Journal des débats 1982-mai-07 | Assemblée législative de l'Ontario

Mr. Nixon: Mr. Speaker, honourable members will be glad to know that outside the doors of the Legislature there are representatives of the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada selling flowers; red for valour and courage; white for virginity or, in some instances, lack of experience; yellow for timidity and unwillingness to carry on in positions of high office; and nothing for cheapskates.

Mr. Speaker: Thank you for making all members aware of this.

VISITORS

Mr. Speaker: I would ask all members of the Legislature to join with me in welcoming and recognizing in the Speaker's gallery a delegation of young politicians from Norway, visiting Toronto as guests of the Toronto chapter of the Canadian Association of Young Political Leaders. We have had a very enjoyable breakfast with these young people and they are looking forward to a very exciting weekend in Ontario.

ORAL QUESTIONS

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION IN TEACHING

Mr. Nixon: Mr. Speaker, this is obviously not payday because the cabinet did not bother coming in. However, Old Reliable is here so I would like to direct a question to the Minister of Education, who has had the responsibility of her present office now for as long as three years --

Hon. Miss Stephenson: Close to four.

Mr. Nixon: Close to four, and is becoming considered a fixture in the education hierarchy. Can the minister explain why, over these four years, she has failed to provide the leadership that would have given women in the teaching profession an opportunity to move out of the lower echelons -- the hewers of wood and drawers of water, if that comparison can be used -- and move into positions as principals and directors of education? Does she feel the fact that she sits on the point of the pyramid is sufficient recognition of her gender and that she can therefore leave her fellow workers in the field in the lower orders?

Hon. Miss Stephenson: Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to be called Old Reliable by the former former leader of the official opposition and I do believe I may be becoming considered a fixture, but a fairly utilitarian and useful fixture within the educational system.

The honourable member is obviously acutely unaware of the fact that since last year, as a result of specific initiatives taken within the Ministry of Education, in those courses for those other positions that he is concerned about, particularly principalships, we have had an increase in the number of women. There has been a gradual increase in the number of women functioning as supervisory officers, but an inordinately small number of those who progressed to the role of principal.

Last year we opened the registration for the principal's course fully and freely so that any individual who feels qualified and is qualified to assume the role of principal may apply and may participate in that course. I am delighted to tell the member that as a result of that initiative the enrolment in the principal's course has gone to 35 per cent women from approximately five to seven per cent.

The other thing I am delighted to tell him, which simply proves the thesis I have been attempting to explain to all of those male members of the opposition parties for years, is that women are biologically, endocrinologically and psychologically not equal to men, but superior to men. The quality of the program and student participation in those courses has increased significantly as a result of that activity.

Mr. Nixon: Since the minister is apparently one of the few on that side of the House who recognizes the validity of the superiority of women, even though the Premier (Mr. Davis) has more or less selected the minister as token of that recognition, could she explain why her best efforts, in an occupation and profession where more than 50 per cent of the participants are women, have yielded only two women directors of the 116 directors in Ontario, 1.7 per cent; or why in the elementary system, with 3,712 principals, there are only 457 women, 12 per cent; and why at the secondary level, with 574 principals, there are only 16, or 2.8 per cent women?

These are the most recent figures available from the ministry. These are evidently as a result of her initiatives and what she calls throwing open the door. Would she not accept the criticism that her throwing open the door has let only a token number of women into the senior areas of administration in education and if she does not do better she had better move over and let a man try?

10:10 a.m.

Hon. Miss Stephenson: It is perfectly obvious that the parties in this House which have token female representation are the opposition parties, each with one, single woman on their benches. Unfortunately, they do not put their money where their mouths are.

As a former teacher, the member knows full well, and so does his seatmate, that the boards of education of this province have for many years controlled entrance to administration courses for the principal-supervisory officers. What we have done is remove that measure of local control which, I am afraid, traditionally was primarily male, but which now is happily becoming at least 50 per cent female at the board level. We have removed that kind of control and permitted the professional development of teachers in a direction --

Mr. Nixon: Why don't you trust women to do the job?

Hon. Miss Stephenson: We do trust women to do the job. We are providing the opportunity now for women to acquire those capabilities and that extra instruction. I am sure the results of this will blossom forth within the next two years and provide significant increases in the statistics the member reads.

Ms. Bryden: Mr. Speaker, is the minister aware that over 100 school boards in this province have no affirmative action program, and of the 175 affirmative action programs the Minister of Labour (Mr. Ramsay) tells us about, only a handful are in boards of education? It has taken seven years to produce that handful. What is she doing to encourage affirmative action programs in the schools?

Hon. Miss Stephenson: Mr. Speaker, the information I have is that almost half the school boards in this province do have affirmative action programs. We are continuing our role of encouragement and support for boards to become involved in that kind of activity.

There is a specific activity within the ministry which provides stimulus and leadership in that area, which I think has been singularly successful in the education area in sensitizing boards and administrators to the capabilities of women and increasing their acceptance of the concept of affirmative action, based primarily on the merit of the individual in terms of appointments, something which must always be uppermost in anyone's mind in any activity that relates to education. Affirmative action is becoming an integral part of the educational system.

Ms. Copps: Mr. Speaker, recognizing that women may be the biological and endocrinological superiors of men, the minister should, however, take a lesson from her colleague the Minister of Labour, who just last week tabled a report which demonstrates clearly that in order for women to be paid on an equal basis with men and to get an equal shake in the work force we are going to have to get into legislated affirmative action.

Why is the minister not prepared to take this step in the educational field, a field that has been dominated by women for many years but where those same women have never made it to the ranks of senior management where the minister now so precipitously sits?

Hon. Miss Stephenson: Mr. Speaker, I am not sure I sit precipitously at all. That women are endocrinologically superior plus anatomically superior is evidenced, of course, by the vital statistics in any jurisdiction in the western world. I am not convinced that legislating affirmative action is the appropriate route to follow. Surely women who wish to move into those areas, given the opportunities to move, will do so. The honourable member does not really need to worry about equality of pay as far as teachers are concerned.

COMMUNITY COLLEGE FUNDING

Mr. Nixon: Mr. Speaker, I will return to the Minister of Education now that she is warmed up and she can assist us with some more information. Is the minister aware that in the next five years more than 166,000, or 25.7 per cent, of all new entrants to the Ontario labour force will be nongraduates from secondary schools?

Can she indicate what programs she is putting forward in order to assist either the training or retraining of the hundreds of thousands of our young people in the age group of 15 to 24 who are now unemployed and who have not even had the opportunity to get a secondary school graduation diploma? Many of them are now even denied the opportunity to attend community colleges because of the cutbacks that have been ordered by her ministry.

Hon. Miss Stephenson: Mr. Speaker, I would like the honourable member to know there have been no cutbacks ordered by the Ministry of Colleges and Universities at the community college level. Indeed, the level of increase to those colleges this year was 12.2 per cent with an additional one per cent to all the colleges as well. I think that signifies there has been nothing that could even be considered a cutback.

I am sure the member knows there are many initiatives under way at the present time. Some of them are related to the secondary education review project and some will become much clearer in the near future. These encourage and assist young people who, although they may have had the opportunity for a secondary education, have not taken advantage of it or have not returned to take advantage of it.

One of the clear initiatives related to that kind of activity is our direction in the funding of education per se. We feel very strongly it is the responsibility of the provincial jurisdiction to ensure that those people who wish to take advantage of educational programs provided by the school boards of Ontario at the primary-secondary level have the opportunity to do so at any time in their lives and without direct cost to them.

We are encouraging, with some very good results in a number of areas, the return of a number of those young people through the counselling mechanism. This stimulates them to consider continuing or furthering education and to return to the secondary school program to acquire the kind of basic and additional skills that will be required for employment.

In addition to that we are taking specific initiatives in the area of the Ontario career action program, which does not restrict itself only to graduates of secondary schools, community colleges or universities, but is available to people who have not completed an educational program. It provides for a 75 per cent success rate and is probably the most successful employment program in Canada at this point. It is so successful that the member's kissing cousins in Ottawa are copying it.

Mr. Nixon: My kissing cousins pay a large share of the costs of these programs.

Hon. Miss Stephenson: Not OCAP. They don't pay one cent.

Mr. Nixon: Oh, the minister and her OCAP and all the rest. If she can get some collection of letters that is catchy, it is worth $1 million to advertise it and that is about the extent of its usefulness.

Is the minister not aware that when she looks at the funding for community colleges she must not look at it the way her seatmate looks at funding for atomic reactors or her colleague looks at funding for new bridges? She should surely know, ahead of everyone else, there is a strong resurgence due to high unemployment in the number of young people, particularly those 15 to 24, looking for entrance into community colleges. The fact that the minister's level of increase has gone up with the level of inflation plus one per cent --

Hon. Miss Stephenson: Plus almost two.

Mr. Nixon: Plus almost two per cent. That has nothing to do with the huge increased demand because of the inadequate employment policies of the minister and her colleagues. The fact that Mohawk College in Hamilton, for one, has had to turn away many qualified applicants from many courses is an indication of underfunding. At the same time we are still importing trained technologists from Europe and elsewhere to do jobs that her system, which I still say is underfunded, has not provided. It has not provided training for people right here in this province to take those jobs.

What is the minister going to do about it? For example, can she assure us the budget we are expecting next week is going to make the funding in this area a priority of the $22 billion we are going to be distributing?

Hon. Miss Stephenson: Having spent almost two decades in this House, the member must be aware that budgetary matters fall under the jurisdiction of the Treasurer (Mr. F. S. Miller). If he wishes that specific information he will have to acquire it from the Treasurer. If he can just hold his breath until next Thursday -- which might be the best thing that ever happened -- he will get the information he is seeking.

10:20 a.m.

We have expanded the technology programs in the community colleges significantly. The figures --

Mr. Nixon: You are still bringing them in from Norway.

Hon. Miss Stephenson: No, we are not. The member is wrong there.

The figures which are quoted by individual colleges must be collated, because the applications to community college programs in high demand are very frequently multiple in nature and most of the young people who wish to acquire that skill are admitted to a program, but it may not be in the first college of their choice. It is unfortunate that the member is using raw figures which cannot be verified at this point, except to say that they were not admitted to one single college.

The expansion of the community colleges has been one of the great success stories of education and training in North America. It continues to be so with the strong commitment of this government.

Mr. Cooke: Mr. Speaker, the expansion of the community college program was good at the beginning of the program, but now we are seeing the retraction of the program. How does the minister explain that she is funding the community colleges adequately when at St. Clair College in Windsor and Chatham they are cutting back on 17 full-time faculty members because of lack of funding and they are eliminating virtually all of their part-time faculty in order to cope with the lack of funding that this province has provided?

Hon. Miss Stephenson: Mr. Speaker, it is the responsibility of each individual college to ensure that all of its programs are relevant. In many areas the relevance of the program, the number of employment opportunities for the graduates, the cost of the program and the opportunities which may be available in future to those graduates are matters which are considered very seriously on an annual basis to determine whether programs should continue.

The community colleges are attempting to fulfil their mandate to ensure that programs of education and training which they provide encourage young people to move into areas where employment is going to be open to them, where there are opportunities for advancement and where the employers in the community require that kind of training. When decisions are made regarding the establishment of programs, obviously certain other programs may have to be cut back slightly because their relevance is no longer as great as it was in the past.

Mr. G. I. Miller: Mr. Speaker, the minister is aware that she has had correspondence from the chairman of the board of Mohawk College indicating that there has been an increase of 20 per cent in applications at Mohawk this year. They have been willing to set up more time to make four more classes available so they can adjust their programs.

I have two young students in my riding of Haldimand-Norfolk who will be graduating from grade 12. They applied for the 32-week course in the process operations program and were told there were just 16 seats and these were filled. Is the minister aware of that and is she going to be able to do something about it?

Hon. Miss Stephenson: Mr. Speaker, I am also aware that the numbers of seats available frequently relate very directly to the potential employment opportunity for the graduates of the program, which is a matter each college must develop. I am also aware that certain programs in existence at one college are also in existence at other colleges which may have space for those students.

Mr. Speaker: A new question. The member for Scarborough West.

An hon. member: Hear, hear.

Mr. R. F. Johnston: Thank you for the enthusiastic support.

Mr. Ruston: Now I see why you didn't win that race for the leadership.

Mr. R. F. Johnston: Well, Dick, I made the mistake of circulating to my caucus the fact that I was going to be doing the leadoff today and you have seen the appropriate reaction to it.

Mr. Roy: Don't worry, you have a seat; your leader doesn't. Hang on to it and don't let them push you around.

Mr. R. F. Johnston: I appreciate that, Albert.

EMPLOYMENT QUESTIONNAIRES

Mr. R. F. Johnston: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Labour. Last year, the member for Sudbury East (Mr. Martel) referred to the minister's predecessor the case of Canadian Blower-Canada Pumps, citing inappropriate and offensive use of medical information being requested as a condition of employment.

I want to bring to the minister's attention a case that has come to mine, involving Coinamatic, a company that runs laundromats throughout Ontario; its headquarters is in Montreal but it has major operations in Toronto, Kingston, London and elsewhere.

A constituent of mine, Barbara Knight, 18 years of age, was there on a probationary period of five weeks and was asked as a condition of employment to respond to 56 questions. I will send a copy of them over to the minister. Some of the questions she refused to respond to were: "Do you have hot flashes? Do you suffer discomfort in the pit of your stomach?" That is a very relevant question for a person who is looking for employment. "Do you wet your pants or wet your bed? Have you ever had bleeding between your periods? Do you have heavy bleeding with your periods? Are you handicapped in any way?"

She was refused employment because she refused to fill out this form. Does the minister accept that, and does he agree that this is an infringement of her basic rights? Why is there no protection for somebody under the legislation to stop companies from demanding this kind of unnecessary and frivolously vexatious information from potential employees?

Hon. Mr. Ramsay: Mr. Speaker, I have had several letters in the past short while somewhat similar to this, raising the same point. One of them was from the member for Sudbury East relative to Brewers' Warehousing and a similar type of form it has for its employees.

I have asked the Ontario Human Rights Commission just very recently to look into the whole matter. I agree with the honourable member; I find something like this repulsive. Because of these matters that are being brought to my attention in respect to employment forms and questionnaires of this nature, I have referred them to the commission and I am waiting for a complete investigation.

Mr. R. F. Johnston: As part of the minister's investigation, will he also look into the whole question of authorization forms? He will see on the other side of the information I have given him that the girl in question was asked to fill out this authorization form for information about her:

"I hereby authorize any licensed physician, medical practitioner, hospital, clinic or other medical or medically related facility, insurance company, the Medical Information Bureau or other organization, institution or person that has any records or knowledge of me or my health to give to Coinamatic any such information."

Does the minister not agree this should not be required of any employee and that it is a basic infringement of the rights of privacy of any potential employee?

Hon. Mr. Ramsay: The whole subject of both medical forms and authorization forms is included in the investigation I have requested.

Mr. Roy: Mr. Speaker, I noted the minister's comments in answer to my colleague to the effect that he has referred this to the Ontario Human Rights Commission.

In view of the repulsiveness of the type of question and information that has been outlined and the fact that the minister agrees it is repulsive, might he refer this to the Attorney General (Mr. McMurtry), who apparently has a group of people in his ministry processing legislation and certain practices to see whether practices such as these and information such as this are an infringement of the new Charter of Rights as accepted by this country in mid-April?

If there were an infringement of basic rights under the charter by asking such questions, this would be the ideal opportunity to send out bulletins to employers, companies and so on, advising them that they must cease such action in view of the infringement of basic rights under the charter.

Hon. Mr. Ramsay: Mr. Speaker, that sounds like a good suggestion, and I will be pleased to follow it up.

Mr. R. F. Johnston: I want to bring to the attention of the minister another essential invasion of privacy by this firm. As another condition of employment, all employees of Coinamatic are required every three months to take a polygraph test, a lie detection test, to make sure they are not pilfering funds from that company.

The Ontario Human Rights Commission has said to me that this is essentially an invasion of privacy and an abrogation of their civil liberties but that our human rights commission has no power to do anything about this.

Will the minister add this to his list of invasions of privacy which should be curtailed in this province?

Hon. Mr. Ramsay: I might be incorrect in this respect, but it was my understanding there was a study and follow-up on that point. However, I will be happy to look into it.

10:30 a.m.

HOMES FOR THE AGED

Mr. R. F. Johnston: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Community and Social Services. The minister is no doubt well aware now, because it has been several days since its release, of the report by Medicus Canada on the resident care characteristics and nurse staffing requirements of the seven homes for the aged run by the municipality of Metropolitan Toronto.

The report basically says, as we have talked about a great deal in estimates, that the ageing process in the homes for the aged is such that the clientele there now is very different from what it was when we first started those municipal homes and that the level of care required for those people is much different today from what it was when the homes began.

Inasmuch as this report indicates that the programs available in those homes are appropriate to only 30 per cent of the residents and that those seven homes themselves need 133 additional nursing staff and about $970,000 worth of expenditures just to bring them up to the standards that Medicus feels are appropriate, does the minister accept their findings and their analysis of the different levels of care that are required for the homes for the aged?

Will there be money forthcoming from the ministry for the specific recommendations that have been brought forward? Is the minister changing the funding definition of extended care to touch the broader range of care requirements that are mentioned in this report, or is he sticking to the very strict definitions we are working under at this time?

Hon. Mr. Drea: Mr. Speaker, I think the honourable member will recall that I talked to the Metro chairman on this matter, which covered not only building standards -- which was the question that was asked, I think by the member's former leader -- but also job classification. I am trying to recall the month -- I think it was December -- when the Metro chairman and I were at a dinner; yes, it was at Joe Clark's dinner. We had a handshake, and I said, "Go to it; there is no problem." Okay? That holds.

Mr. R. F. Johnston: Can I operate with you the same way?

Hon. Mr. Drea: If the member wants to come to dinner with me, I will buy. He can have what he wants, provided it is viable, reasonable and practical. That gives him three bad impediments.

Mr. Speaker: And now, back to the question.

Hon. Mr. Drea: The member should go back and look at that.

Secondly, the only quarrel I have with that report, and I am surprised the member has not brought it up, is that it deals with just the physical side of the medical or nursing care component. I am also concerned, although this report does not deal with it, about the activity or social program. I talked to the Metro chairman about that.

Thirdly, as the member knows, the Ministry of Health and my ministry have entered into a study of the extended care situation in both nursing homes and homes for the aged, as was announced in the throne speech. The obvious reason for that is that residential care, or what the member talked about as the type of care that was predominantly required five or 10 years ago, has virtually disappeared.

Mr. R. F. Johnston: If the minister accepts the rationale of Medicus in terms of the levels of care that are required, and inasmuch as these are only seven out of the 89 municipal homes currently operated around the province and in our past discussions the minister has agreed that the demography of these homes is pretty well the same around the province -- that is, the average age is up around 82 years -- will he not agree that one could extrapolate from the Toronto situation and suggest that to bring the level of care in those homes up to par right now, just as he says, not even in terms of activation but in terms of physical nursing care, we would need more than 1,700 extra nursing staff and an expenditure of $13 million?

The minister shakes his head. Does he not accept that? If he does accept that, when will the money be forthcoming or when will a public inquiry into the status of these other homes be set up?

Hon. Mr. Drea: In reverse order: I just told the member that the government announced the study in the throne speech. Second, it is difficult to extrapolate from one system of homes for the aged, because the Metro homes are not just seven homes; they are part of a system that extends into other areas.

Part of the problem in Metropolitan Toronto's homes for the aged is the physical structures themselves. Some of those structures do not lend themselves, without massive renovation, to heavier nursing care and so forth. In many areas of the province -- and we have been criticized for this by the member; I am glad to see he is on side now -- we have been putting a fair amount of our funds into renovating the older homes, not necessarily on the basis of fire safety. The member criticized us quite vehemently during my estimates last year. I am glad to see he is on side. I am glad to see he now wants me to do these things.

We have been doing a lot of work in bringing up the physical standards to the point where they can handle these heavier cases effectively, efficiently and, most important of all, in an extremely humane manner. One cannot say that because there is a problem in Metro there is a problem all over the place. One has to look at each individual home for the aged. That is precisely what we have been doing for some time.

The member has another little mistake in there. I do not think he meant it. The average age is not 82. I think he meant to say the average entrance age is around 82. There is a very significant difference. Another thing is that now, because the lifespan is remarkably shorter while there, it is obvious they are coming in much frailer; they are non-ambulatory cases at entrance. This is what we and the Ministry of Health are looking at.

While I said I was concerned about the fact that the activity programs and so forth were not looked at in that report, I do not want to leave the impression here that I am not satisfied with it. If we are looking at the side of the physical medicine and the direct care, I hope when they do these reports in the future that they also will look at the other side, because I do not want it ignored. I think it is quite satisfactory now. I think we are leaders in it in our homes for the aged.

The member shakes his head; that is fine. He has never made a suggestion to us as to how we might improve the inside of the homes. I just do not want to leave the impression that we have some difficulties with the activity programs. I only wish that when they study the job classifications they will look at that as well.

Mr. Boudria: Mr. Speaker, I wonder if the minister can tell us very concisely whether he is prepared to approve the additional $2 million in health funds which is needed to alleviate the staffing and shortages so that we can stop compromising in the care of our elderly in these facilities?

Hon. Mr. Drea: Mr. Speaker, I answered that five minutes ago. The honourable member had a written question; I suppose he had to read it but I answered that and I answered it in December.

Mr. R. F. Johnston: Mr. Speaker, if I may, I want to combine a minor point of privilege with the preamble to my next question.

10:40 a.m.

As the minister knows, I have had a great deal of experience in homes for the aged around the province and I have been raising the questions about improving and renovating those buildings since I came here, even with the minister's predecessor -- do check Hansard -- and made suggestions about activation.

I am concerned as well. To put it in terms of a question, is the minister concerned that these homes for the aged in Toronto have decided not to accept any more patients or residents requiring heavy nursing care because they feel they are being unequally dumped, with the nursing homes and other institutions not picking up their share? What is the minister's policy on that, since I gather the homes have been doing that locally as a matter of policy since April 1? What is the government's position on their refusal to accept these people?

What is the minister doing to protect the seniors who are obviously falling between all these homes that will not accept them because the cost of their care would be too heavy to be profitable for nursing homes? They are too onerous and maybe not applicable to some of the charitable homes. Now the municipal homes are saying they will not take them either.

Hon. Mr. Drea: Mr. Speaker, there is an agreed ratio of extended care to residential care patients within homes for the aged. The obvious reason for that is, first, the municipality has to pay 20 per cent of the cost and, second, they may incur a deficit. The deficit is really incurred in the extended care area. The municipality has to pay 30 per cent. It is quite true that we pick up 70 per cent. It is also quite true that it is totally uncapped. It is the last piece of legislation that is uncapped. To have some rationalization, we have this agreed ratio.

There has been a complaint for some time, real or imagined because it is very difficult to determine its accuracy, that the homes for the aged have been getting the more difficult and more costly cases and that this reflects on their deficits. That is precisely why the government in the throne speech announced this comprehensive study between the two providers of care in this area, my ministry via the homes for the aged and the Ministry of Health via the nursing homes. We really want to look at this in the study to come to a rationalized system, because we do not want people shifted from pillar to post.

The difficulty is that what began historically as a very humanitarian thing, a continuum of care from the residential stage into nursing care, now has some implications because there are very few coming in for residential care. We have a continuum of care within a home for the aged that was not necessarily constructed to provide the service from extended care to heavier extended care to mini-chronic care and, finally, to chronic care.

If that is going to be the accepted process in the future, obviously there are going to have to be a number of significant funding changes made in terms of structure, in terms of funding for the future and in terms of the operating costs as well as the classifications. That is precisely the reason for the study.

BUY-CANADIAN POLICY

Mr. Boudria: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Industry and Trade. Now that the House has adopted the resolution of the member for Cambridge (Mr. Barlow) to encourage this government to pursue more aggressive buy-Canadian policies, does the government still intend to buy paper punches in Austria, filing boxes in Franklin Park, Illinois, typewriter ribbons in the United States and so on, or does the government now intend actually to implement what was said yesterday? I could go on and talk about cassette tapes made in Japan. I have a whole bunch of others.

Hon. Mr. Walker: Mr. Speaker, this is a question that would be asked more properly of the Minister of Government Services (Mr. Wiseman), who no doubt is in charge of a number of the government's acquisitions. However, we do have a strong involvement with the Ministry of Government Services in terms of sourcing. We have within our own ministry a Canadian procurement division, which works with other ministries in respect to all kinds of purchases, and we are trying to extend further the tentacles of that.

I suppose those particular purchases were made for the honourable member's caucus, no doubt by the caucus. Whatever the case, we will certainly make every effort to ensure the continuation of the buy-Canadian practice in line with the recommendation of my good friend the member for Cambridge, who won that riding the last time in a very strong battle. It will not be very long before we try to implement the policy he espoused and had passed here in the House yesterday. Thank goodness he had it passed. We certainly support it.

Mr. Boudria: Maybe I should tell the Minister of Industry and Trade that we have a very excellent candidate in Cambridge and the Liberals will win that seat the next time.

Can the minister tell us whether he approves of the recent action by the Ministry of Transportation and Communications in the Haliburton area to invite tenders for the purchase of a snowmobile, specifying that it had to be a Yamaha? Is that the kind of Canadian procurement policy which the minister's particular party in government thinks is proper for the province?

Hon. Mr. Walker: I suppose what the member is actually saying is that the candidate they had for the Liberal Party last time in Cambridge was no good. That is for him to say; I would not want to say that.

Mr. Boudria: That wasn't the question.

Hon. Mr. Walker: On the question of the Yamaha purchase, I do not know the specifics of that individual purchase. However, I do know the --

Mr. Boudria: Do you approve of it?

Hon. Mr. Walker: I wonder if the member will wait until I finish my answer and then he can repeat his question or even ask another one if he wants.

In terms of procurement within the ministry, the practice we have is to encourage as much Canadian sourcing as possible. I do not know the specifics of that individual purchase. However, knowing as I do the manner in which the Ministry of Transportation and Communications, and in particular the minister, works, I would have --

Ms. Copps: We invented snowmobiles in this country.

Hon. Mr. Walker: I ask the honourable member to please wait until I finish.

We would have to find out what it was fitting on. It may be absolutely impossible for it to fit on something else. I do not know. It may be that was the only possible alternative. All I can say is that the ministries have been very good in co-operating with our Canadian sourcing division, and I can imagine that in the future they will be even more so. We will certainly check out that particular matter, but my suspicion is that we will find either a mistake was made or the necessity was very demanding for that kind of acquisition.

Perhaps the member would be good enough to tell me the other half of the story. He has given me one half; now he could give me the other half, knowing the facts he must have at his disposal.

UNEMPLOYMENT

Mr. Cooke: Mr. Speaker, in the absence of the Treasurer (Mr. F. S. Miller), I have a question for the Minister of Industry and Trade.

The minister no doubt will be aware of the figures that were released today on the unemployment rate in Ontario. He also will be aware that in April 1981 we had 4,169,000 people working in the province, while in April 1982 we have 4,143,000. There has been a decline of 26,000 jobs in this province at a time when in the 1981 budget the Treasurer projected 106,000 jobs would be created. The Minister of Industry and Trade will be pleased with that, because he is the one who says government is not in the business of job creation.

However, is it not time for this government to look at short-term job creation as well as an attack on the structural difficulties in certain sectors of the economy, but specifically through short-term projects of public works, housing and conservation which very quickly could create 65,000 jobs in this province through government expenditure and which would create jobs rather than some of the idle kinds of investments this government has made?

Hon. Mr. Walker: Mr. Speaker, in terms of the jobs we have created in this province, I say to the honourable member that when I say governments do not create jobs, I mean we are not in the business of make-work jobs; it is not being honest with the taxpayers when that kind of thing happens, except in some special circumstances.

I will say that it is very important for this government to make sure that the climate exists for private enterprise to create the necessary jobs. When the member makes reference to it, we realize that we have a worldwide phenomenon. In Canada, we have a phenomenon of a lack of jobs at the moment in certain areas, but that still means an awful lot of people are working. That is one thing he forgets: there are a substantial number of people working.

10:50 a.m.

The current round of Statistics Canada reports indicates that only two of the provinces showed any increase in employment. In this province there are some 11,000 more people working than previously. That is an increase the member has to take into account. We are showing some signs of turnaround, and that has to be appreciated by him. He cannot continue to talk about the negatives. He has to talk about some of the positives occasionally. The more he continues to talk that way, the more the public is convinced that things might be far worse than they really are. The member has a duty to show that this province has an awful lot going for it, and he is not honestly living up to it.

Mr. Cooke: The Treasurer was in the city of Chatham a week ago and described the Board of Industrial Leadership and Development program as follows: "It is a wide-ranging, multi-faceted plan designed to foster growth and confidence in this province's economy by nurturing new and emerging industries and strengthening traditional ones."

Now that the BILD program is more than a year old, the unemployment rate, which was projected by the Treasurer to be 6.6 per cent, instead is 7.9 per cent. The fact is, according to Statistics Canada, 575,000 people in Ontario who would like to work are unemployed. Is the minister now prepared to admit that his philosophy of trying to build confidence in the private sector and the BILD strategy were very successful politically but were an economic disaster for Ontario?

Hon. Mr. Walker: Not in the least. The member should read some of the editorials relating to BILD which appeared in his own newspapers. The one in the Windsor Star on March 6, referring to the tech centre, says: "We are happy for both Chatham and St. Catharines. It is good to see the provincial government is helping cities where the slump has brought unemployment, layoffs and the attendant troubles." Why does the member not take a look at some of his own editorials? He will find some support for the BILD program in them.

Ms. Copps: Mr. Speaker, can the minister tell us what the canoe portage in Cambridge, which was financed by the BILD program, has to do with creating jobs?

Hon. Mr. Walker: I will have to obtain an answer on that, Mr. Speaker. I am not familiar with that particular one, but I suspect that if support was provided from BILD for that industry in the period of time when I was not on the BILD committee it was to help Canada.

UKRAINIAN CANADIAN CULTURAL CENTRE

Mr. Gordon: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Citizenship and Culture. A substantial grant for $482,000 was given recently to a group that calls itself the Ukrainian Canadian Culture Centre on Spruce Street in Sudbury for renovations to its building.

The group is very small. It has fewer than 150 members, and there are more than 7,000 Ukrainian Canadians living in the Sudbury area. It is a group with a very weak financial base, and it has a political philosophy that is contrary to everything we hold dear in this province and in this country.

Can the minister explain how this group can possibly meet the civil service and ministry guidelines for a capital grant?

Hon. Mr. McCaffrey: Mr. Speaker, the honourable member expressed some concern last night about this organization and the grant received. I indicated to him that I would undertake to get the background first thing this morning. The first thing I did this morning was to ask the people in the ministry to do that with regard to the size of the organization, its membership, etc.

I respect the member's concern and, as I said, I will undertake to get the details. When making grants or trying to help groups in their respective communities, we do not undertake -- and thank God for it -- to make value judgements on the politics of the groups which subscribe. None the less, I will get the details and fill him in on it.

Mr. Gordon: When there are 7,000 Ukrainian Canadians in the Sudbury region, I find it very hard to believe that a group of fewer than 150 can meet the financial criteria in every respect to get a capital grant of this size.

Mr. Speaker: I am waiting patiently for the supplementary.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Final supplementary; the member for Haldimand-Norfolk.

Mr. G. I. Miller: Mr. Speaker, can the minister indicate whether grants would be available for, say, a mentally retarded workshop in Haldimand-Norfolk under this ministry's program?

Mr. Speaker: That has nothing to do with the main question.

The member for Waterloo North with a new question.

Mr. Di Santo: Mr. Speaker, I have a supplementary.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. I shall go over the procedure once more for the honourable member. When we are on private members' questions, we allow the main question and one supplementary to the main question, and then we allow one supplementary from the opposition.

Mr. Di Santo: But it was not a supplementary.

Mr. Speaker: It was used up, with all respect.

COMPENSATION FOR UFFI HOME OWNERS

Mr. Epp: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Deputy Premier. It has to do with urea formaldehyde foam insulation, otherwise known as UFFI. The minister is probably aware of the fact that a decision was made in Sudbury recently to give a reduction of 50 per cent on property assessment to 37 property owners, I believe it was, because they have urea formaldehyde foam insulation in their homes.

I see the minister is looking around for somebody to come to his rescue, and I have not even asked the question yet.

Mr. Speaker: I am waiting patiently.

Mr. Epp: Given the fact that his colleague the Minister of Revenue (Mr. Ashe) is insulated from the wishes of the people of this province and has taken a very intransigent position with respect to not giving any assistance to these people -- I see the chief government whip (Mr. Gregory) is now coaching the Deputy Premier --

Mr. Speaker: Does the minister agree?

Mr. Epp: I am trying to get his attention, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: Now for the question, please.

Mr. Epp: Yes. Given the fact that the Deputy Minister's colleague the Minister of Revenue is insulated from the wishes of the people of the province with respect to this matter and is sitting in his luxurious office and not dealing with this problem, and given the fact that the Deputy Premier has shown that he is very persuasive with respect to his colleagues in matters such as Suncor, will he take it upon himself to try to persuade the Minister of Revenue and his other colleagues in the cabinet to give assistance to those home owners of up to 50 per cent of their assessment so they can get some of the relief they require with respect to the high taxes they pay on homes?

I ask this also in view of the fact that my colleague the member for Prescott-Russell (Mr. Boudria) introduced a private member's bill yesterday dealing with this same problem and coming forth with a very logical, very reasonable and very helpful suggestion.

Hon. Mr. Welch: Mr. Speaker, if the question is directed particularly to the whole principle of assessment, which I assume it was through all the preamble, I have heard my colleague the Minister of Revenue, who is a very competent Minister of Revenue, explain from time to time that this matter is reviewed by the assessment review court procedures. I assume that will continue to be the case.

Mr. Epp: Given the fact that the Minister of Revenue has had this intransigent position, will the Deputy Premier take it upon himself to try to persuade his colleague to have some test cases in this province or, failing that, to have an across-the-board application for reduction of assessments?

Also, will the Deputy Premier try to convince his colleague that where assessments have been reduced, the government should give assistance to the municipalities of this province, which are already being hard pressed with respect to raising taxes? Will he take it upon himself to try to convince the Minister of Revenue to give assistance to the municipalities that are facing this reduction in assessments?

Hon. Mr. Welch: I do not feel the Minister of Revenue has been inflexible at all. What he is doing is respecting the system that is in place, which is embodied in legislation, as to the procedures anyone can follow who feels his property values have been decreased because of this substance having been installed.

As far as compensation is concerned, my colleague the Minister of Health (Mr. Grossman) has made it quite clear to this House on several occasions that the responsibility in that regard lies with the government of Canada.

11 a.m.

PRIVATE INVESTIGATORS' PRACTICES

Mr. Mackenzie: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Solicitor General. Is he aware that the Securicor company has been destroying records and files for the last week? Is the minister concerned as to whether or not this may have some effect on the ability of the Ontario Provincial Police to conduct the investigation needed into the activities of this company?

Hon. G. W. Taylor: No, I am not aware that Securicor is destroying files. I understand that would be possible within the Business Practices Act and the different pieces of legislation under which different firms operate. I know of no reason that they would be destroying files at this time although it is and can be considered a common practice that firms, even governments, get rid of files when they no longer have any use for them.

Mr. Mackenzie: I find the minister's answer rather hard to take. Does the minister not think it is now time to call for the full public inquiry we have been asking for into the activities of this firm? Will he assure this House that if he is not prepared to call for a public inquiry, the investigation by the Ontario Provincial Police will now be broadened to include companies or principals who have had dealings with, are owned by or are involved in the same disputes as Securicor? I am talking about Stewart Investigations Ltd., W. Stewart and Associates, Jim Lilly, Quest Investigation, Unistaff, Scorpio Investigations Ltd., Aston Associates Ltd., Invicta Services, Armadillo Investigations and Havelberg Securities. At what stage is the minister going to get serious about the activities of this firm?

Hon. G. W. Taylor: The Ontario Provincial Police are carrying out an investigation on this and I can assure the honourable member that, as always, they will carry out the investigation to the best of their ability. They are serious, as I am serious, about carrying it out. As to the public inquiry, with the knowledge I have at present, the activities of this firm do not warrant a public inquiry and I see no need for one at this time.

Ms. Copps: Mr. Speaker, the minister has stated in this House that the OPP are conducting an investigation. The member for Hamilton East has pointed out to the minister that this company is destroying files; in effect, potentially destroying evidence. Yet the Solicitor General stands in this House and tries to draw a parallel between the situation of a change of government, in the person of Grant Devine of Saskatchewan, and this when he knows that his mandate in this province is to make sure that investigation is carried out to the fullest.

Mr. Speaker: Supplementary, please.

Ms. Copps: How can the minister ensure that is being done when he stands in this House and makes light of a company destroying files?

Hon. G. W. Taylor: In no way did I indicate or draw a parallel between Securicor and the government of Saskatchewan. I indicated that in carrying out business practices it is possible that governments can destroy files. The Business Practices Act determines the length of time files are to be kept and at what time they may be destroyed. The situation at this time may be that it is within the act. I have no indication otherwise.

NURSING HOME FUNDING

Mr. McGuigan: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Health regarding the sale of a nursing home.

On April 1, I informed the minister by letter that Mr. Deane, the executive director of the Kent District Health Council, as reported in the Ridgetown Dominion newspaper on February 8, said that the council was not in favour of the Barnwell Nursing Home beds being moved to Chatham. But in a letter of April 1, signed by Mr. A. E. Boehm, director of the institutional operations branch of the Ministry of Health, to Mr. William J. Goldhawk of RR1, Ridgetown, Ontario, the ministry says, "In this instance we are advised that the Kent County District Health Council has no objection to the proposed relocation. Given that the proposed purchaser is acceptable to the ministry, we therefore have no grounds on which to refuse this proposed sale."

My question to this minister is this: What purpose does the health council serve if its advice is ignored by this ministry and its position distorted by officials of the ministry?

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Mr. Speaker, with respect, I take some objection to the suggestion that the position of the health council was distorted by my ministry. In fact, this particular sale was cleared, as they all are, through the district health council, and that council, as reported by my staff, indicated it had no objection to this particular transfer or sale. If it is the honourable member's opinion or advice received in writing from the DHC that it does have an objection to this particular sale, then he should bring forward that evidence. Only upon production of that evidence would he be able to say that a member of my staff is giving misinformation or ignoring the advice of the district health council.

The member attended a meeting we held with a variety of residents and municipal officials arranged by my colleague the member for Chatham-Kent (Mr. Watson). In his presence, with all due respect, the member for Kent-Elgin, who is asking the question, indicated he himself had some difficulty in understanding the whole concept behind the nursing home funding. He had some difficulty and was somewhat embarrassed in front of his own municipal officials at his inability to understand the handling of these procedures, which are complex.

None the less, I think before he rises and suggests that we do not take advice from the DHC, or that we misrepresent the advice given to us by the DHC, he should get some pretty clear evidence from the district health council with regard to the allegation he is making. We are certainly going to pursue that to ensure that the district health council knows who he alleges has been misrepresented by our ministry and is aware of his allegations, so that we can clear this up entirely.

Mr. Speaker: Petitions? The member for Oakwood (Mr. Grande).

Mr. McGuigan: Mr. Speaker, I had a supplementary question.

Mr. Speaker: The time for oral questions has expired. For the information of all honourable members, the time for oral questions expired when the member for Kent-Elgin stood up. I recognized you, you asked your question, and I think I have bent the rules to the limit.

Mr. R. F. Johnston: You're too lax, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: Right. Yes, I am indeed.

PETITION

JOINT BARGAINING FOR SCHOOL BOARDS

Mr. Grande: Mr. Speaker, I have a petition signed by 51 parents at Hawthorne II Bilingual School, the only public school in Toronto that offers a fully bilingual, English-French program for children from junior kindergarten to grade 6. In essence, it says:

"Recently we have learned that the Minister of Education wishes to impose joint bargaining for school boards in Metro Toronto. We are strongly opposed to this amendment to Bill 100 because we feel that the Metro board is not accountable to us as voters and, being the larger body, will not show sufficient sensitivity to the needs of local school communities. In particular, the Metro board has never shown itself to be a friend of smaller schools, parent initiatives or bilingual education.

"We urge the Minister of Education (Miss Stephenson) to drop this particular amendment to Bill 100. We would appreciate a response indicating that she intends to do so."

ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS ON NOTICE PAPER

Hon. Mr. Wells: Mr. Speaker, before the orders of the day I would like to table the answers to questions 70, 101, 102 and 104, and the interim answer to question 112.

11:10 a.m.

MOTION

Hon. Mr. Wells: Mr. Speaker, with the consent of the House, I would like to put a motion before orders of the day.

COMMISSION CHAIRMAN

Hon. Mr. Wells moved, seconded by Hon. Mr. Welch, that an humble address be presented to the Lieutenant Governor in Council as follows:

To the Honourable, the Lieutenant Governor in Council:

We, Her Majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Legislative Assembly of the province of Ontario, now assembled, request the appointment of James A. C. Auld as chairman of the Commission on Election Contributions and Expenses for the province of Ontario, as provided in section 2 of the Election Finances Reform Act, RSO 1980, chapter 134. And that the address be engrossed and presented to the Lieutenant Governor in Council by Mr. Speaker.

Hon. Mr. Wells: Mr. Speaker, in putting that motion I would just like to inform the members of the House that Arthur A. Wishart has requested that he be relieved of his duties as chairman of the Commission on Election Contributions and Expenses. Of course, this request has been granted and it will become effective May 31 of this year.

Mr. Wishart, as you know, Mr. Speaker, was appointed chairman in May 1975, and was the first person to hold this position on this newly created commission. He has served continuously since that time and I think he has served with distinction.

Mr. Wishart, who is now 78, has served this province well not only in this position but in many other positions. As members will remember, he was first elected to this Legislature in 1963 and he served as the member for Sault Ste. Marie until 1971. For many years he was the Attorney General of this province.

I would also like to announce that James Alexander Charles Auld, a former minister of the crown and the member in this Legislature for the riding of Leeds for 27 years, is being recommended to replace Mr. Wishart on this commission on June 1. Mr. Auld did not seek re-election in the general election of last year and since that time has been chairman of the St. Lawrence Parks Commission.

Mr. Nixon: Mr. Speaker, I understand that the appointment is one that comes under the purview and direct responsibility of the government and can be and in fact shall be made by order in council. In the past, similar appointments have been made without reference to the House whatsoever.

I welcome this reference because I firmly believe that we now have a substantial panel of officials, chairmen of commissions and so on, who should consider their appointment the direct responsibility of this House rather than just the responsibility of the government of the day. Besides the chairmanship of the Commission on Election Contributions Expenses these appointments obviously include the Chief Election Officer, the Ombudsman, the Provincial Auditor and, in my view, the Clerk and staff of the Legislature.

There may be others as well, as the responsibilities of government expand, but in my view those particular positions are directly responsible to all members of the Legislature and I for one welcome this move, at least, by the government, in asking that an humble address be sent to his honour in this connection.

I want to join with the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs in acknowledging the service of Arthur Wishart. There were a few of his recommendations as chairman of the Commission on Election Contributions and Expenses that did not command unanimous enthusiasm in this House. One of the things I was surprised at was his rather irritable response to the fact that those recommendations were not accepted enthusiastically. There is not much we can do about that and, of course, he realizes that this House, by its enactment, gave the election expenses commission the right to make recommendations as to what the level of our indemnities and other payments for our service should be.

We were not pleased to accept those recommendations on at least one occasion and, as we all know, his most recent recommendations are pending. It will be interesting to note how the House will respond to those recommendations when the time comes for us to deal with them -- which many feel is already here.

The whole concept of the control and supervision of election expenses and the provision of certain subsidies to bona fide candidates for election to this House has been a good one. I believe the administration by Mr. Wishart and his commission has been excellent from the inception of the commission. There is no doubt about that.

I do not want to make speeches that are a rehash of some things I have said previously, in 1974 and 1975, but it is helpful for us to recall, particularly for those who were not in the House in 1975, that the enactment which established this commission was in response to substantial criticism in this House and in the community with regard to the actions of the government party in the collection of election funds.

We can recall very clearly that this was a front-page matter of public attention involving Fidinam Ltd., the Moog corporations, the building of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, the building of the Workmen's Compensation Board centre and the building of the new Hydro centre. Those are the outstanding examples.

It was under the direct party responsibility of William Kelly, rumoured soon to be Senator Kelly, that a toll gate was established that was extracting a huge amount of dollars from those in the business community who wanted to do business and were doing business with the government of Ontario in this connection.

The government was stonewalling any criticism of that approach at that time. As a matter of fact, when a debate was scheduled for the House which would have condemned the government for its continuing activities, the Premier of the day, the present Premier (Mr. Davis), reversed his position and acceded to the requirement that such a commission be established.

You may recall, Mr. Speaker, hearing about the situation where an honourable member, having been asked by the government to defend its former position of stonewalling any change, went ahead with his speech saying the government would never accept any change under any circumstances. This speech was delivered after the Premier had made a statement that he was caving in on the matter completely and accepting the recommendations as they had been put forward by the opposition and others in the community.

It does not please everybody in the House that we go over all these things, but many people who are not aware of the background think it was a blinding flash of genius from heaven that led our Premier into this, in his altruistic desire to expand the democratic controls of our system. He was led into it kicking and screaming and as a direct requirement of some very bad decisions that had been taken at the time.

But it is a very black cloud indeed that does not have a silver lining. In my view, the legislation we have and its method of administration is as good as anything that I have seen anywhere. We have some exceptions to this, of course, having to do with the limits on electoral expense which we can discuss on another occasion. While in my view it is the best, it still has a good many improvements facing it.

In this connection, various reports from Mr. Wishart and the commission in the past have recommended legislation and amendments to the statute which have not been brought forward in any particular completion, that I am aware of. Many of those amendments are still pending, and it seems we are always too busy in this House to deal with them. I regret that. I think the legislation might very well be brought up to date.

On another note, there is no doubt that James A. C. Auld has well known connections with the Conservative Party. It could well be that the government in its wisdom might have picked somebody like Ross Hall, former member for Lincoln, who has well known connections with the Liberal Party, or maybe even somebody from the New Democratic Party such as Stephen Lewis or Mac Makarchuk or one of those worthies to be chairman. So that almost anybody with a close involvement in and knowledge of elections in this House could have been criticized for having had a political connection. The government might also have gone to some professorial panel and had them do this. But frankly I do not feel sorry the government did not take that course of action.

11:20 a.m.

The idea of having as chairman a former politician -- probably still in his own quiet way a working politician -- does not offend me. At least he knows how this system works and the realities of what we face as politicians in carrying out our democratic duties. The rest of the commission is appointed on recommendation of the three parties in the House so this calls for partisan -- I should not say partisan but perhaps political -- representation in the best sense that in my view makes it a healthy working commission.

We also have those people who are totally impartial, like the Clerk of our House and one or two others.

Hon. Mr. Wells: The Chief Election Officer.

Mr. Nixon: The Chief Election Officer, right. Anyway I find the composition of the commission to be quite acceptable -- in fact it is a good one indeed.

I do not want to seem any more petty than I sometimes do to my friends across the way, but I do not want to vote in favour of a limousine for the chairman if they do not mind. I hope the government is not going to put us in a position where, just as a gesture to good old Jimmy, we give him a limousine, a driver, an apartment and free travel expense and every other blooming thing that the imagination of man can evolve.

Please do not put us in that position. I understand he is being well paid. This pay will not interfere with his princely pension from this House. I will speak on another occasion about that. He is being well paid. His pension probably amounts to another $2,800 a month or so, so we do not have to take up any collection for James A. C. Auld. He may even come up to Toronto for the meetings in his high-powered twin-engine cabin cruiser. He normally keeps it in the Thousand Islands but would probably love to have it in Toronto Harbour for certain special occasions.

We look forward to having him take on the responsibility of the commission and we are not going to object to the resolution requesting an humble address in his favour.

Mr. Renwick: Mr. Speaker, there is little else need be said about the appointment following the peroration of the member for Brant-Oxford-Norfolk (Mr. Nixon), other than to congratulate the retiring chairman of the commission. We would congratulate him on the work he has done over the seven years that he has been responsible for the reform of the election expenses within the very limited capacity available to him under the statute of this assembly which he administers. I do not know whether the outgoing chairman is retiring or whether the government has some new appointment in mind for him. It may well be that Mr. Wishart, at his age, could well serve this government for another 10 or 12 years in some other capacity.

Needless to say, if the proposed incoming chairman were to be the same age as the retiring chairman when he leaves the commission we will be into a new century. I expect there will be few of us here at that time.

I suppose if the short list of persons available for nomination are former members of the executive council of the province the appointment of James Auld is as good as any. I certainly would extend my congratulations to him on that appointment. I do not in any sense hold my breath about the reform of the Election Finances Reform Act.

The government would be foolhardy to reform an act which permits it every four years, or whenever it chooses, to buy the electorate of the province through the expenditure of public funds and through the excessive amounts of money permitted to be spent by the members of the government on their re-election.

That is a matter which is very destructive of the democratic process. It may well be that a man like Mr. Auld will have a deep concern about reform of the election process and that he will be able to bring some influence to bear upon the members of the government to make certain that reform of the election expenses and contributions law of this province again takes place. As an initial stage, this has proved to be ineffective in preserving the kind of democratic process which we in this assembly should prize.

It is a sad commentary on the electoral process in this province when the number of dollars spent by candidates for re-election and election is far beyond what is required to support the democracy of the system. As well, I believe the process which is being developed with respect to the remuneration of members of the assembly by referring the matter to this commission for its consideration and report is a helpful and useful step forward.

I do not have a great interest in those matters but the process itself, in its own slow and laborious way, has at least given some element of objectivity to an assessment of the value of the services rendered by members of this assembly and what their remuneration should be.

The other area which the government may at some point relinquish to that commission is the question of the redrawing of the electoral boundaries of the ridings and constituencies of the province. It is a matter of concern to us in this assembly that there is no statute which reflects the process by which the electoral boundaries are redrawn. It is done by some mysterious order in council and the announcement will be made at some time that there will likely be an electoral boundaries commission appointed to redistribute the population of the electoral ridings we represent.

It may be the time has come to enlarge the mandate of the commission to encompass electoral boundaries as well. Indeed, that is an area where reform is desperately necessary if we are to have a reasonable and sensible representation by population in this assembly, bearing in mind the scattered nature of a large part of the province and the few people who reside in northern Ontario.

The question of an equitable redistribution of riding boundaries is a matter of concern to me. I am sure it is of concern to other members of the assembly. I hope the incoming chairman will think it a useful addition to the responsibilities of the commission to take upon itself the redistribution of the riding boundaries.

It is sufficient to say that, whatever our involvement is now in the appointment of the new chairman, let me on behalf of this caucus wish the outgoing chairman our best wishes if he is going into retirement. Let me say to the incoming chairman that our representatives on the commission will work co-operatively with him in the reform of the electoral law of this province.

Mr. Roy: Mr. Speaker, I could not let this appointment go by without making some brief comments. I do not intend to cover the ground covered by my colleagues the members for Brant-Oxford-Norfolk (Mr. Nixon) or Riverdale (Mr. Renwick). Suffice it to say that as far as Mr. Wishart is concerned, I would like to join with others and wish him well.

11:30 a.m.

I would make this comment about Mr. Wishart. I got to know him when I was assistant crown attorney in Ottawa and he was the Attorney General. At that time he had a tremendous reputation, and he still has, for having been one very good, effective Attorney General. It is ironic, at a time when we are talking about Mr. Wishart and the subsequent era of the Premier (Mr. Davis), how we used to say that Mr. Wishart was doing the job it now takes five cabinet ministers to do.

At that time the Attorney General was doing the job of Attorney General, Provincial Secretary for Justice, Solicitor General, Corrections -- I am not sure whether Corrections was under the Attorney General, and I am not sure whether there was a Ministry of Consumer and Commercial Relations at that time. I can recall when all the new ministries were created we spoke very favourably of Mr. Wishart and the fine job he had been doing in that capacity.

I must put this on the record: In my opinion, Arthur Wishart as Attorney General did a far better job in the administration of justice than he did subsequently as chairman of this commission. In my correspondence with him, and in the initiatives that he took in relation to either his office or responding to inquiries or suggestions we made about what we felt were deficiencies in the present statute or in the administration of the act, I did not find him all that responsive. I am disappointed about that.

I found him responsive on some. In the last correspondence we had just a few days ago, he was very responsive to a suggestion I made that the election expenses be published not only in the English-speaking newspapers, but for those of us who have large percentages of francophones, they be published in Le Droit, the francophone newspaper, or in other newspapers representing other ethnic groups. He agreed with that suggestion, but on other suggestions, especially about government advertising, I found him somewhat unresponsive.

I will not go any further. I want to wish him well. For all those many years he has served this province he deserves our congratulations and our gratitude.

The appointment of James Auld is an interesting appointment, because no member, certainly no minister, was more popular or more sympathetic to all members of this Legislature than Jim Auld. He is a fine individual. He is well respected. Most people have nothing but nice things to say about him.

If the government is going to appoint a Conservative to that job, Jimmy Auld, as my colleagues have said, is as good an appointment as any. There are those of us who remember Jim Auld for his great capacity to put out fires as a minister and his capacity to lull everybody in this House to sleep was a very effective weapon. I am sure he will put it to full use in this particular job, especially during the heat of an election. Those of us who get excited, those of us who complain or who want some quick response from the commission, may be disappointed or may be lulled to sleep by some of his responses to some of our inquiries during the heat of an election campaign.

Never the less, the government having made the decision to appoint a man so associated with a political party, Jim Auld is as good a Tory as any in this province. I am disappointed that the commission did not seek someone who was not so closely associated with any political party.

This function is so sensitive at times that it would require, with respect, the chairmanship of one who is not closely identified with any political party in Ontario. I am disappointed that choice has not been made. I am disappointed because, as my colleagues have said, of some of the abuses under the act. We will not expect any sort of initiative from the chairman in the area of ceilings for campaign expenses. This has been a regular beef, and as the member for Riverdale has said, we do not expect that government over there to correct a good thing till at least it is caught red-handed in a cookie jar.

Another occasion, for instance, was the Fidinam situation. My colleague for Brant-Oxford-Norfolk said the government response always had been to refuse all requests to have any control whatsoever over election expenses, till finally this Fidinam situation came on the scene. I recall the whole incident as well. My colleague mentioned the fact that one of the members had stood up on that particular day and delivered a diatribe about how the past system would continue and there would be no changes, while at about the same time his leader was in the midst of changing the process.

Mr. Nixon: He had heard his leader make a statement here and went ahead with the speech anyway.

Mr. Roy: That is right. I thought that was an interesting experience on that particular day.

My other concern about the fact that the government has decided to appoint an individual associated so closely with the party is in the area where I consider there are other deficiencies.

The major deficiency, of course, is in the area of government advertising prior to and during an election campaign. Many of us criticize this but the past chairman reflected no concern at all about that situation. Today, when I am discussing this problem, I am pleased to see across the aisle from me the Minister of Energy (Mr. Welch), who was the major culprit and offender in what I consider to be this serious abuse of government funds during an election campaign.

Yes, it is his ministry. He looks at me with that innocent, virginal look on his face that says: "Me? How could I have done such nasty things?" His ministry's advertising budget in the year prior to the election was something like $30,000. In the year of the election and since, the budget went to $4.7 million. Is that just a coincidence? Did it have nothing to do with the election? There was the continuous theme, "Preserve it, conserve it."

He is subtle, he is quick. But we are not so stupid that we could not perceive that he was using public funds for the benefit of the government and the Conservative Party. That is an abuse which is going to have to be corrected.

The advertising budget of the Ministry of Health went from $300,000 to $1.5 million during the election period. I could go on. "Good things grow in Ontario." The day before the election was called, $100,000 was put into that kitty for advertising during the election.

There is a clear contradiction because there is supposed to be no advertising till the last 21 days of the election. Yet all of this government advertising took place throughout the whole of the election campaign. That is one area where I am not, let us say, enthused about the fact that the chairman was a member of government when these things took place, and a member of the Conservative Party. I see little encouragement to believe that he will take some initiative to look at this.

I might point out that the federal act gives the commission power to review government advertising. Our statute does not and we should have that power. As I said, I am not overly optimistic, but I hope the chairman will look at this.

Another area I have talked about before is members using advertising schemes prior to the last 21 days of the election period. That was another abuse. The present Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing (Mr. Bennett) had signs, whole billboards, advertising, all during the election campaign, where his riding office was located. That is clearly, in my opinion, an abuse.

11:40 a.m.

The other area of abuse happened in many ridings, but in mine in particular. Members were spending funds, which were properly raised, on radio and television for the benefit of individual candidates. When one looks at the candidates' election expenses, there is not one penny shown for radio or television advertising. Complaints have been made about the member for Carleton (Mr. Mitchell). There was an investigation into this some time ago. In my own riding, the Conservative candidate, Déslauriers, was repeatedly on radio and on television.

In Ottawa, we have a French-speaking radio station, CHOT, which used to have a hockey game from the Montreal Forum on Thursday nights. That was a good time for political advertisements, the draw being very high for the hockey games. I can remember political advertisements for Déslauriers before, during and after the hockey game, yet when I look at his report for the last election campaign not one penny is shown for radio and television advertising. Obviously what happened was that the advertising was paid for by the central fund of the Conservative Party. That type of campaign expense for a candidate should have been in his campaign expenses. I hope this is something that will be looked at and corrected.

The final thing I want to say about this is that, in view of the large amounts of money collected and spent by the Conservative candidates, it seems to me somewhat obscene that any candidate who has accumulated $25,000, $50,000 or $75,000 in his kitty should at some point receive a rebate from the government for $6,000, $8,000 or $10,000. It seems to me to be ridiculous and an abuse of public funds. This rebate was intended -- and I think it is helpful in the democratic process -- to fund some of the expenses. But when a candidate has accumulated such amounts, it is ridiculous that he should be getting a rebate from the government.

We wish Jim Auld well. I have no doubt he will work well with the other people on the commission. I do hope -- and I am being cynical here when I say I am not optimistic, that these changes will take place, because Jimmy Auld was a participant and a member of the Conservative Party when some of these things went on -- that the statute will be changed to make the election commission a more effective instrument not only for the ruling party but for all members of the Legislature and all candidates, whatever party they may represent.

Ms. Bryden: Mr. Speaker, I share the concern of the previous speakers that the government seems to look nowhere else than to defeated Conservative candidates or retired Conservative members for this particular position. It puts the position in the category of being part of the Tory party's patronage, rather than following the tradition of looking for the best person for the job. The chairman has to serve all parties with a very even hand. While the person who filled the job in the past has done a fair job, the tradition should not be that a former Conservative member must always hold the position. I think this would have been a time to show that was not the tradition.

Also, I think the behaviour of the government towards the commission in the past indicates that it does not consider it very important, because it has not accepted any of the recommendations that have come from the commission for amendments to the law. I think in the six years I have been here, we have received at least two packages of amendments proposed by the commission and I believe in most cases unanimously adopted by the commission. These amendments were to close loopholes that had come to light in the five or six years that the act had been in effect.

It is understandable that any new act in a new field of this sort, regulating contributions and expenditures in elections, would require amendment and would have loopholes that needed to be closed. But the government seems satisfied to let the loopholes continue, to let people slip through them and to have the taxpayers' money wasted in some cases. I hope the new appointment means the government will change its attitude towards the commission and start to look at those long overdue amendments.

One amendment that has not come from the commission but which this party put forward last year as a resolution in the House, would require that all election expenditures be subject to control. As we know, at the moment only advertising expenditures are subject to a limit. In Ottawa, all election expenditures are subject to a limit and I think it is done to cut out some of the very excessive spending that used to go on in some ridings. If we had such a limit, it would have cut out the excessive spending that went on in the Ottawa-Carleton by-election, which was really a scandal. That is another area the government should be asking the commission to consider and to bring in recommended legislation to cover all election expenditures and put a cap on them.

The other needed amendments are to require more disclosure of the amounts in the trust funds that were set up at the time the Election Act came into effect. Parties were allowed to put money they had on hand into trust funds, but we do not know what went into those trust funds and what came out of them. This kind of information is essential if we are to know what sort of election kitty all the parties have.

I am looking forward to the new commissioner and his commission bringing forward more legislative proposals. I am also looking forward to the government responding to those proposals and bringing in some reform legislation as soon as possible.

Mr. Bradley: Mr. Speaker, I too would like to make a brief contribution to the debate on this appointment in view of the fact that it is an extremely important position.

The gentleman who has been chosen by the government for this position is a person well liked and respected in this House and a man many of us admired during his years in this House; a man of integrity. Having said that -- and if one is going to pick a Conservative for this job anyway, I suppose Jim Auld is as good a Conservative as any we will find for the job -- I would express the sentiment that in positions of this kind, governments should avoid as much as possible what would be considered a partisan political appointment.

11:50 a.m.

Indeed, a government probably brings a good deal of credit to itself when it appoints either an independent person, a person with no political affiliation, or an individual of a political affiliation other than that of the government. For instance, this was one action that was taken in 1977 or a little beyond when the Premier in a minority parliament chose a Speaker from one of the opposition parties.

Perhaps the government might have been to a certain extent compelled to do so because of the minority situation. One could say it was a smart political move and one that might be designed to assist in the best workings of the House as well. Nevertheless it gave the appearance that this government was prepared to look upon the Ontario Legislature as something other than merely a rubber stamp for the governing party.

This is another instance where I think an individual outside the governing party, in this case one without associations with the Progressive Conservative Party, would have been a suitable choice. There are many, of course, across the province. Some of my friends in the Legislature have suggested some names.

This position is being placed once again in the partisan arena. We had Mr. Wishart as head of the commission before. He is a man who I think was liked and respected in the House but who, once again, was a former Progressive Conservative minister of the crown. If we are to look upon the commission as being a nonpartisan and independent body I think we have to avoid appointments of those who belong to and are so obviously associated with the governing party. They should not have been so closely associated with the policies brought forward by that party in connection with the election expenses commission.

My friend the House leader of the Ontario Liberal Party has talked about some of the perks that are associated with this job. I always found it slightly amusing that some of the suggestions of the outgoing chairman of the commission about remuneration for members of the Legislature maintained respect for the taxpayers' dollar while at the same time many of the members would certainly not enjoy the perks that go with his position.

I think the new chairman must be a person who recognizes government advertising as being within his purview. The last chairman considered it to be outside his responsibility. I see the commission as having a role in this regard and I hope the new chairman will see that role as policing government advertising. It is in effect advertising for the government in power.

I do not suggest this government has any monopoly on that kind of thing. I have seen it in other political jurisdictions. But as I have said on many occasions in this Legislature, they should not just emulate other jurisdictions. They should not merely say, "The feds do it," "They do it British Columbia" or something of that nature. I think we in this province have a chance to be leaders in a field such as this and we can avoid this kind of advertising. It was quite obvious during the last campaign. The advertising budget of this government was $24 million in the year before the last election.

I took it upon myself in the summer or the fall of 1980 to write to the election expenses commission to express my concern and ask them to investigate all of this government advertising that was going on. Much of it was designed to bring credit to the governing party as opposed to providing hard information. At that time the chairman and certain other members of the commission were not supportive of any kind of investigation. They indicated they did not have jurisdiction over it or did not want to deal with it. An independent body, rather than a committee of the Legislature which has a partisan component, could have done that.

That is a role the new chairman of the commission will have to look at. I thought there were many obvious abuses of the advertising budget of the government party which gave it yet another advantage. The governing party in any jurisdiction, particularly one that has been in power for almost 40 years, already has many built-in advantages when it comes to being re-elected.

I hope the new chairman will look at that. I am concerned the new chairman had been a member of the cabinet in a government that saw very little wrong with that, but I hope he will look at the whole problem of spending by candidates in elections. The best example was the member for St. Andrew-St. Patrick (Mr. Grossman) who collected well over $100,000 and spent some $90,000 on his campaign. To say the least, that would be considered overkill. Yet the election expenses commission was not in a position or did not choose to comment unfavourably on this.

The Minister of Industry and Trade who was in the House today would find this interesting. When one is the Minister of Industry and Tourism in that case, or the Minister of Industry and Trade as is the case now, if we look at it in terms of subsidization by the taxpayers it really means one has such a built-in advantage because of those -- and I do not say this in any sinister way -- who feel it would be wise to contribute to the campaign of the person who happens to hold that position. I think that was one of the advantages the Minister of Industry and Tourism had at that time when he collected that amount of money.

On the first $100 one gets $75 back as a credit and I think on the next $550 one gets back 50 per cent. Then it goes down to thirty-three and one-third per cent. In other words, there is a great tax advantage to contributing. When one considers the amount of money that is contributed to one campaign, the taxpayer is heavily subsidizing through that mechanism a person who is able to garner a large sum of money. I do not object to the mechanism in itself. I hope the new chairman of the commission will look carefully at that and report back to this House as to ways of reforming that.

We also want to see a strengthened election expenses commission. I would have hoped an independent person not associated with the government in the past would have been the person chosen to do that. I think I have been careful to say that this is no reflection personally on a gentleman many of us in this House were very fond of for a number of years.

Taking into consideration those few comments, I think we had to go on the record as expressing our concern. The government obviously is determined to have this gentleman, Mr. Auld, appointed to that position. Therefore, we have to wish him the best and hope he takes into consideration the remarks that have been made in the House today so he can alleviate the concern we in the opposition have that a person associated with those policies in the past might well be reluctant to initiate any reforms in that field.

Motion agreed to.

ORDERS OF THE DAY

MINISTRY OF INDUSTRY AND TRADE ACT

Resuming the adjourned debate on the amendment to the motion for second reading of Bill 38, An Act to establish the Ministry of Industry and Trade.

Mr. Renwick: Mr. Speaker, on a point of order: I drew to the attention of the Clerk of the House that the Order Paper appears to me to be incorrect with respect to this debate and that we are in fact resuming the debate on the amendment to the motion for second reading of the bill.

Mr. Speaker: I am advised by the clerk that the order was indeed called that way.

Mr. Renwick: Oh. I am sorry.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Riverdale; sorry, the member for St. Catharines.

Mr. Bradley: Mr. Speaker, I had not intended to change my constituency. The member for Riverdale has been a long-time member there and would certainly be difficult to dislodge. One would suspect that even if his new leader were to run in that riding he would not have the same degree of success as the member for Riverdale, who has had a long and distinguished career in this House and a great affiliation with his own constituents.

Having made that remark, which is irrelevant to this debate, I will proceed with the remarks I was making the other day. It is no bad reflection upon the present Speaker of this House, the member for Peterborough (Mr. Turner), but I notice we have a new Speaker in the chair, the member for St. George, whom I should note is also a distinguished person and has an even more pleasant smile than the Speaker who was sitting in the chair a moment ago.

12 noon

The minister will recall that the aspects of the Ministry of Industry and Trade that I discussed the other day related largely to the problems encountered by the automotive industry. I have read parts of the speeches of the present minister, and I think he recognizes the problem. It has certainly been brought to his attention by Pat Lavelle, who is the head of the Automotive Parts Manufacturers' Association of Canada, the organization that is involved with Canadian parts manufacturers, predominantly in this province.

By the way, he has been succeeded, as the minister will know, by Mr. C. Macey, who is the president of the St. Catharines Chamber of Commerce and a senior executive with TRW Canada Ltd. in St. Catharines. Mr. Macey is a person very familiar with the problems encountered, not necessarily by the Big Four in the industry but by those who deal with the Big Four and others in terms of providing the manufactured parts.

One will find in discussing matters with Mr. Macey that he is extremely knowledgeable in this field and very much committed to the continuance of the industry. His company, TRW, is an American-owned company. We see an example in this case of an individual in the person of Mr. Macey who is certainly very pro-Canadian. I believe he is a Canadian. He is a person who is prepared to make the Canadian operation work to the benefit of Canadians and I guess, speaking parochially, the people in our community. As a member from that area, I hope to continue my dialogue with Mr. Macey. I know the minister will continue his dialogue with that organization through Mr. Macey as the head of it.

We cannot overemphasize the importance of the automotive industry. The minister sits across there. He is certainly well aware of this. I do not say this for his consumption necessarily except to relate it to people in other parts of the country who might somehow have the debate in this House filter to them.

I mentioned to the minister that I had been in British Columbia for a few days and sat in on their Legislature. Their opposition is much better represented, in terms of numbers at least, than is the case in this legislature, but I notice the comments of the Minister of Industry and Small Business Development of British Columbia and their Minister of Finance are somewhat different.

There were a number of people from St. Catharines who were there for other purposes and who are employed in the automotive industry. I was bringing to their attention the opinions of those who represent British Columbia people as they relate to restrictions on automobile trade and to any kind of restrictions in terms of Japan, which is a very important trading partner, particularly for the west coast of Canada as well for as the rest of Canada.

That is why it is important that we in Ontario, whether members of the government party or of the official opposition or of the third party in the House, and most certainly the federal members of Parliament, continue to emphasize and put forward our case for short-term restrictions.

I do not think this minister is saying we should erect a trade barrier wall that will be very difficult to penetrate on a long-term basis. That is not what the industry is asking for. We both know that is not what the industry is asking for. What they are asking for is a chance to catch up, a chance to change their ways, and they are doing it on a progressive basis. They need a chance to change quickly enough to adapt to changing circumstances which came upon us rather rapidly.

I support any efforts that the minister makes and has made in the past to make representations to the federal minister, who must look at all of Canada. Mr. Lumley does the negotiating, and he obviously hears from members of Parliament across this nation. He cannot simply speak for Ontario, but we in Ontario, if we continue to push our message to the federal government on this issue time and again, are bound to have some impact. I guess we do have a built-in political advantage of having 95 federal seats in this area. There are 75 seats in Quebec and there are areas of Quebec that are very reliant upon the automotive industry.

I encourage the minister to continue the efforts he has already initiated in the past in this direction in terms of Canadian content and in terms of short-term restrictions. As the minister knows, we would not be alone in this. Australia, for instance, has an 85 per cent content rule, yet Australia deals extensively with Japan in terms of its natural resources. I do not think we need fear retaliation from the Japanese as much as we may think we do if on a short-term basis we are prepared to place these restrictions and, on a longer-term basis, we move towards Canadian content.

We recognize that the multinational companies are looking to other jurisdictions where they feel they can get a better economic deal to invest their dollars; for instance, Mexico. But Mexico has content laws, as does Brazil and other jurisdictions. When we see those countries prepared to institute content laws, we in this country can do the same. I know this minister will be sympathetic to that point of view on content in the long term and on restrictive trade practices in the short term.

There is another area I would like to discuss with him. I know he is familiar with the cries of small business and their problems. I think all business is hurt at these times of high unemployment, high investment risk and, especially, high interest rates. All of us are hit, as are all aspects of the economy, but the small business people find it most difficult. Many of them have been wiped out. Some of the stronger people say: "That is the way things go. The strong will survive because they have been good business people." I think this minister recognizes, as do all of us in this House, that some good business people have gone under as well because of the economic climate. I know he is interested in encouraging the kind of economic climate that would be conducive to investment in this province; that is why I make a special plea that he continue and expand programs to assist small business.

Many times I get calls at my constituency office from people who say: "You just gave Ontario Paper, TRW and Ford this much money. Why can't we, who are small business people, get our hands on this money? We are the entrepreneurial people. We are the people who really create the jobs. We are labour-intensive. Why can't we get money?"

I am fair enough to recognize that the ministry is reluctant to make recommendations for investing the taxpayers' money -- because that is what we are talking about; we are not talking about money from the sky -- in enterprises that are bound to go under because of poor management practices. I know the minister has to use some caution. But I bring to him the plea of many small business people to ensure that there is assistance for those very people.

The minister has just brought to my attention that Ontario awarded $213,000 in small business incentive grants to 34 Ontario firms in the first quarter of this year. So there is some progress being made in that area, and I commend him for that progress. I hope that will continue and be expanded upon for those who require it.

I am going to go to the designation "depressed areas." I know the Department of Regional Economic Expansion has problems with this. We in the Niagara Peninsula have been called the Golden Horseshoe, or at least part of the Golden Horseshoe. I can tell the minister that we were proud of that designation in the past, but it has been a number years since we have been the Golden Horseshoe.

Unfortunately, when governments at both the provincial and federal level look at us, they say: "That is a relatively prosperous area of the province. If we are going to gear programs to specific areas of the province" -- once again, I go back to DREE as one of those problems -- "the Golden Horseshoe really should not be a priority area."

I am sure the minister's officials have made him aware that we have a chronic problem of relatively high unemployment in our area, which becomes acute when the automotive industry takes the kind of downturn that it does today. So I look at this as a plea to the minister that, in consultation with his federal counterparts, he ensure that our area of the province, the Niagara Peninsula, is not forgotten when these programs for so-called depressed areas are initiated; because the unemployment figures, as released by Statistics Canada, clearly indicate that we are in need of those kinds of incentives.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to travel around parts of the Niagara Peninsula with the member for Kitchener-Wilmot (Mr. Sweeney) and the member for Essex South (Mr. Mancini) as part of our inquiry into problems related to youth unemployment. We saw some good programs in effect. We also saw some that are in need of changes. This relates to the Ministry of Industry and Trade, in that I know employment ultimately is a prime concern of the minister.

12:10 p.m.

I talked about apprenticeship programs to one business person who operates a small plant. I asked him: "How are we going to get the programs implemented? Do we have to mandate them? Does the government have to come down hard and say, 'You must train so many apprentices a year'?" His reply to that was, "It might work if you compel them, but once we have a downturn in the economy and the company lays people off because of economic reasons, it is hard to compel that company to keep apprentices if there is no work for them, unless there is some incentive."

That got us to the second part where he suggested that if governments were to provide some kind of incentive, most industries would be prepared to undertake fairly extensive apprenticeship programs. In his case he does anyway, even though he recognizes he is training apprentices for General Motors and other higher- paying companies. He recognizes that as a fact of life. He had a very positive attitude to apprentices. He felt if he trained five and retained one, those he retained were often his best employees who eventually moved into supervisory positions in the plant.

I know the minister will take this suggestion to the ministers who are responsible in terms of training apprentices. His suggestion was that we could train our own people here with some kind of incentive. The reason the incentive is required is that these companies, when they invest in apprentices, feel that they are really investing to provide them for larger companies, even though some of those larger companies have extensive training programs themselves. He was not critical of those larger companies. He stated that as a fact of life.

I think the minister recognizes the need for a highly trained work force. If I were speaking to a group of secondary or post-secondary students, imploring them to continue their education, I would do so based on what is obviously an ultimate goal of this ministry: to have available a highly skilled and trained work force in Ontario.

To a certain extent, that means getting away from our old attitudes -- I stray briefly into education here -- that really gets away from our old attitude that the only kind of education to have is a straight academic education, and the only kind of job is a so-called white collar job.

From the 1950s on we in North America seemed to have that set in our minds. We are slowly turning that around by recognizing the real needs of this province. The highly paid jobs, and the jobs where there is a future, are in those technical and in some cases highly technical areas. These are opportunities the ministry is attempting, at least in a small way at present, to expand by setting up its technology centres.

This brings me to the auto parts technology centre, which was located in the Niagara Peninsula as we had hoped. I guess we have the luxury of being selective in our praise of certain aspects of the Board of Industrial Leadership and Development program. While we may be critical of a large part of it, saying it is election gimmickry and so on, we in opposition do enjoy the luxury of picking out specific areas we think have been useful.

I must say to the minister that I am pleased he has embarked upon an automotive parts technology centre. Parochially speaking, I am pleased it has been located in the Niagara Peninsula, where we feel a lot of the jobs are. I have had to defend this on the minister's behalf to a certain extent to some who say: "It is a heavy investment. It is only going to create eight jobs to start and maybe 50 jobs along the way. Okay, you have the construction jobs."

I have been in the position of defending it, first, on the basis that the number of jobs involved are more than those at the operation. Second, is the idea of it making our products competitive. The result of the education that will take place there, the technological training, the experimentation and the research, will ultimately benefit our industry.

I will make a political statement and say the government should have done it 10 years ago; which, politically, we always do. I am happy it is there now and I like to thank goodness for small mercies, or the minister in this particular case.

I did not have the opportunity to be present at the official announcement, because I was consumed in very important business in the Ontario Legislature, in the public accounts committee. Friends of mine have suggested the reason the minister called this press conference that day was he knew I would be in the Ontario Legislature. He called it at Tory headquarters, which is the Parkway Inn in St. Catharines, with a lot of fanfare, when the member for that area was busy guarding the taxpayers' dollars in another area of the province.

Hon. Mr. Walker: I am sure you disabused your friends of that evil thought.

Mr. Bradley: No, I encouraged them to think that, as a matter of fact.

We were happy to have that announcement by the minister. I discussed this privately with the minister yesterday, and I know he will respond at some time in the future, but the people are now asking where the centre is. There was a column under the byline of Steve McNeill a couple of days ago in the St. Catharines Standard which said, "We have had the fanfare of the announcement; now where is the technology centre?" The minister has indicated to me that it will be forthcoming soon, and I will allow him at some time in the future to elaborate on that.

We are pleased on the peninsula to have the centre. It is a positive step. We in the opposition recommended that such a centre should be established. We had no monopoly on that idea. I am sure the ministry people knew about it as well, and that is a positive step. We encourage them to take more steps of that kind to make us competitive in this province.

There is an other area I would look at, if I can touch on it very briefly. Knowing this minister's right-wing, private enterprise philosophy, I will not ask him to deny his cabinet thrice, but I suspect he was not one of the people who patted his fellow ministers on the back for the purchase of the Suncor shares.

As Minister of Industry and Trade no doubt he made representations, and cabinet solidarity prevents him from elaborating on this. Although I am not economic expert enough to say this is the case, it might have been worth investigating greater Ontario participation in the Alsands project, which we know would have the effect of providing some jobs right here in Ontario. That is the importance of these projects. Even when they take place outside our province, they can have a spinoff effect. There might have been a role for Ontario in the Alsands project, whereas the Suncor purchase was not a wise one. I do not want to get into a side debate on that, but I think it would be very useful.

Mr. Philip: Do you want to sell it now?

Mr. Bradley: I would be prepared to sell it. I suspect the Minister of Industry and Trade --

Mr. Philip: It's easy to see you've never made money on the market.

Mr. Bradley: No. Unlike my friends in the New Democratic Party, I do not play the stock market on the sidelines and preach the Socialist line in this House.

Mr. Philip: Maybe if you did you would learn something about how business operates.

Hon. Mr. Walker: A landlord as well.

Mr. Bradley: A landlord as well, says the Minister of Industry and Trade. The Deputy Speaker will chastise me for allowing myself to be consumed in a side debate. Also, the member for Scarborough West (Mr. R. F. Johnston) is eager to participate in this debate. I have provided him with the opportunity to place additional notes in front of him; not that he needs them, he is usually extemporaneous in his remarks.

I will bring my remarks to a conclusion by saying that while we have great concerns about what has gone on in the past, there may be a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. I hope it is not an engine coming the other way. The minister has opportunities to make this a worthwhile ministry. We hope he seizes those opportunities. Who knows, it might even propel him into the leadership of the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario.

[Applause]

Mr. R. F. Johnston: Mr. Speaker, that is more concerted applause than I got when I did the Leadoff today. The quality is improving through the day, that is the reason.

Mr. Bradley: I would have voted for you, Richard.

Mr. R. F. Johnston: I know. When that got around, I am afraid it skewered my chances totally.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak on Bill 38 and, even more pointedly to the reasoned amendment that was introduced by the member for Algoma (Mr. Wildman). It is a pleasure to do so. The reorganization that is going on in government ministries at the moment is in some ways welcome, and in other ways is of some concern to us over here. The government no doubt has noticed we are determined to vote against a number of the realignments that have been recommended.

I will try to restrict my remarks today to the concern that is expressed through the reasoned amendment and, if I might, take a particular example of a case in my riding and show why the reasoned amendment is crucial if this new ministry is to have any impact on economic planning in this province.

The act lays out a number of roles for this new ministry. Most of them I would not quibble with at all, but there are some that are obviously missing in the policy direction we on this side would like to see.

The two points that were raised by the member for Algoma are these:

First, there should be some wording in this act which states that one of the objectives is to increase the degree of Canadian ownership of Ontario industry. It is vital that this should be put forward very specifically in this bill.

Second, there should be an objective stated specifically in the bill to give it the kind of mandated power which would give authority to provide for the use of crown corporations and joint ventures and to develop key sectors of the Ontario economy where imports dominate.

Those two reasoned amendments would do a great deal towards giving this new ministry an air of being something new, something more than just a trade mission facilitator and, a direction we on this side look forward to, something that adds potential in terms of Canadian ownership and using public intervention in various forms to try to protect jobs in this province.

I want to speak just to those two concerns which we feel should be in the bill establishing this new ministry. I want to relate them, if I might, to a specific case, that of SKF, which we have all heard about many times -- and I am glad to see the Globe and Mail has picked up on that today and speaks of the fate of the workers there -- and the different kind of response there might have been to the pullout of that Swedish multinational from this province if we had had a ministry whose mandate was specifically in the areas mentioned in our reasoned amendment.

If I may, I will give a little bit of background about SKF which, as I said, is a Swedish multinational corporation. It had been operating in Canada for some 30 years prior to pulling out its manufacturing component in this province.

I will quote from the first report by Dr. Paul Grayson, associate dean of Atkinson College, York University, who has been doing one of the lead studies on the impact of plant shutdowns. He is now studying what has happened to the workers since the closing of the plant.

To give an indication of the size of this corporation and what we are dealing with, it is not, as one might think, just a small ball bearings operation with no major impact on the economy of the western world. It has assets of $3.2 billion, sales of $2.9 billion and as well as ball bearings it produces other high-quality steel products. In 1980, it ranked 156 out of Fortune's 500 largest industrials outside the United States. It is a very large corporation.

Dr. Grayson indicates that in total assets, SKF is roughly twice as large as MacMillan Bloedel, a third larger than Stelco, three times larger than Domtar and Husky Oil and six times larger than Molson's or John Labatt's. It controls 176 companies, has operations on five continents and, according to its 1979 annual report, its world sales were up 16 per cent. Even more important, its sales in Canada were up 33 per cent in the year that the decision to close was made. It is no penny ante company.

The company established itself in Scarborough about 30 years ago, in the early 1950s. At its peak it had about 650 to 700 employees producing ball bearings and other kinds of steel products in the Scarborough plant. It built on 40 some acres of land which, quite frankly, it got for a song as one of the initial major corporations moving into Scarborough as it developed in the early 1950s. It proposed to expand and become a major producer of ball bearings in this country, and it did so for some time.

In the early 1970s, it made a decision to rationalize its Canadian production and moved a number of its high-volume ball bearing lines -- most of them known as the 5200 series -- to the United States. It kept the low-volume lines here in Canada. Low-volume lines are for specialized kinds of equipment with limited needs and often ones that are about to terminate; so, naturally, they would move these very productive lines to the United States and keep only the smaller-volume lines here. It became less and less a productive plant and one can see over the last 10 years, as SKF has clearly shown us, that their profit and loss margins were not as good as they had been in the initial 15 to 20 years of their operation.

The withdrawal from Canadian production was done on the basis of an international decision from Sweden. In 1976, they actually tried to close the plant down, but a major fight by the International Association of Machinists and some local politicians at that time managed to convince the company to shut down only half the plant. It reduced the number of its employees in 1976 from about 650 to about 300 or 350 on the manufacturing side.

During that period we started importing from the United States the same things we had been manufacturing in Canada -- to sell as made-in- Canada goods, if one can believe it. They would bring in ball bearings, in two pieces, to that plant in Scarborough from the plant in Philadelphia. The bearing itself and the cap were of steel. All we started to do in the Scarborough plant, which had made these bearings for 15 to 20 years, was to grease this ball bearing and slap the cap on it and put it into cartons bearing the name of SKF (Canada) Ltd.

To add insult to injury, as I said to the former Ministry of Industry and Tourism, now the Minister of Health (Mr. Grossman), who is in the House today, those ball bearings actually were stamped SKF (Canada) Ltd. in the United States of America. That is the perfect example of what happens to us in terms of branch plantism and how we start to rationalize services to the detriment of Canadian workers.

Sales went up. Actually, the volume was approximately the same for the 5200 series, about 500,000 units per year, but the difference was that we did not make them here. Some 300 people who were employed were no longer employed in Canada, and we maintained the sales operation for SKF International to have its most profitable sales operation in 1979.

Then, in October 1980, the company announced it was going to close down its manufacturing section. It said to its employees that this was a decision made locally because of the low-volume production lines. However, we found out later that the decision was made in Sweden and that the decision was actually known by the International Association of Machinists there before the management in the plant in Scarborough knew. They happen to have laws over there which require multinationals to disclose the results of their operations and their decision-making in worldwide terms by providing information on an annual basis to the government and the unions in that country.

The great story was that this company was making a major move towards giving real notice to workers. The termination notice was 14 months -- highly generous. That was the story, that they were very generous in their termination notice, not that there was no reason for this plant to close down. It so happened that 14 months was chosen because that was when the contract with Pratt and Whitney was going to end and they needed to continue to produce for that period. It was not a matter of generosity to the workers or making it easier for them to find jobs. In fact, the workers in that plant being studied now by Dr. Grayson indicate that they would have preferred a shorter termination notice period, something like six to eight months.

12:30 p.m.

Decisions by the workers to leave the corporation, even though they knew there was 14 months' notice, became harder and harder because they would not get severance pay if they left before the 14 months were up. So they had this hanging over them for 14 months, "Leave, take your chances, lose that severance pay you have earned through your union negotiations, or stay for 14 months, knowing at that point you will have to go out and look for work when things are getting worse and worse in the economy of Ontario." That 14 months' notice was no particular gift at all.

I should say one thing about research and development which ties in with this whole idea of Canadian ownership and interest in what we are doing here instead of just being branch plants of some other country's multinationals. At any time that I have been able to find out, they spent no more than $100,000 on research and development for this plant. This is a plant that is producing over $70 million worth of goods. One hundred thousand dollars a year is just ridiculous. Most of that, as far as I can tell, went into some studies done in terms of updating machinery that was not even going to be used in the Scarborough plant but in the Philadelphia plant, the South African plant and elsewhere.

It was coincidental that the announcement of the closing of this plant came about at exactly the same time as we set up our select committee on plant closings. We had the company and the union before us and I tried to use that as a forum to get this whole discussion before the Legislature in terms of unjustified plant closings. I still believe this was the perfect example of a plant that should never have been allowed to close.

We were given the financial statement before the committee, after some prodding I might say and with a veiled threat of a subpoena. We were given a financial statement, which is very useful for a corporation worth $70 million in Canada. I have it before me. I know you can hardly see it from there, Mr. Speaker, but you can also hardly see it when you are up as close as I am. There are five lines in terms of their net sales, etc., then 10 years, and then a profit and loss line at the bottom. That is all they would give our select committee.

They did not have to give it to us because they had exemptions, as far as they were concerned, from giving to any Legislature any material about their economic wellbeing at the time they were closing their plant in my riding. We pushed them and said we wanted more than that. One of the great ironies was that they did present us with a further financial picture. It happened to be the day or the day before the election was called and because of majority government that select committee seemed to be irrelevant and not necessary in Ontario at that time.

So we have never actually seen these financial statements, although I am sure they were as concocted as this thing was in terms of any real indication of the financial wellbeing of this corporation. These statements are somewhere in the vaults and will not be made available to members of the opposition like myself until many years after this plant has been closed.

During the discussions in that committee, it is interesting to note why this plant closed. Why did it close in Canada when they had plants in Germany, Sweden, France, South Africa, the United States and Mexico? Why Canada? It became very clear that this was the easiest place in the world to close down a plant. It was admitted in testimony that this was one of the more efficient plants, that there was no reason to shut it down in terms of its viability. They made arguments about lack of tariff control, but when we analysed that, they still had a major nine per cent advantage which they would not have had in some of the other jurisdictions.

Why did they close? Because they would have had to justify that plant closing in Sweden. They would have to show why it should be closed in Sweden before any other country in the world. There are major penalties for doing so, and there would have been the prospect of government intervention to stop them from doing it.

That brings me back to the point of our reasoned amendment, which is the notion of joint ventures and joint crown corporations. They could not close down in Mexico, because they had a joint venture with that country. They said they would not move out of there. To move out of France or West Germany would have meant a cost of something between $16,000 and $20,000 a worker. In fact, the government of France has the right to say: "You may not close down. This is not a justified closure. It is not possible." The country with the patsies, the country that will not protect its workers but has governments that are willing to sit on their hands while workers who have been doing their part for this country for 26 or 27 years, like many of these people, are being laid off, that is the country they chose, and that country is Canada.

I will not get into our need for other kinds of labour legislation and justification of pension portability, etc., but I would like to talk a little bit about what we could have done. I have a letter here from the Honourable Herb Gray, federal Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce, who wrings his hands and essentially says, "However, because of our international trade obligations and other considerations, these options" -- that he had laid out above -- "have not provided a means of averting this plant closure."

Quite frankly, that is so much balderdash. There is no reason that government could not have said to that corporation, "You have an obligation to make things here if you are going to sell them here, especially when you have been making them here for 20 some years." We now hear this government talking about content legislation for Japanese-produced automobiles. It could easily have applied to ball bearings. The government could easily have said, "You have to maintain your manufacturing plant in Canada and produce 20 per cent of what you sell in Canada or you cannot maintain your sales operation here; you will not get government contracts for many of the ball bearing goods that would come up in terms of transportation, especially in this province." But that was not done, either federally or provincially.

I suggest we could easily have threatened to have moved into -- it should not have been a threat, it should have been a promise -- a joint venture with that corporation to keep that plant open, so that the people who have been working there for so many years would have been protected. We might even have looked at some kind of worker-controlled, government-shared intervention in that corporation, although it would probably have been less practical. It is difficult because we have allowed them -- if I may use the provocative word -- to castrate that corporation in Canada for the last 15 years by taking away its most productive lines. If we had stood firm in 1976 and made those lines stay in Canada, maybe we could have done it effectively when we did have options.

Why do we want these options? We want them for economic control and for all the reasons that can be talked about in a very academic and dry way, but, most important, we want them because they would protect the workers. They would protect the people who have made commitments to society, who have given to Scarborough and to this province for years and years and are now being left abandoned. There is a social responsibility, in my view, on the part of government and on the part of corporations. There needs to be something in this ministry to say we will take on that social responsibility, that we want to have the goals we have laid out in our reasoned amendment.

Let me point out why, specifically in relation to SKF. Who are the workers of SKF? They are primarily men. Their average age is 49 years. Their average length of time in that corporation was 18 years. Their skill level is what one would call semi-skilled or plant-skilled. To give an example, there was a 52-year-old worker who was a ball bearing polisher. He had the equivalent of a primary grade education in Germany before he came here 27 years ago. He has done nothing in the work force except polish ball bearings. He considers himself to be a skilled worker, but that is not exactly a transportable skill.

12:40 p.m.

Where does one go with that? He is 52 years of age, with a public school education, three children and a mortgage. That is the kind of person we are dealing with in this plant. He has given work, given up of his energies to make this a viable corporation and had it undermined by a multinational, with no government in this province willing to take action to try and protect him and his rights. He is one of the 61 per cent who are still unemployed after that closure. That closure started in September, finished on December 18, and 61 per cent of them are still unemployed.

Why? It is not just because the economy went bad. If one is 50 years of age, with little education and a particular skill, it is going to be hard as hell to find a job. It is a major imperative for a government to look at other alternatives to maintain that operation.

Of the ones who were employed in that plant and have now found jobs, 51 per cent of them are in non-union shops. There are approximately 40 per cent of them using less skill than they were when they were in the plant. I have been hearing of cases now because they still come to my office, thank God, and I can keep some kind of tabs on what is going on with these people. Many of the men who have gone into the non-union shops, who were last hired obviously, are now being laid off as the crunch hits those other corporations.

One man came in the other day who was the first laid off after he got a job with Bell Canada. These are not people who do not want work. Some 70 per cent of them have said they are willing to retrain. Supposedly a mechanism was set up to retrain some of these people. They have had 14 months lead time to set that up. Very few of them have had any retraining at all through the Canada Manpower and provincial liaison that was supposed to go on.

There are 70 per cent of them who are willing to accept jobs which will have a lower skill level. Almost 60 per cent of them are willing to accept jobs paying less. These are people who want to work.

They did an estimate of what this closure had done to these people. There were 82 per cent who said they had lost more than $1,000 of income because of the plant closure in the month and a half after December when this survey was taken; 33 per cent of them said they had lost over $5,000. What happened to those workers is much more profound than the loss of dollars. There has been an incredible loss of self-esteem going on there.

There is major pressure and potential destruction to the family unit going on there. I would like to refer, if I could, to a couple of questions that were on this survey done by Dr. Grayson to indicate that. These workers were given what is known as a stress chart, starting off with the lowest kind of stress, that is getting a parking ticket from a police officer, and going up to the highest levels of stress we can measure in sociological terms, the death of a spouse, the death of a child and divorce.

They asked these workers: "Where would you rate the effects on you and your family of this plant closure?" Mr. Speaker, 41 per cent of them said that they felt it was stress equivalent to the loss of a spouse. There were 23 per cent of them who responded to the question by saying that as far as they were concerned life was no longer worth while.

These are men who have lost a great deal of their own sense of self-worth because they have been laid off, because their sense of value was tied up with their ability to do their work and to do their work well, and because, at 50 years of age, they have been left now with no prospects of finding work for the next 15 years before their retirement. They feel they are losing the respect of their children and their spouses.

All of this has come about because of a political decision. It has come about because of a lack of political will to intervene to say that the ball bearings industry must have a major Canadian component; that there is a role for joint ventures and public ownership in that industry; that there is a will and a desire by government, as stated in its legislation establishing the ministry, to protect workers, to say that is a prime concern and not just to let the market look after itself in a laissez-faire fashion.

I do not have any misconceptions about the nature of this minister in terms of his ideological philosophy or of this government in terms of interventionism. By God, if we had that kind of thing in print, if we had that kind of mandate in the ministry's establishing legislation, it might even affect the attitude of the minister to be more than other ministers over there have been, concerned but inactive.

He might then actually take some action to understand the human consequences of this stuff. This is not just dry economic rhetoric. People in my riding are hurting badly and they need not be. This was a profitable corporation which could have been squeezed to stay here, but it was not. I hope this is a perfect example of why we need this addition to the legislation and why, if we had this, the workers in this province might be a lot better protected than they are at present.

Mr. J. M. Johnson: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak on second reading of Bill 38. Many members, and the government, have expressed the need for industrial growth in eastern and northern Ontario. While I share that view of the need in regard to those areas, I also want to express concern for my part of the province, Wellington-Dufferin-Peel in western Ontario.

Some people have the idea that all of western Ontario is blessed with all kinds of industries. This just is not so. Many of the small communities in my riding have never experienced the benefits of having industrial expansion.

I have a clipping here about the town of Shelburne which says the reeve wants to sell the town. It goes on to state: "For a considerable number of years, Shelburne has had little success in attracting industry. They were encouraged several years ago to expand their sewerage system with the hope that would attract industry, but it has not come about. The taxpayers are faced with the cost of paying exceptionally high taxes." They do not have an industrial base to draw taxes from.

It is also a problem in small communities that, if one does not have industries, one cannot offer the youth of the municipality the opportunity to stay in the community. They have to leave. They come to the cities. While they are not as content in the cities, they really have no choice.

I share the concern about the slowdown in many of our cities, such as Windsor, Chatham, Kitchener and Hamilton. It is a concern of this government and of all the members of the Legislature. I also have a concern for the towns of Fergus and Elora.

I have another newspaper clipping here with the headline "GSW to close its doors." It states: "A major Fergus industry that survived the Great Depression of the 1930s has scheduled two one-week shutdowns that will temporarily eliminate virtually all jobs. It is the most complete shutdown since Beatty Brothers was founded in 1876. General Steel Wares bought them out in 1961. A company that survived the Great Depression is now very close to having to close its doors."

It is easy to blame other people. I think we reckon, as a fact, that we have a very serious problem, not only in Ontario but also everywhere else in Canada and in most of the industrial world. I think we should do what we can to work together to resolve the problem.

12:50 p.m.

Mr. Di Santo: What do you want to do? What do you propose to do?

Mr. J. M. Johnson: I would like to point out that while major cities are suffering thousands in layoffs, for a small community such as Fergus to suffer layoffs of 100, 200 or 300 is just as drastic.

Another point that is often missed by the members when they consider shutdowns or layoffs in Kitchener, Guelph and Hamilton is that they do not take into account that some of these workers reside in my riding and commute to these cities. Layoffs in these cities also affect the communities in the Fergus-Elora area, for example.

We have a financial problem in the agricultural community; this impacts on the business community and then it is further complicated by these layoffs and shutdowns. They have a ripple effect. We have the plant shutdowns, loss of jobs for commuters and stores are then forced to close or to lay employees off to cut their staff down.

A small town in rural Ontario has many of the problems of the cities. I have used Fergus and Elora as examples but many, if not all, of the small towns and villages in my riding are in the same situation. Bolton, Caledon, Drayton, Erin, Shelburne, Grand Valley, Arthur and Mount Forest all fall into similar categories, if not exactly the same ones. They are all experiencing financial difficulties today.

I am concerned about maintaining the financial viability of the downtown cores in these communities. Very few months go by when we do not see another closure in most of these small towns. Communities with 50 or 60 places of retail business are losing two, three, four or five every three or four months. I would say 10 or 15 per cent of the stores change hands in a year. Many of them close and do not reopen. Many have to lay off employees. It is an extremely difficult time for all businesses, and the retail section is suffering as much as any.

I want to suggest to the minister that while we have the problems of trying to relocate jobs for the people in the cities who are hurt, we also have the same problems to a lesser degree in many parts of rural Ontario. For the future, with increasing costs of fuel for transportation and for the commuters, and with the overcrowding and social problems we have in many of our larger cities, the ministry and this government should look to the feasibility of encouraging more industrial expansion into the rural Ontario, into the smaller communities.

Our small towns need this industrial growth. They need it for better equalization of their tax base. They need it to be able to retain their young people by giving them the opportunity to work at home. They need it to keep their small business community, especially the retail section, financially viable and, as I mentioned, to provide employment for at least some of their commuters.

In closing, I want to compliment the ministry and its Kitchener office, especially a chap by the name of Peter McGough, who has worked extremely hard on behalf of small communities in most of my riding. He has an office in Kitchener and, through the ministry, has done many things to assist industry.

I can mention one industry he helped to establish last year, All Treat Products in Arthur. Actually, it was an established business in another line, but last year the ministry assisted the start of a new venture producing bark chips, the pieces of bark used around flower gardens. We have them in most of the flower gardens around Queen's Park.

Until last year, most bark was imported from the United States. I believe there is something like $10 million worth of bark imported into this country. All Treat feels it will be able to replace at least 40, 50 or 60 per cent of this market.

It was the ministry's Peter McGough in Kitchener who took these people down to North Carolina and showed them the production system in that state. Through his persistent efforts, they were able to establish a similar plant in Canada in my riding of Wellington-Dufferin-Peel. That is a positive fact.

In closing, I will mention a negative fact. In my home town of Mount Forest we have a casket company, Mount Forest Caskets Ltd., which is in financial difficulties; the reason is the importation of metal caskets from the United States. The companies not only ship the products into Canada but it is my understanding they also place them in funeral parlours without cost. They financially support the undertakers in obtaining these caskets without any cost. This competition is extremely difficult for a small company to face. There is a possibility that 50 or 60 workers will lose their jobs if this small casket company goes under. It is one of few such companies left in Canada, and we should do what we can to prevent it. Again, it is a problem pertaining to imports. I am not sure what the minister can do, but I ask him to check into it and see whether there is anything that can be done before we lose another industry.

On motion by Mr. J. M. Johnson, the debate was adjourned.

The House adjourned at 1 p.m.

7 mai 1982