Journal des débats 1986-janv-21 | Assemblée législative de l'Ontario

Mr. Stevenson: I have a question of the Minister of Agriculture and Food (Mr. Riddell). There has been some confusion right from day one on the 1985 stabilization payments for cattle. Various reports are coming out of a meeting held in Middlesex last week. Did the minister say at that meeting that if cattle producers buy stocker calves, produce them up to 1,100 or 1,200 pounds and sell them, and if these calves do not go for slaughter but back out to a feedlot for in excess of 60 days, the producers who had those cattle for months get the same sort of payment as the farmers who had them for 61 days?

Hon. Mr. Riddell: They get payment based on the pounds they put on those cattle. We do not require any proof for a 900-pound heifer or a 1,000-pound steer. In other words, we consider that if they go to market at those weights, they are cattle that are destined for slaughter.

However, there may be a feedlot operator who feels he could take those cattle out of the sale and back to the feedlot and put another couple of hundred pounds on them. If he keeps a 900-pound heifer and a 1,000-pound steer for at least 60 days, then the stabilization will be based on the additional pounds he put on the animal. The feedlot operator who bought the calf and took it up to 900 pounds in the case of a heifer, or 1,000 pounds in the case of a steer, will receive the stabilization payment on the basis of the number of pounds he put on the cattle.

Mr. Stevenson: In effect, this is really not a slaughter cattle program. If the minister is allowing that sort of gain to be put on and payments for that sort of gain, whether the animal is slaughtered or not, will he explain to me why slaughter calf producers, who may have these calves around for some six months and put 400 to 600 pounds on them, and stocker growers or backgrounders, who may also be putting on considerable gain but not to the 1,000-pound mark, are not being covered when their costs of production and sales output are very similar?

[Applause]

Hon. Mr. Riddell: I am amused by all the applause from the members on that side of the House who probably do not know the difference between a heifer and a steer.

Miss Stephenson: Some of us do.

Mr. Pope: The minister should look in the mirror.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I do not think that was the question.

Hon. Mr. Riddell: I apologize for being so provocative. Had a stabilization program for backgrounder cattle been in place in 1985, it is questionable -- indeed highly unlikely -- that there would have been a retroactive payment, because those cattle would have been sold at a price that would not trigger the stabilization price. They sold at a level higher than that at which the stabilization would have come into effect. That is the reason there would be no retroactive payment on the backgrounder cattle.

At present the committee is working on a program to cover backgrounder cattle. Had there been a program in place in 1985, there would not have been a retroactive payment because of the selling price of the animals at that time.

EXTRA BILLING

Mr. Grossman: Could the Minister of Health explain to the House his failure to respond in a positive way to the offer put forward some time ago by the Ontario Medical Association to put the billing practices of physicians under complete study while a solution was found to any problems, including accessibility?

Today the OMA made its offer public. We want to ask why the government refused last fall to have an open and complete study of the billing practices of physicians, choosing instead to lob a hand grenade into the health care system.

Hon. Mr. Elston: I thank the honourable member for his question, but of course he is off the point again. There was no refusal on our part to hold a study that would deal with the entire health care system.

Under the auspices of the Premier (Mr. Peterson), certain steps were taken about which the Premier could provide more specific details. There was no refusal to include the OMA in an overall study then and there is not a refusal now; in fact, we welcome its participation in the study of the overall program. Any of its desire to work, however, was based on its precondition that no discussion would be held on extra billing, despite the legislative mandate of this party to bring forward legislation to end it.

Mr. Grossman: If the minister is so hung up on the legislative mandate of his party, we might give him an opportunity to describe why he is not going ahead with the denticare program while he goes ahead and tries to move on this legislative mandate. Perhaps he meant the New Democratic Party's legislative mandate. It does not come from the public.

2:10 p.m.

In his answer, the minister conveniently pretended that part of the arrangement, which was made public today, was that the government would agree to hold back legislation and discuss the problem with the doctors. Why is the minister shaking his head? That was the full agreement.

Mr. Speaker: Question, please.

Mr. Grossman: The request was that the minister withhold legislation and discuss the problem with the medical profession. As a result of his refusal to meet and discuss this with the doctors, the doctors in Pembroke have a problem and there are headlines in Cornwall and North Bay. The system is crumbling around him while he refuses to sit down with the medical profession to try to discuss the problem.

Mr. Speaker: Question.

Mr. Grossman: Will the minister now agree to sit down and discuss the problem instead of coming down on the patients of this province and their respected doctors?

Hon. Mr. Elston: The Leader of the Opposition has been wrong before and he is wrong again, absolutely wrong. He is totally and irreconcilably inaccurate with the factual information that is before the House and which this fellow seems to think it is his right to ignore.

Perhaps it would be easier if I allowed the Premier to give all the details of the meetings and phone calls he participated in. However, I have sat down with Dr. Moran on several occasions and I have talked with Dr. Myers. We held a get-together. The Premier talked to the Ontario Medical Association on October 4. We had a meeting of a group of people interested in such an overall health study on October 31; we had a group of consenting individuals present. The study was being set up. We had everything ready to go until the OMA withdrew the OMA person who had consented to sit on the study.

I have bent over backwards to try to negotiate with that group. I am still extending an invitation to those people to come and speak to me at any time about any aspect of the legislation. Although that person thinks he can refuse to recognize the factual details, the facts are there and they are clear. We will continue to negotiate whenever they want to see us.

The member is wrong again.

Mr. Rae: In his letter to the Premier dated January 21, which is today, Dr. Myers writes in the first paragraph, "We were pleased to hear that you recognized the public purse cannot support the full cost of health care for much longer if we are to maintain our current high standards of care."

I find that to be rather a bizarre admission by the Premier. Since the Minister of Health was present at these obviously interesting exchanges between the OMA and the Premier, perhaps he will share the thoughts of the government. What does he mean when he says the public purse cannot afford to maintain the cost of our current high standards of care?

Hon. Mr. Elston: It is difficult to understand what is actually intended by Dr. Myers's comments. I do not know; I was not present for all the comments that may have been exchanged between the Premier and Dr. Myers.

This Minister of Health and this government are committed to funding a very fine and worthwhile health care system with the public dollars we have. We have increased our spending in several areas. The commitment of the government is to continue to expand the health care facilities of this province to encourage the best possible care to be delivered to the people.

I do not know what Dr. Myers was talking about, but I can tell the member that we wanted, under the auspices of the personal invitation of the Premier, to get into a long-term study with respect to how we could improve a very good system.

Mr. Grossman: Before the minister gets carried away in believing what he is saying, let us be clear with regard to the letter. The Minister of Health is not suggesting the allegations, as he would have it, being put forward by this party are false or incorrect, because we are putting to him the statement made by the OMA, the group with which he is now joining battle.

These are not allegations we are putting forward. We are asking the minister why he refused their suggestion that he withhold the legislation and discuss with them the accessibility question.

Mr. Speaker: Minister.

Mr. Grossman: He is now saying this letter is wrong --

Mr. Speaker: Order. The member placed the question.

Mr. Grossman: Will the minister --

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: The member placed the question.

Mr. Grossman: "Will the minister" began the question.

Mr. Speaker: The member did ask the question.

Mr. Grossman: What was the question? The question has not been put. We demand our right to put questions in this House.

Mr. Speaker: With respect, I listened very carefully. There was a question regarding the letter. Will the minister please reply?

Mr. Grossman: With respect, no question was put. We have a right to face the minister with these questions. He can give us long speeches in response but we have a right to ask questions.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Order. The minister.

Hon. Mr. Elston: With respect to any allegations about what was agreed to and what was not, perhaps the best person to ask in this case is the Premier himself. This was a committee --

Some hon. members: Sit down.

Hon. Mr. Elston: Obviously, they do not really care whether or not there is an answer. It is more grandstanding. They do not care to hear the truth.

Some hon. members: Sit down.

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Hon. Mr. Elston: It is about time they asked --

Mr. Timbrell: Mr. Speaker, on a point of order: There was no question put. t submit you owe it to the Leader of the Opposition to give him the opportunity to complete a question before the minister launches into some nonsensical answer.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I gave the Leader of the Opposition ample time to place his final supplementary.

Mr. Gillies: No, you did not. You do not give us an opportunity to place questions. What kind of railroad is this?

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I feel the question was placed. The minister had an opportunity to reply. I heard a considerable amount of commotion in the House.

Some hon. members: What was the question?

Mr. Brandt: All we want is to ask a question. What is so tough about that?

Mr. Speaker: Order. I have already stated I felt the question was placed. I gave the minister the opportunity to respond. There did not seem to be the necessary co-operation to hear the response. I will call for a new question.

Mr. Grossman: I have been in this House for 10 years and only on two occasions has the Speaker refused to let an opposition party put a question. In both cases, it was this Speaker.

2:20 p.m.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Order. A new question, the Leader of the Opposition.

Mr. Grossman: I would have thought it might have been appropriate for the government House leader to rise in his place and resolve this controversy by agreeing that it might be appropriate to let one simple final supplementary be put. I am candidly disappointed that he did not --

Mr. Speaker: Order. New question, please.

Mr. Grossman: Mr. Speaker, if you continue to prevent this party from asking the questions that need to be put, if you are more comfortable with the lob shots offered by that opposition party, then our party declines the opportunity to ask questions this afternoon.

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Mr. Grossman: We will leave the House.

Hon. Mr. Bradley: This was practised in caucus.

Mr. Grossman: It was not practised; it is what he did.

Hon. Mr. Riddell: Get lost.

Mr. Speaker: Order. New question.

The members of the Progressive Conservative Party left the chamber.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: New question.

Mr. McClellan: Mr. Speaker, my suggestion is that you adjourn the House.

Hon. Mr. Nixon: The suggestion has been made that the House adjourn. It really is very unfortunate that the official opposition with six questions to ask -- two formal questions with two supplementaries in each instance -- has now made this particular spectacle of itself.

As a matter of fact, we stood down the leader's questions until the Minister of Health could be present to respond. Everything we have been able to do to make the minister and the Premier available for any questions has been done. The Speaker has ruled that a question was asked, one of six, and the official opposition has taken this particular stand.

We are prepared to respond to questions from the New Democratic Party, and we might as well proceed with the business. However, if you rule otherwise, Mr. Speaker, we are certainly at your disposal.

Mr. Speaker: The suggestion was made that I adjourn the House. Honourable members know there is nothing in the standing orders that allows me to adjourn the House. I certainly do have the authority to recess for a certain length of time. However, the time is going on for question period. I called for questions.

Mr. Rae: Mr. Speaker, on a point of order: We are in your hands, but I would suggest it ought to be possible, if there is a brief recess, for the House leaders to get together and try to sort this matter out and resolve it. We ought to be able to have a question period in which questions are asked and answers are given. I suggest it is in everybody's interest to try to resolve whatever difficulties may have arisen and for us to make our best effort to do that. We are in your hands in that regard.

Mr. Speaker: In my view, there are members here; the question period is continuing. I really do not see any reason to recess, so I think we should go on with the business.

Mr. Rae: We are ready to go, then, Mr. Speaker. I am delighted. I am not used to proceeding without being heckled from my right. Perhaps somebody in the gallery would like to accommodate us in that regard.

If I could ask my first question of the Premier very quickly: What does Dr. Myers mean when he says in his letter, "We were pleased to hear that you recognized the public purse cannot support" --

Mr. Laughren: Question; put the question.

Mr. Rae: That is what those guys say all the time. We have had it with those people.

Mr. Speaker: Question.

Mr. Rae: It is George Burns's 90th birthday this week. That might explain what has happened.

What does Dr. Myers mean when he says: "We were pleased to hear that you recognized the public purse cannot support the full cost of health care for much longer if we are to maintain our current high standards of care?" What is he talking about when he says that?

What does the Premier mean? Are views being attributed to him unfairly? The only implication I would draw from that is he now believes private-profit medicine has to be introduced into the system somehow. I would like to hear his remarks on that.

Hon. Mr. Peterson: I cannot answer why this letter came in this form. I received it at 11:30 this morning and I am currently drafting a response which will go out this afternoon.

May I respond to the question at perhaps slightly greater length than would generally be accepted in this House, because it is important? I was hoping the Leader of the Opposition would ask me the question because the letter was addressed to me, not to the Minister of Health, and for some reason he chose to cause a fuss today. However, I think it merits some kind of response in detail.

First, I have been concerned, as I am sure thoughtful members of this House on all sides have been, about the tremendous financial demands of the health care system, driven by a number of things such as an ageing population, increased and better technology, and fantastic demands for capital expenditure. Indeed, the list goes on and on of the demands for money into the system. Those things are obviously of concern as we try to reconcile them with fiscal realities over a long period.

Shortly after we assumed the administration of this province, it was my view the entire question needed a thorough review, looking at the alternatives to current institutional care, examining other methods of financing with both doctors and paraprofessionals, without any particular predetermination or conditions on what the answers would be.

To that end, I talked to a number of people who would assist the government in that thorough review. I believe we assembled some of the most knowledgeable, thoughtful people, not only in this province and country but also in the world, to assist us in that review.

In that regard, I talked to the Ontario Medical Association and asked for its participation in this review. One member of the OMA agreed to participate with us and then changed his mind shortly thereafter, I assume because he felt the politics with respect to that would be complicated. At the same time, we told the OMA, and it was clear to anyone who was watching this administration, that we said in the campaign we were going to ban extra billing and we have proceeded on that.

The OMA came back and said, "We will not participate in any discussions or review of the system unless you hold back on the bill and give up on your intention to ban extra billing." I said that was not possible. The association made that a condition of participation in any review and that is where it went. I am sorry about that, because it is still our intention to go on with a review of the system. We believe it is important and we will do that. However, we wanted the help and co-operation of the OMA.

Mr. Speaker: Order. With respect, I think that was a fairly sufficient answer.

2:30 p.m.

Mr. Rae: I want to tell the Premier about two surprise visits I made last night to two emergency departments. One was to the Humber Memorial Hospital, in the north end of my riding, and the other to the Northwestern General Hospital. I visited both these emergency rooms between the hours of 10:30 and 12 last night.

In the Humber Memorial Hospital, there were eight people in the emergency wards who, to my knowledge, are still waiting for a permanent bed. The expectation is they may be in emergency for as many as two or three days.

In the Northwestern General Hospital, there are five coronary patients who are not in the coronary care unit but who are still in the emergency ward, two of whom are attached to monitors which do not provide any readouts for physicians to see in the morning.

The Premier and I both know that one of the solutions to the problem has to do with the problem of the number of chronic care patients who are in acute care beds. It is a problem that is endemic to the entire system. What disturbs me about the letter today from Dr. Myers is it seems to indicate that the Premier's preferred solution to this problem is the injection of private sector dollars and private property dollars.

Mr. Speaker: Would the member come to the question?

Mr. Rae: Is that his solution to the problem, or is he going to address it in the proper way with respect to the health care program?

Mr. Speaker: A long question usually receives a long answer.

Hon. Mr. Peterson: I would ask the honourable member opposite not to take that particular statement or others in here as to be my views of anything. I am, in a sense, disturbed about this letter because, in my view, it misrepresents, albeit unwittingly, the realities of those discussions over a long period.

I think the member would agree with me, and he points out two examples, about the kinds of problems we are facing in the health care system. I do not want to run away from those, I want to face those squarely; I do not want to deny they exist. I want to say we have problems and any thoughtful person looking ahead will see they could become more acute. We have to address them. As the honourable member knows, there are alternatives: community-based care, others with chronic care beds, and others that would take some pressure off the system.

If the member wants to know my view of anything, let him please ask me, and not take it second-hand from any letter when we have had so many unfortunate misunderstandings along the way.

Mr. Rae: With respect, since he has raised the question, we can go into the letter at some other point if he wants to make a statement with respect to what Dr. Myers has said. His government has appointed a minister to deal with problems facing the elderly. I asked questions of the Minister of Community and Social Services (Mr. Sweeney) in December with respect to a real home care program that would marry the programs in the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Community and Social Services.

Given the severity of the problem affecting seniors who have been in hospital for a year or two years, when the only problem is they need someone to take them to the washroom and their families have left them in the hospital for that length of time because they cannot provide the care, when is he going to get moving on a home care program that will genuinely allow people to stay at home, will relieve the burden on hospitals, relieve the burden on emergency rooms, and provide the kind of acute care that Ontario ought to be able to supply?

Hon. Mr. Peterson: I say to my honourable friend that I think we understand these problems and we are moving on them.

Number one, there was an allocation for home care programs in the budget, as I understand it. My colleague tells me that it was passed by Management Board this morning and so we are moving in that particular regard. Obviously we need to do more.

Number two, my colleague the member for London North (Mr. Van Horne), who is the Minister without Portfolio with responsibility for the elderly, has consulted widely across this province. In the very near future, he will be issuing a white paper with his considerations with respect to the care of the elderly and a number of initiatives he has. We are consulting on this point.

We are prepared to deal fundamentally with these questions and we are not running away from them. The member will see, when he adds up the initiatives in total that we are taking, that this is a government of its word and a government that is not running away from problems but is facing them. To that end, I am sure he would be the first to agree there are no simple or easy solutions to a number of these problems, but we are in the process of changing those initiatives and I think we are going to be doing it successfully.

EQUAL PAY FOR WORK OF EQUAL VALUE

Ms. Gigantes: My question is also to the Premier with respect to equal pay for work of equal value in both the public and private sectors.

In view of the difficulty we have had in getting clear answers from the offices of different ministers, can he give us a commitment that the matter of public sector legislation will be before cabinet this week? Can he give us an indication of the date on which we can expect that legislation to be tabled in this Legislature?

Hon. Mr. Peterson: I wish I could give the honourable member a specific date, but I cannot. As she knows, some of these matters are before cabinet and are complicated. I can tell her that a great deal of effort has been put into these things. I do not want to say in the fullness of time, but I would say before summer solstice.

Ms. Gigantes: We are getting increasingly frustrated by the diddle-daddling on this issue. On the matter of equal pay for work of equal value in the private sector, and without reference to phases of the moon and the farmers' almanac, can the Premier tell us how he expects people in the public in Ontario to tell him their preferences for the framing of this legislation when this government has not given an indication to the public of its preferences'? It has simply thrown out a green paper with a whole host of combinations and permutations. Will he see that this government tables draft legislation before the public consultation begins?

Hon. Mr. Peterson: The answer to the honourable member is no.

Let me go back for just a moment. I hope I can persuade the member that our intention on this matter is very clear. She understands where we are coming from. She may question it. If she does, I respect her, but I say she is wrong. However, we are most anxious to consult in society with the people affected and we are anxious to get all the details right when the legislation comes in.

I know the member will be aware of how complicated this legislation can be, and I can tell her we are moving with dispatch. A great deal of effort by the ministers of this government is being deployed in that area. In the public sector I expect it fairly soon; I cannot be more precise than that. When it comes out, the member will be pleased with the result, and it will be thoughtful because we will have consulted with people.

If the member is asking me to be dictatorial; if she is asking me to make a decision such as the one that was made on the way the separate school question was approached; if she is asking me to set back the cause because of the implementation, she should not ask me to do that. We want to do it properly. We want to consult with the interested parties, and I guarantee our commitment and good results.

Ms. Gigantes: If we learned anything from the process we went through on separate schools, it is that we need draft legislation, not people out there discussing they know not what around a green paper. That is the format we have now.

Will the Premier make sure the government reveals the agenda for these public hearings so people know who will be coming to the meetings in various centres? Will he assure us that we at least get the report of the consultants, which I understand from the minister is not to be a series of recommendations but a report on what people are saying about the green paper, at the same time as it goes to cabinet, if it ever goes to cabinet?

Hon. Mr. Peterson: I am not promising the member she will see legislation before the consultation, but I will guarantee that she will get a notice of those meetings and that her views will be taken very seriously. The member has studied this issue and we would like to have her views. Then the legislation will be drawn up as soon as that consultation period is finished.

EMPLOYEE HEALTH AND SAFETY

Mr. Martel: I have a new question for the Minister of Labour (Mr. Wrye) involving the matter of two work refusals by Ontario Public Service Employees Union ambulance attendants at Thames Valley involving two-stretcher ambulances, and outstanding orders that the Ministry of Health has refused to implement since September of last year.

Is the minister aware that orders were issued to make two-stretcher ambulances safe and that they have not been complied with? Is he aware that Mr. Melinyshyn of his ministry agreed to reinspect the vehicles here in Toronto, not in London, without advising the workers and without having them involved at all? Therefore, is the minister not convinced that the Ministry of Labour, through Mr. Melinyshyn, is attempting to circumvent the orders and is violating the Occupational Health and Safety Act, for which they are responsible and which they are charged to maintain?

Hon. Mr. Wrye: I am aware that my friend from the third party held a press conference to discuss this issue. I am aware there is some public concern over it. There has been some concern from the union. I have asked my officials --

Mr. Rae: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker: Being third out of three is bad enough, but being third out of two is positively offensive.

Hon. Mr. Wrye: I suppose those members are number two, because only two of their members moved over to their right.

I have asked my officials for a full report. In getting that full report, I am sure it will be useful to have on the record the questions my friend has raised.

2:40 p.m.

I would be remiss if I sat down before saying that I think Walter Melinyshyn, the head of the industrial health and safety branch, is a first-rate individual dedicated to the health and safety of workers in the work places of Ontario. He proves that day in and day out, year in and year out. This province is lucky to have people of the kind of quality of Walter Melinyshyn.

Mr. Martel: Then he does not agree to violate the government's own act, and that is what is happening. Under the internal responsibility system, the workers are supposed to be in attendance.

Since the Ministry of Health argued with the Ministry of Labour's inspector that patients in transit have to be surveyed only if an emergency arises, and since the Ministry of Labour inspector actually bought that hook, line and sinker, can the minister tell me why, under the Ambulance Act, form 5 says, "Change in route?" and the attendants have to examine the pulse, pupils of the eyes and so on while in transit.

Mr. Speaker: Question.

Mr. Martel: That is why the workers should have been in attendance. Can he also tell me why, when the attendants are trained, they are told they have to face the patient all the time? How can they do that in the seat behind the patient when they are in the ambulance?

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Mr. Martel: Mr. Speaker, I wish you would do the same with the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Grossman). You let him ramble on all day, but you cut off those of us who try to put important questions.

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Hon. Mr. Wrye: I am sure my friend will not be surprised, since the questions he asks are very detailed, when I say I will have to get back to him. I take the question as notice and I will get back to my friend.

CHRYSLER PLANT

Mr. D. S. Cooke: In the absence of the Minister of Industry, Trade and Technology (Mr. O'Neil), I would like to ask a question of the Premier.

Is the Premier aware that in the city of Windsor there is an empty engine plant owned by Chrysler? It was closed in 1979. While this plant lies empty, all the 318 eight-cylinder engines are being imported into Canada from Mexico for Chrysler's large vans and all the four-cylinder engines are being imported by Chrysler either from Japanese auto makers or from Trenton, Michigan, for the small vans.

What is the Premier or his government prepared to do to see that Chrysler reopens that engine plant, thereby creating 1,500 jobs in Windsor?

Hon. Mr. Peterson: To be very frank, I do not have any magic solutions, but with the honourable member's prodding today, I will be happy to get in touch with Chrysler and see whether anything can be done to follow up on his idea. Obviously, if it is possible, it would be wonderful. I will see whether there are any practical impediments and get back to the member.

Mr. D. S. Cooke: The Premier may be aware that Chrysler Corp. has announced $12.5 billion worth of investment in North America but not one cent for Canada. At the same time, we import all these engines.

He may also be aware that in the negotiations between the United Auto Workers union and the company which resulted in a settlement last year, a letter of understanding was signed to set up a joint committee between the UAW and the company to see whether this plant could be reactivated.

Will the Premier directly contact the real decision-maker in this whole process, Lee Iaccoca, and see whether we can get our fair share of an investment in Ontario, in Canada, and the jobs we deserve in Windsor?

Hon. Mr. Peterson: The member will be aware that, in any circumstance in which I felt the role of government, the minister or myself could be productive with respect to the automotive industry, we have been there fighting and doing what we think is the right thing.

I cannot guarantee Mr. Iaccoca will respond. It is not this government's responsibility to monitor agreements between the union and management. That being said, I am not trying to evade my responsibility; I am saying to the member, if there is something constructive we can do with respect to Chrysler, we will be very happy to do that.

With our position in legislation and making jobs here, as the member knows, we are doing extremely well under the auto pact at the moment. There are some people who fear that if it were opened up, we could be net losers in that respect; so one has to look at the whole thing in context. At the moment, we are doing extremely well in the auto business. We have had a number of major investments.

That being said, I am prepared to talk to Chrysler. I cannot guarantee I will be talking to Mr. Iaccoca, but I will talk to the Canadian operation and if we can be helpful, we will.

SHELTERED WORKSHOPS

Mr. Allen: I have a question of the Minister of Community and Social Services. The minister is aware that there is a growing concern in the public mind concerning the earnings of disabled people in sheltered workshops. People question whether disabled people in those workshops are receiving the full amounts actually coming to them as a result of their direct economic activities there.

Does the minister recognize that under both our minimum wage legislation and the implications of the new Charter of Rights and Freedoms, each disabled person in such a workshop should be earning at least the minimum wage? What is he doing to review our current compensation packages for those workers? When will he bring in some amendments to them?

Hon. Mr. Sweeney: Both my staff and I have met with three different advocacy groups, particularly for physically handicapped people but also for developmentally handicapped people, with respect to this very issue. The point we have made to them is that we would like them to work with us in working out a scheme to distinguish the different kinds of functions that are carried out in sheltered workshops, those that are for training and those that are for alternative work.

The point that both they and we have made, however, is that we must take into consideration the other benefits that accrue to these workers. If they were to lose some of those other benefits in return for the minimum wage, they would have fewer dollars, and we do not want that to happen. The point I am referring to is that many of these workers receive family benefits and benefits under the guaranteed annual income system for the disabled. In addition, they receive Ontario health insurance plan coverage and dental, hearing and vision benefits. That total package is well in excess of the minimum wage; so the two factors have to be taken together to determine what the final economic package will be.

Mr. Allen: The minister must recognize that the fundamental philosophical problem that is not addressed by anything he has said is that these workers are forced to earn more through their disability than they are able to earn through their ability to express themselves in their daily work.

In the review of that compensation package, will the minister attempt not only to reverse that but also to make certain those workers earn by their very hands in those workshops a minimum wage?

Hon. Mr. Sweeney: Not only are we in the process of doing that, but we are also well aware it is something we have to do. We know very well we can be challenged with respect to the wages these people earn. At the same time, we want to be sure -- and when I say "we," I speak both of members of my ministry and of the staffs of the various advocacy groups -- that we do not do anything that is going to injure the present economic status of those workers. We have to keep those two factors together.

There is no doubt in our minds whatsoever that this change must take place. However, I would add that in order for a working wage to be paid, some of the workshops themselves must be sufficiently upgraded so they can be sufficiently productive to warrant that kind of wage. In other words, if they are going to be operated on a totally economic basis as opposed to an income support basis, then they must have the resources

Mr. Speaker: Order.

EMISSION DISCHARGES

Mrs. Grier: My question is for the Minister of the Environment. I am sure the minister will recall the federal government announced last March that stringent new emission standards would be in place for 1988 model cars. There are indications that the federal government is reneging on this commitment and has delayed the implementation of these new standards.

Should that occur, is the minister prepared to act unilaterally to ensure that 1988 model cars sold in Ontario are equipped with pollution control equipment that will reduce acid gas emissions to the level specified in the proposed federal regulation?

2:50 p.m.

Hon. Mr. Bradley: First of all, let me indicate I am glad the honourable member asked this question. It is good to have these notes sitting around here from time to time.

Seriously, in response to a very good question, I made representations to the federal Minister of Transport, Don Mazankowski, the day after I announced in the House the Ontario acid rain program.

In my letter I indicated my concern that if the final regulations are not published soon in the Canada Gazette, Part II, the automobile companies would have a case for not implementing the standards for the 1988 model year and such a delay would be a major embarrassment to Canada in future acid rain discussions with the United States. I said I trusted he would make every effort to ensure the final regulations would appear in the Canada Gazette, Part II as soon as possible.

I made our position clear to the minister, that we wish to see the federal government stick to its guns in this matter. I have heard rumours that there may be some problems arising in this regard, but I have seen no concrete evidence from the federal government indicating that is the case.

I can assure the member I will make every effort to convince the federal minister he should take this action across Canada. In regard to her specific question about Ontario, I am not certain whether we have the legal right to do so within one province.

Mrs. Grier: The minister is getting very good at repeating my question to me in historical form, but he is evading the question I actually put to him.

Will the minister follow the lead of Quebec, which obviously has the power and which has prohibited the removal of pollution control devices, by imposing very major fines on people who tamper with those devices? In that way, even if there is not federal action, there would be greater protection for the people of Ontario.

Hon. Mr. Bradley: Although I have been the Minister of the Environment for a mere seven months and cannot yet claim to know all the intricacies of the ministry -- it will take some time for that, I am sure -- I think that under one of the Ontario environment acts, people are prohibited from removing the devices in this province. In fact, we do prosecute.

For instance, I believe we were involved in a case in Kingston, where an individual was charged for tampering with the pollution abatement equipment on the car. We do have that provision in Ontario. I assure the member that through our enforcement branch, this province intends to prosecute on every occasion where we find people tampering with this equipment.

I also assure the member that the full weight of the province will attempt to convince the federal minister not to relent in this matter.

ONTARIO INSTITUTE FOR STUDIES IN EDUCATION

Ms. Bryden: Last Thursday, the Treasurer expressed his conviction that the proposed transfer of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education to the University of Toronto would benefit both OISE and the faculty of education of the University of Toronto and enable them both to deliver enhanced programs.

In the light of OISE's concern placed before the standing committee on resources development last Wednesday that it has no assurance from Dr. Connell, the president of the University of Toronto, that there would be no cuts in its budget under the proposal, will the Treasurer consider a more likely possibility of achieving the same benefits as he expects from the transfer by enabling OISE to become a degree-granting provincial institution --

Mr. Speaker: Order. I think the question has been placed.

Ms. Bryden: -- which would provide different training --

Mr. Speaker: We have been through this once already today.

Hon. Mr. Nixon: At this time, I do not think the government has plans to elevate OISE to the status of a degree-granting institution, but I do want to say a bit more about the preamble to the honourable member's question. It is based on the premise I put forward that both institutions would benefit from an amalgamation.

The member has already indicated OISE does not have degree-granting power, but depends upon the University of Toronto to grant degrees. This is a power that in the past has been renegotiated on a three-year cycle. It is coming up for renegotiation now. I trust the approval of the University of Toronto to continue granting degrees will be forthcoming.

If you will permit me, Mr. Speaker, I would say there are those people whose judgement is that the academic status of the education faculty of the University of Toronto is not exactly world-class. I am a graduate of it myself; I throw that out for the member's judgement.

OISE does have a substantial reputation in this regard, and the University of Toronto would heartily benefit if it became part of that university. At the same time, it would have the proper and approved degree-granting privileges that the university has established over many years, together with a strong reputation for autonomy. I believe both would benefit in that instance.

Ms. Bryden: I remind the Treasurer that the present negotiations appear to be at a complete stalemate. We were told in this committee that OISE feels it has no bargaining power because it has no degree-granting rights and that therefore some other means must be found to bring the two agencies together. I point out to the Treasurer --

Mr. Speaker: By way of a question, I hope.

Ms. Bryden: Is the Treasurer aware that he may have considerable difficulty getting legislation in this House to disestablish OISE under the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education Act? Will he consider this alternative?

Hon. Mr. Nixon: If the question is whether I am aware that I would have considerable difficulty getting House approval, the answer is yes. If I had been better prepared for these special circumstances, I might have acted accordingly. However, even in these rather trying circumstances, I hope the University of Toronto will see its way clear to continue its degree-granting favours, if I may use that word, in connection with OISE, and I have no reason to believe it will not.

YOUNG OFFENDERS

Mr. Wildman: I have a question for the Solicitor General if he will return to his seat. I realize there is quite a choice of seating today, but I notice he stayed on that side.

Is the minister aware that four youths were incarcerated last month with adults in the Sault Ste. Marie Jail? If he is aware of that, will he explain why this apparent violation of the Young Offenders Act is being permitted by his ministry?

Hon. Mr. Keyes: Yes, I was aware they were there. It is on a very short-term basis. We are making arrangements to try to declare a portion --

Mr. McClellan: A short-term violation; is that what he is saying?

Hon. Mr. Keyes: One day or two days.

Mr. McClellan: Is that all right?

Hon. Mr. Keyes: We are looking at designating a portion of the jail as a holding unit for young offenders, which it is in our authority to do.

Mr. Morin-Strom: On the same issue, beyond the fact that they are together in the same jail, is the minister aware that young offenders have been sharing interconnecting cells with adult inmates in that jail and that for 16 to 18 hours a day the cell doors are open and unlocked between the cells housing adult inmates and young offenders? Is he aware that there is complete access between the young offenders and the adult inmates in that jail? Could the minister not have at least insisted that contact between young offenders and adult inmates be prevented in that jail?

Hon. Mr. Keyes: I will be glad to report back to the members with a full report as to the exact situation. To my knowledge, there is no physical communication between them at this time.

FUTURES PROGRAM

Mr. Warner: This rotation system works well. I have a question for the Minister of Skills Development. I appreciate why he has been so defensive the last little while when questions have been put to him about the Futures program. On what grounds can he defend not allowing the co-operative effort between employers and employees to adopt a pre-apprenticeship program in the area of carpentry and other related skills, so that employers can pay the difference between the minimum wage and the going rate in the trade?

3 p.m.

Hon. Mr. Sorbara: This was one of the matters we dealt with to some extent yesterday. I simply correct my friend in his understanding of what the Futures program is about. I said yesterday on a related question that the Futures program is not designed to assist employers with subsidizing the wages of employees they need.

The important thrust of the program is to create new employment situations, characterized by their training component, to train young people so that through their experience in Futures they can be led towards permanent employment. There are a number of young people in the program who are learning carpentry skills. There is an effective apprenticeship program in the province which receives financial assistance in a number of ways through the Ministry of Skills Development.

We have made a decision based on a clientele, that is, the hard-to-employ young people and their needs, not to create a wage subsidy program. That is in no way a fault of the program; that is one of the benefits of it. By and large, the employers we talk to are happy about that aspect of the program because the important point is not to take away jobs from people who would otherwise be placed, but to create new employment opportunities.

Mr. Warner: We are not talking about a wage supplement program. What I am talking about, very directly, is why the minister appears determined to undermine collective agreements which have been in place for a long time. Why is he willing to run this risk of undermining the collective agreements which exist now?

Hon. Mr. Sorbara: There is no intention and no effect with respect to collective agreements. It is a premise with each employer that in accepting a Futures placement he is not taking away a position he would otherwise fill from the active labour force.

URBAN TRANSPORTATION DEVELOPMENT CORP.

Mr. Foulds: In the absence of the Tory party, I would like to put a question to the Premier. In view of the brief presented to him last week by United Auto Workers Local 1075 of Kingston, and in view of a letter which I believe was hand-delivered to his office today from that local, would he give serious consideration to stopping the sale of the Urban Transportation Development Corp.?

Hon. Mr. Peterson: I did meet with the UAW representatives. The brief last week was a very general one saying they were concerned about jobs, which I understand, as I am as well. I have not received a letter today from the UAW. I will look for it, but I have no signal from my staff that they have received it either. I will look for it. Can the member enlighten me about what it says?

Mr. Foulds: I will send you a copy.

Hon. Mr. Peterson: Would you? Why is it the UAW always writes you before it writes me? Answer me that.

ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS IN ORDERS AND NOTICES

Ms. E. J. Smith: I wish to table the answer to question 106 in Orders and Notices.

[Later]

Hon. Mr. Nixon: I wish to table the answers to questions 121, 124, 149 and 173 in Orders and Notices.

[See Hansard for Friday, January 24, 1986].

MOTION

PRIVATE MEMBERS' PUBLIC BUSINESS

Hon. Mr. Nixon moved that private members' ballot item 13 in the name of the member for Prescott-Russell (Mr. Poirier) not be taken up on Thursday, January 23, 1986, the said ballot item to be deferred until immediately following ballot item 21; that all members of the Liberal caucus listed thereafter be deferred one place in the order of precedence, and that any questions on ballot item 14 in the name of the member for Carleton-Grenville (Mr. Sterling) be deferred until 5:50 p.m. on Thursday, January 23, 1986.

Hon. Mr. Nixon: The dislocation has to do with responsibilities on the part of the member for Prescott-Russell in representing the Legislature along with members in other parties at a very important meeting of the francophone parliamentary association, which we all support.

I would also like to point out that during that remaining period of time the House will proceed with the debate on extra billing.

Motion agreed to.

ORDERS OF THE DAY

ESTIMATES, MINISTRY OF MUNICIPAL AFFAIRS

Hon. Mr. Nixon moved, seconded by Hon. Mr. Conway, resolution 15:

That the following vote and item of the 1985-86 estimates for the resources development policy program (Niagara Escarpment Commission) be considered as part of the estimates of the Ministry of Municipal Affairs, the said vote and item to be considered by the standing committee on resources development within the time allocated for the estimates of the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and to be included with the order for concurrence in supply for the said ministry:

Vote 2001, resources development policy program; item 3, Niagara Escarpment Commission, 1985-86 estimates, $1,531,700; amount to be voted, $1,531,700.

Hon. Mr. Nixon: May I just say there are two notices of motion. The next I will place in a moment, with your permission, Mr. Speaker, but this is to adjust the allocation of certain funds in the estimates, which is necessitated by a change in the ministerial responsibility for defending these estimates. These matters will come before the appropriate committee for estimates discussion.

Mr. Sterling: I presume the Treasurer is referring to the resources development policy program when he notes the Niagara Escarpment Commission. Could the Treasurer indicate whether that is for the full fiscal year of 1985-86, and does it include the capital contribution as well -- I believe it is $2.5 million -- which was being made for the purchase of land by the Ontario Heritage Foundation?

Hon. Mr. Nixon: The allocation that will be discussed is the same as the general estimate that was tabled back in July. These are the estimates we inherited unchanged from the previous administration. If there are any supplementary estimates associated with the Niagara Escarpment Commission, they will be put before the committee at the same time. Frankly, I am not sure whether there are or not. They would all be debated at the same time.

Motion agreed to.

ESTIMATES, CABINET OFFICE

Hon. Mr. Nixon moved, seconded by Hon. Mr. Conway, resolution 16:

That the following vote and items of the 1985-86 estimates for the francophone affairs program, forming part of the estimates of Cabinet Office, be considered for two hours 30 minutes in the standing committee on resources development following completion of the estimates of the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Technology:

Vote 302, francophone affairs program: item I , francophone affairs co-ordination, $1, 864,400; item 2, Council for Franco-Ontarian Affairs, $402,700; less special warrant, $200,000; amount to be voted, $2,067,100.

Hon. Mr. Nixon: This deals with the office of francophone affairs and the adjustment here will ensure that appropriate opportunity for members to participate is forthcoming.

Motion agreed to.

PUBLIC SERVICE SUPERANNUATION AMENDMENT ACT

Hon. Ms. Caplan moved second reading of Bill 76, An Act to amend the Public Service Superannuation Act.

Mr. Speaker: Does the minister have any opening comments?

Hon. Ms. Caplan: I would just notify the House that this matter was discussed at the Board of Internal Economy. What it will do is treat the staff of the members who are Legislative Assembly staff the same as those who are ministry staff and allow them to contribute to the public service pension fund. This will result in administrative savings of approximately $25,000 annually. The benefits are consistent and similar. It was the recommendation of the Board of Internal Economy that this happen.

During third reading, clause by clause, I will have two amendments to propose. I can explain the purpose of these. Is it appropriate to read them in now?

Mr. Speaker: The appropriate time is during committee of the whole House.

Miss Stephenson: It would be helpful if the general purpose of the amendments were a part of the minister's original presentation at this point.

3:10 p.m.

Hon. Ms. Caplan: Perhaps I can let the members know what the amendments will be. It was originally assumed when the bill was drafted that regulations would allow the caucus employees who are not crown employees to make these contributions. I understand from the legislative drafters it is not possible to do this by regulation and therefore an amendment to the bill is required.

I will read the explanation for the member. Caucus employees are not crown employees in the same way as other contributors to the public service superannuation fund. Our legal adviser therefore felt it would be preferable to provide explicitly in the act for the transfer of funds from the caucus employees' retirement plan, known as CERP, now managed by the Ontario municipal employees retirement system, and for the payment to existing pensioners.

For crown employees, the authority for the transfer of funds already exists. There are currently 188 contributors to the caucus employees' plan and eight pensioners. This would allow that to happen explicitly in the legislation, rather than attempting to do it by regulation, which is not permitted. Should there be a question regarding the effective date, the agreement with the board of OMERS requires 90 days' notice by order in council. It is anticipated the effective date of transfer will be May 1, 1986. This will be implicit in the legislation as well.

Mr. Speaker: For the benefit of the members, I refer to standing order 58, which says, "When time permits, amendments proposed to be moved to bills in any committee shall be filed with the Clerk of the House at least two hours before the bill is to be considered, and copies of such proposed amendments shall be distributed to all parties."

Mr. Philip: They were distributed to all parties.

Hon. Ms. Caplan: I believe they were distributed.

Mr. Speaker: I just draw it to the member's attention.

Miss Stephenson: Mr. Speaker, I am interested you should clarify the requirements of the House. I regret I did not receive a copy of any proposed amendments at any time. I still do not have them and I would like to see them.

This amendment to the Public Service Superannuation Act is one we can support with enthusiasm because it tends to bring into the ambit of public service superannuation all the people who work within Queen's Park.

One of the questions I would pose to the minister, and I am not clear about this at this point, is whether individuals who are contracted through the legislative office, but who work for members of the caucuses in their constituency offices outside Queen's Park, are covered by this legislation, and whether the principle of reasonable superannuation benefits for permanent part-time employees has been considered as part of this legislation and will become an integral part of the proposal or development that is being pursued. If this is not required to be part of the act itself, would that kind of modification be seen within the regulations? What are the definitions of "permanent part-time"?

The principle of expanding the Public Service Superannuation Act to encompass everyone who works legitimately within this area is entirely right and my party will support it. We believe there are two or three small addendal areas, if you like, that should probably be looked at.

The commitment we have had to coverage for superannuation benefit purposes of permanent part-time employees is one we think is particularly important, since a large number of new jobs in the future, and even right now, will be permanent part-time to provide young women with greater flexibility to work appropriately at their career development while raising their families. That area of activity should receive the benefit of superannuation if it can be included in this act. We strongly recommend that it be included at this time as an amendment. If it does not need to be included as an amendment to the act, I would like to know whether it can be done by regulation and whether we can move in that direction.

Otherwise, I am happy to inform the minister that we will support the legislation, and I believe support the intent of the amendments I now have before me.

Mr. Philip: We received the amendments through our House leader. I believe they were distributed that way. I appreciate that the minister did send them.

We will support the bill. In 1977, when the cabinet made the decision not to allow caucus or political staff to be included, some arguments were made that caucus staff salaries were not public and that the caucus did not follow civil service guidelines.

Those arguments can no longer be made. It makes some sense at the present time and in fairness also. In the case of some of the caucus staffs, there has been the problem over the years that some of the benefits that were obtained by other public servants would follow to the caucus a few months or even a year or more later. This gives them all the benefit of that kind of thing happening at the same time.

I have read through the amendments and I see absolutely nothing to object to in them; they are plain housekeeping amendments. Therefore, we will support both the bill and the amendments.

The Deputy Speaker: Does any other honourable member wish to participate in the debate? If not, then this will close the debate.

Hon. Ms. Caplan: I would ask that the bill be ordered for third reading.

The Deputy Speaker: You have no further comments to make upon second reading?

Hon. Ms. Caplan: Yes. The comments I will make are in response to the questions from the member for York Mills (Miss Stephenson). All part-time employees are covered, as are all staff paid with the moneys appropriated through the Legislature. What this does is to rationalize that which is available to all the staff of all the members of the House. It is my understanding it will not be necessary to have an amendment to achieve that.

Miss Stephenson: May I ask a question? I am concerned about that response.

The Deputy Speaker: No, I am sorry. The debate is completed.

Motion agreed to.

Bill ordered for committee of the whole House.

House in committee of the whole.

PUBLIC SERVICE SUPERANNUATION AMENDMENT ACT

Consideration of Bill 76, An Act to amend the Public Service Superannuation Act.

The Acting Chairman (Mr. McKessock): The minister has an amendment to section 2.

Miss Stephenson: Before we get to section 1, may I ask the minister to clarify her statement that all part-time employees are covered by the Public Service Superannuation Act? Can we please have a precise definition of "part-time" and "all"? Is she talking about temporary part-time employees, those who are employed by GO Temp, who work --

Hon. Ms. Caplan: No.

Miss Stephenson: Okay. That is the kind of thing I wanted to know.

Hon. Ms. Caplan: No. This applies to all the people who are regular employees employed by the members on their staff out of the appropriation from the Legislature.

Miss Stephenson: Permanent part-time?

Hon. Ms. Caplan: Permanent part-time employees are covered. It is important to be clear that it is anyone with whom one signs a contract for regular hours who is considered to be in one's employ under the global allowance given to a member by this Legislature and the Board of Internal Economy.

3:20 p.m.

Miss Stephenson: Under the rules or regulations related to this, is there a minimum hourly requirement per week to qualify for superannuation for part-time employees?

Hon. Ms. Caplan: If the member will give me a moment, I will check whether there is a minimum requirement.

The part-time provisions are defined by the Public Service Superannuation Act as one third of regular time. That is the definition contained in the act and anyone who would qualify under that definition would be eligible.

Section I agreed to.

Mr. Chairman: Hon. Ms. Caplan moves that the bill be amended by adding thereto the following section:

"2. The Board of Internal Economy of the Legislative Assembly, the minister and the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement Board may by agreement,

"(a) transfer all funds and other assets of the caucus employees retirement plan and the caucus retirement Superannuation adjustment fund account to the public service superannuation fund and the public service superannuation adjustment fund, respectively; and

"(b) transfer all credits of contributors and retired contributors in the caucus employees retirement plan and the caucus employees superannuation adjustment fund account to the public service superannuation fund and the public service superannuation adjustment fund, respectively."

Hon. Ms. Caplan further moves that sections 2 and 3 of the bill, as printed, be renumbered sections 3 and 4.

Motion agreed to.

Section 2, as amended, agreed to.

Sections 3 and 4, as renumbered, agreed to. Bill, as amended, ordered to be reported.

On motion by Hon. Ms. Caplan, the committee of the whole House reported one bill with a certain amendment.

EDUCATION AMENDMENT ACT

Hon. Mr. Conway moved second reading of Bill 75, An Act to amend the Education Act.

Hon. Mr. Conway: Very briefly, this is the so-called French governance legislation, more properly known as the minority-language governance for education. My honourable colleagues, particularly the two spokesmen for the opposition, have been very involved and very helpful in the process that has led the new minister and the new government to the introduction of Bill 75.

As the House will know, in mid-June the previous administration introduced its own legislation, Bill 28, which I withdrew early in July on the basis that we felt it could be improved upon.

We have spent a lot of time during the past number of weeks and months working very carefully with the education community in general and very specifically with the provincial associations representing the francophone community. They have been very supportive and helpful as we tried to the very best of our ability to develop this policy, taking into account not only the desire of this government and of this Legislature to provide for the best possible governance for minority-language education in the province but also the very considerable regional variation that is to be found in Ontario.

I am very pleased and proud to move second reading of Bill 75 today, which legislation provides for the francophone community in this province more specifically, although not entirely, guaranteed representation with exclusive jurisdiction in the area of education for schools and classes.

I very much look forward to the contributions of my colleagues, who I know have been thinking about and examining the legislation at hand.

Mr. Davis: First of all, I rise to commend the Minister of Education (Mr. Conway) for taking action as quickly as he indicated he would in response to the concerns of the francophone community across this province and to inform him that we certainly will support his recommendation. As I understand it, he is going to have the bill go to committee for public hearings and for an opportunity for various representatives of the education community, both in the francophone community and in the nonfrancophone community, to come forth and comment on the various aspects of the legislation.

Some of the areas of the legislation, as I will point out in a few moments, seem to have created some concern in people's minds, and it is important that they have an opportunity to come before the standing committee on social development to articulate their concerns and to see whether we can make amendments that will respond to the concerns they have been bringing before us.

It is with interest that I took the opportunity to read through a variety of data that had to do with this piece of legislation. I began with Bill 28 and then moved to Bill 160, which was the first piece of legislation introduced by the previous government in respect to meeting the needs of the francophone community in this province so they would have jurisdiction and control over the delivery of their education program and would have a real and important contribution to make, not one in which they felt they lacked the power really to take initiative in and have direction over their own education policies.

I then read the education green paper that was produced by Dr. Fisher under the then Minister of Education, the member for York Mills (Miss Stephenson). I spent a lot of hours reviewing and considering the report that dealt with the Ottawa-Carleton Review Commission. It also had to do with the alternatives for the organization of the boards of education in the Ottawa-Carleton area in respect to providing some kind of formula or format so the francophone community in that area could have its own education system, its own board of education. I will comment on that in a few moments.

3:30 p.m.

I then spent some time reading the report of the Joint Committee on the Governance of French-Language Elementary and Secondary Schools, which was produced in April 1982, and I reflected upon many of the suggestions and recommendations proposed in that area.

It was interesting to find that enumeration of the electorate for the francophone community is still a problem and has not been addressed by any level of government. There has been no attempt to identify those residents in Ontario who would qualify under the legislation as members of the francophone community and who would therefore have certain rights with respect to the election of their representation.

I read the final report -- the proposal in response to the report of the Joint Committee on the Governance of French-Language Elementary and Secondary Schools -- and then the final report which was put together in February 1984.

I was pleased to see the present Minister of Education, rather than going off on a tangent and responding to the various concerns that I am sure were presented to him, must have spent the same number of hours as I did, or at least he must have skimmed through those briefs, to have some command of the information to take a hard look at it. He used the data supplied under the legislation known as Bill 28, the majority of that bill, to formulate his new Bill 75, to provide the francophone community an opportunity for governance of its own educational system.

There are a number of concerns with this piece of legislation, simply because it is new and innovative and it seems to be, in the eyes of some people in this province, one more step in the fracturing of the educational system and the educational family.

I would briefly like to spend some time raising some of the concerns that have been brought to my attention as the Education critic for the Progressive Conservative Party, to place those on the record so that as we go forth to the public debates we can try to address those concerns.

The French-language advisory committee has changed dramatically. If a board purchases a French-language education from another board and 10 or more qualified electors so request it, that board must establish a French-language advisory committee.

For the first time, this applies to both jurisdictions -- the separate school and public school boards. Of course, there is the definition of the qualifications of a person to sit on that advisory committee.

One of the interesting functions or focuses of this new piece of legislation dealing with FLAC is the new role of the chairman of the advisory committee. He or she will now have the right to sit on the public board, to make recommendations and to speak to those recommendations as they affect the francophone community, but if that person is not a trustee, he or she has no voting rights.

One of the concerns we have with that piece of information or suggestion is that if a board is purchasing French-language services from another board, it has been brought to my attention that we must try to define the role of the FLAC chairman when he or she sits as a nonvoting member on a board that is purchasing the French-language component from another board.

As members are aware, when a board purchases services from another board, it loses any jurisdiction to suggest or direct the other board in the delivery of those services. When we examine that, one wonders what role the FLAC chairman will play on the board that is purchasing the service. Would it not be more effective if that member of the FLAC committee sat on the board that is selling the service, so he could provide some protection and concern for the students of that educational jurisdiction where the services are being purchased?

I suggest it will provide some difficulty in the beginning for the public board to have someone sitting there who has no voting rights but is commenting on a certain aspect of education. However, it is not much different from what happens now with separate school trustees, who in the past have been able to speak, and in fact still do, on the elementary sections although they do not have voting privileges.

It is important that a French-language advisory committee must be established in any jurisdiction in this province where a board purchases French-language education if 10 or more qualified electors request it. It is only right and fair that the cultural rights and heritage that are so important to the francophone community be protected within the educational system.

To have some sense of a guarantee of that protection and some sense of ownership, it is imperative that there be representatives who can articulate their concerns about the delivery of the services and the educational program afforded to their students, to ensure that they receive grounding and knowledge in the historical significance of the contributions the francophone community has made to this country and to the world, and at the same time have the opportunity to be exposed, in their own school setting, to that which is unique in respect to the culture of the francophone community.

A new area introduced in this bill is the French-language section. The new piece of legislation states that a French-language section must be established if a board operates a French-language instructional unit, if it purchases French-language education for 300 or more of its pupils, and if it purchases French-language education for 10 per cent or more of its pupils. It applies to both separate school and public school jurisdictions in this province.

It is important that this legislation state, as it does, that the qualification requirements are the same as for a trustee of the board. In addition, the select members must have rights under section 23 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

In this section of the legislation, the members of the selection have exclusive jurisdiction over matters clearly identified in the bill. This legislation will come into effect for the 1988 regular elections.

One of the concerns being raised has to do with what I like to phrase as quasi elections that are going to occur next September. Somehow we have to provide representation for the francophone community on the boards, and there does not seem to be any other process by which we can afford the francophone community the opportunity at the beginning of a new academic year this coming September to have some jurisdiction in the delivery of educational programs.

A concern has been articulated by various phone calls to myself and my colleagues in the House, and I am sure representations have been made to the Minister of Education, in respect to how that is to come into play. By myself, or in consultation, I have not been able to arrive at a more appropriate mechanism to assure the francophone community of that kind of opportunity and right.

3:40 p.m.

However, I point out it is an area of concern in that trustees are usually elected. There seems to be a distinct process in the election. There is a period of time during which it is done. There is a problem of identifying the francophone electorate in a particular jurisdiction. So that part of the legislation has a number of problems. We hope to resolve them in the committee with some kind of full debate.

Section 4 of the legislation deals with the qualifications of members of the French-language advisory committee and the French-language education councils. It talks about certain aspects of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, including the right to have children educated in the French language in Ontario with regard to subsection 23(3).

Two areas of concern have been brought to our attention, and we would like some clarification on them, because this point is not specific in the bill. Do parents of French-immersion pupils fall within subsection 23(2) of the definition of citizens who have minority-language educational rights? If the answer is no, it is very simple and the minister can make that statement at the appropriate opportunity when this piece of legislation is placed on the docket of the standing committee which will deal with it.

If they do have those rights, then I hope the minister will take the opportunity to explain how this piece of legislation will deal with the parents of French-immersion pupils. That would place other onerous responsibilities on boards of education throughout this province. It would provide an opportunity for those parents, as I understand the process of elections, to have two votes: one for their public trustee, to which they are entitled because they are public ratepayers whose children happen to be taking French immersion instruction, and, at the same time, one for a francophone trustee to represent and protect language rights.

The other concern that has arisen in my deliberations on this legislation is a question which again revolves around French-immersion classes. Do they fall within the definition of a French-language instructional unit, under subsection 258(2) of the Education Act? If a school board decides to implement French-immersion classes in response to the concerns of its electorate, as some have across this province, will that board be required by the new legislation to establish a French-language section, understanding the present delivery of French-immersion programs, the selection of staff and the creation of a French-immersion school in its own building in some jurisdictions? If that is applicable, it will create a great concern and many difficulties for public and separate school boards across this province.

As we go through the French-language section, we find trustees have exclusive areas of jurisdiction. As I read the new legislation in comparison with Bill 160 and Bill 28, the green paper and the final report, there is not much difference between those areas of jurisdiction.

The trustees who are on the French-language education councils or sections will have jurisdiction for the planning, establishment, administration and closing of French-language instructional units and will have responsibility for the submission of capital forecasts for such units to the local public boards. They will have responsibility for the recruitment and the assignment of teachers, administration, administrative and supervisory personnel for the French-language schools and classes.

I suggest that is a deviation from the norm. I assume the intent of this bill is that those teachers would be part of the total complement that is arrived at through the process of collective negotiations, that those teachers would be a line in a teaching formula which says that in response to the French-language section, the number of students will generate X teachers, and those teachers will be a protected section in the negotiating process.

If not, are they on top of the process of negotiating a collective agreement? If they are above the process of a negotiated agreement, who does the negotiation? Is the negotiation done by the public boards and their administration, or is it done by the members or the trustees representing francophone students?

This is a fairly important aspect of history in this province. It seems to me we may not have a quorum.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Morin) ordered the bells rung.

3:51 p.m.

Mr. Davis: It is refreshing to see that my colleagues have gathered to hear this debate and these words on francophone education in the province.

I was talking about the process of negotiation for the recruitment and assignment of teachers. I assume that at some point the minister will clarify it for us so we are aware whether the recruitment or hiring of these teachers is part and parcel of the public- or separate-board negotiating process, or whether he means the French-language sections or French-language education councils will have jurisdiction to hire their own staff outside the collective agreements.

Several years ago, a board of education not far west of here, one with which I am familiar, made a very conscious effort to state that it would provide for lowering the French-immersion program down to the primary grades for the students of that local jurisdiction. To do that, we wanted to ensure we had qualified teachers who were aware and had the capability of delivering good education in French, and who had some understanding and awareness of the culture and contributions of francophones to this province and to this country.

To that end, we made a deliberate recommendation in our hiring policies by saying that when other teachers were being terminated because of declining enrolment, we would protect any teacher who was prepared to spend time specifically in the instruction of French as a second language. I assume this is what the minister has in mind, and that boards across this province will have some mechanism in their collective bargaining process that will recognize the specific needs of the francophone community in each jurisdiction, will ensure they have adequate teachers to deliver the programs and will ensure they have the opportunity to select their own supervising personnel within the total package of the negotiating process.

My party and I believe it is important that the francophone community has the opportunity and the right to plan, establish, maintain and implement its own programs across this province. We believe it is imperative because they will then be more aware of the cultural identities they wish to convey and pass on in the socializing process of the students. They are aware of the

historical significance the young people will find will enrich their lives, and I think it will provide the kind of quality of education that is imperative and has been imperative in the history of education in this province for all students.

I note that the remaining francophone trustees, when they move into other areas, will have certain jurisdictions except in some defined areas where they do not have jurisdiction. What the bill says is that common areas of jurisdiction are referred to in the bill as centralized services. In general, the centralized services are those areas of concern not included in the areas of exclusive jurisdiction. Resolutions concerning the common areas may be moved, seconded and voted upon by any trustees.

As I recall Bill 28, I believe it was a little more definitive in the areas of what they had decided was common to both jurisdictions and the areas in which the francophone trustees would have little or no jurisdiction since they fell within the realm of the public school boards.

I would like to make a few comments on section 277(1) of Bill 28, because I think it has implications for Bill 75. The planning and establishment of elementary schools is one area where there is no overlap. The administration and the closing of elementary schools, again, is an area where there is no overlap, nor is there an overlap in the planning, establishment, and implementation and maintenance of programs that are exclusively within the mandate of the public and separate school boards' jurisdiction.

They talk about the recruitment and assignment of teachers, and I think it is only fair, just and right for the public boards to have that prerogative solely in their own backyards, so to speak. The planning and establishment of the secondary schools across this province, both public and separate, is still within the mandate of the elected trustees of those two jurisdictions, and the ongoing maintenance of their own programs.

In the common areas in respect of all other matters, any additional member of the board of education has the same powers, duties, rights and responsibilities that a member elected by the public school electorate has as a member of the public school boards. They are the same kinds of areas that Bill 75 affords the francophone trustees. They have an opportunity to comment upon the budget of the school boards, expressly to protect their own financial aspects of that budget. They have an opportunity to talk about the purchase of land for the buildings.

That is one area which will have to be debated to some degree in committee as there has been some concern from school boards trying to understand the rationale of having trustees, who are elected by a small segment of the electorate, moving into areas which many of the board people believe might be perceived as an infringement upon their rights.

That is an area that will have to be discussed and we will have to make every effort to put to rest those concerns as we deal with this legislation.

4 p.m.

One of the difficulties that exists in this legislation is that I do not believe the minister and his staff have fully taken into account the impact that this bill will have when it is combined with Bill 30. It is possible, in a wide perspective across this province, that in certain jurisdictions there could be four separate educational entities being charged to run their own facilities.

There would be the public school board, the separate school board and the francophone school jurisdictions. We can see this problem in an area such as Kapuskasing where there would be public and separate boards but only one secondary school. As the discussions go on, I will be interested in hearing how the minister intends to deal with those kinds of unique situations which will be developing across this province.

A prime example has already come forth in this session of the Legislature. In the Prescott-Russell situation, there are six high schools. The question that will have to be worked out as we begin to deal with this piece of legislation is, will they be split on linguistic lines?

I was pleased to see the minister has suggested, if not within the bill itself certainly in his words, the creation of a homogeneous francophone board in Ottawa. I would have been much more interested if the minister had shared with us his thinking on the establishment of the homogeneous board in Ottawa-Carleton. It is one thing to stand before this House and state he is going to create such a board. However, he offers no solution to that.

I assume he has read the green paper and I assume he has read the proposal response, the report of the joint committee on the governance of French-language elementary and secondary schools, as he looks at the francophone problem in Ottawa-Carleton. There are questions on which we would like him to comment and would certainly like articulated and debated in the standing committee. Is he intending to create five boards in Ottawa-Carleton? Is he intending to create three boards there?

If he is going to establish a task force, it would be appropriate if he would articulate the kind of framework in which he would like it to operate. I humbly suggest to him that he re-read the green paper, which offers a number of suggestions to deal with that concern in the Ottawa-Carleton area.

I further suggest, which is not stated in the bill nor have I heard the minister say it, that we not only try to provide the homogeneous francophone board in Ottawa-Carleton, but also look at that as a prototype, as one model that may or may not be applicable to other jurisdictions across this province where there is a need and the kind of quantitative persons and area, because I know there are areas which will create geographical problems in respect to transportation and delivery of services. A number of models may be developed out of Ottawa-Carleton so that homogeneous boards may be created in other areas of this province where there are large francophone communities.

I applaud the minister for recognizing the Metropolitan Toronto area is unique and that in order to address the concern of francophone education in Toronto, we are going to have to develop a model. If I understood his working proposal, it was suggested we look at it.

I urge the minister to create some committee to study that. In Metropolitan Toronto, one needs to move almost as rapidly as they are doing in the Ottawa-Carleton area, before there is a duplication of facilities within both the separate and public school jurisdictions as they try to meet the needs of a francophone community and before the local geographical areas attempt to respond to their own francophone communities by establishing their own schools.

The uniqueness of the Metro area will call for some kind of opportunity for the educational family to sit down and develop a model which meets the needs of the francophone community in this jurisdiction. There are several options open. No matter which option is looked at, one concern will certainly be the transportation of students to a central location.

As we go through the process and begin to examine the impact of this legislation on boards across the province, we find there are many positive aspects to this bill. However, there are some areas which will still need to be resolved and debated.

My colleagues and I applaud the opportunity the minister has afforded the electorate of Ontario and members of the educational family, those being the Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation, the Ontario English Catholic Teachers' Association, separate and public provincial trustees, parents and students.

I am especially intrigued that whenever we begin to talk about education in this province and whenever we begin to examine some aspects of other educational programs, the one group we never seem to consult is the students. Somehow there seems to be a concept that students are not able to articulate what they believe should be delivered within the classroom and what programs they should be receiving.

As we toured the province discussing Bill 30, we were most moved by the articulation and concise statements of young people appearing before us on both sides of the question. Whenever we create opportunity

Mr. Haggerty: What a change after 42 years.

Mr. Davis: I want to say to my learned friend that his government, when it was on this side in opposition, never said students should be involved. This has occurred only since some new blood came into this assembly, new blood which understands a little about education and has an understanding that part of the educational system happens to be students.

Mr. Haggerty: That does not say much for the member's government, does it?

The Acting Speaker: Order. Just address your remarks to the chair.

Mr. Davis: I applaud the opportunity for students to come before us to talk about it. I think it was rewarding when students from Prescott-Russell came to the minister, to myself and, I am quite sure, to the Education critic of the third party. In a very articulate way they expressed their concerns as young people of this province with respect to the educational problems they see in Prescott-Russell, dealing with the deliverance of education on a linguistic basis.

I think the opportunity the minister has afforded the people of Ontario will help us provide good legislation for education in this province -- legislation which does not constantly come back to this House, like Bill 100, to be revamped and reconsidered because there was no opportunity for deliberation. We need those opportunities to have the kinds of open discussions which are imperative when we deal with aspects of education such as this one, which really impacts upon the totality of the educational system in this province.

4:10 p.m.

Whenever we bring about new initiatives in education, there is always resistance and concern because we have lived within a cocoon of historical precepts. We have developed certain kinds of modes of operation. Whenever one threatens a mode of operation, there is always some kind of anxiety, and stress is created within the various sectors of the educational family.

We must provide the opportunity for dialogue. We must say, "Let us look at a working model and see whether it is effective." When Bill 82 was introduced, it was not introduced in some wholesale program that said every board would have it tomorrow. We said: "Let us look at certain jurisdictions in the rural areas and the large built-up areas of this province and establish four or five prototypes. Let us examine how they work and how they deliver that program. Over a period of five years, boards of education will begin to make the internal adjustments they have to make and will begin to take a hard look at how they are going to deliver the services proposed under Bill 82, so it is done with the least amount of upheaval and chaos within the educational family."

When we deal with a French governance bill, especially when we are talking about homogeneous French educational boards, it is important to establish prototypes we can look at, so we can say together as the people of this province and as the family of educators, "Yes, this works and it will work here," or, "No, it does not work and it will not work here," and try to find a new model or tear this one apart. That is important as we go through the process in education. It is a problem of looking, comprehending and moving into new areas.

Mr. Speaker, do we have a quorum?

The Acting Speaker ordered the bells rung.

4:16 p.m.

Mr. Davis: As the Minister of Education considers the Ottawa-Carleton situation, which is a unique one, I truly believe it is time we addressed that concern, which has been before this House on several occasions. He has a number of alternatives he can look at.

He certainly understands that the Lieutenant Governor in Council, under section 52 of the Education Act, has authority to designate areas as school divisions, including combining two or more adjourning school divisions to form one. I am sure the minister is aware of that piece of information and of the opportunities he has to dissolve the existing boards and establish one board of education for the regional municipality of Ottawa-Carleton.

Another option is to dissolve the existing boards of education and establish one board for Ottawa-Carleton containing a defined French-language-trustee component. If he would like to read what is known as the green paper, he will find all the statistics that show how that is feasible.

A third alternative is to dissolve the existing boards of education and establish east and west boards. A fourth is to dissolve the existing boards, establishing east and west boards, each containing a defined French-language-trustee component. A fifth is to retain the existing boards of education within the regional municipality of Ottawa-Carleton but alter each to include a defined French-language-trustee component.

He could also consider the operation of a board with both French-language and English-language selections. One could go on with several other suggestions the minister could deal with in bringing about that kind of proposal.

Mr. Pope: What else can the member suggest?

Mr. Davis: There are one or two more. However, since the landmark legislation in 1968 authorizing boards of education to establish French-language secondary schools and to give legal recognition to French-language elementary schools, my party and the former government have taken that seriously and introduced several measures to improve the status of French-language education in Ontario.

Bill 75 is really the conclusion of what has been the intent of my party and the previous government since 1968 as we moved towards the kind of recognition we now find in Bill 75.

In 1972, there was the establishment of the Council for Franco-Ontarian Education, headed by a full-time chairman. We introduced that. In 1973, there was the creation of the Languages of Instruction Commission of Ontario. In 1977, there was the appointment of the first assistant deputy minister of French-language education and the implementation of many major ministry initiatives.

In that time there were additional grants to school boards for French-language education that afforded the opportunity for many school boards to develop French-language education in their jurisdictions, the introduction of French-language consultative services, the development and distribution of French-language learning materials through the French-language fund, the grant to the Centre for Franco-Ontarians, and the funds to resource centres in the mid-north Ontario region. There was a provision of funds for French-language correspondence courses, the awarding of research and evaluation of funds, and supportive student services and activities.

One of the most novel things that occurred during my tenure as a school trustee was the development by many boards of their own curriculum to try to meet the needs of the francophone Ontarian. The board on which I previously served developed the curriculum with such skill that it now is used in various jurisdictions across the province in the delivery of French-language instruction.

In 1979, we commissioned the green paper on education proposing the establishment of French-language sections in school boards in Ottawa-Carleton. I want to emphasize that the suggested initiative of the present Minister of Education with respect to the homogeneous francophone board in Ottawa-Carleton was something we had initiated and were beginning to move towards as early as 1979. It is not a new initiative; it is but the completion of the ongoing work of the previous government.

Mr. Pope: You were not here then.

Mr. Davis: An interesting observation one can make as a new member of the House is how quickly other parties take credit for legislation that was introduced by a previous government or suggested by another party. For example, I humbly suggest to the members that the reality of the homogeneous school board was not the creation of the Liberal government. It came out of the deliberations of the previous government. There should be recognition of that kind of initiative.

My learned colleagues in the third party initiated much of the legislation across this country with respect to the social benefits many of us now enjoy. I assume they would claim credit for things such as the medicare program, various initiatives in the labour movement, the Family Law Act and other things. The problem is their initiatives were taken over by the government of the day, which said, "They are our initiatives." I say that with all due respect for my colleagues in the third party. Without those initiatives, we would not enjoy many of the benefits we have today.

We have to recognize that certain initiatives in legislation implemented by a new government, such as the one we have today, often have their genesis, the creation of the idea, the homework that went into it, in a previous government or, in many cases, in a third party.

The education green paper in 1979 states our intention very articulately and puts in the forefront the fact it happened through the process of negotiation and consultation with all the people involved, not a process of confrontation or conquer-and-divide, or of creating chaos as we now see in other aspects of legislation before the House and the legislative committees. It was through the process of consultation.

Sometimes consultation means it takes a lot longer to arrive at a conclusion. It takes longer to find a consensus because we afford people the opportunity to debate and discuss. When we do that, it sometimes takes years to bring about the resolution of an issue. But what is a year, what are two or three or four years in the history of mankind?

I would humbly suggest this thrust of co-operation and consultation is one of the rationales which argues that we did not move as quickly as some people would have liked. Conversely, we did not create chaos in the education field. As I review the legislation, and as I understand the history of education in this province, when the previous government dealt with education policies, in most areas they went through without the kind of controversy we see now when we are dealing with legislation addressing certain concerns of members of this House and the people of Ontario -- for example, doctors and pharmacists, and with respect to insurance. It was not a kind of confrontation and division policy. It was one of discussion.

In a number of education issues, such as dealing with the kinds of unfortunate incidents which have occurred in Wellington county since September when there was an impasse and breakdown in negotiations, it has been our party that brought those people in and discussed a resolution to the situation. We did not bring the mandate to the House until we had done that, unlike the situation we faced in the fall.

In 1983, there was the reality of language requirements for secondary school diplomas. The successful implementation of those initiatives over the years is a strong indication of the continued co-operation of school trustees responsible for the provision of French-language education at the local level. Consistent with our commitment in the past to French-language education, we believed it was necessary to take additional legislative measures which reflected to a large extent the recommendations contained in both the Joint Committee on the Governance of French-Language Elementary and Secondary Schools and what we now find in Bill 75.

It was, always has been, and is now our intent to recognize the right of every French-speaking pupil to education in the French language. I believe the proposed legislation which is before us will accomplish that goal, and that school boards will be responsible for providing the required programs and ensuring that pupils have adequate access to French-language schools or classes which they have the right to attend.

I would go so far as to say that minority groups are often forgotten, but in this case those rights will also apply to English-speaking pupils in minority-language situations across the province.

It is my intent and the intent of my party to support the minister's second reading and to ask that this piece of legislation now move to the standing committee for further debate by the people of this province and the various members of the family of education.

4:30 p.m.

M. Allen: C'est avec un grand plaisir que j'annonce l'appui du Nouveau Parti démocratique pour le projet de loi 75.

Premièrement, je veux exprimer l'appréciation de notre parti pas seulement au ministre, qui a introduit cette mesure, mais aussi à Mme Carrier-Fraser, la sous-ministre adjointe, et à ses aides, qui ont travaillé si assidûment sur cette mesure, un projet de loi très complexe et très important.

L'obtention de la gérance de leurs écoles est un objectif désiré pendant fort longtemps par notre communauté franco-ontarienne. Cette mesure est une amélioration significative des projets de loi précédents, comme les projets de loi 160 et 108. Nous savons que ce n'est pas la fin du chemin, mais c'est une démarche très importante.

Nous savons clairement que ce n'est pas une réalisation complète de la décision de la Cour d'appel, et nous voulons avancer le plus vite possible l'achèvement de l'ordre du jour entier de nos compatriotes franco-ontariens.

Je vais proposer quelques amendements pour faciliter ce processus et pour augmenter les pouvoirs des comités consultatifs, par exemple. J'espère que le ministre de l'Éducation (M. Conway) introduira bientôt sa mesure pour un conseil scolaire homogène francophone pour la région d'Ottawa-Carleton, mais nous espérons aussi qu'il ajoutera d'autres régions, comme Prescott-Russell, où les Franco-Ontariens représentent maintenant 76 pour cent de la population.

It is with great pleasure that I rise at this historic moment as we introduce a viable bill into this Legislature for the beginning of a major movement towards French governance of their own schools. This measure has been a long time in coming; a long time in the thinking and fashioning. As we all know, there have been some false starts along the way.

I am aware the background of this bill goes back many years. Some of that has been traced by my colleague the critic for the opposition party. Certainly much of it was advanced by previous ministers of education in his party. No minister in that party with responsibility for education was more sympathetic to this project or moved it along more than Tom Wells. I might suggest perhaps it was because Mr. Wells, in the course of his travels through the French schools of this province, found Madam Carrier-Fraser, who today is the assistant deputy minister of Franco-Ontarian education, that the project we have before us has seen the light of day in the form it now takes. Many hands have gone into the making of this proposal. I want to come back to that in a moment.

The first thing one has to say about this legislation is that there is an absolute and indissoluble connection between education and culture. The notion that somehow a people of one language can well supervise the education of a people of another is quite simply an impossibility. It is not that one simply learns to read and do math in the language. There is a whole web of culture, a network, an ambience that is essential to the whole educational process that can only arise from people of the same language and cultural roots and from no one else.

That is why we have this bill before us; but, although this party supports it, I may say it is also why it does not take us to the final end of the road in the whole question of French governance of their own schools in this province.

The background of the bill lies in an era during which the Conservative Party was in charge of the government of this province. It goes back to a time when there were no Franco-Ontarian schools here. It is quite clear that government sponsored the legislation and brought that kind of educational advance. No one will deny that, and that same government also advanced certain other French-language services that do not have to be recounted here.

What concerns so many of us is that through all that happened there was an unusual lack of concern about the actual status that community ought to have in this province; that it should be an officially recognized language community. That was inevitably tied up with what one was doing about French-language services and specifically in the whole realm of education. We continually asked those questions of the previous government in the hope it would be prepared to grant official status to that language and give the kinds of guarantees which could not be rescinded by the repudiation of legislation or the modification of regulations but would give an inherent right.

The nearest the previous government came to doing that was with the passage of Bill 119 late in 1983. It went beyond the necessities of federal legislation and recognized the absolute right of every French child in this province to an education in his mother tongue, and that the educational system of this province somehow would have to accommodate that recognition.

In spite of that advance, as a government it was still not willing to take the final step and recognize and accord an official status to the French language in Ontario. Before this Legislature rises, I hope we will have an opportunity to do that and put the genuine seal upon what we are about in this legislation.

The legislation goes back to a series of reports, and one only has to rehearse them, though not their contents, to remember the long march we have been on. It was the Mayo report that did the review of the Ottawa-Carleton area with regard to regional government and the provision of such services as education. It is interesting that, in a sense, the Mayo report was the high-water mark of decision-making that the Conservative government was ever prepared to accept, as far as the preparation of models was concerned.

What that report proposed was a series of educational models that might be used, but no one of which went any further than proposing a French complement or French sections of other boards constructed in a variety of ways, whether it was a single board for the whole region, east board and west boards or what have you.

4:40 p.m.

None of the other papers and reviews that came later ever really embraced a model any more advanced than that, whether one looked at the 1979 education green paper, for example; the governance statement on the review of local government in the regional municipality of Ottawa-Carleton; the report of the Joint Committee on the Governance of French-Language Elementary and Secondary Schools in 1982; yet another new document on March 23, 1983, the white paper, a proposal in response to the joint report; or whether one went finally, in February 1984, to the final report of the minority-language governance study committee of the government of Ontario, the Sullivan report.

What I want to say here is not so much putting down the previous speaker as simply correcting the record. He says the concept -- which has to be tied to this bill because it is part of a multimodel approach to French school governance -- of the homogeneous school board proposal lies somehow back in the decision-making processes of the previous government.

To be sure, the previous government could not avoid talking about the homogeneous board concept from time to time simply because the pressure from the French community was so strong in that direction. That was their ultimate objective and they laid the proposal time and again before the previous ministry and the previous government. If one looks at the last stage of the report before we got to any of the legislation, Bill 160 or Bill 28, neither of which embraced the homogeneous school board proposition, one finds the following statement with respect to homogeneous minority-language school boards in the Sullivan report of February 1984, which canvassed a whole series of possible models that might be used in this legislation:

"Model 5, homogeneous minority-language school board: no specific model framework is presented. The committee recognizes that the government's position, as stated by the Premier on November 30, 1983, is in opposition to the establishment of such homogeneous boards. It should be stated, however, that some boards genuinely believe this model to be a viable alternative for government consideration."

What was happening at that time was that the Association of Large School Boards in Ontario, unlike many other anglophone board and trustee structures, was divided but unwilling to pronounce itself in a definitive way about some of these other models. Some of the larger boards were quite happy with the concept of a homogeneous board, but that was as far as it ever got in any Tory document that was sponsored by, referred to or developed through the Ministry of Education in the past. That put an end to the concept of homogeneous school boards as far as Tory legislation was concerned, and that was definitive.

I am extremely happy to hear the Conservative critic not only supporting Bill 75 but also supporting the concept of a homogeneous school board in the Ottawa-Carleton area. He even suggests that perhaps one might look at it appropriately in some other parts of the province.

I do not want to go back any further or discuss any more detail with respect to that model. That is not part of this legislation, and therefore in a sense properly does not concern us here. At the same time, it must be spoken of inasmuch as the new feature of the new legislation we have before us today is that it is not single-model in its character; it is multimodel. The multimodelling is not complete in this bill because we are waiting for the work of a commission that I hope the minister will announce in the next few days, which then will provide legislation to construct that other more complex model and add it to the basic two models present in this legislation.

The evolution of this legislation has provided many headaches -- I am sure the minister and some of his aides under the gallery will nod in assent -- as one tries to work one's way through the number problem of finding a formula to make it possible to have a sufficient and adequate French representation in the kind of model that is presented in this legislation and that would not somehow, in some situation, suddenly flip a whole board over into a contrary language structure from what it should be, given the population it was serving.

We know that happened with Bill 160 and it was still a possibility in Bill 28. Neither of those two resolved those problems. I recall, and I am sure the minister recalls, a long evening of thrashing around in the wake of Bill 28. We were trying to get our heads together about where we might go, where the future lay, as much as Bill 28 really provided an inadequate model.

Without perhaps too much presumption, one might say it was out of that long evening of head-bashing that we arrived at some kind of consensus that it was possible to go towards a multimodel system and that we would all be better for it. We recognized, as the French participants in that discussion will remember, that that would not be the completion of the whole objective but it would take us a long way down the road, further than we were at that time with the existing legislation.

One recalls, over the last few years, the many frustrations the French organizations in our province expressed to many of us over the slowness of this process, over the difficulty of going from one of these advisory-year reports to yet another advisory-year report to yet another one, to a white paper, a green paper, what have you, and still never somehow getting to a complete resolution of the problem that really began to approximate the sense of where they wanted to go.

Without exaggerating the qualities of the present bill, it at least begins to do that in a significant and substantial way. While I still hear criticism about this bill from many of the representatives of those organizations, none the less I feel a much greater happiness that they are on a real threshold, and this is the beginning of something they can see developing in the ways in which they think their educational governance ought to go.

I do not want to spend a lot of time rehearsing the contents of the bill. On the whole, the measures for the expansion of the powers of the French-language advisory committee are appropriate for the boards in question, namely those boards which do not themselves sponsor French-language instructional units, but who purchase services from others.

Yet, it does concern me. There are two aspects of that part of the bill that do concern me. One of them is that while the position of the chairman of the FLAC is somewhat strengthened by giving him a recognized place at the table of the board, where he can speak and recommend, there still is no possibility of the representatives of the French community in that board having any voting power.

Perhaps this bill ought to move one step further and embrace that proposition.

4:50 p.m.

After much reflection, I think the other weakness in that part of the bill is that both FLACs have no relationship with any other of their confrères in adjoining boards and no liaison of any formal kind with the French-language section of the board that does provide for the education of the French children of the initial board that has the French-language advisory committee. I suspect that as we move down the road towards some further consolidation of French-language governance of the school system, it would be wise for us to arrange at this time for those committees to have a liaison structure with the French-language section of the providing board. Whether that constellation, that liaison then evolves into anything will really depend upon the potential, the possibilities that are inherent in that cluster of boards.

The liaison may go nowhere but, on the other hand, if there is a potential for further development, surely that is the rational, logical way to help that to evolve.

Those are two suggestions that I would want to make with regard to that part of the bill when we come to amendments.

The French-language sections that the minister has proposed strike me as an adequate construction of French-language governance, again, in the boards in question; boards in this case which do offer French-language instruction, entities, schools for Franco-Ontarian education.

They are provided for in terms of the proportion of French students vis-à-vis the non-Franco-Ontarian students of that jurisdiction, with the trustees having the same proportional representation with no increase in numbers in the board in question.

That formula has overcome, it appears, those numerical flip-flops that one encountered in Bill 160 in particular. One is pleased that while there are exclusive areas of jurisdiction marked out quite clearly for the French and English sections of those boards, there is some provision for some shifting of those boundaries by mutual consent.

If a board is prepared, by agreement of both sections, to add to or possibly to subtract from the exclusive powers, that can happen. There was some concern among the French community that it would be locked into a set of exclusive powers that would be fixed virtually for all time or that could be amended only with great difficulty, but that flexible boundary opens up variation from board to board and additional governance responsibility that can lie down the road for our Franco-Ontarian colleagues as they increasingly govern their own education.

The intermediary step the minister has devised has clearly some marks of ad hockery and of normal transitional modes, if I can put it that way, where one is getting only part-way to where one wants to get and one hangs on to traces of the inadequacies of a past one wants to get out of. None the less, the French-language educational councils that the ministry has devised as a way of stepping up the pace of French governance in the system without having to wait until that next round of school board elections are, at least to us, an acceptable way to go.

It still has some problems in it. If one is a French member of a board and is elected at large by both a French and an English community in one's ward and sits there as a representative of both those groups and then one decides, as the bill allows one to do, to become a member of the French-language education council, is one then still an adequate spokesman for the people of the other language who elected him?

There are those questions, but I think one simply has to tolerate some problems of transition that inevitably are going to creep into any model one looks at in that respect. I have no interest whatsoever in modifying or amending that section. It will, in any case, be in place for only a number of months and it will be gone. Few of us will be around to remember any of the small inadequacies that were there and they will be relatively immaterial in any case.

What still concerns me somewhat, but I really am not sure how to cope with the problem, is that those sections, while they participate in the overall budgetary discussions of the board, do not as yet have a very powerful handle on the financing of their own part of the responsibilities of that board.

Perhaps the minister can throw an open invitation to come forward to anyone who can resolve that for us with a workable amendment. At the moment, I cannot see one. The shifting boundary proposition that is available may in time also include a more substantial budgetary element.

With those remarks, I think I have said the principal things about the bill that this party wants said. We look forward to its speedy passage, whether it goes to committee of the whole House or to another committee of this House. In any case, we hope no one in this House will delay what has already been too long delayed, and we also hope that groups that come before a committee, if that is where it ends up, do not prolong our consideration.

It is important that the intermediary transitional councils of French-language education be in place as soon as possible. It is important that the French-language advisory committees have an immediate increase in the powers and activities they are able to sponsor. It is important overall that the French community see completed the first major step towards governance of its own system. I repeat that we in this party do not consider this bill to be the final word. We do not consider it is saying to us that we are at the end of the road, but rather that we are at an extremely important beginning.

We remember that the court to which this legislation was referred almost two years ago said quite unmistakably that the present geographical boundaries of school boards in Ontario cannot be considered a limiting factor in the development of French-language schools governance in Ontario. That was saying that in fulfilling the rights the court stated were a clear right of the Franco-Ontarians of this province, those rights should not in any way be impeded by the present geographical boundaries of school boards. It was saying that this Legislature was going to have to take very seriously in the future alternative boundaries where necessary to accommodate new structures and new boards, and making possible in areas where it might not otherwise be possible the existence of homogeneous French school boards.

This is a major piece of legislation. It is the beginning of a historic march and I know this Legislature and this party are happy to take these first steps.

Mr. Pope: I do not see a quorum, Mr. Speaker.

The Deputy Speaker ordered the bells rung.

5:03 p.m.

Mr. Pope: If the member for Brampton (Mr. Callahan) is here, I know he will want to stay and listen to this. I do not think he is, though.

First, I am pleased to participate in this debate and to support the concepts of the bill. I hope other members of this assembly from all parts of the province, including the governing party, will see fit to stand and support the principles of this bill and put themselves on the record. I presume they will do so during the course of this debate. It is an issue that has evoked discussion at various times from one end of the province to the other. I presume members of this assembly will want to comment on this important matter of great public interest.

Cela me fait grand plaisir de participer à ce débat au nom du Parti progressiste-conservateur et aussi comme député de Cochrane Sud. J'aimerais supporter le principe de ce projet de loi, que le ministre de l'éducation a introduit et dont nous avons décidé de débattre aujourd'hui à la Législature de l'Ontario.

Les députés savent que je suis représentant du comté de Cochrane et de la circonscription de Cochrane Sud. Ils savent aussi que la majorité des gens du comté de Cochrane sont francophones et que la plupart des gens de Cochrane Sud sont francophones. Alors, ce projet de loi est très important, non seulement pour le député de Cochrane Sud mais aussi pour toutes les gens de Cochrane Sud.

Nous avons de l'éducation en langue française depuis quelques années à Cochrane Sud. Ce n'est pas une première étape. C'est un processus que nous avons commencé il y a 20 ans au comté de Cochrane et dans tous les autres comtés du Nord-Est de l'Ontario. Les députés savent aussi que nous avons dans le comté de Cochrane et dans la ville de Timmins l'école secondaire française la plus grande de l'Ontario, l'École secondaire Thériault.

Oui, c'est vrai, et les députés savent que c'est vrai. Elle a été établie par le gouvernement progressiste-conservateur de l'Ontario avec le support du gouvernement de toutes les gens de l'Ontario. Ce n'est pas une première étape.

Interjections.

M. Pope: Non, non. Pas du tout, parce que la majorité des gens du conseil scolaire de Timmins sont francophones, non seulement ceux du conseil séparé mais aussi ceux du conseil public.

The Deputy Speaker: Order. Perhaps the member would speak directly to the chair.

Mr. Villeneuve: Are you listening?

The Deputy Speaker: Listening, if not comprehending.

Mr. Bernier: He is not saying a word. I did not think he understood.

M. Pope: Il y a beaucoup de questions que j'aimerais poser au ministre de l'Education de l'Ontario, l'homme de Renfrew Nord, au sujet des idées dans ce projet de loi. J'aimerais poser ces questions parce que c'est très important pour la population francophone à Timmins, à Iroquois Falls -- le ministre connaît le problème à Iroquois Falls -- et aussi à Black River-Matheson. Dans chaque municipalité de ma circonscription il y a des problèmes au sujet des droits des francophones et des droits des anglophones à l'éducation en langue française. J'espère que ce projet de loi va les résoudre.

C'est pour cette raison que j'ai décidé de supporter ce projet de loi, avec tout le Parti progressiste-conservateur de l'Ontario. Nous avons des questions que j'aimerais poser maintenant au ministre, s'il veut en finir avec ses conseils avec le député de Northumberland (M. Sheppard).

First of all, I want to indicate that from the point of view of my own riding of Cochrane South, it is not the first step with respect to francophone representation on boards of education; it is not the first step with respect to the establishment of a French-language-trustee presence in the education system; nor is it the first step in an Ontario-wide perspective in having some liaison, some relationship among various French-speaking trustees and French-language advisory committee members from across the province to discuss the important issues of French-language education that we face in many counties and in many districts across Ontario.

5:10 p.m.

It is not a first step. It is part of a process that has been evolving with the support of all three parties in this Legislature, support for French-language education that goes back to the 1960s, and in some parties before that, with respect to the demand for an improvement. It goes back to debates that have been held in this Legislature not only on the issue of French-language education in this province but also on the role and the perception of Ontario in the national fabric.

Members of the third party, the Liberal Party and our party have all made an important contribution in an individual and a collective way to that evolution in Ontario. It is one we can be proud of and one that other provinces in this country are starting to recognize in more detail than they have done before.

I have some questions for the Minister of Education. I do not believe the quotes today that say he is a master of circumlocution. I know he is going to answer these questions.

Mr. Martel: He learned that from Bill Davis.

Mr. Pope: That is what they call him now. It is on the Canadian Press wire.

I do not believe the New Democratic Party critic who said the minister can talk a lot and say very little. I know the minister will answer the questions the members of the assembly put to him promptly, clearly and concisely.

Mr. Ramsay: Sean is cute too.

Mr. Pope: Who said that? That was not reported.

I do have some questions to pose to the minister. In fairness to him, in case he feels there is something untoward going on here, I think his advisers from the ministry will say that in the quieter moments of conference these same questions have been put in an earlier day and in another forum with respect to a project of this nature from a previous government.

These questions have to do with my own experience in my own riding and some of the points of view I listened to as I travelled across the province in other incarnations.

Mr. Martel: Name one.

Mr. Pope: Minister in charge of tree nurseries. How is that?

Mr. Breaugh: In your chauffeur-driven Lada.

Mr. Pope: No, not in the north.

I note a save-and-except clause with respect to subsection 23(3) of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. I am not saying this is unique. I will not quote extensively, but I will just briefly refer to it. Subsection 23(3) of the charter says:

"The right of citizens of Canada under subsections (1) and (2) to have their children receive primary and secondary school instruction in the language of the English or French linguistic minority population of a province

"(a) applies wherever in the province the number of children of citizens who have such a right is sufficient to warrant the provision to them out of public funds of minority-language instruction; and

"(b) includes, where the number of those children so warrants, the right to have them receive that instruction in minority-language educational facilities provided out of public funds."

There are two aspects to subsection 23(3). One is the language and one is the institution. It appears to me this government is putting in a notwithstanding clause with respect to this legislation that has arisen through the charter. I thought about this very carefully and I think saving and excepting a provision of the charter is the same as having a notwithstanding clause.

If that is the case, why are we doing it in this legislation when we would not do it in earlier legislation at the suggestion of some members of the Legislative Assembly? I believe it is a notwithstanding clause, which means the provisions of the charter do not apply.

I do not know from what end the minister or the government is coming in deleting or in saving and excepting subsection 23(3). Is it with respect to the facilities to be provided to francophones or is it so we do not get into an argument over the "numbers warrant" test for any court test. All I can say is if that is the case, if it is to avoid that test, then it really fits into the category of a notwithstanding clause. Again, I ask why the government did not do it for the separate school funding bill, when it is prepared to do it for this bill, and avoid some of the court confrontations based on a challenge to the charter.

I am not saying this is a unique provision the minister initiated. I am just asking for an explanation as to the comparison of the use of the notwithstanding clause and what is the real meaning of the save-and-except provision.

Second, very briefly -- and I am going to be brief, mercifully -- I want to say our community has a long history of improvement of French-language education. It goes right back to the establishment of schools in the old town of Timmins in the early part of this century and goes on up through the separate school system to the establishment of l'École secondaire Thériault, a very large public French-language secondary school -- or one of the largest in Ontario, so I will not quarrel with the member for Sudbury East (Mr. Martel) -- which now is assigned to the separate school board, I believe.

The history of our community in Timmins is one of accommodation; it is one of problems but also one of accomplishments. We have had problems, but it was the anglophone trustees of the Timmins Board of Education, responding to a clearly felt need in the community and a demand by our fellow residents in the town of Timmins and in the Porcupine Camp, who made the decision to establish l'École secondaire Thériault in the 1960s and pursued the matter with the then Minister of Education to a successful conclusion. They are the same trustees and boards of education who made sure the services provided in l'École secondaire Thériault, the staff and the administration met the needs of the francophone population as best we could.

Now we move beyond that, knowing the history of the separate panel system in the Timmins Board of Education, of which a certain Linda Fillion was a member for two years, and beyond the area of the French-language advisory committee, which was so successful in bringing the concerns of the francophone population of Timmins to the attention of the board over a number of years, into this new system. I hope that is the kind of progression the minister sees: a progression into this system.

I guess I have to ask the minister to contemplate administrative issues that will be of concern to the people in my riding. First, the minister will know this bill falls in the middle of the debate in Iroquois Falls with respect to a separate French-language entity. How will the decisions that have been made by past boards or by the present board with respect to this matter be impacted by this legislation?

Another consideration for the minister to think about in the circumstances of Iroquois Falls is as follows. Many residents of Iroquois Falls are in mixed marriages, anglophone and francophone husbands and wives. They wish to see their children have some French-language education and some English-language education. They wish their children to be truly and functionally bilingual in a town where the majority of people are either francophone or from a mixed marriage, or the product of a mixed marriage. In other words, there is a complete mixing of the two founding cultures and the two official languages in that community.

5:20 p.m.

Therefore, the school controversy is not reflected in a hard division between anglophone and francophone, because that does not exist within the population but relates to the aspirations that some of them have concerning the education of their children.

How will this bill impact on what has been a rather difficult political situation for all parties to handle? All three parties had difficulty with this issue in 1985 and in 1981. The candidates for all three parties faced it, had trouble with it, tried to understand the complexities of it and tried to understand the local concerns and fears with respect to any of the options that might be considered. In that kind of situation, how will this legislation affect any possible conclusion that can be drawn?

I have some concerns about where we are heading with respect to the costs of administration. I said this about three months ago in another forum for another purpose but, in supporting the concept of French-language education, one of the issues that was constantly brought to our attention was the concern of citizens, francophone and anglophone, from all parts of the province, about whether we would have another complete administration. They were concerned about whether we would hire another director of education earning $70,000 or $80,000 a year plus benefits, another curriculum supervisor, another maintenance or building supervisor.

People wondered what the administrative structure would be and whether now is the time to put any concerns with respect to administrative structure or its growth into legislation, so we would have some rationalization of costs and administrative functions as well as of representation on linguistic and religious grounds in various panels and boards across the province. I think the two of them can be developed at the same time.

It appears to me, unless there is a clear signal from this minister in this law, there is an expectation we will try to make the system more efficient or have some amalgamation of administrative functions. However, we have not really taken a responsible step in dealing with the costs of education, about which we have all heard as well with respect to the separate school bill.

I have some concerns from an administrative point of view. For example, I think there are only two separate school trustees in the city of Timmins who are anglophone. The rest are francophone, duly elected. To the credit of the trustees on that board, their chairman this year is an anglophone. Last year it was a francophone. After the last election, there was only one anglophone representative.

What I am trying to say is, within the context of the separate school board of Timmins, there has never been a linguistic issue. We are talking about a board that administers French-language primary schools and has some influence on the administration of l'École secondaire Thériault through the use of something called a separate panel, to which a certain Linda Fillion was elected in 1978 for a two-year term.

The majority if not all of the administrative staff in the separate board is francophone and there is a significant proportion on the Timmins Board of Education which is francophone, duly elected. The public has no concern they will not perform their functions the way they are expected to do, and they have done a good job. Furthermore, a significant number of administrative staff on the Timmins Board of Education is francophone.

What we really have in place in communities such as Timmins and many others across the province is a separate school administrative system and a public school system that do not distinguish on the basis of language with respect to job function or representation on elected bodies such as boards of education. We will now have this bill with the French-language section.

We then have to talk about the consequences on existing separate school boards. We have to talk about the consequences with respect to the public school board, the separate panel and the French-language advisory committee.

All of these are important parts of the process that give public education the quality it has in the communities of Cochrane South. They are needed not just for the francophones, they are needed for the anglophones, to round out the educational system and make sure French-language immersion is appropriately introduced, administered and available to the people of my home community and riding.

I have some concerns as to where the existing elected, appointed and administrative people and bodies will fit into the scheme of things after the introduction of this project, and what the consequences will be on the duality, French and English, of the public and separate school systems in the city of Timmins and the harmony that evokes in my home community.

I have some concern about children who come from mixed marriages such as my own son does. I have concerns as to what his rights as a future elector will be under this legislation. I have concerns about what my rights will be to vote, along with my wife, with respect to the affairs of the school system of which my son is a member. Having read the definitions, I am not sure I yet understand. I know the minister will explain all that to me.

These questions were posed to the ministry at an earlier date in other circumstances with respect to another bill. I do not think they are unique to my riding. I may be wrong, but I believe similar questions could be raised with respect to Timiskaming, not because there are problems and not because we do not support the bill, but because we have questions as to how it is going to work out and as to whether we are going to retain, in the public and separate school systems, the influence we think is necessary to promote both official languages in the school system in our communities, and to promote harmonious relationships among francophones, anglophones and those of other races and cultures.

It is the same in Iroquois Falls and Cochrane North. I know the member has spoken to the minister about that, although the problems of Cochrane North will be on the other side of the ledger with respect to anglophone representation and its rights and powers in the school system in Cochrane North.

These issues have to be dealt with even though they are not necessarily contained in the legislation, although they could be. They have to be talked about in specific detail so people will understand where we are headed, not only with respect to French-language education in the province, but also with respect to the education of everyone in the province and with respect to where both official languages of the country fit into the educational system.

I have a lot of concerns that I am sure the minister will hear about from the Timmins trustees, if he has not heard from them already, about the whole immersion system, as to where it fits in, what the rights of immersion students will be, what the rights of parents of immersion students will be, what their options will be, and what tests will be applied to allow entry into these education systems in the future and whether they conform with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms that is so important to us all.

I raise these issues and ask the minister for some response in the context that we are supporting the bill and that we think it is an important step on a long road that started many years ago and has involved many members of this assembly. We think these issues can be resolved up front if there is as much detail as possible from the minister's staff, who I know have had these questions put to them before.

If they can be resolved and explained up front, I think there will be a genuine willingness across this province, and certainly in northeastern Ontario, to make the system work, to have a transition with as little difficulty as possible and with as few additional administrative costs as possible. That is a goal I know is shared by the minister, our party and the third party.

5:30 p.m.

In this Legislature, we have an obligation to do our part to lay all this out ahead of time and not to have to react to concerns that not enough information is available. I know the minister does not like to be in the position of reacting to announcements that have been made previously. I do not want to repeat the mistake that has been made in the past with respect to this bill. If there is a clear understanding, it is my view that although there will be some dissent, the vast majority of people will see it as necessary, see it as progress, for which they will get the benefit and the credit. They will also see it as a way in which we can do our part to bring this province and this country together.

NOTICE OF DISSATISFACTION

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Morin): Pursuant to standing order 28(b), the member for Brantford (Mr. Gillies) has given notice that he is dissatisfied with the answer to a question given by the Attorney General (Mr. Scott) concerning the sentence given to a sex offender. This matter will be debated at 10:30 p.m.

EDUCATION AMENDMENT ACT (CONTINUED)

Resuming consideration of Bill 75, An Act to amend the Education Act.

The Acting Speaker: The member for Nipigon.

M. Pouliot: Lake Nipigon, Monsieur le Président. Vous savez sans doute mieux que personne où c'est situé. C'est situé de l'autre côté du Lac Supérieur, mais vous m'avez présenté, vous l'avez fait gentiment quand même, en disant que j'étais le député de Nipigon, mais c'est Lake Nipigon.

Le président suppléant: Je m'excuse de mon erreur.

M. Pouliot: Je ne peux pas passer sous silence, en me levant pour parler peut-être pour une minute ou deux, le projet de loi 75 qui est maintenant en deuxième lecture et qui a été présenté cet après-midi, et puis de souligner -- et ça je le fais tout simplement -- de souligner l'audace, le courage de temps à autre, et le manque de courage aussi. J'essaie de choisir mes mots un peu méticuleusement, étant, comme à peu près tout le monde, au courant de la gouvernance en ce qui a trait aux lois ou aux règles parlementaires.

Tout ça pour offrir comme prélude et pour vous dire simplement que le député de Cochrane Sud (M. Pope) -- c'est moi qui dis simplement encore mon opinion -- s'éloigne de la vérité quand il nous présente un parallèle ou une analogie. Mes collègues et moi avons un peu agonisé pour quelques secondes quand celui-ci nous déclarait il y a quelques minutes: "Ah bien, on n'avait pas besoin, ou à peu près pas, ou un peu moins besoin du projet de loi 75, parce que chez nous à Timmins, premièrement, nous avons la plus grande école secondaire, du point de vue du nombre, de l'Ontario." On ne l'a pas vérifié mais on le croit.

"Mais aussi en vertu ou en raison de la population chez nous, on a toujours eu une représentation française en ce qui concerne ma région, celle de Timmins." C'est le député de Cochrane Sud qui le dit, mais aussi en nous disant ceci, il nous dit autre chose, ou il a omis de nous dire qu'on n'avait aucune garantie, que c'était la représentation par accident de parcours; qu'un jour on aurait la représentation, parce que le citoyen, comme tous dans une démocratie allait voter, allait s'affranchir mais que demain peut-être nous ne l'aurions pas.

Le député nous disait, "Bien, chez nous, on n'avait à peu près pas besoin." Mais en toute conscience, on va se protéger et on va quand même vous faire plaisir, parce que nous aussi, d'après le gouvernement précédent, on s'en rapporte au premier projet de loi 160 qui, lui, a donné, à cause de sa rigidité, naissance dans la douleur au deuxième, qu'on appellera 28.

En passant, on avait demandé quand les deux projets de loi précédents concernant la gestion des écoles françaises, on avait demandé qu'on les présente, imaginez-vous, en français, tout aussi bien, en même temps qu'on le fait en anglais. Évidemment, on avait souligné que ce n'était pas fait. Je me réjouis qu'aujourd'hui le ministre l'a fait même si j'ai dû, parce que vous savez il faut être franc entre nous deux, soutirer votre copie.

Je suis certain que vos aides qui sont assis en arrière que l'industrie du papier au Canada ça passe bien, on en a plusieurs copies du projet de loi en français. Imaginez-vous la difficulté, ça vous l'aviez reconnu aussi, la difficulté d'évoluer à partir d'un texte anglais quand on parle des droits des francophones ici. Est-ce que ça a du bon sens ça? Est-ce que c'est réciproque? Vous ne l'accepteriez pas. Nous non plus.

Maintenant on a quand même un texte anglais, un texte français aussi, c'est le début d'un temps nouveau. Enfin une représentation à peu près juste. Bien sûr j'aurais aimé qu'on annonce que le projet de loi prenne place à peu près en même temps que d'autres services aux francophones. J'aurais aimé qu'on ait une loi cadre, j'aurais aussi aimé qu'on ait la traduction simultanée, peut-être que ça viendra un jour, parce que vous savez on attend depuis longtemps. J'aurais aussi aimé, dans le même contexte, ou si non à peu près en même temps qu'on nous parle des services de la santé.

Nous sommes 500,000 à demander qu'un jour on nous ouvre la porte et qu'on nous donne les outils, la chance de vivre comme les autres. Pas plus que ça, mais pas moins que ça non plus. Espérons que ça viendra.

En ce qui concerne le projet de loi 75, je ne peux passer sous silence les efforts de tous ceux qui vous ont appuyé. J'en vois quelques-uns, on voit des têtes qui sortent un peu partout. Les longues heures de travail, les gens qui ont su mettre des idées sur le papier. Au début ça n'a pas été facile parce qu'on ne voulait pas offenser les autres. C'était complexe, c'était des textes difficiles. Il y avait plus d'exceptions qu'il n'y avait de règles, mais petit à petit ils y sont arrivés.

Je ne prendrai pas trop de votre temps parce qu'on me dit que d'autres conférenciers voudraient aussi parler à la Chambre en ce qui concerne le projet de loi 75. Nous sommes en faveur, il y a longtemps qu'on attendait. On vous fait confiance, on vous croit.

Il y a une chose qui m'agace un peu, qui me chatouille, c'est la gestion provisoire en attendant que tout se normalise avec l'élection municipale scolaire qui aura lieu en 1988, qui suivra son cours. Il y a une chose qui me taquine. Espérons que ça va bien fonctionner, qu'il n'y aura pas trop de chatouillements, d'accrochages, mais les assemblées de paroisse, il faut s'attendre à ce qu'il y en ait beaucoup. La démocratie va être servie mais elle va juste être servie.

Le ministre me dira bien sûr que c'est dans l'entretemps, que bientôt on aura la chance d'être comme les autres, aussi en ce qui concerne l'élection, ça aura lieu en même temps. Les gens auront le droit de s'affranchir, de choisir universellement. Mais en attendant, attendez-vous à quelques petits accrochages. C'est à peu près la seule erreur que l'on puisse découvrir, sur laquelle on puisse se pencher.

C'est un début, chez nous on croit que ça ne va pas assez loin. On n'ira pas jusqu'à dire que vous nous avez donné une gourde et que nous aurions besoin ou que nous demandions un pleur. C'est l'abbé Pierre qui l'a dit. Dans ce contexte, ça va suffire.

En ce qui me concerne comme critique des droits aux francophones, des affaires francophones, des services aux francophones pour le Nouveau Parti démocratique, c'est un autre service. Bien sûr il y en aura plusieurs qui suivront. On remercie le ministre, nous appuyerons en deuxième lecture le projet de loi 75.

The Acting Speaker: The member for Stormont, Dundas, and Glengarry.

5:40 p.m.

M. Villeneuve: Il me fait aussi plaisir cet après-midi de prononcer quelques mots au sujet du projet de loi 75, que nous sommes en train de débattre cet après-midi. Tout comme mon collègue le député de Lake Nipigon (M. Pouliot), je trouve un peu sérieuse, un peu complexe la situation que le projet de loi 75 sur la gestion scolaire aux Ontariens d'expression française ne soit qu'en anglais ici.

Maintenant, mon collègue a souligné le fait que je crois qu'il en a une copie française. On n'en avait qu'une seule. Eh bien, je suis certain qu'avec un début comme celui-ci, espérons que la situation s'améliorera à mesure que le projet de loi deviendra un fait réel.

Consultation est quelque chose qui est très important. J'ai eu l'occasion de siéger dans la ville d'Ottawa au projet de loi 30 au courant de l'été dernier. J'ai eu aussi l'occasion d'écouter plusieurs présentations qui ont été faites au comité pour étudier le projet de loi 30. La consultation est devenue très importante.

Je trouve un peu étrange qu'en certaines situations quand le ministre mentionne en groupe mixte, où peut-être certaines gens qui sont présents ne sont pas en faveur du projet de loi 30 -- comme nous savons bien que nous en avons plusieurs dans la province de l'Ontario qui ne sont pas tellement en faveur du projet de loi 30 -- le ministre souligne que c'était le projet de loi de l'ancien gouvernement et de l'ancien premier ministre, l'honorable M. Davis.

Par contre, quand on parle de la gestion scolaire aux Ontariens d'expression française à un groupe principalement d'Ontariens d'expression française, le ministre accepte assez rapidement le crédit de tout ce qui se passe, incluant le projet de loi 75. N'oublions pas que l'ancien gouvernement avait son projet de loi 28, qui avait besoin, d'accord, qui avait besoin d'amélioration, qui avait besoin des amendements qui auraient probablement desservi la population d'expression française aussi bien que le projet de loi 75, et je souligne, avec des changements et des améliorations.

Par contre, le projet de loi 28 a été mis de côté et a été remplacé par celui qu'on débat cet après-midi, le projet de loi 75. Je félicite le ministre pour avoir établi un conseil homogène de langue française pour la région d'Ottawa. Je crois que c'est quelque chose que nombre de nos Ontariens d'expression française avaient demandé depuis longtemps.

Je veux mentionner ici un nom, une grande championne des demandes d'un conseil homogène de langue française, Mlle Jeanine Séguin. Je veux la reconnaître ici cet après-midi. Elle a été l'une de plusieurs qui ont réellement encouragé la fondation d'un tel conseil. Espérons que ce ne sera pas seulement le premier mais que nous en aurons nombreux qui suivront ce premier conseil homogène.

Le projet de loi est froidement accueilli. Je lis dans l'un de nos journaux de l'Est ontarien, qui lit comme suit: "L'intention du gouvernement de l'Ontario d'accorder aux minorités francophones le droit de former un conseil scolaire à l'intérieur des structures déjà existantes a soulevé déceptions et interrogations dans Prescott-Russell."

Comme le ministre le sait, la situation dans la circonscription de Prescott-Russell en est une qui est entièrement différente de celle qui existe à peu près n'importe où ailleurs. Nous avons une situation où la population est en grande majorité, ou environ 75 pour cent, d'expression française. Alors, je demande au ministre de considérer cette région pour la possibilité d'un deuxième conseil homogène de langue française, qui pourrait peut-être inclure la région d'expression française dans la circonscription de Stormont, Dundas et Glengarry.

Je continue sur un éditorial qui provient du Carillon: "Je suis très déçu, a indiqué le président du conseil des écoles catholiques, Bernard Clavel," au sujet du projet de loi, qui n'inclut pas de conseil homogène pour la région de la circonscription de Prescott-Russell.

As members know, the riding of Prescott-Russell is a unique region in the province in that about 75 per cent --

Mr. Harris: A fine riding it is.

Mr. Villeneuve: A fine riding it is, represented by a fine gentleman, other than the fact he happens to sit on the wrong side of the House. However, that will be a discussion for another day. We do not normally discuss politics in this great chamber, do we?

The minister knows, and I appreciate the fact, that we did discuss the unique situation that exists in Prescott-Russell. I appreciate the input he allowed my colleagues, the member for Cornwall (Mr. Guindon), the member for Scarborough Centre (Mr. Davis) and myself. We know the minister has a rather difficult situation to face and it is a bit of a dilemma. However, I urge him to consider the inclusion of a homogeneous French-language school board for that region of Ontario as he did for the Ottawa-Carleton area with that one French-language homogeneous school board he now has in place. I must congratulate him. I think he did meet and satisfy the requirements and the requests of a large number of people who reside in that area and who speak French as their main language.

Un groupe de conseillers représentant le groupe linguistique minoritaire et un autre de majorité linguistique, les deux conseils géreraient en commun dans certains secteurs, indépendamment dans d'autres. Alors, c'est toujours la situation à laquelle les gens de Prescott-Russell s'attendent.

Ce que nous devons éviter, toutefois, c'est la domination dans les débats du chauvinisme linguistique ou religieux. Je retourne à la situation qui a eu lieu à Ottawa quand nous avons siégé sur le projet de loi 30. J'ai eu l'occasion de questionner à certaines reprises des représentants qui nous donnaient leurs intentions au sujet du projet de loi 30.

Ma question était celle-ci: D'après vous, est-ce que les choses linguistiques ou les choses de religion sont plus importantes, l'une que l'autre, dans le projet de loi 30? J'ose suggérer que la majorité des réponses ont été que les choses linguistiques étaient plus importantes que les choses confessionnelles.

Comme les députés le savent, le projet de loi 30 était établi sur une situation confessionnelle et non linguistique. Alors, ce que nous devons éviter est le chauvinisme linguistique ou religieux. Il n'est pas nécessaire de répéter que les principaux conflits dans le monde présentement sont à leur base de nature religieuse. Il ne faut pas grand-chose pour faire déborder le vase déjà rempli d'incompréhension et de tension.

Le conseil des écoles catholiques de Prescott-Russell, comme je l'ai dit tout à l'heure, a un caractère tout à fait particulier. C'est la seule région en Ontario avec une grande majorité francophone et catholique. Si le gouvernement ontarien s'engage à respecter la planification conjointe des deux conseils scolaires locaux dans la mise sur pied d'un conseil scolaire français ayant un volet public et un volet catholique, et dans la mise sur pied d'une structure ou de services semblables et comparables, alors, le conseil des écoles catholiques de Prescott-Russell maintiendrait les services qu'il offre au palier secondaire, tels qu'ils existent présentement pour ainsi mettre en place toute autre planification. Alors, je crois que cette région est prête pour son propre conseil homogène de langue française.

Les conseillers scolaires francophones élus en novembre 1985 pourront opter de devenir membres de ces nouveaux conseils jusqu'à la fin de leur mandat en 1988. En l'absence du nombre minimum de trois conseillers prévu aux termes du projet, des élections auront lieu de la même façon qu'elles ont lieu en ce moment pour les conseils consultatifs de langue française. Le ministre a précisé ces choses quand il a annoncé son nouveau projet de loi 75, que nous passons en débat cet après-midi.

5:50 p.m.

J'ai ici correspondance que je crois est très importante, correspondance qui provient de Mgr Joseph-Aurèle Plourde et qui a été envoyée au président du conseil d'éducation de Prescott-Russell. Cette correspondance se rapporte à certaines démonstrations qui ont été faites par un groupe d'élèves au mois de novembre dernier, une situation qui a créé beaucoup d'incompréhension, surtout dans le monde anglais, qui ne comprenait pas la situation existant dans la région de Vankleek Hill et Hawkesbury. Je cite de la correspondance de Mgr Plourde, adressée au président:

"Le conseil homogène: (a) Les francophones ont toujours été majoritaires dans Prescott-Russell, mais je suis fier de dire qu'ils ont toujours respecté les droits de la minorité anglophone. Il me semble donc malhonnête de prétendre que l'avènement d'un conseil homogène français changera cette louable tradition. Le respect des droits d'autrui relève d'une mentalité, d'une disposition de la volonté et du coeur qu'une structure scolaire nouvelle ne saurait changer.

"(b) De plus, il me semble qu'il eût été normal d'attendre de voir le projet de loi qui sera soumis aux discussions des citoyens par les autorités gouvernementales si elles songent à la mise sur pied d'un tel conseil pour Prescott-Russell, avant de prendre position. On y verra sûrement qu'un conseil homogène ne pourra pas chambarder tout le curriculum et qu'il y aura des sujets `obligatoires,' dont l'anglais. D'ailleurs, à cause de l'influence des médias et de la majorité anglophone, bien des élèves parlent l'anglais entre eux, même dans des écoles françaises. La crainte que sous un conseil homogène les élèves n'apprendront pas l'anglais est sans fondement.

"Les manifestations des étudiants sonnent faux. Il est difficile de ne pas penser que ces jeunes n'étaient pas pleinement renseignés sur les enjeux en cause et qu'ils ont été utilisés pour d'autres raisons que celles qui ont été mises d'avant pour justifier un débrayage que seul votre conseil pouvait autoriser. L'avez-vous autorisé, Monsieur le Président?

"(c) Ensuite, les parents, qui sont les premiers responsables de l'éducation de leurs enfants, ont-ils donné leur accord à ces démonstrations? Si non, ne croyez-vous pas que leurs droits ont été lésés?

"(d) Enfin, l'on affirme que des directeurs et des enseignants ont tout fait pour influencer les jeunes dans le choix de l'école qu'ils entendent fréquenter dans l'avenir sans pour autant leur dire toute la vérité sur le sujet.

"Si cette rumeur est vraie, à mon avis cela constitue une atteinte grave à l'éthique professionnelle. Le devoir des enseignants est de dire la vérité, de renseigner objectivement les jeunes mais non de choisir l'école que fréquenteront les enfants qui ne sont pas les leurs. Ce sont les parents qui portent cette responsabilité."

Mgr Plourde continue au parachèvement et au projet de loi 30, qui dans le moment a terminé la deuxième lecture et attend une décision de la Cour suprème de l'Ontario.

In closing, it is a most important issue. Education is something that is not only very expensive in this province, but is something that is indeed the future of the generation that is currently attending school. What they will do in the future depends on how well they accept the educational process and put it to work in their own lives.

Parents are in somewhat of a quandary right now in that we have heard so many things, particularly emanating from the hearings of the standing committee on social development on Bill 30. Many people are confused to a point where they have literally closed one of their ears to what they hear. They have heard many different points of view from people who have had axes to grind and people who have not, people who stand to benefit and people who fear any sort of change within the education system.

I believe Bill 75 is an excellent bill and it is a start. I know it can be improved and the minister will be monitoring in particular the new homogeneous French-language board he has established in the Ottawa-Carleton area. In the long run, and I sincerely appreciate the fact, French-speaking people will be masters in their own house. This is a most important situation and if, indeed, we were to try to teach the French language in English, it would take a tremendously long time to learn, if it would be possible to do so.

Therefore, l commend the minister for having brought this bill forth. I thank him for having given myself and our party some input and some thought in its formulation. If we can be of assistance at any time, please let him not hesitate to call on us.

On motion by Mr. Villeneuve, the debate was adjourned.

The House recessed at 6 p.m.

21 janvier 1986