young report and when I think about what Borovoy -- I'm not talking about some nattering nabob of the provincial opposition, but the sainted Alan Borovoy -- said about the orientation and the attitude of the Ontario Human Rights Commission in the corner store case, I worry about just what kind of means the good people at the Human Rights Commission are contemplating to achieve an end which I think we all want.

Ms Rosemary Brown: I think that is only going to become clear when the guidelines have been released. That is the only time that it will really be fair game to hold the commission up to scrutiny, when we have issued our guidelines and said, "These are the guidelines which are going to direct the way in which we deal with cases based on race." That is the only point at which there should be any real concern out in the community.

Mr Conway: Can I just ask you quickly about the Cornish recommendations, which are very interesting, very thought-provoking and call for a sweeping set of changes in terms of the way the OHRC is organized and the way it does its business. In early February 1994, what is your view and what would your advice be to this Legislature about the efficacy of the principal recommendations from the Cornish commission?

Ms Rosemary Brown: The commission agrees with the principles upon which the Cornish commission structured its recommendations. We totally agree with those principles. We fully endorse the principle of strengthening the commission's mandate to promote human rights through all aspects of its work. We also endorse the concept of a standing tribunal, which was one of her very strong recommendations, to hear human rights complaints. What form such a tribunal will take, as well as its scope or whatever, is open to further discussion.

But I want to reiterate that I think the basis of the Cornish report is something that the ministry and the elected representatives have to deal with, and having done that, then the commission becomes part of the policy direction or the policy decision about which of those recommendations are workable and are in the best interests of realizing this goal that we all have for this province and which ones aren't. I do not see the Human Rights Commission taking off with the Cornish report and saying, "This is what we want done, and we want it done now." That is not our mandate.

Mr Conway: But for those of us who have been around here a while, I've heard the Ombudsman complain about the difficulties on an ongoing basis with the commission. That's been dealt with earlier in the cross-examination. We've had others, Cornish among them, saying: "The basic problem is that the structure of the commission is rooted in a past that's now largely irrelevant. We have to really recast the entire piece."

I'm again sensitive to what I'm hearing from some, I think, small-l liberal, progressive people who intervene at the Human Rights Commission, who would not disagree with a lot of the objectives you have but who report to me a tangle and an overlap and a lack in some cases of procedural fairness that they think is really, really worrisome, and I'm now talking about lawyers who have reported this to me. But one of the things I notice they're saying to me lately is, "Will you do something up there at Queen's Park, will you decide?" because we're creating a commission, a quarter.

If we were to alter the mandate of the Human Rights Commission, which we may very well want to do in a positive and expansive fashion, having in mind that we've got the new Advocacy Commission and we've got a number of equity commissions, and of course we've got the great Ombudsman's office, which was created in 1975 to solve all problems with procedural and administrative tangles within government, are there any of these other apparatuses that we should wind down?

Ms Rosemary Brown: No, I don't think I'm in a position to talk about other commissions being wound down.

What I really would like you to do, though, as elected members, is to give us a chance. We're putting into place a leaner structure, a tighter structure. We're really tightening up our time lines and our time frames. We've heard all of those criticisms that you've heard and we've actually listened to them and tried to address them. Give us a chance. Let's see if this thing works.

It's only been seven months since we've really tried to start this. I think the fact that we've decided not to go out and do some big, flashy kind of response, something on the outside -- as I said, this is going to be a quiet revolution. We're going to really try and change ourselves internally in terms of how we do business.

At least allow us to fail at that before saying, "You are dysfunctional and you are no longer relevant," because human rights is still relevant, and even as we talk about the evolution of new rights in our community, it makes the kinds of things that we do at the commission even more relevant. So I think we are crucial in terms of the health of the province -- the emotional, social, psychological and community health of the province -- and we should at least be allowed to see whether these steps that we're taking are going to work or not.

Mr Conway: A fair request. Thank you very much.

The Acting Chair (Mrs Elizabeth Witmer): The time is up. We're going to go until 4 o'clock. We can divide the time, and that will be about 16 minutes each.

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Mr Cousens: That's fine. Mr Klopp was opening up the question that I was in before, and there's one dimension of the problem with businesses that have disgruntled employees who come back and make a charge under the Human Rights Commission. What advice do you have for businesses to protect themselves from disgruntled employees who are fired or have problems?

I'm just saying the small businessman is more fearful of you than you think they should be. You say, "Oh, they don't need a lawyer, and they don't need these other things." Is there any advice that you could give them on how to handle a situation? Do you have a little booklet or do you have any words of wisdom?

Ms Rosemary Brown: Actually, one of the things that policy and public education have been doing for some time is responding to requests from the private sector or from any community group for assistance in terms of understanding the code better and learning how to protect themselves, as you say, against violating the codes, consciously or unconsciously. We will continue to do that.

I am troubled by the perception -- and I know it exists, you're absolutely correct -- that the commission is the enemy of the private sector. We are impartial. We have to be neutral. If we've lost that reputation, we have to find some way of regaining it.

Mr Cousens: You're saying it correctly, but I've seen companies have sessions and seminars and they hire lawyers to do it. None the less, I just wondered if you've got any strategy. Because on the one hand, the complainant finds it very easy to get into the process. Mind you, they become part of the backlog and we'll criticize you for that. On the other hand, I'm trying to look for a way of at least protecting and showing guidance to those business people who are facing the music. You don't have a specific program.

Ms Rosemary Brown: I can also tell you that there are a number of complaints which have been filed which upon investigation have proven to be grudges, as you've said, without merit, and under section 34, we've just not dealt with them.

Even if they have been investigated and got as far as a commission hearing, the decision has been made by the commissioners not to go to board of inquiry because we've seen that the case has been without merit. You never hear about those cases.

Mr Cousens: No.

Ms Rosemary Brown: Well, I'm going to get that figure for you --

Mr Cousens: Good. I'd welcome it.

Ms Rosemary Brown: -- because there have been a number of instances.

Mr Cousens: Ms Brown, I encourage it. I'm just saying that somehow or other people feel there is not the balance and the system is tilted the other way.

There's one other thing that I want to get into before I have my series of questions. I have a 22-year-old son, and when his friends come around they enjoy picking my brain and sometimes beating me up on things provincial. One of the issues that comes out is reverse discrimination against white, Anglo-Saxon young people. They have illustrations where they have been, they feel, cut out of the system and that they themselves are now somewhat disfranchised, that they have lost some of their rights. It's a perception again, but I think Ms Ziemba, with her program --

Mr Perruzza: Do you discourage or promote it?

Mr Cousens: I'm opposed to any kind of discrimination, but there is the reverse side of it, where the whites, Anglos, in their position in Ontario, have a sense in which they fear for their potential and their ability under different acts and under different situations.

I am asking a more specific question. Do you in the commission have a number of those cases brought to you which could be identified as reverse discrimination issues where it's the white Anglo-Saxons, who are in the majority, who are now coming and saying, "We feel that we have been discriminated against"?

Ms Rosemary Brown: I just want to start out by saying I don't believe that there is such a thing as reverse discrimination. Discrimination is discrimination. If you discriminate against a white person, you're discriminating the same way --

Mr Cousens: Only to the extent that it describes the group within our society. Then in that case I use the term.

Ms Rosemary Brown: Okay, but I think we should use the term "discrimination," because then it makes you part of the community at large rather than --

Mr Cousens: I stand corrected. I'd like to think that, but they call it that.

Ms Rosemary Brown: Right, but remember that we're trying to educate each other.

Mr Cousens: I don't like discrimination of any kind.

Mr Curling: Sensitive, aren't you?

Mr Cousens: Watch it, Alvin. You're picking on me.

Ms Rosemary Brown: Section 14 of the code allows the commission to promote special programs. These special programs are designed as positive measures to deal with the imbalance which exists as a result of present and existing as well as past discrimination against certain groups in our society.

We are allowed to do that under section 14. This is because it has been recognized that in fact there is only one way of dealing with some of this existing as well as past discrimination, and that is to go directly to the point and say, "For the present or for the future, we are going to give a boost to these particular groups." So this section 14 has been applied.

I was listening to the CBC this morning and they were talking about that meeting the Prime Minister had last night with the movers and shakers in the financial community of Ontario.

Mr Cousens: There aren't many left.

Ms Rosemary Brown: There was a male CBC commentator who mentioned that finding the women in that group was like looking for a needle in a haystack. They just weren't there. His argument was, what are we doing wrong? How come there are not more women in that area at that level?

Mr Cousens: I've got a few questions, and my time is so limited. I think you've been helpful, but I'm really cut for time. I know what you're saying and maybe we can continue next meeting.

Ms Rosemary Brown: Special measures.

Mr Cousens: I want to talk about the Fair Rental Policy Organization of Ontario, where it's a common practice for landlords to require that rental payment not exceed 30% of a prospective tenant's income. Could you explain the rationale for this policy?

Ms Rosemary Brown: We believe that such a practice constructively discriminates against people on public assistance and other groups, such as young people who are first-time renters and women, who are protected under the Human Rights Code. We believe that it is possible for landlords to screen the tenants on their ability to pay their rent by using other criteria. Some of the criteria that we suggest they look at would be rental history of people, doing a credit check on them, asking for personal references or asking for a guarantor. There are other means of getting the information they have without this blanket discriminatory decision.

Mr Cousens: I'm going to chase it down a different direction, though. It's gone from 25% to 30% of the person's income, and the NDP government has announced that the rent-geared-to-income ratio would increase from 25% to 30% of income by 1998 to save the government some $3.6 million. You'd be aware of that policy as it came out in the 1993 expenditure control plan. Do you feel that the commission is acting in contradiction to the NDP government's own policies when that happens?

Ms Rosemary Brown: No, because the commission is saying we don't care if the landlord says 5% or 1% or 2%; it's discriminatory. What we're saying is, use other criteria.

Mr Cousens: The commission produced a discussion paper on the minimum income requirement in rental applications in August 1992. Did you submit a written presentation to the commission?

Ms Rosemary Brown: Did we?

Mr Edwards: Yes.

Ms Rosemary Brown: Yes, we did.

Mr Cousens: How many meetings have you had with the commission on this matter?

Ms Rosemary Brown: I'm going to allow Neil Edwards to deal with that, because I wasn't around in 1992.

Mr Edwards: Yes, we have had about three meetings so far on that particular issue.

Mr Cousens: Do you feel that the commission has been receptive to your concerns?

Mr Edwards: They have been, yes.

Mr Cousens: Our briefing material indicates that a board of inquiry is scheduled to begin hearings on this issue in 1994. How much is it going to cost your organization to be represented in those hearings?

Mr Campbell: We don't have an estimate at this time.

Interjection: What do your researchers say about it?

Mr Cousens: That's what I'm trying to find out. We don't know anything without asking questions.

Ms Rosemary Brown: We can give the answer after, because then we'll know whether the board sat for one day or four days or six months. We can get that answer for you after.

Mr Cousens: Employers and individuals who file claims before the commission -- and I'm speaking of Mary Eberts, Tory, Tory, DesLauriers and Binnington, barristers and solicitors -- are generally dissatisfied with the functioning of your commission. Do you have any specific recommendations for reform?

Ms Rosemary Brown: I thought I dealt with all of our reform this morning.

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Mr Cousens: You don't feel there's a need for any legislative change then, specifically?

Ms Rosemary Brown: Oh, I think there are some amendments to the code which would be of use to us, but as I said, basically the kinds of things that we can do without those amendments are the ones that I outlined this morning.

Mr Cousens: I have a situation here where Russell Juriansz, Blake Cassels and Graydon, barristers and solicitors, said, in a Business Journal article, that you are quoted as stating, "The commission claims that it's neutral, but in fact it acts as an advocate for the complainant. Most of my clients" -- now, this is Russell Juriansz, Blake Cassels, saying he feels the playing field isn't level. Could you comment on that?

Ms Rosemary Brown: Sorry, I was supposed to have said that?

Mr Cousens: "The commission claims that it is neutral, but in fact it acts as an advocate for the complainant."

Ms Rosemary Brown: It's not supposed to; the commission has to be neutral.

Mr Cousens: It says here that you went on to say that you advise your clients "to hold their nose and sign a cheque, because it's cheaper to pay than to prove you're right."

Ms Rosemary Brown: No, that does not sound like Rosemary Brown. I don't make comments like that.

Mr Cousens: I got that from an article in the Business Journal, January 1993.

Mr Campbell: Excuse me, who was saying that? Is that the chief commissioner or is that counsel?

Mr Cousens: I'm sorry, that's counsel saying that.

Mr Campbell: That's counsel saying it, not the chief commissioner.

Mr Cousens: Let me just check this. I will get the exact --

Interjection.

Mr Cousens: Never mind, I'll get the background and pass it on to you so that you have the exact context in which these concerns were raised.

Ms Rosemary Brown: Actually, it concerns me that Hansard, though, would be recording that quote as coming from me. I was not here. Let the record show I was not chief commissioner in 1993. Those are not my words.

Mr Campbell: If I might, it cannot be us, because we don't --

Mr Cousens: Can I just make this clarification? It was Russell Juriansz of Blake Cassels and Graydon --

Mr Campbell: That's fine; that's not the commission then, that's private counsel.

Mr Cousens: -- former director of the legal branch of the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

Mr Campbell: However, he's speaking as a private counsel when he speaks in this capacity.

Mr Cousens: You never know how a person speaks these days. He was writing in the Business Journal and in this article he made the statement that, "The commission claims that it's neutral, but in fact it acts as an advocate for the complainant." Then he goes on to say, "Most of my clients feel that the playing field isn't level." To that extent, it's his comments. I'm asking you to comment.

Mr Campbell: We would not accept that.

The Acting Chair: Excuse me, Ms Brown, are you comfortable now with the clarification as far as Hansard is concerned?

Ms Rosemary Brown: Yes, I am comfortable that it has been clarified, that those were not made either by me or any other commissioner, that it was made by private counsel. That is not an accurate description of the commission. We are neutral; we do not take sides; we do not advocate either for one group or the other, either respondent or complainant.

The Acting Chair: Mr Cousens, we have just one minute left.

Mr Cousens: Ian Howcroft, policy adviser to the Canadian Manufacturers' Association, was commenting on Bill 79, the Employment Equity Act, and the relationship of the employer community. He was expressing concern about the potential overlap of responsibility between the Ontario Human Rights Commission and the Employment Equity Commission. Does your organization share any concern about overlap between the two groups?

Ms Rosemary Brown: No. We anticipate working in cooperation with each other, as I said, to the realization of shared goals. There has been no protocol worked out in terms of how we're going to do that, but we are supportive of the concept of employment equity and we intend to work with the Employment Equity Commission to see that it is the best it can be. We anticipate they will work with us to see that we are the best we can be.

Mr Cousens: Do you think there's any reason for concern by the employer community about potential overlap?

Ms Rosemary Brown: No.

The Acting Chair: Mr Cousens, that's all the time we have today.

Mr Marchese: I just want to make some quick remarks on the matter of the report written by Donna Young, because Mr Conway raised it. I want to say as a personal opinion that I'm not as shocked by her opinions as others are. I can understand why the commissioners, because it's critical of the commission, would be very, very much disturbed by it. The comments she makes are very raw in terms of what they say. I can understand that and I'm almost sympathetic to the fact that they would be very sensitive to them.

But I take those remarks, unlike Mr Conway, as encouraging things that we need to deal with. It's an opinion of a person, of course, a study done by her; it makes statements about issues of race, racism and how prevalent they are in society, and there's so much more. I have only a brief commentary on the whole thing; I don't have the whole report, obviously. But I would take those statements as something that we should review, to assess whether or not they really apply to us, not in a defensive way but rather as a way of analysing whether or not they are true and, if they are, how we deal with them.

I can understand too, Ms Brown, why you and others might be defensive about the report, because I can see some of the implications it could have in terms of people being very frightened by it and wanting to almost disconnect themselves from it. But I would urge the commissioners and other staff people to use that as a basis of looking at ourselves a little more critically.

If they're found to be not correct, then we can say that, and where they're found to be correct we can say maybe there's something to those comments. We should be evaluating it in that context. I wanted to offer that as a comment. You don't have to respond to it.

Ms Rosemary Brown: No, but that's the kind of analysis that the report has been going through.

Mr Marchese: I have a few other questions that hopefully will be quick, because I want to ask some questions on hate literature, which might take a moment or two longer.

The Acting Chair: Mr Marchese, I'll just mention to you that Ms Carter and Dr Frankford also wish to speak.

Mr Marchese: I understand, okay. Is the chair the only full-time person on the --

Ms Rosemary Brown: Yes.

Mr Marchese: Is there a case to be made for somebody else being full-time?

Ms Rosemary Brown: No.

Mr Marchese: Very well.

In terms of the issues that you deal with, issues of people with disabilities, there are many cases dealing with that issue.

Ms Rosemary Brown: Number one.

Mr Marchese: How does that relate as an issue to your own offices being accessible? Are your offices accessible or is that something you're doing?

Ms Rosemary Brown: For the most part. At our main office, we have the women's washroom, which still needs some work to be done. The money has now been released and it's going to be done. All of our regional offices are now wheelchair-accessible. We've been attending to business.

Mr Marchese: Good. I would find it terribly contradictory if we're dealing with that issue --

Ms Rosemary Brown: We did it because there was a time when we weren't accessible.

Mr Marchese: Great. Obviously organizations can't represent individuals as they take a case to the Human Rights Commission. Is that correct?

Ms Rosemary Brown: Yes, you are correct. The only exception to that, I think, is a guardian representing a child or something.

Mr Marchese: I can see where there's a case to be made, where we have an issue of literacy or class -- and they're always interrelated -- where an individual doesn't have the skill or feels that he or she doesn't have the skill to be able to take the case and needs to have an organization to represent them. What is your view of that?

Ms Rosemary Brown: That's got real merit and it's worthy of consideration. Neil is telling me something here.

Mr Marchese: Neil can answer.

Ms Rosemary Brown: CERA, that's right, yes. They do. CERA does that, and so does ARCH, on behalf of the disabled community.

Mr Marchese: So organizations can do that for individuals.

Ms Rosemary Brown: They can apply for intervenor status at the boards of inquiry.

Mr Marchese: But does that fall within your mandate or does the code have to be changed to allow, in general, for organizations to represent individuals?

Mr Campbell: They can represent, but they can't file a complaint. There's a difference.

Mr Marchese: The point would still apply that if it's a literacy issue where individuals obviously don't feel they have the skills to do that --

Mr Campbell: Then someone could represent them. Someone could come before the board of inquiry, if you will, and represent them.

Mr Marchese: At the board of inquiry, the final stages.

Mr Campbell: Yes, but clearly also we have that right now in our own procedures where people who have problems with English as a first language can be "represented" by someone.

Mr Marchese: I'd love to explore that when you come back, because I know you're coming back. I'll explore that issue a bit in detail when you come back.

I wanted to ask, on the whole issue of hate literature, you're obviously faced with some contradictory matters that you're dealing with, one where the act protects the freedom of expression and the other where someone has to prove intent to infringe on another person's rights, so as I understand it, that is a contradiction that you face. The code obviously limits you in terms of what you want to do.

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Ms Rosemary Brown: Yes, that's right. We would be much more effective if the code gave us a better mandate to do that. But we realize that we can't just depend on the Human Rights Code and that the Criminal Code too is another option in terms of its ability to deal with that.

Mr Marchese: So if there were a recommendation that you would make, that would be one of them obviously.

Ms Rosemary Brown: Absolutely, that we would support enforcement under the Criminal Code being looked at and also an amendment to our own code to make it possible for us to move in that direction.

Mr Marchese: Madam Chair, my colleagues have questions as well.

Ms Carter: I just wanted a little bit of expansion on some of the points you made in your presentation this morning.

Under the different things that you listed that you are doing in the commission, under number VII was "training and development." You talk about, "For the first time, adult learning principles are being applied in a cohesive manner." I just wondered if you could explain a little bit what you mean there.

Ms Rosemary Brown: I'm going to turn that over to Scott.

Mr Campbell: I can speak to that. In the past what has happened in terms of traditional training, it's been very much a classroom-based training where somebody stands up at the front of a classroom and teaches. It's sort of like, "When I went to school," and so on.

In terms of adult learning, adult learning brings to it the basic philosophy that adults already have an awful lot of knowledge, already have an awful lot of ability and therefore you take that knowledge and ability and, using that, enhance the knowledge and ability that people have.

Therefore, for example, you would have less lecture method and more interactive methods in terms of case studies, in terms of people working in groups, in terms of people making presentations to each other, those sorts of things. That's what we're talking about when we talk about adult learning principles. Does that help, Ms Carter?

Ms Carter: I guess so, yes, and there would be a few days taken out of each employee's working time to do this?

Mr Campbell: What the chief commissioner said in her remarks was dealing with the concept of how people learn so that we are now developing training packages that are more learner-centred, that are more centred around how adults learn as opposed to how children learn. In the past we've never made that distinction.

Ms Carter: Okay, thanks. Under number VIII, "organizational health," you stressed anti-racism principles and developing that side of your institutional awareness, if you like. I guess that's where the Young report came in. I'd just like to add my comment to that. Of course, people said, "Well, you're saying that the people accused of racism are guilty until proved innocent."

But it seems to me that in the ordinary legal world, where you're talking about innocent until proven guilty, you don't say, "We haven't got a case to answer here because we're presuming somebody is innocent; we're just suspending our judgement, not treating them as guilty and we're still going to go on and make this inquiry," whereas you were talking of inquiries never being proceeded with because the complaint wasn't taken seriously in the first place.

Ms Rosemary Brown: Actually, the report just recommends that the complaint should be treated as though it were a legitimate complaint.

Ms Carter: Which is what is done in the ordinary --

Ms Rosemary Brown: Yes. It wasn't about assigning guilt or not.

Ms Carter: I was just wondering whether racism is unique in this respect. I mean, obviously we're dealing with a lot of different categories here, disability and all the other things that people can be discriminated against because of -- are there not the same problems related with these other issues, of comprehension as to what is involved, or is racism unique in that way?

Ms Rosemary Brown: I think the interesting thing about racism is that it's probably one of the oldest forms of prejudice that's been recognized. If we really started to investigate our history right back to anthropological times, we might find that discrimination against people with disabilities is probably as old, or discrimination against people based on their sexual orientation is probably as old, but it has never been accepted legitimately as a prejudice which is abhorrent and which we must bring to an end.

Part of that -- well, I don't want to get into that because that's a very long and convoluted discussion about racism, but certainly the triggering of human rights and the Human Rights Commission came about as a result of communities' concern around issues of race and issues of creed. Those are the two cornerstones that started it. But I think we've always been prejudiced against people who are different, for whatever reasons.

Ms Carter: So there could indeed be some need to raise awareness on some of the other categories as well?

Ms Rosemary Brown: The commission has been doing a very good job on that through some of the literature, as I mentioned earlier, and the audio tapes and using different languages and focusing in on some of the newer issues like sexual harassment and our accommodation guidelines and those kinds of things.

Mr Robert Frankford (Scarborough East): Is mandatory drug testing, say in the workplace, an issue that you've had any cases on or ruled on?

Ms Rosemary Brown: Yes we have, actually. There is a case that is currently going forward. We are concerned about the whole issue of mandatory drug testing and I know it's something that the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, Alan Borovoy, who was mentioned earlier, is certainly on our case about, and also the Canadian Human Rights Commission, so it's an issue that seems to be of concern in a very wide area. We will be following the proceedings of the Canadian human rights case which is presently going before a board and seeing what the results of that are, monitoring it.

Mr Frankford: So you'll be using that as a precedent?

Ms Rosemary Brown: We're hoping that we will be able to benefit from whatever decision is handled there. I want to add, however, that the code is not necessarily the only piece of legislation or even the best piece of legislation for dealing with this particular issue.

Mr Frankford: Another area that one keeps reading about is in the genetics. One keeps reading about the ability to do genetic testing to predict the occurrence of diseases, of cancers or schizophrenia or whatever. In what one reads, they talk about the potential of identifying the likelihood of that occurring, and it seems to me that could lead to considerable discrimination within, say, insurance policies or employment. Have you given any thought to that issue?

Ms Rosemary Brown: Under section 25 of the code, insurance companies have been given the right to exclude, because of pre-existing handicaps and other instances that will increase the risk -- because they deal in the issue of risk, because they deal in the business of risks they have been given this particular dispensation. Whether they could expand this to cover everything that's genetic, you know, research revealing to us in this day and age, I really don't know. We haven't actually had a case.

Mr Frankford: It would seem to me that they could reduce their risks considerably but at a real cost to the people who are unfortunate enough to have that condition identified. Maybe it would turn out that the prediction was wrong.

Ms Rosemary Brown: Yes. It's something that we would have to have a case and do the investigation and follow it through.

The Acting Chair: At this point then I'd like to call a recess. Tomorrow we will meet at 10:30. I would just remind you we don't start at 10 o'clock.

Ms Rosemary Brown: Madam Chair, before you close, can I just say a couple of words in closing?

The Acting Chair: Certainly.

Ms Rosemary Brown: I realize that over the next couple of days this committee will be hearing from a number of people who will have a lot of good things as well as a lot of negative things to say about the commission. I'm just asking the members of the committee to bear in mind that much of the criticism which they will be hearing will be based on the history of the commission, and to remember the new initiatives that we've put in place and to weigh what they're hearing against the impact that these new initiatives will have. In other words, give us a fair hearing.

The Acting Chair: Thank you very much, Ms Brown, and thank you for the staff that you have brought with you today. I think you have demonstrated throughout the day that you have made a sincere attempt to make a difference. We're just starting now to see some of the positive difference that is being achieved. We'll certainly keep that in mind.

Mr Curling: That is why we asked them to come first.

The Acting Chair: That's right.

The committee adjourned at 1602.