Journal des débats 1988-avril-06 | Assemblée législative de l'Ontario

Yesterday there happened to be a little problem outside. The Minister of Housing (Ms. Hošek) forgot where she was. Instead of making a ministerial statement in this area in red, that is the chamber where you say things like that, she said it outside, here, in this area marked in green, which is where the scrum usually occurs.

That is a problem that really cannot continue for very long. I know; it is a technical problem. The Premier (Mr. Peterson) does not exactly know where it is. The government House leader is not too sure about it. But just for the record, you make statements and you answer questions in here, in the area marked, very nicely, in red. When you go outside, you actually answer questions to reporters. It is not a very difficult task, but it is one that is fairly straightforward and pretty important.

I would simply like to leave this map with the government House leader. He can show the Premier where the chamber is and he can explain in here why he went to visit the Premier of Quebec, because we would all like to know that; and the Minister of Housing, instead of secretly passing regulations to important bills, could actually come in here and stand up in her place and say exactly what it is she wants to do. Then we will all know, and the people of Ontario will all know, exactly what the secret government of Ontario is doing.

It is my pleasure to present them with this map this afternoon.

MINISTER’S RESPONSE

Mrs. Marland: I would like to bring to the attention of this House the unacceptable treatment by the Minister of the Environment (Mr. Bradley) in his response to a letter which I wrote to him two months ago.

On January 26, 1988, I wrote to the minister about an upcoming public meeting that was to be held on February 2, 1988, to review the matter of a test burn for a proposed energy-from-waste facility at the St. Lawrence Cement company plant in my Mississauga South riding. l indicated to the minister that I was alarmed to learn that the test burn plans had progressed to this stage in the absence of consultation between representatives of the ministry and local members of the provincial parliament. In my letter I outlined three questions that I would have liked the minister to address.

On March 28, two months later, I received a form letter dated March 22, 1988, thanking me for expressing my concerns but indicating that I could express myself to the ministry staff at another public meeting that would be held some time near the end of March. In his letter, the minister also suggests that I read my local newspaper, where I should see an advertisement about the meeting.

I am appalled by the attitude of the minister to the very real questions that I outlined in my letter of January 28. I expect some legitimate answers in response to my questions in the very near future, and I think the very least the Minister of the Environment could do is respond directly to the Environment critic and the member for that riding.

HYLIARD CHAPPELL

Mr. Mahoney: I would like to bring to the attention of all members of this House the passing of a friend and a colleague in Mississauga, Hyliard Chappell. Both Hyl and his wife, Grace, have lived on the Riverwood estate, which is in my riding, for many years.

Hyl served two terms as a councillor, first from 1947 to 1950 in Toronto Gore, and then again from 1960 to 1962 on the township of Toronto council.

A graduate of Osgoode Hall Law School in 1943, Hyl worked in the law firm of the first chairman of Metropolitan Toronto, F. G. Gardiner, and later, in 1949, formed his own firm, which is known today as Chappell, Bushell and Stewart.

From 1968 to 1972, Hyl was the member of Parliament in Ottawa for Peel South in the government of the newly elected Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau.

His recent record shows one of continued community involvement. From 1962 to 1968, Hyl served as president of the Central Peel District Boy Scouts and was active on both the board of governors and the senate of his alma mater, McMaster University. I had the pleasure of serving on the very successful Erindale College scholarship fund-raising committee, of which Hyl was a patron.

Most recently, he served as chairman of the fund-raising committee to purchase a computerized axial tomography scanner for the Credit Valley Hospital. This campaign was successful, raising $1.2 million, and recently the Ministry of Health announced the operating funds to fulfil Hyl’s dream.

He will certainly be missed by his many friends in the city of Mississauga and the province of Ontario.

ANTI-CLOTTING DRUG

Mr. R. F. Johnston: I rise on my own behalf and on behalf of any other potential heart patient in Ontario.

The government of Ontario has decided that it is not going to fund a new drug, tissue plasminogen activator, which can, as all studies have shown at this point, save thousands of lives of people who have heart attacks from heart blockages. It has decided that it will not fund this drug, even though months ago we saw the news heralded across this province that this would be a great advance in medical care.

Instead, the Ontario Medical Association now is suggesting to its doctors that, because of the lack of funding, they should use the present streptokinase, which is known to cause side-effects like severe internal bleeding, which the new drug does not cause, and in some cases can be very detrimental to people’s health.

I would ask the government to reconsider whether or not $3,000 a life is worth it and this drug should be funded, or whether the additional costs that are going to be there for heart patients who have compounded problems, if they survive, is a better medical management than providing the necessary coverage for this drug in our hospitals in Ontario.

SCHOOL ACCOMMODATION

Mr. Jackson: Just following the recess of this House in February, the cabinet made the decision to close Sir Winston Churchill Secondary School in Hamilton. The school contains nearly 1,000 students; it was built for 1,200.

The cabinet decision to transfer the school leaves unanswered many questions, foremost among them, what constitutes a viable school, and when may a school be closed? Do 985 students not constitute a viable school?

The arbitrator appointed by the government said that a school can be closed when enrolment falls below 85 per cent of ministry-rated capacity. Is this to be the rule for all future transfers?

Tonight, parents and students of Vaughan Road Collegiate Institute in the city of York will convene to protest the possible transfer of the school out of the public school system. They seek the same answers which the Premier (Mr. Peterson) and the Minister of Education (Mr. Ward) failed to provide for Hamilton.

Why does the government not make use of the provisions already set down in regulations and in its B7 policy memorandum? These guidelines already provide for public hearings and public input whenever enrolments fall so low that it becomes necessary to determine whether a school is surplus or redundant to the board’s needs. Dialogue at these meetings centres on the preservation of quality education in the face of declining enrolments.

The first principle behind Bill 30 was supposed to be the preservation of the viability of the public school system. Why does this Liberal government refuse to consult with the communities directly affected by transfers?

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LIONEL DEMERS

Mr. Campbell: I wish at this time to advise the members of the Legislature of the recent death of Lionel Demers. Throughout his life and by his example, he became known to many people in Ontario as the champion of the Sudbury area.

He began his civic career in 1959 as a member of the Neelon and Garson council. With the advent of regional government in 1973, Mr. Demers served as a councillor-at-large for Nickel Centre. His contributions to the life of the Sudbury area were extensive: chairman of the Sudbury and District Health Board for eight of his 20 years on the board, member of the Nickel District Conservation Authority and member of the Sudbury-Manitoulin District Health Council.

I knew Lionel Demers and had the distinct privilege of working with him for many years on the Sudbury and District Social Services Administration Board. He was a man of compassion and understanding whose experience and counsel I valued when I was first elected to the regional council of Sudbury. I would ask the members of this Legislature to join with me in paying tribute to the late Lionel Demers.

HOSPITAL FUNDING

Mr. Swart: There are three hospitals in the greater St. Catharines area which are planning expansions at a total cost of $48 million, and as necessary as these expansions are, the funding is unjust. St. Catharines and Thorold must provide $14 million of this cost, mostly through property taxes. Already property taxes are increasing faster than the cost of living and the additional $20 per average home yearly for 10 years will accelerate this escalation.

There are two dimensions to this injustice. First, the property tax is an extremely regressive tax and should be used sparingly for anything other than services to property. Second, it is the Ministry of Health which determines how many beds and what facilities there will be within hospitals. As many as 100 Ontario communities are in the process of building or planning hospital construction or renovation. This level of construction or renovation exceeds anything since the establishment of the Ontario health insurance plan.

It is the appropriate time, therefore, to admit that the public hospital buildings are an integral part of the health care system; thus their costs should be paid by that system. Therefore, I am tabling a motion with the Clerk calling on the Lieutenant Governor in Council to amend regulation 859 under the Public Hospitals Act so as to allow the Minister of Health to pay up to 100 per cent of the hospital costs instead of the present two thirds.

MINISTER’S ANNOUNCEMENT

Mr. Cousens: On a point of privilege, Mr. Speaker: I rise with a great deal of unhappiness that my personal rights have been abused in this House, and the rights of the opposition party. I feel that there has been a great neglect on the part of one of the honourable ministers. I believe that one of the honourable ministers has ignored the House by her actions outside the House.

I believe that she has shown a tremendous amount of disrespect to the House and to all members of this House who come for question period, who come for statements, who come to hear what is going on. Outside the House yesterday the Minister of Housing (Ms. Hošek) made a statement and made a release of information that is very significant to what we were trying to do in the House yesterday. Our questions were not answered. It was as if we were being ignored. I feel very chagrined that this would happen.

Mr. Speaker: I listened very carefully to the honourable member, as I have to other members in the past. I do not consider it a point of privilege. However, I believe I have made many comments on such situations in the past and I am sure that the members and the ministers will take interest in my previous comments.

STATEMENTS BY THE MINISTRY

POLICE COMMISSION APPOINTMENT

Hon. Mrs. Smith: I want to inform the House of the appointment of June Rowlands to the Metropolitan Toronto Board of Commissioners of Police. Mrs. Rowlands is well known in the Metro area and has served the public with dedication and skill during her years as a municipal councillor. I am convinced that this dedication and skill will serve her well in her new job and help the Metropolitan Toronto Police Force chart a sound and progressive course for the future. I am sure all members of the House will want to join me in wishing her well.

I am equally sure that the House will join me in thanking outgoing chairman Clare Westcott for the leadership he provided during his time in office.

OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH CENTRES

Hon. Mr. Sorbara: I am pleased to announce a new initiative in the field of occupational health. I would like to inform the members of the House that the government is planning to provide up to $5 million in funding over the next three years to establish two occupational health centres that will specialize in this important, growing field of health care. This initiative follows a proposal from the Hamilton and District Labour Council and is supported by the Ontario Federation of Labour.

The importance of providing expanded, high-quality and dedicated occupational health services for workers has never been greater. This view, of course, is shared by the Ontario Federation of Labour and affiliates such as the Canadian Auto Workers and the Steelworkers and, of course, the employer community in Ontario.

The primary goal of the new occupational health centres will be to contribute to the prevention of occupational disease by improving accuracy of diagnosis. In addition, we see them as strengthening and expanding the training programs for occupational health professionals at all levels.

The centres will also provide independent assessment and screening of work-related diseases; improvement of worker and employer knowledge of work hazards, occupational diseases and preventive measures; research about the relationship between occupational diseases and the work environment; and, finally, clinical training of occupational health practitioners.

These centres will vastly increase the availability to workers of independent medical assessments, including occupational histories and physical examinations by occupational health specialists and medical monitoring of workers exposed to hazardous substances. In addition, these centres will contribute to improved industrial hygiene standards and will serve as sources of data for epidemiological studies to determine the relationship between work hazards and disease.

The centres, to be located in Hamilton and Toronto, are a further indication of this government’s long-term commitment to occupational health and safety. We hope the two facilities will begin operating in the next few months. In the interim, we will be continuing discussions with representatives of labour, management and the health care community to finalize the role of these parties in the operation of the centres. It is my sincere hope that these two pilot projects will lay the groundwork for significant enhancement of the capacity to provide accessible and high-quality occupational health services to all Ontario workers.

RESPONSES

POLICE COMMISSION APPOINTMENT

Mr. Reville: I would like to respond to the statement made in the House today by the Solicitor General (Mrs. Smith) in connection with the appointment of June Rowlands to the Metropolitan Toronto Board of Commissioners of Police. I had the opportunity to serve with Mrs. Rowlands on Metro council; in fact, I sat on her left hand for three years on the budget committee and had an opportunity to get to learn her monetary views, which I did not always agree with. There is no question that Mrs. Rowlands will be a determined police commissioner, and I note with some wry irony that perhaps this does allow Metro to have the majority of police commissioners, as was suggested for many years by my party.

OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH CENTRES

Mr. B. Rae: I want to respond to the announcement by the Minister of Labour (Mr. Sorbara) by saying to him that obviously we welcome the announcement today of the occupational health centres in Hamilton and Toronto. We feel they are long overdue and will provide a very necessary service to working people in both these communities. But I must take this opportunity to say that the government really is being very slow and reluctant in terms of creating alternatives to the current health care system and that in fact what we are suffering from is as much a surplus of pilot projects as anything else.

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There are also community-based alternatives in the field of occupational health and safety which we feel merit support. We are very concerned about the problems in northern Ontario and the fact that the north has not been chosen to be included as one of the areas for these two projects. We simply say to the minister that we think it is time to move on in an even bigger way. Obviously, we greet these two particular centres with considerable interest, and I can assure the minister we will be referring a number of cases and problems to these centres as soon as they are established.

POLICE COMMISSION APPOINTMENT

Mr. Brandt: I would like to join with the Solicitor General (Mrs. Smith) in congratulating June Rowlands on her appointment to the police commission. I would, as well, like to comment on the fact that this is an instance, as members well know, where someone can lose a nomination and be appointed to another position that may even be somewhat more attractive in terms of salary. On occasion, one can lose and still win, which is a good exercise to go through.

The gentleman who is being replaced, Mr. Westcott, is an individual who has a long and distinguished record of service to this province. He served the province well in his former capacity as chairman of the Metro police commission. I would like to wish both June Rowlands and Clare Westcott the very best in the new challenges that face them. I am sure the commission will be well served by Mrs. Rowlands and that the kind of legacy of hard work, effort and dedication that was put in by Mr. Westcott will leave her position in such a way that she can handle it in a very easy and forthright fashion.

OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH CENTRES

Mr. Pope: I would like to react, if I may, on behalf of our party to the announcement of the Minister of Labour (Mr. Sorbara) today. Obviously, this is progress in helping injured workers and workers exposed to hazards in the workplace across the province. I think I understand why it is a pilot project. The minister does not want to do it in eastern Ontario and northern Ontario yet, so he calls it a pilot project and puts it in his own backyard in Hamilton and Toronto.

One of the most important occupational health matters brought before this Legislature by the opposition and the third party, our party, over the past two years has been the lung cancer issue among gold miners in gold mining communities in northern Ontario. If there was ever a need for occupational health centres to be located in northern Ontario, it was amply demonstrated by that issue.

The Ministry of Labour is responsible for setting standards and threshold criteria that are very controversial, that are based on very little empirical evidence or assessment of the medical conditions of these workers. It is denying compensation to the survivors of dead miners in northern Ontario on very loose and flimsy grounds. Rather than addressing that problem and getting a proper assessment of this issue and getting help for miners in the gold mines of northern Ontario, the minister has chosen to ignore one of the major occupational health issues of the past two years and put his centres in Toronto and Hamilton.

I think it is time the Ministry of Labour and this government reassessed their priorities and got the help up to northern Ontario for the gold miners and their families. They deserve it.

ORAL QUESTIONS

RETAIL STORE HOURS

Mr. B. Rae: I have a question for the Premier. The Premier will be aware of the climate of fear -- and there really is no other way of describing it -- that exists among many small business people when it comes to the question of Sunday shopping and Sunday opening.

I wonder if the Premier would care to comment on a standard clause in a standard form lease that was shown to me by a tenant who did not want to have his name used. I can assure the Premier it is a large retailer. I would like to read the clause to the Premier and see how he matches that clause with all his fine talk about a so-called option.

I am quoting from the clause. It says: “Tenant will conduct its business in the premises in good faith during such hours and on such days and evenings as the landlord shall from time to time require and in such manner as shall assure transaction of a maximum volume of business in and at the premises. Nothing in this section shall require the tenant to carry on its business during any period prohibited by any bylaw regulating the hours where such business may be carried on. Tenant agrees not to support the enacting or renewal of any such law or bylaw.”

I repeat, “Tenant agrees not to support the enacting or renewal of any such law or bylaw.” That is a clause that has been signed by thousands of businesses in this province. I wonder if the Premier can somehow equate that with his so-called local option when it comes to store hours.

Hon. Mr. Peterson: I will refer this legal question to the Attorney General.

Hon. Mr. Scott: I am happy to say that several months ago we heard from a number of retailers who have leases of various types, more often than not with large shopping plaza concerns, who brought to us the problems that they envisage if the law is to be reformed. We are looking at those problems and we hope that we will be able to present to this House, when the Solicitor General (Mrs. Smith) presents her bill, an appropriate solution.

Mr. B. Rae: That was certainly an exciting answer.

Hon. Mr. Scott: It suited the question, actually.

Mr. B. Rae: A definitive endorsement of the rights of freedom of speech and conscience coming from the Attorney General we did not find today, just weasel words and more sucker clauses which are being justified and tolerated by the Attorney General.

Mr. Speaker: Order. Did it bring about a supplementary question?

Mr. B. Rae: Yes, Mr. Speaker, which I would like to address to the Premier. A second clause which is being signed by tenants, which is being used by landlords to force tenants to remain silent and which creates this climate of fear which exists, says, “Any business conduct or practice promulgated, carried on or maintained by tenant, whether through advertising, selling procedures or other use which may harm or tend to harm the business or reputation of the landlord, or reflect or tend to reflect unfavourably on the shopping centre, landlord or other tenants or premises in the shopping centre, or which might tend to confuse, mislead, deceive or be fraudulent to the public shall be immediately discontinued by the tenant at the request of the landlord.”

Is the Attorney General aware of that clause as well? What is he going to do about the fact that landlords in shopping plazas across the province have been using that clause to intimidate small business people, who are afraid to come forward and as a result have created this climate?

Hon. Mr. Scott: The Leader of the Opposition did not find my answer exciting. His manner, apparently, is to use inflammatory language at the top of his lungs to make his questions interesting, as they would not otherwise always be.

The point is that many retailers in the province have leases with their landlords, who are quite often large landlords in shopping plazas which have clauses of this type. The clause the Leader of the Opposition has referred to is very probably unconstitutional. In any event, the honourable member can be sure those kinds of considerations are being taken into account by the government as it develops its response to the retail holiday closing bill which will be introduced during this session.

Mr. B. Rae: I appreciate again that ringing endorsement of the concept of freedom of speech in the province coming from the chief law officer of the crown. I will say it quietly, or indeed if freedom of speech has to be endorsed loudly, that is what I will do as well. At least we on this side will endorse it, which is more than we are getting from the Attorney General. He has said nothing about this matter until it was brought to his attention today, not a peep, not a sound, about the intimidation that has been going on. Does he have to be asked about this in order to respond to it?

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Mr. B. Rae: I wonder if the Attorney General could perhaps answer this question. I have a letter here from a couple who are small business people, Mr. and Mrs. Van Mourik. They have a business, and their simple message is this: “We are a small business and we feel we would be hurt badly. We cannot afford extra help and we are unable to operate seven days a week on our own. The stores which are open would rob us of our business.”

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I wonder if the Attorney General can tell us what he can possibly do, once he has opened up the door to Sunday shopping and to required openings as exist in current leases, to protect the Van Mourik family, stop them from having to work on a Sunday, stop them from having to operate on a Sunday and stop them from having to lose their business to the big chains, which is precisely what the Attorney General is doing.

Hon. Mr. Scott: After 25 years as a director of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, I am not going to take lectures on civil liberties from this Johnny-come-lately.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Order. Attorney General, response.

Hon. Mr. Scott: I have a note in my question period book that was written by my executive assistant. It says, “Be nice to Bob and Evelyn.” I regret having intruded in this debate in this fashion in so far as my friend may feel that I have not been nice to him. If he feels I have offended him in any way, I want to extend my apologies. Let me try to deal with the question that he has posed.

Mr. Speaker: Response, I hope.

Hon. Mr. Scott: Let us try to deal with the issue he has posed.

At least one third of the retail workers in Ontario are required to work on Sunday under the present law. What we have indicated is that we, as a government, are considering a law which will permit local municipalities or regional municipalities, as may be decided, to determine whether those laws should apply in their municipalities, be extended or be restricted.

The government is considering that matter, as the honourable member knows, and the plight of retailers and those who work in the retail trade under the existing law or under any new law are going to be fully considered and a determination made, but what we are not going to do is give the honourable member the bill until it is ready to be introduced. When we are ready to introduce it as a government, those answers will all be made plain.

Mr. B. Rae: I just want the Attorney General to know I do not expect him to be nice to me. I expect him to do his job defending civil liberties across this province. That is the only test we apply. Niceness does not come into it.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I would remind all members this is time for oral questions. Does the Leader of the Opposition have a question?

HOME CARE

Mr. B. Rae: I have a question for the Premier about our health care system. The Premier will have received, I am sure, as I have, letters every day from people who are unable to get the kind of care in our health care system which they, I think very rightly, feel entitled to. I would like to refer the Premier to one such letter from a woman whose sister is suffering from cancer and is in a four-bed ward in the Cambridge Memorial Hospital. She says two of the other ladies in the ward have been in the ward for over a year. She goes on to say:

“Why I am writing this problem is this, and I am sure you and many others are aware of it, that people are living to a ripe old age now, but some are not able to care for themselves. The hospital is no place for some of these people. Poor planning on the government’s part. No place for them. It must be costing the government millions to care for them in hospitals ... I do not think there is much you could do for Bernice. I am thinking of the future needs of the elderly. In the hospitals the nurses cannot look after them. The hospitals are short-staffed and the nurses are rushed off their feet.”

Mr. Speaker: And the question?

Mr. B. Rae: “Soon there will not be any nurses, as it’s a thankless job. The young people will turn to other careers.”

Mr. Speaker: Question?

Mr. B. Rae: This is just one example of what is taking place. I wonder if the Premier can tell us what he is going to do about the crisis in our hospital system, because there are so many people there, particularly old people, who should be cared for somewhere else, preferably at home.

Mr. Speaker: Order. The question has been asked.

Hon. Mr. Peterson: My honourable friend makes a reasonable point in the question he raises. He is well aware, and many others would agree with him, that there is a feeling that a number of people, particularly the chronically ill, are misplaced in some of the active institutions. I think that relates specifically to the letter he read to the House. Those cases in fact do exist.

As he knows, this government has stated its intention to look at alternatives. I am sorry I do not have the statistics just at my fingertips -- I know the Minister of Health (Mrs. Caplan) and the Treasurer (Mr. R. F. Nixon) would -- with respect to programs on noninstitutional care and community-based programs. He is aware that we have launched, I believe, the largest capital campaign in the history of this province, some $850 million.

That being said, I cannot tell him for sure that every patient is in absolutely appropriate care, but our emphasis is on community-based care as well as improving our institutions; it is on noninstitutional care. I think the government is making progress in that regard.

Mr. B. Rae: I am glad the Premier in his answer referred to the so-called community-based approach. In a letter the Premier himself wrote on March 2, 1988, to Patricia Spindel of the Concerned Friends of Ontario Citizens in Care Facilities, the Premier said, “We intend to continue endorsing the integrated homemaker program as the cornerstone of our community services strategy.”

If this is his cornerstone, I wonder if the Premier can tell us why his own evidence shows that he is paying the people who work in that field literally for peanuts? The turnover is 50 per cent among visiting homemakers. He is unable to attract and keep people because he is paying many of them less than $5 an hour. In fact, in 1986-87, of a budgeted $7.3 million, his ministry spent only $4.8 million. If this is his cornerstone and this is his answer to my question, I wonder if he can explain to us why it is that in a health care budget of $11 billion he is spending this much and not even spending --

Mr. Speaker: Order. The question has been asked.

Hon. Mr. Peterson: It is an important program. It is moving ahead. My honourable friend is standing in the House and arguing that we should be spending more on employees. One can always make that point, I am sure.

Obviously, there are finite amounts of money that can be spent on any particular program. We think it is a constructive one and it is moving ahead. If the member has suggestions on how to expand it and how to make it more appropriate, I am obviously interested. It is something we believe in. I think he has seen a large number of programs from this government with respect to assistive devices, homemakers’ programs and a lot of other things, which are making it easier for people to live on their own, with their independence and with their dignity.

Mr. B. Rae: In the same letter the Premier wrote to Ms. Spindel, in which he referred to the homemakers’ program as the “cornerstone” of what he was doing in health care in the community, he said, referring to the agencies that are for profit, commercial centres for homemakers, “I would like to point out that there is a need to utilize these agencies....Our chief concern is that clients secure the most appropriate local service available.”

I wonder how the Premier feels about the fact that his own interministerial study, which is admittedly only a draft, of which we have a copy dated August 28, 1987, showed that the average hourly wage for homemakers identified by the agencies ranged from $4.35 to $7.80 per hour for not-for-profit agencies and $4.35 to $5.75 per hour for the commercial agencies. In the commercial sector, 41 per cent of those found at the minimum of the wage range were in the $4.35 to $4.50 bracket.

How can he possibly sustain a system of home care in which he is paying people who are working in home care $4.35 to $4.50 an hour? He has got the system backed up, he has not even begun to address it --

Mr. Speaker: Order. The question has been asked.

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Hon. Mr. Peterson: I think one could make the same point about child care. One could stand in this House and say that child care workers are inappropriately paid. The Leader of the Opposition frequently makes the case that members of Parliament are underpaid as well. He could make that case, perhaps, about many other sectors in our society.

Is his point that we should expand the numbers or increase the wages for the people who are there or just spend more, forgetting about the revenue that has to be garnered somewhere or other?

I admit, and it is no secret, that there are problems in that particular area, but I think if one looks at the cumulative weight of the programs we have instituted, we are making real progress in this regard. If he is suggesting that we should pay people twice as much and have half as many people enrolled in the program, obviously, that is a point of view that he is entitled to have.

RETAIL STORE HOURS

Mr. Brandt: My question is for the Premier. Yesterday, once again, the Premier indicated that he favours and believes in the local option as it relates to the Sunday shopping question. To quote him, “The official position of this government is that we respect the local option to make a decision with respect to Sunday shopping.” He went on to say, “I have sufficient faith in the local leadership to make decisions appropriate to that community.”

Could the Premier, perhaps reflecting on what he said yesterday, indicate to us today whether he still has faith in local leadership, and does that faith extend to local municipalities making decisions on the type of stores that will be allowed to open, as well as the size of stores that will be allowed to open, under the legislation he intends to bring forward?

Hon. Mr. Peterson: My honourable friend is asking to see the legislation today. I can tell him that the entire package will be brought into this House in the not-too-distant future and we will share it with him on that occasion.

Mr. Brandt: I appreciate that response, because I would like to quote another statement that appeared in the Kitchener-Waterloo Record within a matter of the past day or so from the Solicitor General (Mrs. Smith). I will share the quote with members now, “The province could decree that nothing would open that was larger than 10,000 square feet.” She went on to say that the types of stores would be regulated and concluded that we could have overriding provincial laws.

I would like to ask the Premier, since the Solicitor General is now suggesting that the size of the store may well be regulated and that there could be overriding provincial laws as they relate to the Sunday shopping question, really what kind of local option is it that the government is talking about that the municipalities are going to be given by Ontario?

Hon. Mr. Peterson: The member’s question raises an interesting dilemma for him. He is getting all exercised and he does not know what he is getting exercised about.

I say to my honourable friend that it will all be brought forward to him in this House and he can give his particular views on the subject. If he has any amendments he wants to bring forward or matters he wants to raise in debate, I think my honourable friend will end up quite happy with the things that we will be bringing forward next week.

Mr. Brandt: I have to say to the Premier, with due respect, I have never seen a government so totally confused on the issue in all the time I have been in this House. He brings forward a suggestion of legislation some five months ago and then he complicates the legislation as he discusses it with the people of Ontario. He does not know whether there is going to be a local option or whether there are going to be controls in a local option.

With respect to the same question, the member for Guelph (Mr. Ferraro), when asked about restrictions, indicated that a decision had already been made. I recognize that the legislation has not been brought forward, but he goes on to say there are going to be restrictions on municipal authority.

Is the member for Guelph or the Solicitor General or the Premier indicating an accurate position reflecting the decision that this government has made as it relates to the local option? As he now gets advice from the honourable member to his left, is he now in a position to indicate whether there are going to be restrictions with respect to local municipalities or are there not going to be restrictions, and will there be a true local option with local autonomy? Which is it going to be? It is a very simple question.

Hon. Mr. Peterson: I appreciate the question very much. Indeed, my colleague to the left was giving me advice, because he responded particularly viscerally to the member’s claim that this was a confused issue in this House. He asked me to remind the member of the Suncor purchase by the member’s government and the separate school issue as handled by the member’s government, when it comes to the area of confusion; but I refuse to do that and I reject his advice. I am not going to raise those issues; I am going to respond directly to the member’s question.

We have brought forward, as he knows, the idea of municipal option with respect to Sunday opening, which just extends the power municipalities have now, as they control stores six days a week. That will be presented in a complete package, so my honourable friend will have an opportunity to criticize all of it, rather than little bits. My honourable friend will have an opportunity to put forward his particular views, always thoughtful and constructive. He will have an opportunity at that juncture to reconcile the opinions of his former leader, some of his colleagues and indeed some of the people in his own party.

One of the things I enjoy reading the most is a document called the Blue Review. I guess it is from the Young Progressive Conservatives. There is this chap here saying: “Sunday shopping is good. An extra day to shop would allow people an extra day to handle domestic chores. More important, it would allow them the freedom to choose whether or not they wish to do so.” That is in the member’s official party organ, by David Gilinsky, who sits on the executive of the Ontario Progressive Conservative Youth Association.

The member will have an opportunity, when this bill is brought in next week or so, to express his views, the views of the member for Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry (Mr. Villeneuve), Mr. Grossman or anybody else. He will be able to see -- I will not put him through this agony of picking away at little pieces -- the broad context. When he sees it in its broad context, I am sure my honourable friend will see the genius of this particular legislation and that it is conceived to extend --

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Mr. Brandt: I have another question for the Premier. Let me just say, if I might, that the Blue Review makes a lot better and more interesting reading than the “red rag.” I want to suggest further to him that the youth of our party is involved in the decision-making process, unlike the youth of his party, who could not even get in to speak to the Attorney General (Mr. Scott) about the Meech Lake accord. They were shut out entirely by the Premier’s party and he knows it.

Mr. Speaker: And now for the question.

JUSTICE MINISTERS’ MEETING

Mr. Brandt: Now, Mr. Speaker, for the question I know you are waiting for so patiently.

The federal and provincial justice ministers, as the Premier knows, met in Saskatchewan on March 17 of this year. They had a discussion, over a period of about three days, that concerned some very important and major issues to this province and to the country as a whole. It involved discussions on victims’ rights, compensation for wrongful committal, sentencing, law reform and abortion. Who attended this conference on behalf of the interests of Ontario and who spoke out at this conference for the people of Ontario?

Hon. Mr. Peterson: With respect, number one, to his preamble and his question about who makes decisions in this party, I think it is quite obvious that some juvenile has been making policy in his party for some long period of time: but on to his question. The Attorney General (Mr. Scott), of course, is the chief law officer of the crown and speaks for these matters, but he was away and the Solicitor General (Mrs. Smith) attended in his stead.

Mr. Eves: I am glad we have clarified the point that the Attorney General was on holiday in Mexico, because the same day a communications assistant in the Attorney General’s office is quoted in one newspaper as saying: “‘Mr. Scott is in Saskatoon this week at a meeting of federal and provincial justice ministers,’ Ms. Boswell said.” The same day, she is quoted in another newspaper, “‘Mr. Scott is on vacation this week,’ she said.”

While the Attorney General was vacationing in Mexico, he later saw fit to make public comments regarding Canada’s parole system and Canada’s sentencing system. If the reform of the sentencing system and parole system in Canada is so important to the Attorney General and to this government, why did the Attorney General see fit to be in Mexico vacationing instead?

Hon. Mr. Peterson: I am not sure, very frankly, that question deserves a serious answer. It speaks to the paucity of any particular views the member has that he raises this question in that way.

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Let me just say that this Attorney General, in my opinion and in the opinion of many others, is the most respected Attorney General in this country today. I say that without fear of contradiction. I have sat in many federal-provincial conferences with him when I have seen respect and deference from everyone, from other attomeys general to the Minister of Justice, including the Prime Minister, because of his leading contribution in matters of justice. I do not think he has any apology to make to the member when he takes a week or two holiday.

Mr. Eves: The Premier’s opinion is probably one shared by about 93 other colleagues that I can think of; 93 other people in Ontario, perhaps.

During that federal rninisters’ meeting, Mr. Hnatyshyn, the federal Minister of Justice, said it was important to consult the provinces concerning the abortion issue because they have an important responsibility in the prosecution of the criminal law. I quite agree with the Premier that every Attorney General needs a vacation like everybody else every now and then, but there are priorities here. This is a government that supposedly has mouthed concerns about the abortion laws and about these various other topics enunciated by my leader, at a very important meeting --

Mr. Speaker: The question.

Mr. Eves: The fact of the matter is that the Attorney General for this province was not there to express his opinion. He chose to express his opinions about these issues in the newspaper a week later. He regarded that as being more important --

lnterjections.

Mr. Speaker: Order. Do you have a question? I guess there was no question.

RENTAL HOUSING PROTECTION

Mr. Breaugh: I have a question for the Minister of Housing concerning her inadvertent release of certain regulations for the Rental Housing Protection Act that were leaked yesterday to the scrum outside.

Can the minister explain to us how these regulations will do anything for those tenants on Jameson Avenue in Toronto, from Toronto Apartment Buildings Co., who were physically evicted from their apartment units? How do these regulations help them in any way, shape or form?

Hon. Ms. Hošek: The hotel regulations that came into effect yesterday are going to protect tenants because they are going to prevent buildings from being turned into suite hotels in order to circumvent the rent review legislation. As to the question about the tenants of Tabco who were evicted, they are protected in one case under the Landlord and Tenant Act as well.

Mr. Breaugh: I get the feeling we should all adjourn to the scrum outside where some answers might be forthcoming.

Can the minister explain to us precisely what she has done here that will help people who have already been evicted? Is she specifically proposing that people who have been thrown out on the street will now be able to apply for a rent rebate at our famous rent review process, so that people who were thrown out on the street more than two months ago will have to wait about two years before any decision is reached on whether they do or do not qualify for rebates and whether those units are apartments or hotel suites?

Hon. Ms. Hošek: Some of the tenants of Tabco, who I think are the ones the member is particularly concerned about here, have already applied for rent rebates and I have instructed the ministry that all applications for rent rebates under this suite hotel regulation, which is part of the Residential Rent Regulation Act, not part of the Rental Housing Protection Act, will be a first priority and will be processed immediately.

Mr. Cousens: I have a question for the Minister of Housing. I am reading today the definitions that go with the regulations. The minister has released the regulations somewhat after her scrum, but I also have a copy of the definitions, which really open up what these regulations are all about.

First of all, the regulations and definitions were prepared on January 28, over two months ago, and it has taken this length of time for the minister to finally table them in the House. She has stalled for that length of time. In the meantime, we now have suite landlords who have a set of loopholes that show them how to circumvent rent control. If these regulations are a priority, why has the minister waited two months to release these regulations, and not even the definitions?

Hon. Ms. Hošek: The regulations we have put into effect starting yesterday offer protection for tenants in exactly the way they asked. I have taken very seriously the concerns they made to me, which a lot of the members know about as well, about the situation they were facing in their housing. That is the reason I fulfilled my commitment. I said I would get this done by the week of April 5, and that is exactly what I did.

Mr. Cousens: The minister has not answered the question, as usual. She has delayed for two months on a question that is very important to many people, both tenants and landlords, and now the definitions, as they are described, really permit the landlords to walk through the loopholes the minister said she closed. The landlords can now continue to charge daily, weekly and monthly rent. The landlords now have the rules on how to circumvent rent control, if we look at the last page of the definitions -- maybe we did not get that.

I will ask the minister why it is that she will not admit here in this House that she has widened the loophole rather than closed it?

Hon. Ms. Hošek: We worked long and hard to get a very strong definition of “suite hotels.” We tested it against the situations we knew we were trying to make sure we were protecting tenants from. It is our considered opinion, it is my considered opinion, after much thought and much work, that that is exactly what the regulation does.

COLLEGES OF APPLIED ARTS AND TECHNOLOGY

Mr. Adams: My question is for the Minister of Colleges and Universities. The college system is now more than 20 years old, and yet links between the high schools and the colleges and between the colleges and the universities are still far from clear. For example, although college students can transfer a credit to university in many individual cases, this is still by no means automatic.

Similarly, although there are more university students transferring to colleges than the other way around, the transfer arrangements there are also unclear. What is being done to make transfers between colleges and universities more effective and productive?

Hon. Mrs. McLeod: This issue is actually of great concern to both the university and college community at the present. As I am sure the honourable member is well aware, the universities are fully responsible for determining their admission criteria to specific programs, so it must be, in fact, that the decisions about transferability of college credits are the result of discussions between a specific university and the colleges.

I am very pleased to find that in fact those discussions are taking place more often and that there are in fact linkages and transferability of credits to specific programs being arranged. I certainly, as minister, feel that those linkages are important. I encourage those discussions.

I also think it is important, to the interest shown in your question, to note that I have asked the Council of Regents, which is the advisory body for the community colleges, to examine the evolving role of the colleges and, as part of that, to look very specifically at the relationship between the universities and the colleges.

Mr. Adams: There also appears to be some confusion at the high school-college transfer point. For example, students who do not complete high school before going to college find it virtually impossible to complete their high school credits while they are in the college system. Could the minister comment on relations between the high schools and the colleges, please?

Hon. Mrs. McLeod: Once again, I have to note that the colleges are responsible for determining their admission criteria for specific programs, although within particular provincial guidelines. I believe there is considerable discussion and liaison between the colleges and the high schools, and many of the specific concerns of students and their credits are examined with fairly flexible programming on the part of the colleges.

I would note that there has been some concern expressed on the part of the colleges about the changes in secondary school curriculum and what impact that might have. It is for that reason that Graham Collins, who is dean of human studies at Humber College, has been seconded to the Association of Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology of Ontario for a two-year period. He is specifically looking at the impact of the secondary school changes on the colleges and developing a close liaison provincially with the Ministry of Education and with provincial secondary school associations. I think many of the aspects of the member’s questions will be examined in that review.

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HOME CARE

Mr. Allen: Since the Premier (Mr. Peterson) has flunked the question on home care, perhaps I can pass it on to the Minister of Community and Social Services. The minister will know that hundreds of seniors and disabled and semi-invalided persons in this province are unable to secure homemaker services at this time, and those who do secure a low-wage, revolving-door, untrained service that in fact is a kind of disappearing, dissolving affair since the homemaker services cannot keep people on staff in the present labour market.

In 1986, the homemakers appealed to the minister and to the government to do something in response to the growing crisis. They said they could not provide adequate or sufficient care. What is the minister going to do to respond to those needs since he has not to date?

Hon. Mr. Sweeney: The honourable member correctly identifies part of the problem, and that is that the current wages are low. When I met with the organizations he referred to, we did indicate to them that we were working on two fronts simultaneously; that is, trying to make some decisions as to the extent we were going to expand the opportunities to use homemakers as opposed to restricting that opportunity and increasing the wages of the current staff.

The honourable member will be aware of the fact that we now have about 18 municipalities across the province that are involved in the integrated homemakers program. We said clearly when that was introduced that it would be difficult to know in advance how much takeup there would be on that and therefore what kinds of costs we would be facing and that we wanted to try it in a sufficient number of places and with a sufficiently broad geographic base to be able to assess that.

That information is now coming in to us and we have the information as to what the takeup is, what it is likely to be over the next five years and what the costs are going to be. On the basis of that, we are currently making decisions as to how far we can expand that, as opposed to slowing it down but providing more funds for the programs that are already in place. That is the decision that is facing us.

Mr. Allen: The takeup question is one question, but one can hardly take seriously a profession that this is going to be the cornerstone of community health care when the basis of it is low-wage labour at an average of $5.50 an hour. A neighbouring province pays $10.81 plus benefits. The result of that is that this is a system that will function only in depression and recession times, not in times when there is a competing market and people are drawn away from those services. The result is that 50 per cent of those homemaker services have turnover rates of 50 per cent, 13 per cent or 100 per cent per year.

Is this the kind of system the minister wants to make the cornerstone of the community health care system in Ontario, one that functions in that dissolving and disappearing fashion?

Hon. Mr. Sweeney: The short response to the member’s question is no. I am convinced, as I believe he is from our discussions, that we must provide sufficient opportunities and sufficient options, particularly for our elderly population and our disabled population in our communities to remain in their own homes or to remain with their families.

If that is going to happen, then we have to provide the support services. At the same time, we know from the experience that the member has indicated that is not going to occur at the rates we are paying at the present time. That is recognized and we will be addressing it, but I must say to my honourable colleague that will put some restrictions on how far we can expand that service. Again, I come back, that is the difficult decision facing us.

RENTAL HOUSING PROTECTION

Mr. Cousens: I have a question for the Minister of Housing again. We continue to be stonewalled by the minister, we are not getting answers, and it is too bad there is nothing we can do within question period to force answers to questions. Notwithstanding that, we will keep asking and we will keep searching for the answers, because maybe we will go out and listen to the scrum and find another answer to one of the important questions.

I would like to raise a question to the Minister of Housing regarding the Rental Housing Protection Act, which is an act for condo conversions. People want to know what is going to happen with that legislation when it expires and sunsets this year. People are asking, and I think we have the answer. Maybe the minister can confirm what I think I read in Topical on February 26, 1988, where her ministry was advertising for a rental housing protection program planner.

Inasmuch as the minister is doing this, will she not admit right now in this House that her ministry is going to bring forward the Rental Housing Protection Act again?

Hon. Ms. Hošek: I recognize that this issue is an issue of great concern to people, as it is to me. The member knows that the Rental Housing Protection Act is meant to lapse at the end of June 1988. I guarantee everybody in this House that he will hear our intentions about that way before that date.

Mr. Breaugh: In the scrum or right in here?

Mr. Cousens: We will be listening in the scrum, but we will continue to ask in the House. The minister has failed to answer the question. What happens now is that Bill 11, or the condo conversion act, raises many questions. The questions are now ones of credibility to the tenant groups and the landlords, who are asking: “What is going to happen to us? What is the solution going to be?”

Here at one point the minister is advertising for a planner, which says she is going to continue. On the other hand, the minister is carrying on conversations with tenant groups saying: “Well, what do you think? How should we do it?” Why is it that the minister continues to ask people who are looking to her in good faith? Why does she ask them for help and assistance when in fact she already has her own agenda to re-enact the condo conversion act?

Hon. Ms. Hošek: I find it astonishing that the critic from the third party objects to my talking to the people who are most likely to be affected by any sort of changes we make. I thought that was one of the important things to do around here.

What I should tell the member is that everyone I have spoken with in the past six months that I have been working as minister has raised issues and concerns about this act and about the whole issue of rental housing protection, and I guarantee this House that we will get a clear message about what the government’s intention is in the House very soon.

INTERPRETER SERVICES

Mr. Faubert: My question is for the Minister of Citizenship. Ontario, as we are well aware, is a province rich in its multicultural diversity. People have come here from all countries, communities and backgrounds to seek a better life for themselves and indeed for their families. However, the language barrier is often a problem for some people in our multicultural communities. This, of course, makes it difficult for them to take advantage of the many services that the government has to offer and hinders their full participation in the economic, political and social life of the province.

Can the minister advise of any initiatives that his ministry is presently undertaking to deal with this specific problem?

Hon. Mr. Phillips: As the member may know, historically the various ministries have provided interpreter services. In addition to that, our ministry funds well over 100 different community groups that provide interpreter services.

One thing I should bring to the attention of the House is that we initiated a very innovative program in the last 12 months in the area of wife assault programs, specifically in the area of providing wife assault programs for non-English/French-speaking women, a very important initiative and one which is working very well because of one element; that is, we have what we call cultural interpreters, who make certain that the interpreters not only can handle the language but are extremely sensitive to the cultural background of the people who are affected. It is a very important program.

As a result of that program, we are now looking, on an interministerial basis, at extending that cultural interpreter program beyond just the wife assault program. That committee is working and looking at expanding that very successful program beyond this program.

Mr. Faubert: The city of Scarborough contains one of the largest, most active and fastest-growing multicultural communities in Ontario, if not in Canada. Can the minister assure this Legislature that the city of Scarborough will be considered as a possible recipient of these very worthwhile interpreter services?

Hon. Mr. Phillips: As I said earlier, this wife assault program is extremely important. We are looking at expanding it. We are looking at several communities. We will expand it on the basis of need, and if Scarborough meets the highest criteria, Scarborough will get that program. We are planning to expand this very important program in the area of the highest need, based on some very strict criteria. If Scarborough meets those criteria, we would expand it there.

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Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Nickel Belt would like to ask a question.

INCOME TAX

Mr. Laughren: Thank you for protecting me from my colleagues, Mr. Speaker. I have a question for the Treasurer. Those of us who know the Treasurer understand full well that he would never embrace the philosophy of “make the rich pay.” However, that should not necessarily mean that he believes in making the poor pay.

Could the Treasurer tell us how it is that after almost three years as Treasurer and $8 billion in increased revenues to Ontario, in this province people earning below the poverty level pay the second-highest amount of provincial income taxes and provincial levies in all of Canada? Only Newfoundland pays more; a family of four pays $1 more than in Ontario, otherwise we would be leading the pack. At the same time, that same family earning $50,000 a year was fifth from the top.

Could the Treasurer tell us how it is that he has allowed this to continue despite the fact that he has been Treasurer for almost three years now and he has had $8 billion in increased revenue to play with?

Hon. R. F. Nixon: I think maybe there is too much research available to the member.

Actually, I had not realized that those statistics were that damning, but the member is aware that in each budget the tax reduction program has been enriched, and frankly I have been very proud of the fact that we have improved the situation. We have also, as a government, taken the initiative of putting a surtax on incomes over approximately $50,000, which was designed to add at least some degree of progressivity to the tax range.

Mr. Laughren: I understand that the Treasurer does not want to talk about details of his upcoming budget, but would he give us one assurance; namely, that after his budget this year those people earning below the poverty level will pay no provincial income taxes, and that for those people earning over $50,000 a year we will be number one in the province of extracting a fair amount of income from them? That is the kind of tax reform we have a right to expect from this administration.

Hon. R. F. Nixon: I am not sure whether the honourable member comes into that latter category or not, but he must be pretty close, so I will bear that in mind as we adjust the surtax.

Mr. B. Rae: The Treasurer is also included.

Hon. R. F. Nixon: I am in it; oh, yes.

I am not in a position to give the honourable member the undertakings he seeks, but I guess we generally share similar aims. I can say that as far as I am concerned the budget will reflect fairness and equity in all of its details.

NORTHERN ONTARIO HERITAGE FUND

Mr. Harris: A year ago we had a budget that followed a throne speech that pledged an additional allocation of $30 million would be put, in that fiscal year, which ended last month, into the northern Ontario heritage fund. Yesterday the Minister of Northern Development (Mr. Fontaine) responded to the member for Lake Nipigon (Mr. Pouliot), and he said this, “During the last seven months, we used the heritage funds for northern Ontario for certain projects which were in progress.”

Interjection.

Mr. Harris: Sorry, I am just reading from Instant Hansard. The minister said, “During the last seven months, we used the heritage funds for northern Ontario for certain projects which were in progress.”

I wonder if the minister could tell us which projects the money was used for and why it was necessary to replace the money that was already there, if those projects were in process, with the northern Ontario heritage fund.

L’hon. M. Fontaine: En réponse à la question du député de Nipissing, je dois lui rappeler que je n’ai pas parlé du «heritage fund» hier, j’ai parlé du Fonds du patrimoine, qui n’est pas dépensé puisque j’amènerai la loi ici, d’ici quelques semaines; nous allons présenter une loi en Chambre pour ce fonds-là. Ce dont j’ai parlé, c’est le Fonds du développement du Nord. Nous avons continué à dépenser la portion de presque 30 millions cette année dans le Fonds du développement du Nord pour des projets qui seront peut-être les mêmes projets qui seront amenés dans le Fonds du patrimoine.

Je dois lui rappeler la raison du délai: c’est parce que j’ai consulté les personnes du Nord de l'Ontario pour savoir ce qu’elles voulaient obtenir de ce fonds-là, comment on devait l’utiliser, mais je n’ai jamais dit que je l’avais dépensé. J’ai dit que j’allais revenir d’ici deux semaines avec une loi qui sera débattue dans cette Chambre. Je suis certain que le député lui-même et les gens du Nord seront satisfaits de ce que j’amènerai dans deux semaines. Merci beaucoup.

Mr. Harris: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It is a lot clearer now. In fact, I was surprised at the minister’s answer yesterday and I am pleased that he is correcting the record today. I wish he had done it voluntarily and not forced me to ask him a question, because, in fact, in answer to my query, the minister, on the order paper, indicated: “No projects have been approved for funding as yet. No identifiable administrative costs have been incurred.” He announced it a year ago, he got the headlines, he allocated $30 million, and now what he is telling us a year later is that not one cent of that northern Ontario heritage fund money was spent. In fact, it was turned back in, I presume, to the Treasurer (Mr. R. F. Nixon).

He has had two premiers’ conferences in northern Ontario. He has had the whole gamut, the Premier (Mr. Peterson) and all the cabinet ministers, up there and he has come out with two reports. He told northerners, “You have got to tell us what you want.” He has got this report from the last one. He ignored the first report, which makes all kinds of recommendations. Can he tell me why, after two years, he has not found one single solitary thing in any of these conferences or any of the other recommendations that have come forward on which he has seen fit to spend one cent of the northern Ontario heritage fund money?

L’hon. M. Fontaine: Je dois rappeler au député de Nipissing encore une fois que je crois qu’il n’a qu’une idée dans la tête, qui est de regarder seulement ce que son gouvernement a fait, lui, dans le Nord de l’Ontario. Si le gouvernement qui a été là pendant 42 ans n’a rien fait, ça ne veut pas dire que nous autres, on n’a rien fait. Il n’a qu’à regarder les projets que nous avons mis en place dans le domaine du développement. On va dépenser presque au-dessus de 100 millions de dollars d’ici un an dans des développements. En plus, avec la Northern Ontario Development Corp., nous avons mis des projets en place; avec le northern Ontario regional development program, nous avons dépensé au-dessus de dix millions cette année.

Mr. Harris: No you haven’t. What a joke.

L’hon. M. Fontaine: Ferme-la donc. Attends un peu, toi, énerve-toi pas.

En plus, pour en revenir aux conférences, je dois lui dire que ce rapport-là, qui est sorti depuis deux semaines, nous allons le déposer devant les ministres du Cabinet qui s’occupent du développement du Nord, qui vont donner une réponse, d’ici peu, indiquant leur plan d’action.

Je n’ai pas honte de comparer ce qui est arrivé depuis un an dans mon ministère avec le ministère de M. Bernier avant. Je demande aux municipalités, je demande aux compagnies ce qui se passe comme projet, et elles sont satisfaites. Depuis un an, un an et demi, je n’ai pas eu une lettre qui me dise qu’on n’était pas satisfait de ce qu’on fait pour le Nord de l’Ontario. Les chambres de commerce, les personnes en tête, les entrepreneurs sont satisfaits, comme c’est là.

Mais on va en faire plus en mettant ce rapport-là en place d’ici quelques mois. Alors, il ne reste qu’à attendre pour voir l’action qui s’en vient. Merci.

CAR RENTAL CONTRACTS

Mr. Callahan: My question is for the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations. Last night on Market Place it was reported that major car companies in the United States require people who are going to use their products to pay an additional fee to provide for what they determine to be collision coverage or a collision waiver. It was also reported that they discovered this was not an insurance policy and that in fact it was simply a contractual arrangement subject to conditions on the back of a contract that would be very difficult for even the youngest of us to read.

The net result was that, when an accident occurred and these conditions were breached, the people had to pay the damages. My first question is, has there been any report that this situation prevails in Ontario? I will have a supplementary.

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Hon. Mr. Wrye: Unfortunately, I did not see the Market Place program in question, but I am aware of the issue and the concerns that have been raised on this matter from time to time about the so-called collision waiver forms that individuals, particularly when they are vacationing in the United States, find themselves faced with. I have not received any high volume of complaints and concerns raised. That does not mean there have not been any. I will check into it for the honourable member.

I am advised by my officials that individuals in this province who are travelling to other jurisdictions and who may perhaps face the same problem here in Ontario may buy as part of their own insurance policy something which will give them the protection so that they do not need to sign off on one of these waiver forms, which, as the honourable member correctly points out, can be, I am advised, quite fraught with holes.

Mr. Callahan: Some of the conditions that were reported on Market Place, at least in the US, excluded liability for such things as travelling over an unpaved portion of road. One particular poor person wound up having to do that in order to get from point A to point B and found that one of the conditions in the contract was that this vitiated the coverage he thought he had.

I ask the minister if his department will canvass these contracts and determine whether or not the conditions contained therein are reasonable conditions or, in the alternative, that these people might be made aware of the fact that they can obtain insurance from their own carriers for a very minimal fee.

Hon. Mr. Wrye: The honourable member makes a very good suggestion. I am not sure what we would be able to do in terms of car rental companies doing business in the United States. I am quite prepared to take a look at those companies doing business here in Ontario. I do know we have on occasion brought these matters forward to the attention of consumers in this province. Certainly, the honourable member makes a good suggestion, that perhaps the ministry, as it does in its ongoing attempts to educate consumers and to give them good consumer tips that will protect them from the kind of situation described on Market Place, should do that kind of practice a little more and take up this issue in the near future.

TEMAGAMI ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT

Mr. Wildman: I have a question of the Minister of Natural Resources regarding the Red Squirrel Road environmental assessment fiasco, particularly in regard to the published comments by Mr. Teleki of DeLCan Corp. Can the minister explain the extent to which the environmental assessment document prepared by DeLCan differs from the document submitted to the Ministry of the Environment by his ministry? If he is sincere about environmental protection in the forest, will he either do the EA study again or submit the original DeLCan document rather than proceed with the laundered document that he has submitted?

Hon. Mr. Kerrio: Certainly, we are very anxious to get the environmental assessment of Red Squirrel done with. I want the honourable member to remember that I put forward the Red Squirrel for an environmental assessment voluntarily. I was not forced into that position. I am very pleased to say the Minister of the Environment (Mr. Bradley) was pleased that I should take that initiative. The member is going to see good things happen throughout Ontario relating to good management when we go through the whole class environmental assessment to protect. the forests, the jobs and the people of northern Ontario.

Mr. Speaker: That completes the time for oral questions.

Petitions. The member for Mississauga South.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Order. We have come to the time for petitions. It is very difficult to hear. I will ask for your assistance and recognize the member for Mississauga South.

PETITIONS

RETAIL STORE HOURS

Mrs. Marland: I have close to 5,000 petitions which I have pleasure in presenting on behalf of those people who are concerned with the subject of Sunday shopping. These petitions have been collected with the assistance of Lansing Buildall, and particularly Howard Kitchen of that firm. I am presenting these to the Lieutenant Governor in the hope that he will convey the message to the Premier (Mr. Peterson) that these close to 5,000 residents object to the decision of the government to pass the responsibility for seven-day retailing on to the municipalities. They also object to the inevitable increased cost and the elimination of the opportunity for a common pause day for families.

Mrs. Stoner: I have a petition signed by 60 residents of the Municipality of Ajax, which reads:

“To the Lieutenant Governor and the Legislative Assembly:

“We the undersigned wish to express our opposition to changes in Sunday shopping laws which threaten to transform Sunday into just another day for doing business. We are in favour of limiting Sunday shopping for the following reasons.

“1. It is commanded of us as Christians that one day in seven should be set aside for worship. Sunday has special significance for us because the resurrection of Jesus took place on a Sunday.

“2. Families need a regular patterned opportunity for the whole family to share time.

“3. Individuals need a regular, consistent opportunity for rest and recreation. An open Sunday will erode that opportunity greatly.”

Mr. Cleary: I have two more small petitions, one signed by 20 people and the other signed by five individuals from my riding with concern about the effect of Sunday shopping. One reads:

“We, the undersigned, beg leave to petition the Parliament of Ontario as follows:

“In recognition of the importance of a pause day in Canadian society, we ask that the Retail Business Holidays Act be maintained and strengthened; that the act remain under the jurisdiction of the Ontario Legislature and not be transferred to local municipalities.”

NATUROPATHY

Mr. Daigeler: I have the pleasure to introduce a petition signed by 60 residents of Ontario regarding the regulation of naturopathy. The petition reads as follows:

“To the Honourable the Lieutenant Governor and the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“We, the undersigned, beg leave to petition the Parliament of Ontario as follows:

“Whereas it is my constitutional right to have available and to choose the health care system of my preference;

“And whereas naturopathy has had self-governing status in Ontario for more than 42 years;

“We petition the Ontario Legislature to call on the government to introduce legislation that would guarantee naturopaths the right to practise their art and science to the fullest without prejudice or harassment.”

INTRODUCTION OF BILL

MID-CONTINENT BOND CORPORATION, LIMITED ACT

Mr. M. C. Ray moved first reading of Bill Pr28, An Act to revive Mid-Continent Bond Corporation Limited.

Motion agreed to.

ORDERS OF THE DAY

Mr. Speaker: Orders of the day.

Hon. Mr. Conway: Thank you, Mr. --

Mr. Reville: Speaker.

Hon. Mr. Conway: I really do appreciate the help offered by my friend the member for Riverdale (Mr. Reville), who is in an uncommonly friendly and congratulatory mood today. I would be pleased, on his behalf, to call the 18th order.

If I might just seek unanimous consent of the House, the Minister of Municipal Affairs (Mr. Eakins) is not going to be with us this afternoon, so the parliamentary assistant will have carriage of the bill. I am just wondering whether, as a courtesy to the opposition, it would be agreeable to have the parliamentary assistant move to this side of the aisle, if that is at all helpful.

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Mr. Speaker: The member for Oshawa on that point.

Mr. Breaugh: I think I must be mistaken. I thought I heard the government House leader say that this bill, which was so important, which they had to have, does not have a minister to carry it this afternoon. If that is the case, we would bend over backwards to have the parliamentary assistant sit anywhere he wants to, to carry this bill.

Hon. Mr. Conway: I say to my friend that the minister will join us. He has --

Mr. Breaugh: How nice.

Hon. Mr. Conway: In fairness, I say to my friend the member for Oshawa, in agreeing to the emergency debate yesterday the minister has had to make some adjustments. There is a group he is completing a meeting with and he should join us very shortly. I will assure the House that he will be here presently.

Mr. Breaugh: We will look forward to that.

Mr. Speaker: I understand the request has been made that the parliamentary assistant --

Mr. Breaugh: Sit somewhere on the government side. Sure, no problem. Perhaps he could go out to the scrum and release the regulations while he is at it.

MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS STATUTE LAW AMENDMENT ACT

Mr. Neumann moved, on behalf of Hon. Mr. Eakins, second reading of Bill 77, An Act to amend the Municipal Elections Act and the Assessment Act.

Mr. Neumann: All of us in this House will agree, I believe, that we need a strong and accountable local government in Ontario. This government has made the issue of municipal reform a priority. In order to help ensure this, we need to improve our method of identifying voters. The legislation we are considering today will accomplish this by establishing a new voter identification system.

Because this is such an important facet of our electoral process, it is of the utmost importance that the new system be in place before the coming elections. As the members may recall, my minister outlined the legislation in some detail in his December 16th statement to the Legislature. However, I want to highlight briefly some of the key provisions of this bill.

As many members are aware, the present door-to-door enumeration system simply does not work effectively. The main problem, and it is a serious one, is that the information collected is often incomplete and inaccurate. This raises some doubt about the validity of the voters’ list produced.

In every municipal election there are complaints that qualified persons are not enumerated correctly and that their names therefore are not included in the preliminary list of electors. The new system will address this concern by replacing the door-to-door enumeration with a self-administered questionnaire.

The new system will work as follows. Early in May of each election year, a questionnaire will be mailed out to all households. Eligible individuals will have approximately two weeks to complete and return the forms. The specific deadline will be set by the Minister of Revenue (Mr. Grandmaître).

We realize, of course, that some people may not return the questionnaires. To deal with these situations, enumerators will visit such households during the six weeks following the deadline. The assessment commissioner will then send an enumeration list of electors to all municipal clerks by the end of July. Each clerk will have an opportunity to review the list, to ensure that it conforms with the requirements of the polling subdivisions.

The enumeration list will be printed and posted by each clerk before the start of the revision period. This list, in effect, will become the preliminary list of electors. The assessment commissioner will also send a notice to every household, indicating each person’s status. During the subsequent revision period, electors will be able to apply to their local municipal clerk to have any necessary changes made to the list. After all appropriate revisions have been made, the preliminary list will become the polling list for the November elections.

I want to add that, as the purpose of the new system is to ensure that no eligible person is left off the list, any elector who has been missed will still be able to obtain a certificate of eligibility from the clerk. That person will then be eligible to vote in the election.

In summary, the new system will increase the accuracy of our voters’ lists and provide up-to-date population and electoral data. The end result will be a healthier local government electoral process in Ontario. I urge members of the House to pass this legislation expeditiously so that necessary changes can be implemented with minimal disruption.

Mr. Breaugh: There are a number of us on this side who for a long time have been interested in the process whereby people become eligible to vote and a number of us have thought about and worked at different kinds of proposals to change what we all agree is a flawed system into something that would be better. Our inclination, quite frankly, would have been to be very supportive of this notion. None the less, we are Her Majesty’s loyal opposition. It is our job to oppose, and that is what we will do with this bill.

I think it is important to get on the record this afternoon what has transpired around all this. For example, the ideas contained in this initiative this afternoon are not new. They are concepts that have been discussed by Anne Johnston’s committee, by a number of municipal associations and by a number of people who have been aware for some time that there is a problem with the enumeration process. We have all been amused at different levels when this is done, at dogs that made their way into the voters’ list, not to mention the dogs that actually get elected. There are hilarious little anecdotes from all over Ontario in every enumeration that was ever done about things that go wrong, and they do go wrong. Essentially it is, in part, because it is an aspect of the electoral process that does not get a lot of attention in this country.

We do spend considerable time, money and effort trying to prepare people to do a proper enumeration, but it is done by different levels of government at different times. There is no kind of set professional force at work to do this. We have looked at other jurisdictions where, I suppose, it is more an integrated part of the electoral process than it is here.

This bill before us this afternoon calls for a series of proposals which in a slightly different time frame I would look at in a different way. I want to say I am confused somewhat by the initiatives taken by the government on this matter. This is one of those things where the government announced its intentions last fall by means of a ministerial statement and one of the few areas where it actually put together legislation and even allowed us to see it. I took that legislation to my caucus in the fall session and asked it to consider the matter, which it did. We have been prepared to deal with this bill since about last November, near the end of the fall session.

I had anticipated, since I had private conversations with various ministry people, that the government was anxious to do this, and the government made a pretty good argument, to me anyway, privately, that it needed, above all else, time to implement, that this was a venture that was going to involve participation by more than one ministry. Those who have been around here for a while know that is always a danger sign. Whenever one asks more than one ministry to participate in a project, one knows right away there are problems under way. To ask one set of bureaucrats to actually deal with another set of bureaucrats causes problems. It is not the smoothest thing in the world.

I think this initiative would have produced a different response from me personally if we had proceeded in the fall to do the legislation. We were ready to deal with it then. I had anticipated that somewhere near the end of the fall session the minister would seek an opportunity to put this bill in front of the House. I believe he tried to do that, in a halting way, on a couple of occasions.

I would have thought it would be imperative that this bill be dealt with in the fall session. I would have thought the government obviously would have needed the better part of a year to implement this because this is new ground, because this involves more than one ministry and because it has an impact on every municipal election all over Ontario this fall. The government will have to do in a very short period of time something I do not believe it can do.

This bill, I assume, will carry. The government’s majority may not desert it totally on a bill of this nature, so I assume the bill will carry. But I am anticipating, quite frankly, that the minister will encounter serious difficulties in implementing it.

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I am aware that some of the provisions about giving people notice are already going to be in jeopardy. I am aware that some of the definitions that are contained within the bill still have not been worked out. I am aware that there are going to be challenges and problems to overcome. I am concerned, therefore, that if this process is to be put in place for this fall’s municipal election, it stands a reasonable chance of succeeding. I do not believe it does. I believe it would have if it had been dealt with in the fall and they had a full year to run at it.

I believe that a more sensible proposition, frankly, would have been to give themselves a whole lot of lead time to process this bill in one year, perhaps just after a municipal election, and then give themselves a full three years to work the bugs out of the system, because the problem that I want to pinpoint this afternoon is precisely that the system is probably one of the most important parts in the electoral process; that is, who has the legal right to vote in the election. It always comes down to human beings looking one another in the eyeball and saying, “You do have the right to vote,” or “You do not.” In that moment, we are not particularly as well prepared as I would like to see us be.

I believe there are good intentions at work here. I believe a number of groups, associations and people across Ontario have been aware that there are flaws in the way we enumerate people, flaws in the way we prepared those lists, difficulties with definitions; and the ramifications are very serious indeed. It is not the kind of thing that I would do on the off chance that we might get this thing right the first time around. This is a venture that we have not tried before. It is a venture that the government knows is in some difficulty at this moment if this bill, for example, carries this afternoon or tomorrow afternoon.

My information from ministry staff is that the government is going to have a very difficult time implementing the bill in time for this fall’s election. I am not quite sure why it is proceeding, but I venture to say that there are real problems ahead. I would go so far as to say I would not be surprised to see, three or four months from now, some minister of the crown standing up and saying, “We tried but we could not do this.’’ I think that is a rather difficult position to put municipalities in at the moment.

The government is going to change the process by which people are qualified to become electors in the system. The government is facing a municipal election this fall. If this system does not work out, there are always fallback systems, but I am going to predict that is probably where the government will be. It may give this an attempt now, and it has made provision in here for a fallback position.

Just to go through some of the little flaws that are here: it sounds to many of us like quite a reasonable proposition that a ministry of the government will send out to the population at large some kind of a questionnaire and that people will, in fact, return that; but there are many people who may not get that. Any one of the members who does what is called in the trade “mailouts” to constituents will know that one of the most vexing and difficult things to do is keep an accurate mailing list because in many of our communities, mine in particular, people move from one location to another so it is difficult to keep an accurate mailing list together. In my municipality, for example, the turnover rate among occupants is about 50 per cent in many buildings; the people who lived there last fall do not live there any more, by and large.

To do the first leg of this process by means of a questionnaire being mailed to people is going to cause some problems, and that is setting aside the concerns that many of our constituents might have in being able to actually understand the questionnaire. The more I am in politics, the more I appreciate the concerns that many people have that questionnaires from governments are not often the easiest things to understand. I really do not know why that is, but I would admit as well that very often a questionnaire that was prepared by some person working in the civil service and that looks very straightforward to him, does not look quite as straightforward to me.

Many of my constituents who may not be quite as fluent in the English language as somebody like me or quite as familiar with bureaucracies and forms and questionnaires as I am, have double problems in trying to fill out this information. Some are not too sure what this questionnaire is all about. Some simply do not trust governments and do not bother to mail them back.

I think there are a number of places, as we go through this bill, where problems can occur. In fact, I cannot convince myself that the government is prepared to implement this. I know it wants to try, but I also know it is as aware of the problems as any of us. My concerns, for my part this afternoon, will centre precisely on whether the government can do what it purports to do in this bill.

I want to conclude by saying that, frankly, I do not believe it can. I have a number of other colleagues who want to speak a little more specifically to what might be done, but for me the most important question is whether this legislation can actually be implemented before this fall’s municipal election without really screwing it up.

I do not believe it can be. I am concerned somewhat that a foulup at this time becomes very critical; that if the government starts out to do one system of enumeration now and has to admit failure in August or September, it is going to have problems putting in place a second system which will actually do what needs to be done for electoral purposes this fall. That is the concern.

Let me take a moment to suggest what might be a better way to go. I believe we have to, in this nation, do something about this process, and that there are really serious problems. I guess the wonderfulness of politics and elections in Canada is that, despite all of the screwups, it all still works. In some wild and wonderful way, at the end of the day, a government does get elected and local elections are decided. But many of us who are very active in a way the population is not, in terms of elections themselves, are aware that this is a really imperfect process under way.

At the best of times, people with the best of intentions get it all fouled up and at critical moments, particularly on election day, you really cannot find a way to get somebody where he ought to be. You get into a constant barrage of little arguments over whether some returning officer did his or her job properly, whether they provided a sign that actually identifies where the polling booth is, whether they provided access to somebody who needs a little assistance with access, whether somebody actually got his right to vote carried through.

We all have a variety of ways in which we relate to that. Perhaps I am a little too sensitive to them. Perhaps in the long run it really does not matter, but I want to propose that, whatever happens with this legislation, a move is made by Ontario to co-ordinate with the federal government, the provincial government and the municipal governments to provide for a better form of enumeration.

Frankly, I am an advocate of a permanent voters’ list of some kind. I am open to argument about how the government does that. If there is a positive step in this bill, I see that, above all else, as a first step in that direction. I hope that is where the government is going, but I believe that in this country one of the things we really have to do is to work very hard in nonelection periods to ensure that those who are legally qualified to vote are known and that they have an opportunity to exercise their democratic right to vote.

We will probably see it again this fall in municipal elections, the great tragedy of our times in many of our communities, that sometimes close to 70 per cent of the population will not vote for anybody because they will not even exercise their right to vote. In part, I would say we do not make it easy for people to vote in this country. We do not facilitate that process at all; whether that is the enumeration process, whether that is the actual voting process, there are a number of elements that are rolled into it.

I recall a number of occasions when people have called me on election day and frankly said they are just fed up with the system. They are not on the list. They cannot get on the list. They cannot get access to a polling station. Somebody did not ensure them of their rights. So there is a wide variety of problems there.

I will leave the government with one positive thought: I believe if this is its first step, great. I believe there is a lot more that has to be done than what is proposed in this particular bill. I hope that the long-term goal from a number of levels is to just get this part of the process accurate.

That would be a monumental step forward, if we had a voters’ list that was actually valid. Not to say that all of the other voters’ lists to date were not legally proper and all of that, but if the voters’ list itself was based on fact, if it provided a system whereby all of those who were entitled to vote actually got to vote and if it got to the point where we were not challenging the validity of those deemed to be electors in any given election, that would be a substantial improvement in the democratic process in Canada.

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Our reservations on the bill, frankly, do not stem from the principles that something has to be done. We give the minister that one, that is true. Our problem with the bill is that we are unsure at this stage, and I am personally quite convinced that he cannot do what he purports to do under this bill and that confusion will cause problems in this fall’s municipal election.

I wish we had been able to deal with this particular piece of legislation during the fall sitting, because then I could have seen the lead time that the ministries would need to co-ordinate their work. I see where the problems are and I think the ministries are both aware of where the major difficulties are in here. There are still some arguments unresolved and I do not think the minister can start the process with those arguments in that state. I believe they have to be tightened up.

I believe the minister is going to be standing in his place, at some point in time between now and next fall, saying, “We tried, but we just could not do it.” The only problem I see with that is it then enters into a new era of confusion where many people will have been notified by means of a questionnaire and they will not be quite sure about it, then someone will knock on their door and they will not be quite sure what that all means. There will be confusion.

If the electoral process works at all, it never works very well when there is a lot of confusion rampant in the land. It works only when there is some clarity as to who has the right to vote and who does not and what the purpose of the exercise is, and sorts it all out in the public mind in that vein.

We will not support the legislation this afternoon. Frankly, I would have preferred to support the bill, and on another day, in a different way, we would be happy to do that. I do not want to say bad things about a ministry that is trying to respond to an obvious need. I am saying very basically that we preferred this be done in a more orderly way. The passage of this legislation right now, I believe, causes more problems than it resolves. I think the ministry is guilty of, if anything, good intentions and lousy timing.

I believe this bill has some flaws in it that could be worked out, given a little bit of time. But I think the minister is going to cause more headaches than he resolves in the processing of this legislation right now. I say that as one who has been involved in the electoral process at just about every level in Canada and who knows there is a deep-seated problem about this part of it. I wish it were otherwise, but I think this particular bill, this particular initiative is not going to have a very successful ride, even if it gets out of this Legislature in short order.

Mr. McLean: I am pleased to participate in the debate on Bill 77, An Act to amend the Municipal Elections Act and the Assessment Act.

I find it unbelievable, when we have a parliamentary assistant with many years of municipal experience and a minister with many years of municipal experience, why they would wait until this sitting to bring this legislation forward. I have many years of municipal experience myself and I can tell members that this bill has some faults and some benefits, in my opinion. I find myself in the rather unique position of finding many faults, as well as many benefits, in Bill 77, which will aid in the identification of voters who will be eligible to cast ballots in the municipal elections in November.

The current door-to-door system of enumeration which is conducted in the fall prior to municipal elections has a number of weaknesses that have created concern and some doubt for voters. As we all know, there is traditionally a problem with the accuracy of the names on the list and with ensuring that all eligible voters are on these lists. One of the main causes of this problem is the reluctance many enumerators have in asking such personal questions as religion, to determine school support, and language. Recent changes to the Education Act have made it essential that the identification of English-language and French-language electors be as clear and accurate as possible.

This legislation will replace the previous door-to-door system of enumeration with a bilingual questionnaire which is to be mailed out and returned in the spring. I can see a number of advantages to this system of enumeration, including the fact that it should increase the completeness and accuracy of the voters’ list. It should eliminate the problems encountered by enumerators asking potential voters personal questions and the reluctance of potential voters to reveal this information to perfect strangers. It should provide timely population and electoral information for determining municipal election representation and the size and composition of the school boards.

Under this proposed system, voters will have more time and increased opportunities to ensure that information about them on the voters’ list is accurate because voter identification will take place in the spring rather than in the fall just before they troop to the polls in November. At the beginning of May in each year a bilingual questionnaire, including instructions on how to fill it out, will be mailed directly to all households and other premises by the Ministry of Revenue.

All people will be required to return these forms on or before the day designated by the minister and during a six-week follow-up period enumerators will visit households which have failed to return their questionnaires to collect the forms and to assist individuals in filling them out properly.

I like this double coverage that potential voters will receive and I believe it will result in more accurate voters’ lists, but I have one reservation on that: who is going to visit the nursing homes or the Huronia Regional Centre, which has 700 and some residents, of whom approximately 50 voted the last time? Who is going to visit, as I said, the nursing homes and the homes for the aged and do all these extra things when you send out a mailing that will probably not end up in anyone’s mailboxes in those homes? We must remember they all have a vote.

If no return is filed even after this follow-up, the electoral forms and status of an individual will be based on the ownership or tenancy data as indicated on the assessment roll. A preliminary list of eligible voters will be produced by the Ministry of Revenue and sent to all municipal clerks by July 31. That is my understanding. A voter identification notice showing the electoral status of each person will be mailed to every household by the Ministry of Revenue by August 31.

So far, members can see I have no difficulties or problems with Bill 77. Once the enumeration process has been completed, electors will have the opportunity to make changes to the voters’ list during the revision period which begins on the first Tuesday in September and ends on the Monday 28 days before voting takes place. I feel that this period is too long, but I will get to that in more detail a little later on.

The necessary changes will be made to the preliminary list of electors by the municipal clerks and the revised list will ultimately become the voters’ list. At this stage, however, it is still not too late for voters who have been missed to get on the list. They can still obtain a certificate of eligibility from their municipal clerk. In nonelection years the list will be continuously updated through such mechanisms as changes of ownership and the assessment roll.

I like the idea that the government has promised to initiate a multilingual public information campaign in the early spring to prepare the voters for the arrival of the voter identification form in the mail to ensure that no one is left off the list. I hope this is one promise this government plans to keep.

As well, the government has promised to set up a network of community groups to assist people whose first language is neither English nor French to complete the voter identification forms. This is another promise I hope this government plans to keep.

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I would now like to address some of the concerns I have about Bill 77. As I mentioned earlier, moving the nomination date from 21 to 28 days before the election, in effect creating a four-week-long campaign, is disturbing, because we do not need another lengthy election campaign to add to those of the federal and provincial levels of government. People are tiring of lengthy campaigns, with the exception of reporters who are looking to be kept busy and out of trouble, but many candidates cannot afford the time away from work, and I think a longer campaign would be a financial burden on our smaller communities.

This bill is just one of many legislative changes that will significantly alter and affect the 1988 municipal elections. I feel that the government could be throwing too much at our municipal governments all at once. The government wants to change the distribution of school trustees throughout the province. It wants to alter ward boundaries in Metropolitan Toronto. It wants to make changes to campaign expenses and contributions. Is this too much food for municipalities to digest all at once, if the government wants to have all the changes in effect prior to November?

I think there will be massive legislative indigestion throughout this province because of this government’s agenda. Municipal clerks and other election staff will see their administrative responsibilities drastically altered and budgets increased severely because the government is rushing this through with little time for these officials to adapt to the new law.

While I support many changes that will make municipal elections fairer and more accessible to both voters and candidates alike, I have to wonder why the government has delayed introducing this legislation for so long and then turned around to ram it through at what is considered to be the very last minute. We have now entered a municipal election year in Ontario and we have major amendments to legislation pending and, in some instances, not even introduced for our consideration in the Legislature.

Once again this government is governing this province by chaos. I suggest they go back to the drawing board with much of Bill 77 and contemplate introducing it again.

I say to the minister, through the parliamentary assistant, that having dealt with some 11 municipal elections, I find it hard to believe that the mailout will work; there are going to be many missed. I still believe that the personal touch of people going door to door is the best system, and I still believe that perhaps if there had been more time spent in studying that aspect of it, it could probably have continued on. A mailing list will be a disaster. I have to tell the members that when I send out a mailing, as many other members do here, there are always hundreds of changes every time.

I can go back and repeat, as I have indicated before, that the fall session would have been the opportune time to introduce this legislation for debate. It should have been sent to committee for public input.

I talked this morning on the telephone to a reeve from a small municipality who was not aware at all of this legislation coming forth. I am sure there are many municipalities in this province that are not aware of it. Maybe the clerks are aware of it, maybe the administrators are aware of it, but the politicians are not always aware of it, and I am sure that that is the case here. I feel that this legislation should be sent out to committee for public input to let those politicians in the municipal and rural areas have some input into this bill.

I find it hard to understand why the minister would believe that the municipality of Carden in his riding, with some small population, needs 28 days to campaign. It is totally unacceptable, in my opinion.

Bill 77 is a bill that is going to affect a great many people in this province. Every municipality -- 800-and-some of them -- is going to be affected by this piece of legislation. I am sure there is not one third of the municipalities aware of what is taking place in this province today with regard to this legislation. I feel sure of that. We talk about an open government -- no walls, no barriers. Do we see it here? I think not. I do not understand why this government wants to bring this legislation and put it through at this time.

I hope that the minister would see fit to send this bill to committee for public hearings and in-depth study so fewer changes will need to be made in the future. Mr. Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to speak on Bill 77.

Miss Martel: I am joining my colleagues, one who has already spoken and a number of others who will speak, on this bill. I would like to make several comments concerning it.

I agree with the principle of the bill, as the government has presented it, for several reasons. I recognize the significance of what the government is trying to do in order to amend the present process, which we have seen has been extremely troublesome and burdensome, with many people left off the list and its not being very complete at all. I can recognize that they are trying to amend a number of the weaknesses in the present system, some of which traditionally include a problem of the accuracy of the lists themselves and the number of people who were on, the actual people who were on. Were they eligible to vote or not? There have been a large number of people traditionally left off the voters’ lists as well.

We have seen a number of problems in terms of information that was appearing on the list. It was indeed inaccurate, and there were no attempts to change that or enough time to change that. Certainly, there have been a large number of difficulties associated with the problem of determining school support. Usually that has come down to a problem of enumerators finding it difficult at the doorstep to address those questions of language and religion. They found it difficult to do that at the doorstep with people, to try to get around that. We have certainly had a problem in determining where school support was going and the numbers involved in that.

I think, finally, that all of these problems, and in particular the last, have been intensified for francophones in this province, because francophones have had, in many cases, difficulty understanding the process; they have had difficulty in having enumerators at the door who have been able to explain that to them and the importance of having themselves put on the list. What we have seen is that the present process has been really incomplete at best, and in many ways it has been a fiasco at worst, specifically in terms of the question as it applies to francophones in the province.

I want to say that the bill itself recognizes some of those problems. It makes some good attempts to address those and make the proper changes. First of all, the questionnaire is going to be bilingual, and that is a far step forward. It goes a long way to improving the process for francophones who want to and who should be involved in the process of enumeration and of voting in municipal elections.

Second, the questionnaire itself will allow voters to respond directly to those very personal questions of language and religion which otherwise they might have difficulty doing; that is, at the doorstep where they might be hesitant to respond to questions from enumerators. They are now going to be able to address those questions directly on the questionnaire. I think that is a far step forward as well for dealing with maybe some of the unease that people would otherwise have under the current process.

It will also go a long way then to achieving greater accuracy in determining the number of French- and English-language voters, which will then in turn deal with better accuracy with the question of school trustees and those numbers. In terms of the francophone community, as well as the questionnaire itself being bilingual, some of the questions it is going to address are going to have a great impact on francophone education in this province.

What the questionnaire will do, probably for the first time ever effectively, is identify those numbers of students who are or are going to be pursuing French-language education in this province. Second, we are going to have a greater idea of the number of francophone schools that are going to be required in this province in future. Third, we will probably have a better idea, at least the Minister of Education (Mr. Ward) will, as to the amount of funding that is going to be required in future to provide Franco-Ontarians education in their own language. Finally, it is also going to aid the government, and certainly school boards, in determining the number of trustees who are going to be required in both school systems and in both languages.

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I commend the government for the attempts it is making to address, in particular, some of the problems that are so evident under the present system, and I recognize the lengths to which it has gone to try to address some of those difficulties. However, I have to say that there are a number of problems associated with this bill, not the least of which centres on the timing of this particular bill. My colleague the member for Oshawa (Mr. Breaugh) went into this question at some length, and I am going to pursue it as well.

As it now stands, the provisions within the bill are going to make it exceptionally difficult, if not impossible, to bring this bill through, to get it to the public and to have it operating effectively by the November elections. I am not sure how the government is going to do that. I would really like to go through the bill a little bit more carefully to look at some of the problems this entails, having the bill now when we should have been discussing it in November.

First, we have this questionnaire, which must be mailed out to Ontario residents at the beginning of May. That is stipulated in the legislation itself. That will be mailed out by the Ministry of Revenue. The problem is, it means the forms should be ready and in place now in sufficiently large volume to be mailed out to the residents of Ontario. I was able to get a copy of the form today, much thanks to the minister responsible for francophone affairs (Mr. Grandmaître), who gave it to me, and that was the first time I had seen it.

Actually, what they told me was that the forms should not be out in the public, so not a great number of people, except ministry people, have seen them. If there are problems inherent in the forms, and I think there are, this government is not going to have time to address the problems, even in the form itself, which is going to cause confusion and a great deal of difficulty for residents trying to respond properly to this.

I am not going to go through the form yet. I will come to that in a minute. I want to complete the section in terms of the timing. The problem with the form is a significant one, and I will deal with that in a moment.

Second, the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and the Office of Francophone Affairs, in the statement that the Minister of Municipal Affairs (Mr. Eakins) made on this bill, stated that there would be a comprehensive public information campaign in both English and French, and in other languages, to explain the new system to voters in this province. This campaign was to be carried out before the questionnaire arrived at people’s homes, which I repeat is at the beginning of May. In consequence then, this advertising campaign should be well under way and in effect at this point if we are going to be able to reach those groups and have them understand the new system, which is going to be complex indeed.

I do not see any campaign going on. I do not know if the ministry has those plans in place. Certainly, if they are not in place, they have to be got together fairly quickly, especially if this bill goes through in the next couple of days. I must say that I really do not know how this government is going to put that type of advertising campaign into this province to make people understand what is happening under this new system. I have some grave concerns about how this media campaign is actually going to work and how it is going to be effective.

The Ministry of Municipal Affairs also promised that it would establish a network of community groups which would assist individuals whose first language was neither English nor French to understand the particular bill. Again, we run into the same type of problem that we do with the advertising campaign. I have no idea whether the ministry has made those contacts, if indeed that network is in place. How does the ministry propose to get this type of information out to the minority groups in this province in order to have them understand the new system?

Certainly there has been no talk. I do not know what is going on in the ministry. This whole thing has been so rushed that I do not think very many people have an idea, perhaps not even ministry officials themselves, about how that is going to come about. I would think it poses a tremendous problem for the ministry to make good on the promise that the information will be made available to minority groups in the province.

I want to point out in that vein as well that l’Association des enseignantes et des enseignants franco-ontariens, which is a group of teachers in the Ottawa-Carleton region in particular, approached the Office of Francophone Affairs some time ago asking what kind of media campaign would be run in order that it might be able to run a parallel campaign.

The main approach that the francophone groups are trying to put across now is that they want francophones to participate in the system, but they admit that more people, in particular francophones, have to be made aware of what the bill entails and the importance of actually signing this documentation and voting in November. They have been very concerned about this. They have approached the government to ask what kind of campaign is going to be run in order to run a parallel campaign.

I say to the parliamentary assistant as well: I do not know if that is coming about, if the ministry indeed has plans for advertising and has shared these with francophone groups in the province which are very concerned about making their people aware of the situations and of the complexities of this bill. I think that the government is also going to have some great difficulty in meeting with those groups in order to try to run a parallel campaign in that regard.

If the members look seriously at the timing as outlined in the bill, they will have to admit that there is very little way -- I think it is practically impossible -- that the government is going to be able to bring this in, bring it in realistically as a process that is going to work in November, as a process that is not going to cause a great deal of confusion and one that is going to make the present process simpler, easier and more accurate. I say to the parliamentary assistant that, under these provisions, I am not sure how he is going to be able to do that.

In terms of the form itself, I want to return to this question. There is a serious problem which has been pointed out to the ministry responsible for francophone affairs, at least in terms of French language rights and the maintenance of these rights.

French-speaking individuals in the province are going to be asked to identify themselves in order to be eligible to elect trustees to school boards to represent minority-language groups. A French-speaking individual can qualify or is eligible under this provision if he or she can answer “yes” to one of the three questions. I am going back to the form which was made available to me this afternoon.

The first question is, “Is French the language you first learned and still understand?” The second is, “Did you receive your elementary school instruction in Canada in French?” This cannot include French immersion or French as a second language. The third is, “Have any of your children received, or are they now receiving, elementary or secondary school instruction in Canada in French?” Again, the provision does not include French immersion, nor does it include programs of French as a second language.

What in effect has happened is that the qualifications as they appear on the form exclude a large number of new Canadians who use French as a first language, but it is not the language they were born to. It excludes a large number of these new Canadians who otherwise consider themselves as active members of the francophone community.

If I can just name some of those groups, we are looking at a large number of Arabic groups or groups of people who lived in former French colonies who first learned their home language and then French as a second language. Coming to Canada, it is indeed not their first language, but they identify themselves with the francophone community instead of the English community.

There is a large number of groups out there in that category. They are not addressed in this bill and indeed, under those qualifications, they are going to be excluded from giving their support to French trustees as opposed to English trustees.

What happens under the terms of this form is that, if you cannot answer “yes” to any of those questions, you immediately are moved to elect English trustees. There is no provision for this group actually to be allowed to elect French trustees or to support French trustees even though they use French as their language now and are identified with the French community.

The Carleton Board of Education has pointed this out to the Ministry of Municipal Affairs. To date, in looking at the bill, there have been no amendments brought forward, so I take it the government is not going to respond to this very serious concern which has been pointed out to them by the Carleton board.

I would say to the parliamentary assistant that perhaps we could have amendments here that would rectify this situation. We do not see it coming today and, if this bill goes through, there are large numbers out there who are going to be affected and indeed who are going to be disqualified from giving their support to French education and French trustees.

There is a second problem in terms of the language written into the form. I want to address that as well. It also concerns a section on French-language education rights. If I can just read this to the parliamentary assistant, it states: “In communities where a school board operates both French and English schools, trustees will be elected to the school board to represent the minority-language group.” However, members of the Legislature will know that, under the Education Act, in 1988 trustees will also be elected to represent minority-language groups in other areas. I will quote this: “where a board enters, or has entered, into an agreement with another board, or boards, to enable a calculated enrolment of at least 300 resident pupils to receive instruction in one or more French-language instructional units operated by the other board or boards.”

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What we are seeing is a problem that the qualification on the form and the information present on the form are incomplete because they do not include the second section referring to the Ministry of Education. It is misleading in many ways. It gives the impression that the identification of French-speaking persons is only useful in areas where there will be French-language sections; that is, in areas where a school board operates both French and English schools.

I should point out to the parliamentary assistant that the identification of French-language voters is still essential: first, for statistical data; second, for requesting French-language education; and finally, for the election of French-language advisory committees. What happens in this form, because the qualification is so narrow and admits the provisions under the Education Act, is that there will be a large number of French speakers who will consider themselves not eligible to vote in this regard or not eligible to mark down that they are supporting French-language schools in the province.

This was pointed out by the Carleton board. Again, I see no amendments being brought forward by the government in this regard, so I have particular concern that if the section has not been amended or deleted completely, it is probably going to reduce the number of identified French-speaking ratepayers and/or electors in this province.

With those two questions in particular on the form and the overall great problem with the timing of this legislation, I say to the government it is going to have some great and tremendous difficulties in trying to get this legislation through to the public and have it working in place by the time of the municipal elections.

I reiterate that we support, on this side, the principle of the bill, but due to the great difficulties in timing, and for myself the real difficulties inherent in the form and what that is going to mean to francophones in the province, I would have hoped the government would have brought forward some amendments to deal with that situation. I wish the government luck because I think it is going to be a source of major confusion. I certainly hope that what my colleague the member for Oshawa has said will happen, that in four months’ time or five months’ time the government will have to stand here and say it could not be done, will not happen, but I really cannot see how it can be otherwise, given the bill in its present form.

Mr. McCague: I congratulate the government for bringing forward a bill or any bill which would expedite the enumeration system. Like all others who have spoken, I think the parliamentary assistant has left himself far too little time to accomplish what could otherwise be a successful system. We are, after all, dealing with municipalities of many different sizes, and while the larger municipalities are staffed and knowledgeable in changes that are being suggested by the government, the smaller municipalities do have some difficulties with the multitude of changes they are now facing.

The parliamentary assistant wisely, I suppose, dealt with Bill 77 before he dealt with Bill 76, even though the numbers seem to be in reverse order. I think the member for Brantford (Mr. Neumann) knows there are some considerable difficulties with Bill 76, which we might have otherwise dealt with first.

I am concerned, as has been said, with the May 1 mailout of the questionnaire; that date is very quickly approaching. I am also concerned about how this enumeration will be taken. On page 7, under subsection 21(4) of the bill, clause 14(5 )(a) of the act, it mentions “delivering or mailing a municipal enumeration form as prescribed by the minister to the last known address of each inhabitant.” I am not sure what that means. The last known inhabitant may be in Quebec or British Columbia or out of the country.

If that does not work, the minister is going to canvass “the premises of those inhabitants who have not completed and returned the notice delivered or mailed under clause (a) on or before the 15th day of May or such other day as the minister may prescribe.” It may be only a problem with the wording here, but it is the “last known address of each inhabitant,” and then they are canvassed after that. If he is not around, how can the minister canvass him?

Or he is going to do it by “such other means or in such other manner as the minister may prescribe.” Of course, I presume these are regulation-making powers, or maybe they are powers that are given to the minister to proceed in whatever fashion he sees fit. The minister could correct some of the discrepancies he has through his clause 14(5)(c) in that section.

I think he is just in for a multitude of problems in trying to do all this -- after all, my counting says he has very few days -- until May 1 when the system is supposed to be all ready to go. A copy of the form has been given to the member for Sudbury East (Miss Martel). I do not happen to have one. I am aware that in the Oshawa area there are a lot of problems with the form as it applies to the French electors in that area. I am not aware that all those issues have been addressed even in letter form to the people who have written to the minister in this regard.

I think there is just too little time. l understand that the minister is under some pressure from the French-speaking electors to proceed with this bill in order that they can get a list that would be appropriate for the elections in the fall. I understand that point, but l am not sure that we should be putting the whole province, the ministry staff and so forth to the pressures and uncertainties that I think are inherent in this whole thing.

It might be a lot wiser, and I suggest it would, if the minister would leave the system as it is for this election, and right after the election get working again on a system which would take effect in 1991. I know that the parliamentary assistant and the minister will be prepared to throw all kinds of resources, money and people into this system to try to make it work to the best of their ability in the next few months, but I think doing that does not in any way alleviate the fears, concerns and misunderstandings of the people they are trying most to serve; that is, getting every person on the municipal voters’ list.

The ambiguity of that section I read earlier tells me -- I do not know what it tells me, to be perfectly honest. I know the parliamentary assistant will explain that to us when he has the opportunity. There has always been a problem with people being left off the enumeration, whether it be the system that is conducted for municipal elections or whether it be provincial elections. All of us know that whole blocks, for some unknown reason, can be left off. I think that we, as the Legislature, owe it to the people, if we are going to change the system to prove to them that it is a better system.

Given the time constraints the minister is now under, he may have all kinds of people to blame for why he did not get it on the agenda prior to Christmas. Be that as it may, he did not get it on. His House leader may have pressed very hard for it -- l am not aware of that -- but here we are, right up to the deadline, trying to push through a system which, in my opinion, has not had sufficient scrutiny by those who are probably the most concerned. Of course, the most concerned are the electors, the ratepayers, but the people who have to make all these things work are the municipalities.

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I am aware that the Association of Municipalities of Ontario has endorsed the bill in most parts. I am not sure if the AMO report or comment covers the Rural Ontario Municipal Association, for instance, or other smaller northern Ontario organizations, but probably the parliamentary assistant can tell us just what it is in that regard.

I would like the parliamentary assistant to explain to us why they went from 21 to 28 days. It may well be that is the length of time that is necessary for people in the municipal offices of these municipalities to get this work done under the present system.

If it is not that, I would say that, maybe not in the bulk of the population but in the bulk of the municipalities, the 21-day period is quite sufficient. After all, the people who are running in municipal elections are much the same as the member for Brantford who has never quit campaigning for the last 10 years. They do not need 21 days to persuade the public whether they should be supported. It is a long period.

The parliamentary assistant is throwing this change at them. He is trying to throw at them Bill 76, An Act to amend the Education Act and certain other Acts related to Education. He is throwing at them -- there are so many I cannot catch all the balls -- the Municipal Elections Statute Law Amendment Act for campaign expenses. He is giving them the opportunity to decide whether they want Sunday shopping. That battle will be between those who want Sunday shopping and those who do not, who will be lobbying the councils to get the item on the ballot, be it one way or another.

Heaven knows what else he has up his sleeve. There may be something come from something that happened today in the hall. There may be something slid in tomorrow like the one that was slid in yesterday. What is he facing these people with? I guess, for the most part, he is facing them with making the decisions the government should be making.

I hope the parliamentary assistant will take these things under consideration. As the member from Sudbury said, we would have expected to have had some amendments to this bill from him. When we do not have any amendments from him, I presume he does not intend to make any. That is the only presumption we can make, and if I am wrong on that it would have been a courtesy to have had them to us by this time.

I think there is still lots of room for discussion on the 21-day period to the 28-day period for the election campaign. The honourable member will no doubt answer the questions I have raised. When we get into committee of the whole House today or whatever day that might be, I will have some additional questions for him.

The Deputy Speaker: Are there any questions and comments pertaining to the member’s statement?

Mr. McLean: I think it is speeches such as this that makes legislation better. Some of the key points were spoken to by my colleague the member for Simcoe West (Mr. McCague). The very key point in this legislation is the 21 days to the 28 days. It might be all right for Metropolitan Toronto or for Ottawa. What about the small rural-urban areas, which my colleague touched on, with 1,000 people or less? Why 28 days?

Because it happens in Toronto, do we have to do everything that Toronto does? Is this legislation passing and being commented on for Metropolitan Toronto? I happen to believe that the 800-and-some municipalities should have some input, and when my colleague is talking about urban and rural campaign expenses and municipal experience, do they need those 28 days? I think some of the comments my colleague has made are very worth while for the minister to consider.

The Deputy Speaker: Any other questions or comments? If not, would the member for Simcoe West like to respond?

Mr. McCague: Yes, I would like to thank the member for Simcoe East.

The Deputy Speaker: Do any other members wish to participate? The member for Etobicoke-Lakeshore.

Mrs. Grier: Thank you Mr. Speaker, and I thank the member for Scarborough West (Mr. R. F. Johnston). I participate in this debate with some interest, having been subjected to the existing legislation on municipal elections for my 15 years in local politics and having been subjected last September to the even worse administration of the existing provincial election law. It was in my riding that 30 polls failed to open because of the incompetence of the administration of the election and the appointment of the returning officer by this government, so I have a very deep self-interest in trying to improve the electoral system of this province.

It was therefore with some delight that I heard this bill being portrayed as a step towards a permanent electoral list, because that is something I and others of my colleagues have felt for a long time would be an advantage and a progress that ought to be welcomed.

However, when looking at the details of the legislation, one is forced to conclude that this short step towards a permanent voters’ list creates more problems than it might solve. It is for this reason that we here on this side have so many questions and concerns and lack of support for the legislation.

I think, of course, the primary problem is that it is so late in coming. When the Minister of Municipal Affairs released the report of the Advisory Committee on Municipal Elections in February 1987 and said that final recommendations would be received by the ministry at the end of May 1987, he then went on to say, “It is my intention to have electoral reforms in place well in advance of the 1988 local government elections.” Here we are well into 1988 and still trying to get this legislation dealt with. I hold the government entirely responsible for the fact that we are coming down to the 11th hour and the legislation is not in place.

It is certainly my position that if it were in place we probably would, as I say, have had more problems than we would have solved, because I think in bringing in this legislation the government has missed the boat. It would be much better to take it back, talk to everybody concerned and try again, because the legislation that is likely to be in place is going to be there for quite some time.

We have had the advice of the Advisory Committee on Municipal Elections, a very thoughtful and intensive review of the whole system, and most of its recommendations appear to have been ignored by this government. Their analysis of what was wrong with our way of collecting voters’ lists was very substantive and pointed out that enumeration, as everybody participating in this debate has said, was not the way to go.

They made the point that sociological changes are taking place that make enumeration more difficult to conduct. Enumerators are more difficult to find and residents are less willing to provide information. Any one of us can, I think, attest to that. As a candidate, it is getting harder and harder to get all of those doors answered when you go knocking on them, whether it is because people are hesitant to open their doors to strangers or whether it is because in cities like Metropolitan Toronto people never seem to be at home during the hours when either candidates or enumerators are likely to be knocking at their doors.

It also pointed out in the advisory committee report that enumerators are unable to make contact with 15 per cent of the residential units and only 15 per cent of the notices left at these units are returned. There is always a hard-core group that will never respond. Some residences do not have mailboxes or any place where notices may be left. The rate of response to mailed-out nonresidence notices is low.

That committee very clearly spelled out that enumeration as presently conducted does not work.

So what do we have in the legislation before us? We have enumeration still there filling in the gaps from the questionnaire which has been sent out, and we know from the advisory committee that it is likely a great many of those questionnaires will not be returned. They have in fact given us the worst of both systems. We really do not have a permanent list. We have a self-administered list to some degree; and then we have enumeration.

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Having had a committee report that said (a) a self-administered list probably will not work, and (b) that enumeration will not work, I really do not understand the thinking behind the ministry bringing forth this particular piece of legislation.

The recommendation of that advisory committee which I think made the most sense was that we give further study to a permanent voters’ list. Its analysis clearly spelled out the advantages and disadvantages of that. It pointed out some of the difficulties and some of the arguments that had been made in other jurisdictions. It pointed out that in the UK there is one system, there is a compulsory system in western Europe, and in Australia there is yet another system. There are models that could be looked at.

Surely it is not beyond the wisdom of the ministry officials to come up with a system that would be applicable to Ontario.

The concern that was expressed in the report, and was identified in Quebec, about the privacy issue, is one I think perhaps is very real. Again, I am not convinced it is of such a substantive nature that we should eliminate consideration of a permanent voters’ list.

I think what we ought to be doing today is not proceeding with this legislation, but having the ministry go back to square one and look at a permanent electoral list.

That would involve all levels of government. It would involve working out which level of government was going to be responsible for the maintenance of that list and, presumably, making some arrangements with that level of government that it would be compensated for doing the work for the other levels of government, if that is what it came down to.

We have a government that is prepared to devolve to the municipalities responsibility for life in this province, as demonstrated through the Sunday working issue. Presumably they could also devolve to municipalities, with some support, responsibility for maintaining permanent electoral rolls. That could only come after extensive discussion and negotiations with the municipalities. It certainly could not be done in time for the 1988 municipal elections.

The timing is also a problem in that, as I read the legislation, the information to householders as to whether they are on the list is probably going to be going out over the summer months. Again, the Johnston-Parisien committee pointed out that was the worst possible time to be conducting any kind of enumeration. It represents the peak vacation period and approximately one-third of the transfers of residential property occur in June, July and August. This mobility would lead to an anticipated level of inaccuracy in the preliminary list of electors resulting from summer enumeration. I would submit that it will also contribute to a very great level of inaccuracy or no response in the enumeration that is called for, for filling in the gaps in the legislation as we now have it.

The primary problem with the legislation which is proposed and with the system we have had is a lack of clarity as to who is responsible for putting people on the electoral list. We have always had a divided responsibility. We have assumed, as governments at all levels, responsibility for collecting the names and establishing a voters’ list. Yet we have assigned to the voter a certain element of responsibility, in that they have to find out whether they are on and then take some steps to get themselves on.

I think that divided responsibility has contributed to the woes we have experienced with our present system and will experience with this system. Surely it is time to assign to the voters of this province, clearly, the responsibility for making sure they are on the electoral lists. We do it when we change our place of residence. We change our address, we change our drivers’ licences, we change our credit cards. Is it too much to expect that we not begin to take to ourselves the responsibility for making sure we are on the voters’ list?

Let us devise a system whereby the means of doing that is very clear, the responsibility for doing it is very clear; a system which points out to everyone at some specific time annually whether they are on the list and what they have to do to get themselves on that list.

Until we begin to do that, we will not have the kind of clarity and simplicity in our electoral list that I think we need, and that is an essential ingredient of making elections in this province not only fairer but clearer and less prone to the incredible problems that have been given rise to in the past by our outdated and inefficient system.

Mr. Villeneuve: l rise today to participate in the debate on Bill 77, which will effectively change the municipal election statute law. I find it rather sad that we are dealing with this particular amendment to the act at the 11th hour, and even beyond the 11th hour. May 1 has been aimed for as the trigger date, the date on which forms will be sent out to the electorate so that they can complete these forms. Then a rather intricate process of enumeration will begin.

I think this government, for whatever reasons, has seen fit to postpone this particular legislation to so late so that it would then be law to rule over the municipal elections that will be happening this fall. I realize that, particularly in the area I represent with a fairly large number of French-speaking people in the electorate, in order to establish and elect French-speaking trustees to the different school boards, a new mechanism has to be in place. However, again, it is rather sad that it is brought down to the 11th hour.

As my colleague the member for Sudbury East mentioned a moment ago, she was able to receive the form itself only today. Quite obviously, in its haste, this government is very ill prepared to proceed with Bill 77.

In the riding I represent there are 23 very rural municipalities, Mr. Speaker, very similar to the riding that you represent. In these rural ridings, as May 1 comes along, I think we all know what happens to those who are involved with agriculture. What happens at the mailbox is sometimes and very often left for a rainy day, which sometimes never comes. I can tell the members that some of these application forms that will be received by some of our rural people in the riding of Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry, and east Grenville, will probably had their way into the wastepaper basket. I feel rather sad about that because this will not make Bill 77 work in the way it was intended to work.

I believe that the Association of Municipalities of Ontario has accepted the fact that a new method of enumeration must be put into place. However, I think they would be quite prepared to accept some period of time beyond the next municipal elections, and I would certainly be one to favour a permanent voters’ list. We have a very mobile society now, whether it is in the urban parts or the rural parts of Ontario, particularly in that area that you and I, Mr. Speaker, represent along the Ontario-Quebec border. We have many comings and goings of people who may not even reside in the municipality in question but who however are land owners. They may own waterfront property along the Ottawa River or along the St. Lawrence River, and these people, again, will probably be overlooked in this mail-out to the last known address.

Enumeration by questionnaire always makes one wonder, and I guess we will never have a perfect method of establishing exactly who lives where and when. However, whenever you leave it up to the people themselves to complete questionnaires, there is always a great deal of apprehension. As a matter of fact, any time you deal with government agencies -- l could quote Revenue Canada as one -- everyone is deadly scared that anything they would put down pertaining to religion, their particular language, would make them just a little bit concerned.

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I have concern about this legislation. Traditionally, enumeration has never been an exact science. What I am afraid of and what has been alluded to by some of the previous speakers is that this will be an even less exact science under the amendments as made in Bill 77.

The election of French-speaking trustees, I believe, is most important because of changes in legislation in a number of other bills that will be presented to this Legislature in the not too distant future.

Yes, we must find a better way to enumerate, for electoral purposes, the people who reside in this great province. However, Bill 77, in my opinion, does not satisfy the criteria I believe should be encompassed whenever setting up standards for a new enumeration method.

The identification process, because voter identification under the new system will take place in the spring rather than in the fall, leaves me also wondering. Springtime is when many people do change residence. May, June, July and August are the most mobile months for the Ontario population. I feel that having the questionnaire presented to the electorate at the beginning of summer, and at a rather inopportune time for those who are involved in agriculture, would render that process even less accurate.

I realize that some major changes must occur and I would certainly encourage this government to look at a permanent electoral list. However, I do not believe that Bill 77 is the right vehicle to do this. As I mentioned, we have 23 municipalities, the largest of which -- I see the House leader here and he has some relatives out in Glengarry county -- is the great little community of Alexandria, my metropolis, with some 3,300 population. We have another great little town called Kemptville with 2,600 population, down to a very small, one-poll town, the town of Finch with less than 500 population. We have many rural municipalities which are in the 2,500 to 3,500 range, with many rural routes throughout.

Mr. Wiseman: Like the member for Renfrew North (Mr. Conway) has, and the member for Lanark-Renfrew.

Mr. Villeneuve: That is right. The member for Renfrew North certainly has many rural routes in his riding.

Mr. Wiseman: He agrees with you. He is shaking his head yes.

Mr. Villeneuve: We go back to what this government intends to bring in in the not too distant future, the local option on Sunday shopping. We were told by the Solicitor General (Mrs. Smith) that a great deal of thought had gone into this but, indeed, on the same day the Solicitor General made the statement that the local option would prevail, she was not even aware that many municipalities in northern Ontario are unorganized. The Solicitor General did not know how that would be handled in municipalities which do not have elected officials.

I wonder if this is the kind of thought that went into the preparation of Bill 77. Quite obviously, a little more thought went into Bill 77 than the announcement that was made by the Solicitor General pertaining to local option on Sunday shopping. However, when one knows the back-ground and the lack of research that went into that particular declaration by the Solicitor General, one has to question and one has to wonder.

Public information campaign: we, the elected officials, were only able to obtain the questionnaire today. How will that work, to inform the public who will be completing these questionnaires, completing them shortly after May 1 the trigger date, at the 11th hour and beyond the 11th hour in preparation for fall municipal elections?

In conclusion, I suggest very strongly that the House leader and indeed the government recon-sider their position on Bill 77, put it on hold, give it more thought and bring it forth to this Legislature at some time when we are not at the 11th hour.

Mr. McCague: The honourable member brought to my attention a question I might ask the parliamentary assistant to answer later. I am not sure what is going to draw a home owner’s or a taxpayer’s attention to the importance of the letter that he is receiving from the government. Any members who have the opportunity to go into post offices will know what happens with a lot of the mail that arrives there. Many of my constituents do, unfortunately, leave things piled in the federal government’s post office. Some of them are taken home and left in the hands of the local waste management committee. Others are used to prop up the telephone or to put your morning coffee cup on, and you spill something and that is the end of that. That may sound a little facetious, but it really is not.

Any members who have been here as members of the Legislature for a while, or maybe have been here just a short time, will know that very often when an official plan amendment is circulated by a municipality or a zoning bylaw amendment, a year or two later members get calls from many taxpayers wondering what happened: “You never notified me. What is the matter with the system?” The government is going to have a lot of problems with this that I am not sure it understands at the present time. I do not know of any other system like it on which the government could base the kinds of hopes that it has for the success of it.

Mr. Villeneuve: I want to thank my colleague; and yes, I have to agree with him. That is why I brought the situation to the attention of the parliamentary assistant in the absence of the rninister. My riding office is almost directly across from the local post office. Many people go to the mail, and anything that is -- I should not say that does not look important but we find many items of routine mail stacked in a garbage container.

Mr. McCague: Liberal newsletters.

Mr. Villeneuve: There may be some of those -- not too many in my riding, but in some ridings throughout the province -- that do wind up in the wastepaper basket. I think it is imperative that the parliamentary assistant and the minister add some particular importance to the letter they will be sending so that the householder does not simply take it as a little more mail that really goes to file 13.

The Deputy Speaker: Thank you. Any more members who wish to participate in the debate?

M. R. F. Johnston: Merci, Monsieur le Président.

L’hon. M. Fontaine: En français.

M. R. F. Johnston: Oui, je peux essayer, mais il est difficile pour moi, comme étudiant, de faire tout un discours en français. Peut-être que c’est le même problème pour vous, je ne sais pas.

I did want to say a few words while the step-dancer from Pembroke was here, but -- oh, there he is. He has come over to our side now. Welcome, Mr. House leader. Perhaps he has not been reading the Pembroke papers lately, but there are some very interesting editorials these days about the government House leader, which I will allude to as I go through my speech because these things are all tied in with enumeration, as I am sure he is aware.

I was hoping that at least one of the ministers who has been involved in the perpetration of this colossal legislative mess we have now, in terms of municipal reform, might be here in the House and not leave a novice parliamentary assistant to have to handle the burden of my unleashed wrath, which I will now have to temper because it is unfair, of course, to attack a new member in a way I would normally tear strips off a minister.

I have been here only nine years now in this House. I was first involved in enumeration questions around francophone enumeration in 1980, when I had to deal with the member for Simcoe West, who I see is here in the House, and Dr. Bette Stephenson at that time, as we started the whole history of incredible mistakes around the enumeration policy involving our francophone population.

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But I have never seen, and I never expected to see from a Liberal reform government, the kind of chaos that has been perpetrated on us in terms of municipal reform in Ontario. We have several pieces of legislation before us, some not yet before us, all dealing with this fall’s election in Ontario.

We have Bill 76. We have Bill 77, which I am, of course, speaking to at the moment, Mr. Speaker. We have Bill 100. We have Bill 106, just brought in yesterday, to deal with the whole question of financing of local elections, giving us lots of lead time for the coming election. We are still waiting to see what the similar legislation for Metro Toronto is going to look like whenever it happens to be brought into this Legislature.

There have been several recommendations made by task forces to this government. This government, of course, has been superb at appointing task forces. It has probably done that better than any government before it. Those people who have picked up the per diems on those task forces are very happy that they did that, I am sure. Some of them who have actually seen a few of their recommendations implemented must have been happy about that as well.

But I do find it strange that the recommendations that have been brought forward on this matter in terms of local government elections, dated February 1987 -- that was the final report from that committee -- have been ignored. The committee that dealt with how we would bring about representation by population in school boards has had their basic recommendations thoroughly ignored.

The basic recommendation was that you do not rush this change; you do not bring it in during an election year and cause all sorts of confusion among the electorate. You bring it in with lots of lead time. You do not bring it in with the step-dancing House leader asking us to get this through in one day because he has a time-line problem. You take a lot of time to make sure all the bugs are ironed out of municipal reform legislation and you maybe even bring it in, both reports suggest, with pilot projects to see how it works before you try to impose this kind of major change on a province which already suffers from a great deal of confusion during municipal elections.

I do not have to tell the parliamentary assistant what it is like for electors to look at the ballot, let alone anything else, in terms of the information that they get around various candidates during an election. The last one I saw in Scarborough, in my riding, must have been at least a yard long with all the representatives who were seeking election to various kinds of posts, and you could have piled the election material higher than my average junk mail in Metropolitan Toronto. The confusion that lies around the whole process of municipal election is enormous.

To add now a whole new approach to enumeration -- which I think has some serious problems with it which the member for Etobicoke-Lakeshore (Mrs. Grier) was referring to -- to add whole new concepts on how we will elect our boards of education, to try to bring in a new enumeration system during a year when, for the first time, we are actually going to have French-language boards of education in areas of this province where we have never had them before, where the problems of trying to work in joint board operations in places like Ottawa-Carleton are proving to be very problematic, is, in my mind, folly.

I do not understand why the government has proceeded in this fashion, instead of bringing forward this legislation, taking sufficient time for proper consultation with all the groups that are involved out there and heeding the recommendations from the task forces that they paid for with taxpayers’ dollars -- presumably wanting to listen to it -- so that we had time to watch this develop and so that this fall’s elections were not thrown into chaos because of potential gerrymandering under one piece of legislation or insufficient and inappropriate enumeration under another piece of legislation, which I am speaking to at the moment, which is Bill 77. I find it difficult to understand why we are doing this.

As my friend the member for Cambridge (Mr. Farnan) will know, one tries not to impute motive -- because it is not allowed, number one; but, number two, it is an unseemly kind of thing to put your mind to, always to be thinking that there might possibly be some kind of machiavellian interest on the part of a ruling government party in this kind of process, so I will not even think about that. I just have to think that perhaps this has been done in an attempt to seem to be reformist, thinking that it was going to be easier than it was going to be and then discovering that, in point of fact, complication upon complication was compounding and, therefore, the government just had to keep bringing in new pieces of legislation.

Let me remind members about how this process started. The government brought in an announcement about reform in Metropolitan Toronto in terms of the direct election of a chairman. This is how this all began last fall. This was how the snowball began to develop, rolling down the hill. I would suggest it eventually is going to run over the whole electoral process before it is finished and make a total mishmash of things this fall.

From that point on, the government then decided that this would require a redistribution in Metropolitan Toronto, and it came forward with a new approach to developing electoral boundaries which has caused us amazing problems in Metropolitan Toronto in terms of the attempts to gerrymander that have been seen at the local level.

That, unfortunately, was brought in without any consultation with the school boards. The government then had to quickly run off and draft up some new legislation which they thought would fit the school boards. This is Bill 76. I am not speaking to that at this point, I am speaking to Bill 77 of course, but they are all a package and that is why these have to be interrelated.

Now we have discovered, as of just Monday, that the government recognizes all the problems that we and the school board associations across the province spoke to with Bill 76 and the way representation by population is being imposed against the advice of the task force which this government set up to suggest how representation by population could be brought in for school boards. All those problems we had identified were, in fact, there and real, and now the government has brought in, I think, around 30 pages of amendments to Bill 76.

Sorry; the step-dancer wishes to speak? No, just gesticulate. I am sorry. I thought the House leader wanted to speak, but it was just a hand gesture, which will go undefined because the camera is on me and not on him.

So we then had to catch up with the problems that were based on Bill 76. Now we have also discovered, of course, that all those kinds of changes in representation by population cannot apply to Metropolitan Toronto, because they cause even more problems. So we are now waiting this week or next week, or goodness knows when, for one of the ministers involved, the Minister of Education or the Minister of Municipal Affairs, to come forward with a new piece of legislation that will affect the school boards in Metropolitan Toronto as a particular piece of legislation.

I just say that I have never seen such a strange approach to municipal reform in my life. What I do not understand is that when the government started to see it was going to be this complicated and when it had basic recommendations from, for instance this particular group, the Advisory Committee on Municipal Elections -- which, on page 2.45 of its report, says, “The recommendations that no changes be permitted close to the date of elections received an exceptionally high level of support” -- from this group, which says the government should not be moving before an election on these matters, the government ignores that and decides to forge ahead anyway, hoping that this last little rush of amendments on all these various bills, brought in at the very last minute under pressure from the government House leader that we get this thing through in a day, for instance, as quickly as we possibly can, because without it goodness knows what will happen and the cataclysmic events that will follow.

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Given that the minister knew that was happening, why did he not just withdraw this stuff or put it out there for public input and let people have their say about what they would like to see happen in terms of municipal reform? The idea that they might have something of worth to say to us might be something that this open Liberal reform government might normally have wanted to try to bring into the process. Instead, it seems to be reverting to the process that Bill Davis had around Bill 30; that is, “Ram the thing through and we will talk to the people afterwards.” Having chaired the committee that had to talk to the people afterwards, I know just how difficult that was when we had to do it after the fact. Of course, I am speaking to Bill 77 here.

Mr. Lupusella: You don’t believe in regional autonomy.

Mr. R. F. Johnston: Excuse me. I think the member for Dovercourt had something to say about housing.

The Deputy Speaker: I presume you have finished with your speech.

Mr. Lupusella: If the honourable member and his party do not believe in regional autonomy, how can they accuse us of not believing in that particular process? Take a look at the issue of Sunday shopping. We want to give power to the municipalities to make a decision and members opposite do not want it.

The Deputy Speaker: I am sorry, the member for Dovercourt is out of order. Would the member for Scarborough West please continue.

Mr. R. F. Johnston: I am sorry, Mr. Speaker. I thought it was a point of order about housing problems in Etobicoke. I was not sure, but I thought we should hear it just in case there was a new initiative with the Ministry of Housing that the member was putting forward. I am speaking to Bill 77, of course, and talking about housing has nothing to do with the matter at hand.

Why is it that an open government decides that something as important as the democratic process at the municipal level, which we supposedly want to enhance through this package of reforms, should not be something which goes out to the public for discussion, has a long period of gestation out there -- perhaps even, as the government’s reports recommend, the odd pilot project to try things out -- and then becomes legislation after the fact? Why is it that, instead, this government has brought the House back on April 5 -- a date which went by unnoticed by any member here, and I was a little hurt that the member for Oshawa or others did not bring to the attention of the chair and others the fact that that was my ninth anniversary elected in the Legislature. I think it was just a small oversight. He had a few other things on his mind, because normally, as our procedural expert, he would have leapt to his feet and brought that to members’ attention. But, of course, I am speaking to Bill 77 and not to my anniversary.

Mr. Breaugh: Could I leap to my feet now and bring it to their attention?

Mr. R. F. Johnston: That is probably a good idea. Do you remember where I was, Mr. Speaker?

The Deputy Speaker: No, but I wish you would remember.

Mr. R. F. Johnston: I know what it was. I was going to speak to the question of this rush on Bill 77, because that, of course, is what I am concentrating on this afternoon.

The Deputy Speaker: Or trying to.

Mr. R. F. Johnston: That is what I am trying to keep myself focused on.

The thing I note is that the government, which called us back on my birthday -- that is what I like about this place; there was a sort of rebirth for Richard Johnston the day he was elected to the Legislature; it determined to call us back on that historic anniversary, perhaps for that reason, although there was no celebration -- did not call us back earlier than that to deal with important business such as perhaps the passage of Bill 77, which is so important to this government, a bill which has as part of its mandate the beginning of the enumeration process, the mailing of enumeration forms on May 1 of this year, less than a month from the date of the recall of the House and which is expecting electors in Ontario to respond by May 12.

Is it not a little strange in terms of the ordering of business in this place, with all the powers of the 94-seat majority, that a government that has legislation tumbling forward, causing problem after problem and causing other legislation to be promulgated because of the mistakes made and the deficiencies in the other pieces of legislation, has a piece of legislation of which it knew months ago that, to be brought in in any kind of orderly fashion, should have been brought in at least several weeks ago so this process could be established. Instead, it calls the House back on April 5, and then the step-dancer from Pembroke, sometimes known as the House leader -- there he is again -- keeps popping forward, hands close to his sides and feet nimbly moving, as step-dancers do, as you will be aware from your part of the province, Mr. Speaker. All of a sudden, we are to pass this thing immediately, because if we do not, there is going to be electoral chaos out there.

I ask the parliamentary assistant, who is causing the electoral chaos?

Mr. Lupusella: The New Democratic Party.

Mr. Pouliot: The member for Dovercourt should know.

Mr. R. F. Johnston: I suggest it is not this party which is asking to have one day to discuss something which has been so botched over the last nine years that I have been around this place; that is, the enumeration of municipal electors. It is not this party, the official opposition, or the third party, which, with all its faults in terms of the way it dealt with enumeration over the years, perhaps is seeing the light and wishes now to talk about ways this could be improved. It is the government, which is so confused about what it wants around municipal reform that it was not even able to call us back a week or two weeks earlier to deal with this matter so that the proper kind of announcements, TV support of this information, development of French support to this letter and information out to the multicultural communities of this province could be developed in a proper way so that people would not just be totally confused when they get this thing in the mail.

Mr. Cousens: What’s that?

Mr. R. F. Johnston: The member for Markham will be pleased to know this is actually the form that people will now be asked to fill out. How many members in the House have one of these? I would suggest that very few of the members have actually seen one.

Mr. Cousens: How many have you got printed?

Mr. R. F. Johnston: As always, the member for Carleton (Mr. Sterling) has one, because he is usually on top of this sort of thing. But I suggest to members that perhaps even the parliamentary assistant does not have one on his desk at this point. Perhaps he would wave it to me if he has one. No, I did not think so.

This is a document which starts off a whole new enumeration process, something which the people of this province have never seen before, and members of this House, before a debate on this matter, were not provided with it. The people of Ontario have had no chance to look at it and see if it meets the needs of their various communities, and it has to be out and in their hands by May 1 in some kind of explicable way that they can fill this thing in so that the first part of the enumeration process can be undertaken.

I suggest that the government has had some representations about what this form should say and has chosen to ignore some of the complaints from francophone communities and individual boards, especially in eastern Ontario, about this form. It may not seem like a large matter, but I would like to take members back to the days when I was pushing Dr. Stephenson, the member for Simcoe West (Mr. McCague) and others to try to bring in a new form of recensement pour nos collègues franco-ontariens.

Every time, there was a problem with the way the thing was written. Every time, the language that was being used in the attempted door-to-door canvass enumeration that was being done was inappropriate. In places like Metropolitan Toronto-to, about one tenth of the known census francophones were identified. It was a dismal failure. We developed, as a result of those eruptions in the House and the concerns by l’Association canadienne-française de l’Ontario and other organizations, a major discussion about what the language should be. I am really disappointed to see that still, in 1988, in the huge rush to get ourselves a new kind of enumeration as part of this overall election reform that the government has gotten itself involved with, it has not listened to all the groups of Ontario in terms of who might be left out of this who is a bona fide francophone.

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I know the member for Sudbury East has talked about this and I want to reinforce it. It is no longer appropriate in this province, where we now have some substantial francophone immigration, for us to consider old definitions of who is a francophone. If someone is coming to this country from Egypt and his first language is not English and it is not French, but his second language is French, not English, he should be able to declare himself a francophone elector. He cannot do that at the present time unless he meets the criterion of having a child in the system at the moment, and not in an immersion system but in the francophone school system. That is very important to remember.

If you are from West Africa or Morocco or Algeria, you are very likely to be in the same position. If you are from Vietnam, you are likely to be in the same position. Whether you are in Toronto or Ottawa, where the board has pointed out this problem to the government, it is a real disenfranchisement which was not necessary if we had taken our time about this electoral reform process.

I do not know how many thousands of people might be involved in that. I do not have the numbers from the 1986 census, for instance, which may tell us how many people in Ontario have French as their second language but not English as their first language, but I would suggest it is an affront to those groups that they are not automatically going to be capable of being enumerated on this list.

I do not know why it is that we feel that, again, we have to proceed with another flawed enumeration, disenfranchising people who would wish to see themselves as francophone electors -- especially now, because it is not just a matter of wanting to have a say with your French-language education council, for instance. It is now being able in some communities to be saying: “I’m going to be voting for a board. I’m going to support a francophone board, not just an advisory committee any more.” Real power has been given to francophones in the democratic process, and yet in the enumeration we are cutting out a community that cannot participate.

There is no way that this can be amended now. How can this possibly be amended when, on this very appendix that is being attached to it, we learn that all of this has to be done by May 12? This has to be mailed back by May 12. How on earth can this be amended now? It cannot be.

So what are we saying? To meet some arbitrary deadline which this government has established, against the advice of its own committees, the task forces which it has established, we are now going to disenfranchise this group and, as the beginning of a process of electoral reform, are perhaps going to unleash a whole mishmash of problems on the municipal scene this fall in terms of people understanding what their rights are, who they can vote for and that kind of thing.

I just say to the government that it is not the opposition’s fault that it is caught in this kind of position. It is their planning problem. It is their lack of desire to take this out to the public and talk about this package of reforms as a package with the public and then refine their legislation and bring it in slowly and in a sensible fashion that is causing the problems.

If there is chaos this September and October as the campaigns get started and as the election day draws near, I would suggest that will fall on their heads. What started off as a symbolic, small gesture of Liberal reform, the direct election of the Metro chairman, will now have caused a whole series of problems all down the line which I think could have been avoided.

Just to speak a little bit to the process itself, the member for Etobicoke-Lakeshore (Mrs. Grier) has talked about the idea of mixing who is responsible or not responsible for getting on the voters’ list. This piece of legislation, although it allows people more opportunities to participate than the old, single door-to-door canvass used to, mixes responsibilities in terms of who is to get himself on an enumeration list or who is responsible for making sure somebody gets on a voters’ list. I think that is a fundamental error.

I wonder, and I hope the member from Brantford will speak to this in his remarks later, why it is that the government did not decide to accept what is recommended on page 213 of this report, recommendation 19, that “the ministries of Municipal Affairs and Revenue, in co-operation with the chief election officer of Ontario, study the concept of a permanent voters’ list.” I wonder why it is we did not do that this year instead of changing the system in such a rush and causing the kind of confusion I think is going to be out there. I am wondering if there can be some logical explanation.

Anybody who has looked at this scene for a long time, as I know the member for Brantford certainly has, will know that this is a stopgap measure. Bill 77 is not something that will be in place 25 years from now. The election enumeration law most certainly will have changed to be sure that it is more representative than this, that fewer people are missed.

Mr. D. S. Cooke: Why the optimism?

Mr. R. F. Johnston: Why the optimism? Because I am sure that within 25 years the member for Windsor-Riverside (Mr. D. S. Cooke) will be Premier of Ontario. That is why I know he would make sure this would be one of his first steps with his Minister of Revenue. But the major reason I suggest this is because this is a problematic piece of legislation because it mixes responsibilities and because it avoids the essential reform that is required.

Mr. Cousens: The member is changing my vote on this.

Mr. R. F. Johnston: I hope so. I always get nervous when the member for Markham votes the same way as I do. If there is anything more I can say to get him over to the other side -- and I see him crossing the floor now, symbolically -- I will be happy to do it, speaking always to Bill 77, Mr. Speaker, as you know.

Mr. Fleet: The member for Scarborough West is getting more right-wing in his old age.

Mr. R. F. Johnston: The member for High Park-Swansea arrives now to tell me that it is right-wing to think of a permanent voters’ list, to think of having a proper, permanent reform. This is an interesting concept coming from a Liberal. A Liberal? I look for help from the member for Muskoka-Georgian Bay (Mr. Black). I have never been sure about the member for High Park-Swansea. There is such an interesting history of representation from that area that I would not want to presume somebody’s ideological stripe.

I was, of course, speaking to Bill 77 and we have been dragged off. The reason I was saying this is because I think Bill 77 avoids the issue of proper reform, which would be a permanent voters’ list, which the member for High Park-Swansea seems to think would be a very right-wing and regressive kind of notion in the province and one which I am sure he is going to speak about in the debate to make sure that the parliamentary assistant at least knows his views more particularly on it.

I know the parliamentary assistant is going to take this seriously, but why is it that we have this approach to electoral reform being taken by this government? Why did they decide, as the open, Liberal reform government, not to take a package to the people through the committee system of this Legislature over the course of several months, inviting input from all parts of the province on the incredibly complicated issues that are around, whether it is school boards in isolated, unorganized areas of Ontario or whether it is places like Metropolitan Toronto with huge multicultural communities and different linguistic groups?

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Why is it that instead of that, the government is putting the opposition parties in this House in a position by saying that this thing has to be pushed through within the next day or so or it falls on our heads that there will be chaos in the system? I really would like a serious answer to that in terms of why we are being put in this position and why the people of Ontario are not being given a more appropriate chance to have a say in this.

The final thing I would like to reiterate is that enumeration may seem to be a small and technical side of the whole election reform package and maybe not warrant major debate in many people’s minds, but it is the fundamental building block for franchisement. If you do not make it on to a list --and in this case, with the very complicated structures we have now for how you can determine what kind of elector you are at the municipal level, if you are inappropriately placed on a list and put into the Catholic system of education when you should be in the Protestant, or really wish to be a francophone elector and to be able to vote, for once, for the first time, for a board of your choosing it is the vital first step and it is intrinsically tied to all the other matters the government is trying to bring forward.

I do not think that rushing the thing through today is the solution to a bad form which, again, does not meet all the needs we would have it meet, as I have indicated before, and will disenfranchise people who should be looking at electoral reform as a positive reopening of their possibilities for participation in the democratic process and in fact will be just another difficult-to-understand piece of government bureaucracy being inflicted upon them and removing from them rights which they were being led to believe would be theirs.

I urge the government to rethink how it is approaching this process, to slow down and make sure we do this properly, dot the i’s and cross the t’s, and not lead us down the road to chaos this fall.

Mr. McCague: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker: Earlier in the afternoon, it was indicated by the House leader for the government that the minister would be here momentarily, I think it was. I am sure I could persuade the member for Markham to leave the minister’s seat if he is going to return momentarily.

The Deputy Speaker: That is not a point of order, but thank you.

Hon. Mr. Conway: I want my friend the member for Simcoe West to know that I was just inquiring after the whereabouts of the minister, who is meeting with a delegation. I expect he will be here very shortly. I appreciate what the member has said. These are the kinds of things a government House leader has to adjust when he tries to accommodate such things as emergency debates. But I appreciate the point the member from Simcoe West makes and will make every effort to have the minister here.

Mr. McCague: The member for Scarborough West raised the point of the difficulty he had in persuading previous members of the government to come up with an enumeration form that was suitable for the purposes for which it, in his opinion and that of others, was intended. One of the pressure points on this legislation we have before us is, in fact, the desire for a better identification system for French-language electors.

I asked the parliamentary assistant this before, but I will ask him this time in a slightly different context. I would like to know, and I am sure my party would, just what might be done to accommodate what I agree is a pressing need on behalf of certain groups within Ontario but at the same time may well be to the disadvantage of a whole other group. I am sure the member for Scarborough West would be as interested as I am in knowing, should the legislation not proceed, what would the government then do to accommodate-date that very urgent concern.

Mr. Fleet: I would not want to disappoint the member for Scarborough West, given only two minutes to reply to all of his various comments. My gibe to him with respect to being right-wing was perhaps taken a little too literally.

I would like to point out that my understanding about the cost of a permanent voters’ list, based on what I remember reading in a report from the federal chief electoral officer some years ago, was that although it was heavily considered by that office it was found to be far more expensive.

I believe it was the member for Oshawa, speaking earlier, who said there is a turnover of 50 per cent in some of his buildings. The cost of doing it is probably prohibitive, in my view, unless you had a co-ordination at all levels of government -- municipal, provincial and federal -- so that you could cut the cost down. I do not intend to speak in respect of the government’s position, but my understanding is that would be very difficult as a practical matter.

I suspect that, given the attempt by this government to try to introduce reform in a difficult matter with, admittedly, some time lines involved, it does not mean that we should back away because there are going to be some criticisms coming from the honourable members opposite. Anything we do in this respect which is going to be involving reform is going to have some steps which are experimental in a sense, which we are trying to make sure work out.

I might also add that the bottom line is that the current system does not work well enough. We are trying something that will be better. With the help of the members opposite, I am sure we will be able to respond to any perceived inadequacies between now and the election.

Mr. Morin-Strom: I want to compliment my colleague the member for Scarborough West on the very valid points he has made on this important piece of legislation. There certainly is no more important issue when it comes to democracy than ensuring that everyone has the right to vote and is properly enumerated and will have that right to utilize what is one of the most important elements of our parliamentary system and, in this case, with respect to municipal elections.

I think it is quite unfortunate that while we are having a debate on an issue that one would imagine should be the top priority for the Minister of Municipal Affairs, the minister responsible for this issue, he does not have the time to be in the Legislature to listen to the important comments being made by other members of this body.

l think the government should be looking at what its priorities really are, addressing them in this Legislature and ensuring that the people who are responsible for the pieces of legislation we are going to deal with in this session of parliament are available.

This was the number one item the government wanted to address in terms of bills, in terms of its priority list. Here we are on the second day of the Legislature and the minister who is responsible does not have the time to come in to hear the comments on this bill and to be able to react to opposition members such as my colleague the member for Scarborough West. I would hope that the minister will show greater respect for this body in the successive days on this bill.

Mr. R. F. Johnston: I will take the opportunity to respond, Mr. Speaker, and to thank the member for Simcoe West for his comments. I think there are solutions to the question of more adequate French enumeration. I would hope, whether or not this legislation goes through, that we would have a more adequate enumeration than is suggested on this form, that these forms should all be adjusted and that the time lines, if necessary, should all be changed. There have been a number of models developed that I think could be followed to make that happen.

The member for High Park-Swansea is tasting the joys of the front row over there at this point, perhaps for the one and only time, and I hope he enjoys himself there. I would just suggest to him that it may indeed be an expensive matter to have a permanent voters’ list. It is also incredibly expensive in two ways to continually do enumerations for each election, whether it is federal, municipal or provincial. There is a financial cost and there is also a major cost in terms of those people who are left off on a continual basis.

If other nations and other jurisdictions have been able to institute this kind of system with a much greater accuracy rate than we have in our present systems of enumeration, and I would suggest with this one as well, then it is certainly something that a wealthy province such as Ontario could undertake in order to make sure its electorate is properly represented.

I would like to thank the member for Sault Ste. Marie (Mr. Morin-Strom) for his kind words which I can use in my riding report.

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Hon. Mr. Conway: If I might, before the member for Carleton (Mr. Sterling), I just want to indicate to the House that it may be difficult. I understand that the minister is not now going to be able to join us. I do not want to --

Mr. R. F. Johnston: Let’s go home to dinner.

Hon. Mr. Conway: The very competent parliamentary assistant is here. I know that the member for Markham will be disappointed, but this debate is going to carry on. I just wanted to report that.

Mr. R. F. Johnston: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker: I wonder if the step-dancing House leader could tell us whether the minister will be available tomorrow. I am sure we all are, and we would be happy to be here when he could be here tomorrow

Hon. Mr. Conway: I fully expect that the minister will be here tomorrow but I expect this debate will continue this afternoon and into tomorrow.

Mr. Sterling: I will try not to repeat much of what has been said prior to my standing and speaking on Bill 77, but it is absolutely amazing to me, in talking to many of the clerks of the various municipalities I represent in eastern Ontario, that this piece of legislation was not brought forward in the fall session. I find it inexcusable that we have not had time for this to be put in place and implemented at an earlier date.

Second, with regard to this piece of legislation, there are some serious problems, particularly in the Ottawa-Carleton area, which I will allude to. I think one of the points brought forward by previous speakers in this debate should be re-emphasized and I will do that very shortly; that is, enumeration of people who are eligible to vote in an election is not only a problem in the municipal arena but I feel it is also a problem in the provincial arena, as we found out last September 10.

Therefore, the suggestions of members such as the member for Etobicoke-Lakeshore of the New Democratic Party I think should be taken seriously by this government. There should be a permanent voters’ list that can be used in a municipal election, in a school board election, in a provincial election or in a federal election. That particular list should be an updated list, and with today’s computer technology that should not pose too great a problem.

I want to speak about Bill 77 and the effects it is expected to have on the formation of a French-language board in the Ottawa-Carleton area. I want to thank in particular Hal Hansen, chairman of the Carleton Board of Education, who has written to the Minister of Education, to the minister responsible for francophone affairs and to the Minister of Municipal Affairs with his concerns over this bill as it will affect the new francophone board. We were expecting to see that legislation yesterday, we were expecting to see it today and we hope we will see it in the not-too-far-distant future if we want trustees elected to a French-language board for this coming November.

I understand that Mr. Hansen has not received a response to his concerns. Today I forwarded his concerns to the Minister of Citizenship (Mr. Phillips) because I thought he should take an active role in this issue. The Minister of Citizenship tends to be involved in issues of more show and splash, rather than getting down to the nuts and bolts of protecting new Canadians by providing them with equal opportunity in our province.

The problem lies in the definition of what a francophone ratepayer shall be. I will read the paragraph which Mr. Hansen brings to our attention:

“We would like to highlight our concerns with regard to the rights of French-speaking persons to identify themselves as eligible to vote for French-language trustees on school boards. The enumeration form, which was attached, identifies three questions to which a person must answer yes at least once to have the right to vote for French-language trustees. Unfortunately, these questions exclude a large group of new Canadians who use French on a continuous basis and who consider themselves as active members of the francophone community. Since their first language learned may be neither French nor English, since their elementary education was not received in Canada and since they do not have school-age children in the French-language instruction unit, they must answer no to all of the questions and must thus vote for anglophone trustees. This situation takes on greater urgency in our area, Ottawa-Carleton, since these new electors will be excluded as ratepayers of the proposed new French board, thus reducing the potential tax base of the new French-language board.”

That is written by another board which will suffer at the loss of assessment from the new French-language board, and so I take very seriously the objection by Mr. Hansen and by the Carleton Board of Education. We have not heard --

Mr. Morin-Strom: On a point of order, Madam Speaker: Can you tell us if we have a quorum in the Legislature today?

The Acting Speaker (Miss Roberts) ordered the bells rung.

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The Acting Speaker: A quorum is present. The member for Carleton, if you wish to resume.

Mr. Sterling: Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. I think this is the first time we have had a quorum all afternoon. I have seen very few members in the Legislature dealing with this particular bill.

At any rate, as I was saying, I think the Minister of Citizenship should be putting forth proposals to help and assist the Minister of Municipal Affairs in order to allow new Canadians, people coming to Ontario who identify more with the francophone community than they do with the anglophone community, the option of having the right to be considered ratepayers within the francophone community.

I do not think this would be a threat to the French-language board, and the reasoning behind the existing definition of a person who can enrol in it, as identified in this particular questionnaire, is perhaps not needed. I think another definition can be put forward and I look forward to a positive response from the parliamentary assistant or the minister, because he has had notice of this objection since the second week of March.

I would also expect that the Minister of Citizenship should be involved in trying to address this lack of opportunity on the part of new Canadians coming particularly to the Ottawa-Carleton area, because this is where the only French-language board will exist.

The other matter I would like to relate to is the number of changes that are occurring in the Ottawa-Carleton area over this year dealing with education, dealing with municipal government and dealing with the whole bag of government relations.

In Ottawa-Carleton, the Minister of Municipal Affairs last November appointed a former mayor of the township of Rideau, David Bartlett, to prepare a report on the structure of regional government in Ottawa-Carleton and recommend changes to that particular government. Mr. Bartlett worked extremely quickly and was able to produce a report that came down, I believe, in February. Now we have the Bartlett report on the table; it has been made public, and people are talking about the changing of regional government and how the regional chairman shall be elected or shall not be elected.

We have had in the regional municipality of Ottawa-Carleton an appeal to the Ontario Municipal Board dealing with apportionment of education taxes. The apportionment between various municipalities to pay their levies to the various school boards is confusing as well, and the burden has shifted substantially from, for instance, the city of Nepean to the smaller townships like Osgoode and West Carleton, both of which I represent.

We have legislation coming up under Bill 76. If it is not changed during debate or by amendments that were put forward yesterday -- and I have not had the opportunity to look at them-it may change the trustee representation significantly in the growing Carleton Board of Education.

We have an indication by this government that it is going to delegate the whole can of worms dealing with Sunday shopping to the municipalities. There may be plebiscites that will take place this fall in some of the municipalities dealing with that issue.

We have a new francophone board being created, if we ever see that legislation see the light of day and if we do not see that very soon.

We have a new election expenses act for municipal politicians to deal with.

We still have the after-effects of Bill 30 occurring in the Ottawa-Carleton area as that is implemented, and the shifting of pupils from one board to the other. With the new francophone board, we will have approximately 20,000 students in Ottawa-Carleton shifting from the other four boards to the creation of yet another school board in the Ottawa-Carleton area. We will now have five different school boards in Ottawa-Carleton.

Adding on to the back of all that, we have a financial problem. We have an insensitive Liberal government cutting back on provincial transfers to the public school boards, at least the public school boards in the Ottawa-Carleton area. We have a situation in the Carleton Board of Education where we have 1,000 more students this coming year in that board, yet this government is going to give them a paycheque of actually less money than they got this past fiscal year.

We have a situation in the Carleton Board of Education, in the Ottawa Board of Education, in fact in all of eastern Ontario, where we were given a pittance in capital funding last year to build new schools and to renovate schools. We were given $25 million out of a total capital budget of $300 million in the province to address our accommodation problem.

We have a whole bunch of problems to deal with. We have a parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Education who comes from the Ottawa area, who represents the riding of Ottawa-Rideau, who is telling the Ottawa area that we are a wealthy area. Now, that is a great signal for the other representatives from Ottawa-Carleton to come down here and try to get a fair shake out of a government that has treated them badly in the past.

I have listed about eight different ways that Ottawa-Carleton’s municipal school board structure is changing dramatically at this juncture, and now we have the late introduction of a new enumeration system which is flawed, as pointed out by the Carleton Board of Education in a letter to the minister.

There is a lot of sympathy on our part and on my part, and we would like the government to seriously consider that perhaps at this late date it might be better to put this thing back and off the burner until we have time to assimilate and to deal with these other changes I have mentioned before.

I mentioned the member for Ottawa-Rideau (Mrs. O’Neill). One of the meetings that I went to with her dealt with parents dealing with education from the Carleton board area. Their message to us was: “We do not want any more changes in our education system. Let us take care of the problems that we have now. Let things smooth out so that the kids can start to settle down and get their education system in place and the kinks can be worked out.” This may be an opportunity for this government to back away from Bill 77 at this time and carry it forward.

I do not know what the government is going to do about the French-language board. I do not know what it is going to do with regard to how to carry that forward, but that is its problem. It has to figure out an enumeration process. It has left it so darned late. I do not want to see the French-language board set aside at this time. I want it to go ahead, but I do not know how the government is going to handle putting this process in place.

As some of the other members have said, if it is fouled up, the government is to blame, and we will blame it in the end. We will stand up in this House and we will rain it down upon the government, because there is no reason that this could not have been brought forward in the fall. We would have had time to implement this properly, time to talk about it and time to amend this flawed piece of legislation so that it would take care of the number of problems that have been pointed out today.

Mr. McCague: There was interjected, just before the member for Carleton spoke, a comment from the House leader that, unfortunately, the minister was not going to be able to appear this afternoon. That is fine, but I want to have the parliamentary assistant ask the minister how he could have been so presumptuous as to have thought that we were going to deal with this bill and get through it yesterday. That has to be the presumption under which he was working, because he said it was the emergency debate that fouled him up.

However, we have said it is too late. It is too late for the minister to get here today. It is too late for this bill to pass. I might remind the parliamentary assistant that in many respects the election year, as it is seen by the people who run municipally and for school boards, has already started. Here they are, especially the school boards, sitting there wondering what area of their municipality they are going to represent. Like the minister who is too late, it is too late for this election.

Mr. R. F. Johnston: I would like to make a few comments on the comments of the member for Carleton as well, rather than commenting on the absence of the minister, which I really deplore as well. I was very pleased that the member brought the information from the Ottawa area board to the attention of the House. I had also received that correspondence from them, and that is why I raised the concerns as well about this part of our community which is being disfranchised.

I think the board, through the member, has made it very clear that to a substantial population in this province this is no answer at all and that at least we should be hearing from the government and one of its speakers in the next little while. Surely a small note can be passed to one or the other of those people who are literate on the other side -- and that is the vast majority; I would not want to name names at this point --

Mr. Lupusella: Speak for yourself.

Mr. R. F. Johnston: Oh, I just heard one of the members. Perhaps he would tell us whether there is any step at all that can be taken to improve this document that is out there so that those people will not be disenfranchised.

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Perhaps we could just get some kind of idea from the government as to whether or not that group is not important to the Liberal Party of Canada and Ontario or whether it is a group the government thinks it can do something for before this election is brought forward. Are those immigrants whose first language is not English and whose second language is French unimportant to the government? Does it feel there is no reason at all to move on this form before this goes out or not? It would be very interesting to hear from somebody over there as to whether they think it is worth bringing these people into the electoral process.

Mr. Morin-Strom: I think the member for Carleton has made some valid points, again concerning the Carleton Board of Education. However, I think it is unfortunate that the Minister of Municipal Affairs is not able to be here again to respond to the comments of the opposition members. At the start of this afternoon’s session, we had been promised by the House leader of the governing Liberal Party that the minister would come in before we ended this --

Mr. Black: On a point of order, Madam Speaker: Is the current speaker commenting on the comments of the previous speaker or is he commenting on some other piece of information?

The Acting Speaker: I am sure that the member for Sault Ste. Marie is getting to his comments with respect to the --

Mr. R. F. Johnston: On a point of order, Madam Speaker: I wonder if someone could check Hansard to see whether or not the member for Carleton actually mentioned that the minister was not here. I know the member will not be able to remember at this point, but perhaps we could check Hansard. A small break perhaps would be appropriate so we can check.

The Acting Speaker: I believe that the member for Sault Ste. Marie is going to continue on with respect to his comments.

Mr. Morin-Strom: Yes. As well, I think several members now have taken some of the two minutes allotted to me. The member for Carleton did make the point that the government obviously is not interested in this bill; it is not responding to the opposition comments.

Interjection.

Mr. Morin-Strom: He was not prepared to be here today when he knew that his bill was the first one to come up. It was to have started yesterday but there could be no assurance that it would be completed within one day. It obviously is not going to be completed today either. So we have the government stalling and ensuring that we do not get through with pieces of legislation which it claims that it wants to get addressed.

The Acting Speaker: Would any other member wish to comment upon the comments made by the member for Carleton? If not, would the member for Carleton wish to respond in two minutes?

Mr. Sterling: Absolutely. Now that we have a quorum, both down here and up there, I would be remiss if I did not comment.

I am absolutely amazed. Yesterday we heard the government House leader talk about the government’s legislation and its agenda for action. They wanted to press forward with the government legislation. Our party was quite willing to pass this particular piece of legislation this afternoon. We would have perhaps put it into the committee of the whole House. We would have dealt with it in the committee of the whole House. We would have been on to Bill 76 tomorrow. We could have done that.

But with the parliamentary assistant here, and not the minister, we do not know what kind of amendments are acceptable to the minister at this time. We do not know whether or not we could put forward amendments and expect a fair hearing for those particular amendments, so it leaves us no option but to carry the debate on for another day.

We would really like to take forward the legislative program dealing with municipal elections, because we realize our municipalities, all 800 of them, are in trouble. If the government insists that this legislation go ahead for the November elections, we have to get on with it. Even over our objections we have to get on with it. We have an interest as well in having this legislation dealt with in a speedy manner, but we want to have some kind of hearing. With only the parliamentary assistant here, even though he is a skilled municipal politician, we do not feel we can get a fair hearing. We would like to get on, and we find it ironic that a government which has asked for speedy passage does not have its minister here.

Mr. D. S. Cooke: I am not going to speak at length but I want to make a few comments, not necessarily specifically about the bill, because I do not pretend to be an expert about the bill. I want to talk a little bit about process in this place and what has happened over the last few months and over the last couple of days.

I find it strange that the House resumed after the election and we went all the way to the Christmas break and did not pass any legislation at all; then we get back here and do a little bit of work during the break. From what I have heard of some of the committees which met during the break, some of them were interesting and useful and some of them were not particularly necessary or important. But that was the government’s agenda: It was to have certain things referred out to committee, and other items which the opposition had sent out to committee were not seen as priorities and they could not be dealt with.

Then the House is called back for yesterday and we are told that this bill, Bill 77, has to be passed immediately, that this is the absolute deadline, the bill actually should have been passed yesterday and if it is not passed, there are going to be all sorts of problems.

I find it really strange. If this is the top priority for a newly mandated Liberal government, and it orders the business in such a way that the day we come back it has to pass the bill, then it is really poor organization, poor planning. Absolutely, if there are any problems which result from this bill not being passed quickly, yesterday or last week, the problem squarely lands on the shoulders and on the head of the Liberal government for not properly calling us back. If this was a priority, if this was an item that had to be dealt with in order to run municipal elections efficiently, then why were we not here last week?

From what I hear from some of the people in the ministries who are dealing with this legislation, my understanding is that an advertising campaign is not ready to go yet; the whole state of dealing with this legislation once it is passed is in absolute chaos. I do not know what will happen when these forms are mailed out very soon. There has not been preparation done with the voters, and when they get these forms in the mail, the mailback rate will be extremely low. We all know, even from our own direct mail campaigns which political parties do, that it is much more effective with proper preparation of the people you are going to mail to and proper follow-up.

We are doing this in complete chaos. There has been very little preparation done. It is absolutely amazing. The government has been studying this issue for quite some time, set this as its number one priority for the resumption of the Legislature, and nothing much has been done in proper preparation within the committee.

If I were a Liberal back-bencher, I would be a little offended in the way this has been handled as well. The government calls us back and basically says to the Liberal back-benchers: “Sit down, shut up, and don’t speak on this bill, because we don’t want you to speak on it. We don’t want you to participate. We expect you to stand up and vote yes when we tell you to vote yes.”

I would have thought that people such as my newly elected colleague the member for Windsor-Walkerville (Mr. M. C. Ray), a former member of Windsor city council, would have wanted to participate in the debate on this bill. This is a bill absolutely basic to the efficient operation of municipal elections. But I am sure the member was told, “Don’t participate.” That is why he is not here right now. He was told not to participate.

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There are many other municipal politicians who are now members of the Legislature for the Liberal Party. I gather the member for Sudbury (Mr. Campbell) was also a member of council. I am sure he was told the same thing: “Sterling, I know you want to participate in this debate but don’t participate in the debate. Sit down, shut up and vote ‘Yes’ when the Liberal Party tells you to vote ‘yes.’”

Lots of other municipal politicians and members of school boards who are now members of the Liberal caucus should be here and should be participating in this debate on Bill 77 so that we can improve the bill. But instead they have been taken for granted by their own leadership within their caucus.

The opposition parties have also been taken for granted. We were told to come back here. We came back yesterday and then we were told by the government House leader: “You’ve got to pass this bill. It has got to be done today. This is the Liberal government agenda and, come hell or high water, the Liberal agenda is going to be followed.”

There may only be 36 members of the opposition, but that is not how this place operates. It is not how it has operated in the past when there have been minority governments and it is not how it is going to operate when there is a majority government. The opposition parties have to be respected. After all, we may be only 37 members but we do represent the majority of voters in this province. The members must remember that over 50 per cent of the public did vote for the opposition parties. We have a valid point of view, and a point of view that is going to be expressed.

If there are problems with legislation not being passed on time, then the government is going to have to understand that we are not responsible. We do not set the agenda for this place; they set the agenda for this place. If there are going to be problems with passing legislation, then they are going to have to learn that there has to be consultation, proper planning and open ears.

Mr. Black: The voters knew you weren’t responsible.

Mr. D. S. Cooke: Why don’t you get up and speak on some of this legislation?

The Acting Speaker: Order.

Mr. D. S. Cooke: As a member of the opposition and as a member of parliament, I always thought it was part of my role to express my point of view, not just to be plunked down in a chair and stand up when I am told to stand up.

I hope that with the discussion on this bill and other pieces of legislation that will be coming up over the next few weeks, and I think particularly of the Sunday working issue which we will be dealing with at length in this place, the government will begin to understand that it must listen. They must listen to the opposition and the public. In the end, the result will clearly be better government, more receptive government and more sensitive government for the people of this province, and that means better-quality programs for all the nine million people who live in this province.

I hope the little exercise that has been gone through will be a useful one. I hope that maybe the parliamentary assistant will communicate to the absent Minister of Municipal Affairs that the opposition had some valid concerns on Bill 77 which have been expressed. It is obviously too late to appropriately deal with this bill through amendments. It is obviously too late to do the proper planning within the ministry to make sure that the public is aware of what is going on and prepared for a new way of doing enumeration. That time has all been wasted by the government.

But I hope the government will have learned from this exercise and I hope some of the suggestions that have been made will be incorporated into further amendments that will come in the future on how we put the voters’ list together for municipal elections. After all, it is a pretty basic process. But if the voters list is not adequately prepared in a democratic society, and people are disenfranchised, then the word “democratic” does not mean a heck of a lot.

I have enjoyed this afternoon’s debate and look forward to hearing other members’ comments. I hope that over the next number of months we will be able to deal with this bill and other pieces of legislation in a co-operative way, with meaningful participation from the opposition parties.

Mr. Speaker: Are there any comments or questions on the comments by the member for Windsor-Riverside?

Mr. Morin-Strom: Again, I find it disturbing that the minister responsible for this bill is not here and, further, that the members of the governing party, particularly the parliamentary assistant to the minister, are not responding to the concerns that are expressed.

Mr. Speaker: I thought you were going to refer to the comments.

Mr. Morin-Strom: I am referring to the comments that have just been made by my colleague the member for Windsor-Riverside.

Mr. R. F. Johnston: He did mention this fact.

Mr. Speaker: Oh, did he mention that fact?

Mr. Laughren: You must have missed it, Mr. Speaker. You can’t catch everything.

Mr. Morin-Strom: The major and initial point that was made by the member was that the governing party is not here to respond to the comments that are being made by opposition members on this bill. It is still not responding.

Then we have the parliamentary assistant here, whom we were told by the government House leader would be here. In fact, we gave him permission to sit on the other side of the House to be able to react to the comments of the opposition members. However, he has not responded up to this point, at least not during the period that I have been here, to any of the comments, very valid ones, that have been made by opposition members in terms of problems with this act, how the government is going to address them, why the government has been so slow in bringing this act in and how on earth we are going to be able to get an efficient system in place for the municipalities for the elections coming up this fall.

Mr. Speaker: You are agreeing with the comments of the member.

Mr. Morin-Strom: I am agreeing very strongly with the comments of my colleague.

Mr. Speaker: Any other comments or questions? If not, any comments by the member for Windsor-Riverside? You have up to two minutes.

Mr. D. S. Cooke: I appreciate and agree with the comments made by the member for Sault Ste. Marie, which were in agreement with the comments that I made.

I encourage members of the Liberal caucus to participate in the debate today, because I think the kind of meaningful participation that has occurred and the input from all sides of the House is useful. That was the old way that we used to operate in this place, so I hope other people will participate.

Mr. Cousens: I am pleased to rise to address this bill that is before the House, Bill 77, An Act to amend the Municipal Elections Act and the Assessment Act.

There are a number of points I would like to make. I notice that the parliamentary assistant is here, at least, and has not fallen asleep with the presentations by his own caucus members and others in the House, but I have to say that the speeches from the opposition party and from my predecessors in this party have been very eloquent.

I would like to touch on a number of concerns I have about the bill. I have concerns that it has not been discussed, debated and reviewed in a great deal of detail with municipalities across the province. I do not see this bill as having a great vision for the future, as taking a whole, comprehensive view of what can be done to touch upon the municipal elections in the province. I believe the bill is fraught with a time problem. We are coming in now, and unless it is passed quickly, we are not going to be able to implement it in time. I see this as a very sick process that the government is following.

I am concerned with a number of aspects of the bill and I am concerned with the regulations around the bill, the form that is going to be used to have people respond, the enumeration notice. First of all, let me just touch on the problems and then deal with some of the concerns I have.

Why do we need to have 28 days for municipal elections in Ontario now, in 1988? We have more media around there to help politicians communicate effectively with their proposed constituents, with their existing constituents, with whoever is out there. We have electronic media. We have the newspapers and so many ways in which we can talk to people, and it is going to be seven more days. Already, people in the province do not take enough heart and enough interest in municipal elections, and what the government is going to do now is just bore them to death over the 28-day period. It should bring it in closer.

Mr. Fleet: Just as you’re doing now.

Mr. R. F. Johnston: Change provincial ones to 15 on that basis.

Mr. Cousens: We could reduce the provincial ones. You do not need the length of time right now, because by the time you put it out, it is going to be a cost to the candidates. You have an extra seven days. Everybody is saying, “What is going on here?” There will be so much chance for the Liberal candidates out there in the province. They can have 28 different positions. At least, if you have it the old way of 21 days, they would have 21 positions. It is going to be more confusing to the electorate than it has ever been.

I am concerned that we are just adding a length of time to the election process, and I have not heard any reason from this government as to why it should not be shorter. It has gone the other way; it is adding to the length of time.

I do not think there is any doubt that anyone who has run for office municipally knows that a 21-day period is sufficiently long to do the job he has to do, to present himself, to prepare his brochures and to complete that whole electoral process so that the public knows who he is. Tell us, why is it they have to add seven more days in an age in which they could be cutting it back?

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I am concerned with the total confusion to the electorate in Ontario, because there has not been any effort --

Mr. Fleet: You are confused.

Mr. Cousens: There is always someone who is going to be confused, because the way they are doing it no one understands why, how, when, where or what they are up to.

The people here in Ontario are shortly coming into municipal elections. It is going to be this year and there are going to be so many changes I am worried, unless there is supporting documentation, supporting information and effort so that the people out there in the municipalities understand what is going on.

Why is it so piecemeal? Why is it that they have this bill and then there was another bill for Toronto and there might be another one tomorrow on election finances and there might be another one and another one? Why have they not come forward as a government with a cohesive plan that says, “Here’s what we are going to do for the municipalities in Ontario”? Table a strategy; put out a white paper, a green paper -- or maybe with those guys a pink or red paper -- so that people have a chance to understand what it is they are up to.

What they do is they just take a little bit here, a little bit there and it is all over the place. There is no cohesion to what they are up to, and they are missing the opportunity of allowing people to become very much more involved in municipal elections. There was a project by a former Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, the Honourable Claude Bennett, and the fact is that we were concerned as a government in those days that the turnout at municipal elections was so poor. In some municipalities it is down to 25 or 28 per cent of the population that votes. In some communities it is maybe only around 30 per cent.

Interjection.

Mr. Cousens: Probably in those that voted for you, it was down to 10 per cent.

Mr. Faubert: No, 40.

Mr. Cousens: Oh, 40. I did not know the member had that many relatives.

The fact of the matter is, we should be looking at ways of involving municipalities in Ontario and the people of Ontario in the electoral process. What this thing is going to do -- and I am going to go over the form the government is going to be sending out-is that it is going to turn them off; it is going to turn them right off as to what it is all about. I will come to a number of reasons for that.

I hope there is not a mail strike when they are mailing all these things out. I can just see they are going to have problems that are outside of their own control.

I wonder why it has taken them so long to bring this forward. Here it is election year and we are into a deadline. It just makes no sense at all, at least to the thinking people on this side of the House, and there might be a few thinkers over here in the rump, but those among us who are concerned with the people of Ontario have great concerns that the government has waited so long to make this happen.

I am delighted that the member for Carleton brought forward the concerns of the Carleton Board of Education and the concerns of French-speaking persons who want to be involved in the next municipal election. I am just sorry that he has to bring it forward in this way. It could have come through much, much better had the government done what the member for Simcoe East (Mr. McLean) was asking for, and that is that there be some public hearings and some involvement with it. They are obviously not prepared to do that; we will use the House as the forum to present it.

It is very good to see the Speaker in the House. It must be a heavy day, having question period and then all the meetings you have and then to be here for the closing of the House. I just hope that someone like yourself, who is so neutral and so unbiased, has had a chance to look at the municipal enumeration notice that has been prepared to go with this legislation.

I cannot show it to the people who are watching on TV right now. I am sure if you send a letter to the member for Brantford, the parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Municipal Affairs, he will send you a copy of it. I am only fortunate enough to have a photocopy, but with this legislation going through, every house, every apartment in Ontario is going to receive one of these documents. I think it is green. I am not just sure, because I am working from a photocopy.

It is the most boring-looking document. It is the most unexciting thing that people will have ever seen. It will come to their homes, they are going to look at it, and it is full of print.

Mr. R. F. Johnston: Unless they watched my speech.

Mr. Cousens: If they listened to the speech by the member for Scarborough West, they will be excited. I hope they did.

I cannot believe in the year 1988 we are putting together a form for people to respond to that is so screwed up, so messed up, so hard to read and so difficult to work out as this one is. I am surprised that some of the other honourable members in this House have not torn it apart the way I intend to.

Interjections.

Mr. Breaugh: There is a reason for that, though.

Mr. Cousens: There is a reason for that; those guys cannot read the fine print. The municipal enumeration notice is what it is called. It is going to be going out any day now. There is fine print. With my glasses, I can read it off, but there are some people who are going to have trouble reading the fine print. There are an awful lot of people in this province who cannot read the fine print that is on there. I know that for a fact. Is there a second form to handle the visually impaired? Please answer that question when responding to some of the concerns we are raising.

It says right at the beginning, “You are required by section 14 of the Assessment Act to complete and return this notice.” What happens if they do not? Is there some rule that they have to do it? What are the penalties if they do not? I venture to say that it is going to raise many questions in the minds of people in Ontario who will say: “My goodness, what does this mean? What happens if I do not? I have been away for a while and I am required to fill it out.” Maybe there will be some explanation of what the Assessment Act is really asking them to do, because as it stands in Ontario, if people do not want to vote, they do not have to vote. We want to make it easy for people to want to become involved in the electoral process.

I do not know what people are going to do in certain parts of Metropolitan Toronto, in parts of my riding and in other parts across the province where we have many different languages being spoken other than English and French. In Milliken, in the riding of Markham, there are in excess of 50 different languages being spoken. There are many people within that section of maybe 12,000 to 14,000 people who do not speak either French or English. How are they going to handle this form? How are they even going to be able to read that first little sentence that says, “You are required by section 14 of the Assessment Act...”? Is there going to be any direction to those people who speak other languages? Where has the minister of culture been on this one? Has he had anything to do to help understand the needs of those people who otherwise might never be able to fill this out?

Hon. Mr. Sorbara: That is the Minister of Citizenship. The minister of culture is a she.

Mr. Cousens: I know, but no one is working over there so we really do not know who is doing anything. I think it is time we had Susan Fish back in there and she could show you guys how to do it.

The fact is, we have got people who speak many different languages who are going to have a great deal of trouble reading this form.

Just as an aside, I am very appreciative of one of my fellow members, the member for Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry (Mr. Villeneuve), because he was saying, “I hope they keep better track of the results of this than they have of the people on the Ontario health insurance plan.” I understand there are 14 million people on the OHIP roll.

Mr. Villeneuve: Twenty-seven million.

Mr. Cousens: Is it 27 million on the OHIP roll? I wonder what is the population. It is going up. Everything else is going up, the cost and all these things. The fact is, I hope that the government has sent in all the systems and procedures to make sure that when these forms are finally collected in the municipalities, they are going to be tabulated correctly. I assume that would be the case if there are certain other people to look after it.

This is a form that is going to turn people off. There is an example here which says, “If any of the information is incorrect or incomplete, or if it relates to the previous occupant, owner or tenant, please correct as shown in the example. If you look at the example, and I just cannot believe, because I cannot tell what is right or what is wrong by it, there has to be some more explanation of what it is that you want people to do when there is a mistake or a correction to make. It is an extremely confusing section within this form.

I am just cut for time. The problem is, there are a number of problems with this form. I would like to touch upon one of the sections that pertains to residency. Under this section there are quite a few words and they are all in very fine print so some people will not be able to read it. I would not mind putting a test to the honourable House leader to take his glasses off to see if he could read it. I am sure it will be the only thing he has ever failed in his life.

This section says, “If you live in another municipality, check box 3.” What does that mean, “If you live in another municipality”? Does it not mean that in a municipal election you can vote in the municipality in which you live and also in a municipality in which you own property? So the question comes forward, should there not be some explanation to the person who is filling out this form as to his right to vote --

Mr. Speaker: The member may wish to take note of the clock. If you have further comments, you may wish to adjourn the debate.

Mr. Cousens: I will then, Mr. Speaker.

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

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Hon. Mr. Conway: Just for the information of the House, I would like to indicate that tomorrow we will continue with the debate on Bill 77, at the conclusion of which, should that be the case, we will proceed to debate the government notice of motion standing in the name of the Treasurer (Mr. R. F. Nixon).

The House adjourned at 6 p.m.

6 avril 1988