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September 14, 2010

39th Parliament, 2nd Session

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Hansard Transcripts

Votes and Proceedings

Orders and Notices

Hansard Transcripts 2010-Sep-14 (PDF)

L042 - Tue 14 Sep 2010 / Mar 14 sep 2010

LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY OF ONTARIO

ASSEMBLÉE LÉGISLATIVE DE L’ONTARIO

Tuesday 14 September 2010 Mardi 14 septembre 2010

ORDERS OF THE DAY

SELECT COMMITTEE ON MENTAL HEALTH AND ADDICTIONS

INTRODUCTION OF VISITORS

LEGISLATIVE PAGES

GOVERNMENT REGULATIONS

ORAL QUESTIONS

GOVERNMENT’S RECORD

TAXATION

HYDRO RATES

HYDRO RATES

RENEWABLE ENERGY

PENSION REFORM

ACADEMIC TESTING

TAXATION

HYDRO ONE

POWER PLANT

LOCAL HEALTH INTEGRATION NETWORKS

EMPLOYMENT STANDARDS

SERVICES FOR THE DEVELOPMENTALLY DISABLED

SKILLS TRAINING

DECORUM IN CHAMBER

MEMBERS’ STATEMENTS

ROSH HASHANAH

RAMADAN

VILLAGE OF SEELEYS BAY

INFRASTRUCTURE PROGRAM FUNDING

FIREFIGHTERS

TRANSIT FUNDING

MISSISSAUGA–STREETSVILLE BARBECUE

JIM DEVLIN

FULL-DAY KINDERGARTEN

REPORTS BY COMMITTEES

STANDING COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT AGENCIES

PETITIONS

TAXATION

RECYCLING

ONTARIO PHARMACISTS

HOME WARRANTY PROGRAM

CHILD CUSTODY

TAXATION

DIAGNOSTIC SERVICES

RECYCLING

ONTARIO PHARMACISTS

REPLACEMENT WORKERS

TAXATION

TAXATION

ORDERS OF THE DAY

WATER OPPORTUNITIES AND WATER

CONSERVATION ACT, 2010 /

LOI DE 2010 SUR LE DÉVELOPPEMENT

DES TECHNOLOGIES DE L’EAU

ET LA CONSERVATION DE L’EAU

The House met at 0900.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Good morning. Please remain standing for the Lord’s Prayer, followed by a moment of silence for personal thought and inner reflection.

Prayers.

ORDERS OF THE DAY

SELECT COMMITTEE ON MENTAL HEALTH AND ADDICTIONS

Resuming the debate adjourned on September 13, 2010, on the motion for adoption of the recommendations contained in the final report of the Select Committee on Mental Health and Addictions.

Hon. Monique M. Smith: Mr. Speaker, on a point of order: I believe we have unanimous consent for the time remaining to 10:15 to be divided equally among the recognized parties.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Agreed? Agreed.

The member from Oakville.

Mr. Kevin Daniel Flynn: It’s a pleasure to speak to this report from the Select Committee on Mental Health and Addictions. It’s entitled, as we all know now, Navigating the Journey to Wellness: The Comprehensive Mental Health and Addictions Action Plan for Ontarians.

I have to say from the outset that I’m especially proud of this report. It was an honour to chair this committee.

On February 24 of last year, 2009, the Legislative Assembly of Ontario gave unanimous consent to a motion by Christine Elliott to appoint a Select Committee on Mental Health and Addictions. That in itself, I think, is unusual in that the motion came from the opposition parties and was supported by all members in the House that day.

The committee was asked if it would consider and report its observations and its recommendations concerning a comprehensive provincial mental health and addictions strategy for the province of Ontario. It would work with consumers, survivors, providers and experts, and it was going to consider the mental health and addictions needs of various groups. Those groups were outlined; they include young adults, children, First Nations, Inuit, Métis people, seniors and francophones.

The committee would identify opportunities to improve coordination and integration across the sectors for all people and examine the existing continuum of services that were available today and the social services that went along with that.

In order to make this report possible in the way that it was presented, the members of the committee, in my opinion, conducted themselves admirably and deserve your admiration as a result of that. Members from all three political parties worked in a non-partisan manner that is more and more unusual around here these days.

I’d like to thank all members for their work on the committee: Christine Elliott, from Whitby–Oshawa, was the Vice-Chair and she did a wonderful job; Bas Balkissoon, the member for Scarborough–Rouge River; France Gélinas, the member from Nickel Belt; Helena Jaczek, the member from Oak Ridges–Markham; Sylvia Jones, the member from Dufferin–Caledon; Jeff Leal, the member from Peterborough; Liz Sandals, the member from Guelph; and Maria Van Bommel, the member from Lambton–Kent–Middlesex. They all put their party affiliations behind them and served in the best interest of Ontarians.

Each member volunteered to serve on the committee because of their personal commitment to mental health and addictions issues.

I’d like to thank the committee staff for the hard work that they did. Susan Sourial was clerk. Elaine Campbell and Carrie Hull were the research officers.

The people who deserve the most thanks in this entire exercise are the people who came forward to share their personal experiences of what was happening within their own families as a result of either mental health or addiction issues. They were brave, they came forward, they were courageous, and they told their stories. We held public hearings on 30 dates. We heard testimony from over 230 presenters, individuals and organizations. More than 300 submissions were received.

We heard from those people providing the service today, and we heard from people who experience the mental health and addiction system directly themselves or through a family member. Personal stories were shared, and for many of these people, they were very difficult moments.

We went beyond the traditional public hearings and made site visits to various locations. The committee toured such facilities as CAMH, St. Thomas and Eva’s Phoenix in Toronto. Let me tell you that we also went to several First Nations communities: Sandy Lake First Nation, the Oneida Nation of the Thames, and the Six Nations of the Grand River.

We brought forward an interim report in 2010; we brought forward the final report. I’m going to stop here because I want all members of the committee to have a chance to speak. I will just let you know how proud I am of the conduct of this committee and how proud I am of the report and the expectations that it has created that this Legislature is going to act in the best interest of Ontarians on an issue that has been ignored for far too long.

The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Julia Munro): The member from Dufferin–Caledon.

Ms. Sylvia Jones: I am pleased to stand on behalf of the Progressive Conservative caucus to talk about my role in the Select Committee on Mental Health and Addictions. As the Chair referenced, we’re all pretty proud of the work that we were able to do, the 23 recommendations that came forward as a result of this work.

I’d also like to touch on why I asked and why I was so interested in participating in this committee. I’m sure I am not alone in talking as a member representing a riding where you try to assist family members and you try to help people who are looking for assistance with their family member, spouse or child suffering from a mental health issue or an addiction. What I quickly discovered was that there is very little help out there.

I had far too many parents come to me saying that they wanted to get their 16- or 17-year-old assessed—this is not treatment; this is simply being assessed—to find out what was happening with them from a health standpoint. Unfortunately, the further I delved into the issue, I realized that children, these 16- and 17-year-olds, were going to age out—

The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Julia Munro): I’d just ask that those conversations taking place either become much more quiet or taken outside the chamber so we can all hear.

Please continue.

Ms. Sylvia Jones: As I was saying, as a member of provincial Parliament, you try to assist these family members trying to get assessments and treatments for their children. I was quickly finding out that, in fact, there were not enough services available. Assessment wasn’t going to happen until the child turned 18, aged out of the children’s mental health sector and, of course, then immediately went on to a waiting list for assessment under the adult mental health system.

It was an incredibly frustrating situation, so when my colleague the member from Whitby–Oshawa brought forward the resolution in December 2008 to study and thoroughly review the mental health and addictions system in Ontario, I thought it was a very good opportunity for all parties to come together on an issue that is troubling all of us. I am sure there is not a member in this House who has not heard a story and had to try to help a family navigate a system that is quite frankly far too fragmented to help anyone. So I do want to thank my colleague Christine Elliott for that work.

Of course, as a result of that December 2008 resolution which was passed unanimously, the select committee was struck. Because of my history of trying to assist families in Dufferin–Caledon, I approached the then House leader at the time, Bob Runciman, and asked if I could participate, and here we are today almost two years later.

The previous speaker also made reference to the staff who worked with us on this committee. It was hard work. There were a lot of sad stories, a lot of tough decisions. I am particularly proud of the work that Elaine Campbell and Carrie Hull did assisting what ended up being 10 members with very strong opinions in very thoughtful deliberations. I thought they did an excellent job of putting together our thoughts and our desires into a comprehensive but ultimately very readable report.

The 23 recommendations, as we all know, were based on consensus—again, rather an unusual situation in the chamber and in a legislative process that generally spends more time on “them and us” than it does on consensus-building. I’m proud of those 23 recommendations. I’m not going to tell you that they came easily. There were some very good debates within the committee process, but ultimately, I think those debates led to thoughtful and doable recommendations.

Many of the hours that we spent debating and discussing what the recommendations could be or would be were not just pie-in-the-sky ideas. They were suggestions based on how we can do it, how we can make it better now. This is not a 20-year plan. This is not a 15-year plan. These recommendations could be implemented and done now. I truly believe that if the various ministries look at them and review them closely, they will find that they are a reasonable review of the mental health and addictions system in Ontario today.

The first main recommendation, of course, is the umbrella organization, Mental Health and Addictions Ontario. I think that as you read the report, you will realize that many of the recommendations subsequently follow from the idea that we cannot continue to piecemeal mental health and addictions services in Ontario, that we need to have an agency that ultimately has control over all aspects of it.

The history of it, I’ll briefly tell you, is that we’ve seen some success with Cancer Care Ontario. I don’t think there is a member who can say that cancer services in Ontario have not improved since the formulation of Cancer Care Ontario. We understand that every single mental health and addictions service or treatment cannot be in every single community across Ontario. What we do want to see and what we do agree with, as a committee, is that regardless of where you live, regardless of where those treatment services are, they should be available to you.

That’s what we’re trying to do with this agency that will ultimately be there to coordinate and ensure that access is available to all Ontarians.

There are some great programs in Ontario. We saw some of them in our site visits. But ultimately, it is not consistent across the province. For whatever reason—the community getting together or some funding available at a certain point in history—there are programs that are doing excellent work in pockets across Ontario. We want to ensure that those programs ultimately become available to all Ontarians.

The other recommendation that I would like to touch on is peer support. There is a growing understanding of the value of peer support in all aspects of mental health and addictions, and ultimately health care services generally.

I remember when I participated in the Chair-leaders event in the spring. I spoke to the organizer, and they actively used peer support workers. What he told me was that when there is a spinal cord injury, peer support workers are there on-site speaking to the individual who has had an injury within hours. Initially, you would think, “That’s a physical injury.

They have to deal with the spinal cord injury first.” But his point was, as a peer support worker, as a peer support adviser, they become part of that support system, part of that support circle that assists people as they are trying to navigate what is, for the vast majority of us, a very different experience. I see a lot of value in using and utilizing those peer support volunteers and workers.

That is, of course, one of the 23 recommendations, and I’m hoping that is something that we, again, can move forward with quickly. It doesn’t take a lot of study. All you have to do is look at some of the other peer models that are taking place in other health aspects to see and understand how valuable it can be. The benefit is that that peer support, that circle, that assistance, goes all the way through from when you are initially assessed when you’re choosing and deciding on your treatment; it can assist your family as they try to be part of your model of care, your assistance. I see it as a very valuable addition.

I say “addition” because it is not a medical model. We’re not talking about replacing physicians and first responders. We are talking about having an additional support system helping people who are suffering through mental health and addiction services.

While we didn’t write the report with a vision of who’s going to like it and who isn’t going to like it, it was a pleasant surprise, shall we say, to find that within a day, three provincial umbrella organizations had applauded the select committee’s report on mental health and addictions. The three agencies were the Canadian Mental Health Association, Ontario division; the Ontario Federation of Community Mental Health and Addictions Programs; and the Ontario Peer Development Initiative.

I’m sure I’m not alone, as one of nine members of the committee, in that I’ve also received a number of emails, a number of phone calls, had many individuals and family members approach me who have had the chance to read the recommendations, the report, and are pleased with what we have come forward with.

Of course, after their congratulations, their next comment is, “So what’s the next step?” This debate, engaging the rest of the 107 members of provincial Parliament, is certainly part of it, but ultimately we will be looking at the various ministries and the government to start implementing those 23 recommendations.

There has been some movement, and an announcement I think within a couple of days from the Minister of Health and Long-Term Care, on the OxyContin initiative, and that’s a good step in the right direction. But again, I think I’d like to see a little more movement on how we can get that umbrella agency moving forward and ultimately move forward on the other 22 recommendations.

I don’t want to use all of our time, because I know that the Vice-Chair, my colleague from Whitby–Oshawa, would also like to share her comments.

In closing, I would just like to thank again the many family members, agencies and organizations who took the time to appear before us, and to open their agencies and their facilities to our site visits. It made our job considerably easier to have that easy access. You answered all of our questions and took a lot of time with us, and I do appreciate that. I’ll close with those thank-yous.

The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Julia Munro): Further debate.

M me France Gélinas: As has already been said by the member from Oakville, as well as the member from Dufferin–Caledon, it was a lot of work putting those 23 recommendations together.

I knew when I started that mental health and addictions needed some work, but after 18 months, 30 days of hearings, 230 presenters and 300 submissions, I’m more convinced than ever that mental health and addictions in Ontario is in crisis. You see, I come from 25 years in health care delivery; I’m a health care worker. I worked in the intensive rehab unit with people whose lives had taken a sudden turn for the worse.

They had become either amputees, quadriplegic, paraplegic, brain injured, severely burned or otherwise disabled, but I was not ready for what I was about to hear with my participation on the Select Committee on Mental Health and Addictions. Not only do people with mental health and addictions have problems gaining access to the care, support and treatment they need, but they get stigmatized and they don’t even get empathy from the health care workers who are supposed to help them.

We are failing thousands of Ontarians who need our help every day, with often catastrophic consequences on their health, their lives, the lives of their families, their friends and their communities.

I signed the letter asking for the report and its recommendations to be called for debate in the House at the earliest opportunity. Although I would have liked a little bit more than 20-some minutes of debate, I certainly appreciate the fact that the response to our request for the earliest opportunity was certainly acted upon, as this is only our second day back and we have a chance to debate our report in this Legislature. So I’m happy for that.

The first and most important recommendation in our report is the creation of Mental Health and Addictions Ontario, an umbrella organization. I will know that all of this hard work has paid off and has been taken seriously when the Minister of Health stands up in this Legislature and announces the creation of Mental Health and Addictions Ontario. I cannot wait for that day to happen, and I hope it happens quickly. This alone will bring a significant improvement in the mental health and addictions system and in the lives of so many people in Ontario.

There are so many ministries right now that offer bits and parcels of mental health and addictions services, from Aboriginal Affairs to Attorney General, Children and Youth, Citizenship and Immigration, Community and Social Services, Community Safety and Correctional Services, Education, Health and Long-Term Care, Health Promotion and Sport, Seniors—and the list goes on and on. The implementation of mental health and addiction services in Ontario will be important, and we certainly would not want this to draw funds away from front-line services.

By giving mental health and addiction a home, by shining a light on it, by putting someone in charge of mental health and addictions, if history repeats itself, then history has told us that that will improve quality and accountability and end up with better outcomes for the people who depend on that care, on those services, on those programs.

The second part of our first recommendation has the potential to create quite a bit of anxiety in the field: that is, bringing children and youth services under the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care. I was there way back when, when children’s mental health services used to be under the Ministry of Health, and it did not work out so well. This time, the transfer of children and youth back to the Ministry of Health has to be done, and it has to be done well.

No one on the committee, and I think no one in Ontario, wants to bring back or subject children to institutionalization in psychiatric facilities and nursing homes, or drugging and various adverse measures such as the use of physical restraints that we saw way back decades ago. What we want, by bringing children and youth under the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care, is to give young people the opportunity to form stable relationships, to gain access to social supports, strength-based intervention.

We realize that they need monitoring, they need short-term crisis intervention and individual and family counselling. This is what we’re trying to achieve by bringing children and youth under the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care. We want these to be in place in a systemic way in communities and schools.

Once those services are funded by the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care, that does not mean that it would become a medical model; it’s just to make sure that the gaps in services such as the member from—I always have a hard time—Dufferin–Caledon mentioned don’t exist anymore and the kid, the youth, doesn’t age out of a waiting list before ever receiving any programs or services that could help them.

Data collection and accountability is one piece of the mental health and addictions system that is currently lacking. We seem to be swimming in data of all sorts, none of this is standardized, but we continue to lack accountability for the quality and types of services provided for ensuring that front-line practice matches research findings about what actually helps people with mental health and illness, and those struggling with the challenge of addictions of all kinds. The problems in the mental health and addictions field lead to the disempowerment of consumers as well as front-line staff.

There is no consistent approach by any funding body to determine which mental health and addictions organizations are providing excellent services to consumers. We know there are some excellent people out there in the field, but there is no way of telling them apart. With 440 children’s mental health agencies, 330 adult mental health agencies, 150 substance abuse agencies and 50 problem gambling agencies, people told us time and time again that they could not find an agency that could help them. There were more reasons why they could not access services than there are agencies that I just named for you.

Whether it was geography, language, dual diagnosis, age—there was always a reason why all of those hundreds of agencies that exist could not help them. The only meaningful way to determine quality services is through the collection of standardized data, which often includes qualitative information from the consumers themselves. They know what constitutes quality services for them and what helps them.

Add to this the fact that good, competent staff often feel disempowered within their own agency or within their own field and are concerned about the treatment of their clients and the poor services that they received from other professionals, with nowhere else to turn to correct the problem. You have a system that is unaccountable, top-heavy and provides, at best, inconsistent services to clients. Where best practices do exist, they are overlooked, are not shared and do not inform practice.

Our report recommendations, once implemented, will help to change that. Everyone who came to present to the Select Committee on Mental Health and Addictions told us their story. There were very many similarities. They told us the same thing: Quality mental health comes from an interdisciplinary team of providers working together.

Furthermore, clinical consultation to front-line staff is often provided by supervisors who are more or less skilled in the area. The fee-for-service model of remuneration for physicians does not work when you provide mental health and addiction services, yet payment models that would include psychologists, psychotherapists, trauma specialists, developmental specialists, mental health counsellors, social workers etc., do not exist or are severely lacking. The recommendations in our report, once implemented, will change that so that we have a fee system that supports good, quality care in mental health and addiction.

We have to talk about stigmatization. We heard it over and over. It is often described as the worst barrier that people living with mental health and addiction face in society—stigma. It prevents them from having friends, from obtaining employment or even obtaining housing. Our report raised this issue. Our recommendations, once implemented, will help to change that.

It could begin with education and training at the college and university level, making sure that what is being taught is the latest information and that it shows results. There is lots to be done. Mental health and addiction in Ontario is in crisis. I look forward to the day where we take this most important step of announcing the creation of Mental Health and Addictions Ontario. I can’t wait for this day to be here.

Lorsque j’ai accepté de participer au Comité spécial de la santé mentale et des dépendances, je savais que les services existants ne rencontraient pas les besoins des Ontariens et Ontariennes. Après 18 mois de travail, 30 jours d’audiences, 230 présentations et plus de 300 soumissions, je suis maintenant persuadée que la situation est urgente et qu’on ne peut pas se permettre d’attendre.

Il n’a pas été facile d’avoir un consensus de la part des trois partis politiques représentés au comité. C’est rare que l’Assemblée législative travaille de façon non partisane, mais on a réussi à le faire au Comité spécial de la santé mentale et des dépendances parce que c’est tellement important d’amener des changements.

Les 23 recommandations que nous avons faites ne seront pas faciles à mettre en oeuvre, mais nous le devons à tous les Ontariens et Ontariennes qui dépendent du système de la santé mentale et des dépendances, un système qui ne rencontre pas leurs besoins, avec souvent des conséquences catastrophiques pour eux, leur famille, leurs amis et leur communauté.

J’attends avec impatience la mise en place de nos recommandations.

The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Julia Munro): Thank you. The member for Oak Ridges–Markham.

Ms. Helena Jaczek: It’s certainly a pleasure—and I really mean it sincerely today—to follow the comments of my colleagues from Dufferin–Caledon and from Nickel Belt. They’ve mentioned the umbrella organization Mental Health and Addictions Ontario that we believe is necessary in order to focus our efforts on solving the many, many difficult issues surrounding mental health and addictions issues here in Ontario. I just want to touch on a couple of the responsibilities that we’ve outlined for that organization that I think are particularly important.

First of all, we see Mental Health and Addictions Ontario as being the repository of best practice of clinical practice guidelines in the field of mental health and addictions. Because we know that in fact while many organizations are providing excellent care, they are doing so in a highly fragmented way.

We believe that the establishment of centres of excellence such as the one that does exist at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario as it relates to children’s mental health—that concept of a centre of excellence should be extended to study First Nations’ mental health and addictions issues, those issues in seniors, those issues in the francophone community. We believe that Mental Health and Addictions Ontario will be the organization best able to disseminate this best-practice information to practitioners in the field.

Another responsibility is to ensure that those who first encounter individuals with mental health and addictions issues have the appropriate tools to actually diagnose the condition—in other words, early assessment tools. Family physicians are often quite bereft of the tools that they need. They often consider that if a child in particular is brought to them by parents, there’s a behavioural issue; it’s a stage in their life. The parent knows something is wrong. The doctor does not have any easy way of diagnosing a serious mental illness, and in fact many times they fail to do so.

In fact, I would say some of the most compelling stories we heard were from parents of children who took their loved one to the physician many times before the child was finally in a crisis in the emergency department in a psychotic state. Their stories were heart-rending. We have to do better in this regard, not only in the family physician’s office but also in the workplace, wherever there’s a potential for people to notice that someone is not functioning as they normally would. They need the appropriate care in a timely fashion.

The third area of responsibility that we’ve put to Mental Health and Addictions Ontario is to develop a wait-time strategy. As one parent said, “If I took my child to the doctor and they had the symptoms of diabetes and the physician took blood sugar, that child would be treated immediately.” As my colleague from Dufferin–Caledon said, children are waiting up to nine months for an assessment. This is intolerable; it cannot continue. It needs to be addressed urgently.

We’ve had some successes with wait-time strategies. When you measure and you know you need to improve in accordance with your best practice, you will improve. So we need to have an organization that establishes those wait times for various mental health conditions, and then we need to act on them. As my colleague from Nickel Belt said, we believe that we have reached a crisis situation in mental health and addictions in this province, and it is imperative that we move forward to solve it.

The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Julia Munro): Further comments?

Mrs. Christine Elliott: It truly is an honour to rise today to add my comments to those made so eloquently by my colleague the member from Dufferin–Caledon on behalf of the PC caucus to the final report of the Select Committee on Mental Health and Addictions. Entitled Navigating the Journey to Wellness: The Comprehensive Mental Health and Addictions Action Plan for Ontario, this report is really groundbreaking for several reasons. It was released on August 26 and represents about 18 months of work resulting from a private member’s bill that I had brought forward in December 2008.

It was accepted by the government and was established as an all-party select committee. As you know, Madam Speaker, select committees are very unusual in and of themselves, but even more unusual was the fact that all of us as members of the community came to the same conclusions based on the powerful evidence that was presented to us by over 230 presenters representing all regions of Ontario over the last 18 months.

So I think I speak for all of the committee members when I say that we are really grateful to all of those who took the time to come and present to us; to the people who wrote the over 300 written submissions; to the many mental health and addictions facilities that gave us tours of their facilities and answered all of our many questions; and finally, to the First Nations communities who so graciously hosted us on a number of occasions.

It was really a pleasure to work with my fellow members of the Legislature on this committee, and I’d like to thank them all for their dedication and commitment. I think we’re all really proud of the report that we produced together.

It’s my sincere hope that the select committee structure can be used for other non-partisan issues in the future so that we can all work together in the way that I believe our constituents both deserve and expect from us.

Finally, with respect to the select committee itself, I would also like to thank the staff who dedicated the same level of dedication and commitment to this project as we did. I would like to thank Elaine Campbell and Carrie Hull from legislative research services, who travelled with us and who basically helped us write the report, spent countless hours on it and were extremely patient with all of us as we made numerous revisions to the report along the way.

I’d also like to thank the clerk of the committee, Susan Sourial, for making endless arrangements, for answering our endless questions and, again, for her dedication.

Before discussing the specifics of the committee’s report, I would like to note that the report itself is very brief. It’s only 21 pages, with 23 recommendations. This was a conscious decision on the part of the committee. We spent hours discussing what we had heard, what were the common problems and how we could come up with solutions to try and rectify them. We did not want to produce a report that was full, dense with information, where you couldn’t see the forest for the trees, so to speak. We wanted to have a series of clear, concise recommendations that could be implemented in a reasonable and practical manner.

As we conducted hearings across Ontario, we heard about many state-of-the-art programs and services that demonstrate best practices that could be replicated across the province. But we also heard about numerous gaps in services, where programs didn’t exist to serve children, seniors, newcomers, First Nations—they’re simply lacking. Similarly, individuals with autism, fetal alcohol spectrum disorder or a dual diagnosis are orphaned. There simply is not a place for them to receive treatment in many parts of this province.

The solution which the committee came up with is the creation of an umbrella organization, which has been mentioned by my colleagues, called Mental Health and Addictions Ontario. This body would be responsible for designing, managing and coordinating the mental health and addictions system in Ontario and for ensuring that core programs and services would be delivered across the province. Mental Health and Addictions Ontario would be responsible to the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care, including children’s services and children’s mental health.

In our view, the creation of this body would transform the delivery of mental health and addiction services in the same way that Cancer Care Ontario has been revolutionary in organizing cancer care services in this province.

Central to the work of our committee was the recognition that mental health wasn’t just a health issue, but one which has affected and is affecting virtually every other ministry in the government, including Municipal Affairs and Housing, Community and Social Services, Citizenship and Immigration, the Ministry of the Attorney General and the Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services, among others. We don’t have time, unfortunately, to speak to all of these issues in the way that we would like, so I would like to concentrate on just a few issues that really spoke to me in a particularly powerful way, and I’d like to spend a few moments on some of these key recommendations.

One relates to an issue that was raised by many individuals, almost all of them family members with a loved one struggling with mental health and/or addictions issues. I can tell you that many people spoke before our committee and shared deeply personal stories, often through tears, and it was very emotional and very difficult for us, as committee members, to listen to it, but I commend them for their courage in coming before us.

They were people who loved their family members—their parents, their brothers and sisters, their children—who knew that they were struggling with mental health and addictions problems, who tried repeatedly to get help for them but were unable to do so because their loved one had a right to refuse treatment, and/or they were unable to obtain information from mental health professionals due to confidentiality laws.

We also heard that, as a result, their family members ended up living in substandard housing or, in some cases, in jail or on the streets, where both their physical and mental health deteriorated. On more than one occasion we heard that their family members ultimately committed suicide.

The committee is well aware that the recommendations that we have made in this area are controversial in calling upon the Minister of Health to establish a task force of experts, mental health clients and family members to investigate and propose changes to Ontario’s mental health legislation and policy pertaining to involuntary admission and treatment and to the Personal Health Information Protection Act respecting access to personal health information.

We know that any intrusion on our civil liberties is very serious, but we also know that people have a right to be well. This is an issue which has been sidestepped too many times in the past because it’s fraught with political danger, but it needs to be dealt with now. As André Picard stated in his recent column in the Globe and Mail, “Inaction will leave us all with blood on our hands.” I couldn’t agree more. We must tackle this issue.

Any discussion of mental health and addictions in Ontario necessarily involves the issue of stigma. It remains a serious impediment to treatment for many people in Ontario, particularly children. One of the most significant responsibilities of Mental Health and Addictions Ontario will be to develop strategies to reduce stigma and the harm it causes. This harm is widespread. Stigma prevents treatment and often creates lives of hardship and poverty for people because they are unable to find meaningful employment.

People are still afraid of mental illness, and what we need is a campaign to educate and inform employers in the same way that they are informed about heart disease and cancer. Why? Because even if you aren’t concerned about mental illness on a human level, you should be concerned about it on an economic level. It has been estimated that mental health and addictions issues in the workplace cost upwards of $30 billion annually to the Canadian economy, not to mention the cost of disability support programs provincially. People want to work, they want to contribute, they want to be fully participating members of our society, but much work remains to be done.

One volunteer initiative that I am aware of is called Rotary at Work, which was started by a group of Whitby Rotarians. Mark Wafer is a businessman with experience in working with people living with mental health and addictions problems, who is meeting with fellow Rotarians across the province to answer questions and dispel myths. He argues that employing people with mental health and addictions problems should not be approached as

an act of charity but as a good business practice, and he has years of experience to prove it. We need more such initiatives working with Mental Health and Addictions Ontario, as well as the federal mental health commission.

I’m just wrapping up, Madam Speaker, if I may have the indulgence of a few more comments.

Our report makes 23 recommendations. Some require funding, but many do not. We understand that it may not be possible to implement all of our recommendations right away, but we are calling upon the Premier and the Minister of Health to fully implement the recommendations of this report. Anything less would do a disservice to the many Ontarians who are counting upon us to be their voice.

The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Julia Munro): The member for Timmins–James Bay.

Mr. Gilles Bisson: I, too, want to applaud the work, first of all, that was done by the members of the committee because there was certainly a lot of time and a lot of work put into the report that is being presented to the Legislature. I want to tell you, I appreciate the work that you’ve done. More importantly, I really appreciate the work of all those who took the time to write, to come and give submissions and to give witness to what the system is currently—how it works and, quite frankly, how it doesn’t work—so that we can learn from that collective experience that happens in Ontario when it comes to both addictions and to the mental health issue.

I want to come at this from a bit of a different tack. I want to come at it as a person who is the primary caregiver for somebody who has schizophrenia. My sister Louise lives on her own now. She has an apartment in Timmins and she is a patient of the Canadian Mental Health Association. I have permission to talk about her situation. We’ve talked about this many a time, just so people know.

I just want to give a perspective from a family member. My mother and dad were the primary caregivers until they both passed away, and being the only son in Timmins, the only child in Timmins, it falls upon me to be my sister’s sort of caregiver, in the sense of being there for her when she needs me.

There are a couple of observations I’ve made in the couple of years that I’ve had to do it. The system tries real hard. The people who work at the Canadian Mental Health Association and the people who work in various agencies who try to work with my sister and do what needs to be done so that she is able to live independently and with dignity, I have to say, are top-notch. I know that because I happen to be the father of two and the father-in-law of another who work in that field.

My daughter is a nurse practitioner with the Canadian Mental Health Association directly, so she is providing primary health care needs to people who are patients of the Canadian Mental Health Association, and our youngest daughter, Natalie, is a clinician in the children’s mental health field at the Timmins children’s aid society. My son-in-law, who is my youngest daughter’s husband, Shane—who, by the way, ran the Ironman in Louisville, Kentucky, and came in 630th out of 3,000. I think that’s pretty amazing. To Shane Wakeford, congratulations from the Legislature.

But he works as a counsellor at the Canadian Mental Health Association. So I am going to come at this from the perspective of a brother, a father and somebody, as a constituency person, who works in the mental health field.

Louise does well. Why? Because she has accepted that she’s got a disease. That’s really what it comes down to. The big problem in the mental health field is that until the person says, “I am sick and I need help,” there’s no way of forcing help onto them. So there are many, many people, unfortunately—I think probably a majority—who refuse help because, “There’s nothing wrong with me,” says the person. And so they are not taking their meds; they are not being properly assessed.

They’re not even getting their ODSP cheques in some cases, and in many cases are on the streets, not only in places like Toronto but in places like Kapuskasing and Timmins. I have constituents, one in particular who I can think of, without giving any names, who literally lives on the streets in Kapuskasing. Why? He’s an individual, a proud, strong, strapping young man, probably in his 30s, maybe early 40s, who doesn’t admit that he has schizophrenia. He has schizophrenia or he’s bipolar; I’m not quite sure what the diagnosis is.

As a result, he can’t get an ODSP cheque because he doesn’t have a fixed address, and because he doesn’t have a fixed address and he doesn’t get his ODSP cheque, we’ve had to arrange to have the cheque sent to our office so that we can give him his cheque on a weekly basis so he can at least buy some food. The problem is, because he refuses to get any help, he doesn’t get the type of support that my sister gets, that would allow him to live in an apartment or a group home and to have at least the basic needs of everyday living taken care of: his meds, personal hygiene, food, a roof over his head.

There lies the problem—there are two parts to this. The first

part is, how do you deal with people who refuse help? It’s a very tough question. There’s one side of me, as a brother, who says, “My God, if there’s something wrong with Louise, grab her, strap her down and let’s make sure we do what we have to do in order to make sure Louise is safe.” But you know what? She’s like you and I. She’s a human being. She has rights and she has the ability to say no.

How do you balance off those two parts, the part of the system and the family who say, “Oh, my God, we’ve got to do something,” and the reality that Louise is a human being with individual rights who is protected under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms—but more importantly, who we understand has the ability to make some decisions?

That is, I think, one of the most crucial parts of how we get services to people. We need to figure out one day how we balance off those two things. I don’t know what the answer is, but I can tell you that our family has struggled with it for over 20 years. Louise went from being in a very bad state to only becoming in a very good state once she finally admitted she had a problem and she was willing to have help. Louise does quite well today, but she only does so because she admits that she has a problem and she takes her meds.

The other side of it is in the system. I got quite angry at the Canadian Mental Health Association about two years ago, after my mother passed away, because I wasn’t noticing, but Louise was starting to relapse, probably because of the trauma of having lost her mother. Who knows? I’m not sure what triggered it off. Maybe having to make some financial decisions herself, something she had never had to do before—a combination of whatever it was.

But she was starting to get sick again, and being that I’m not in Timmins—as everybody here, I’m here Monday through Thursday, so I’m not home during the week, and on the weekend I’m not home because I’m in some part of the riding that may not be the city of Timmins, so I don’t see my sister sometimes for a couple of weeks at a time. So she came over to the house one day, because we invited her over for supper, and Louise smelled. It’s not nice to say, but these things happen. That was the first indication to me that there was a problem.

Where was the Canadian Mental Health Association, where was the ACT team, recognizing that that was a sign that something was going on with Louise? They said, “Listen, we can’t force her to do things that she doesn’t want to do.” I understand that, but that was a sign that she was relapsing. As a result, she ended up in the mental health facility at Timmins and District Hospital for probably about five to six or eight weeks.

Since then, she has not gone back. She’s doing fine, but how we’ve had to deal with it is that I’m on the phone with her almost every day. If I’m not around, I know that I need to talk to her, and I can pretty well tell by how she talks and what she’s saying to me how she is doing. Now that she’s into a regimen of making sure that’s she’s taking care of her basic needs and personal hygiene, keeping her apartment clean, cooking and doing the things that she needs to do, she is doing quite well.

The other part of this is—and I don’t know how you deal with this—how do families find the strength, the courage and the empowerment to actually be that person who needs to provide the support to the family member who is sick? Because it isn’t easy. I look at many of my constituents—and we all have them in our constituency offices on a regular basis; you know what I talk of. A person comes in and is totally irrational, is mad at the parents and mad at the brothers and sisters, and calls them all kinds of bad, nasty names—it’s all their fault—and accuses the family of all kinds of things that may probably not be true. And so finally families go, “Whoa. I can’t take this anymore.”

Hence, the other problem: We need some system to bridge between that acting out on the part of the individual and giving the families the type of support that they need so they know how to deal with it and learn not to take it personally: This is not your sister, your brother, your mother or your father speaking and who really means this; this is their mental health speaking out for them, and somehow or other you need to work your way through that. I don’t know how do you this, because I haven’t figured it out after all these years. We need to find some way to give the families the ability to cope with that.

One other thing I want to say in passing: One of the things my son-in-law, Shane Wakeford, the one who did the Ironman, is doing—and I think this is very innovative, and good for the Canadian Mental Health Association. I give the Canadian Mental Health Association a lot of credit because they’re pretty innovative. They’re always the lead for a lot of things.

He said, “Listen, I would like to have a program where I can encourage people to become more physically active.” It might not be running the Ironman, but it might be walking to the corner rather than taking the taxi, it might be working out in the gym, whatever it might be, so that people are able to start having a bit of a goal in life and feeling a little bit better about themselves physically, both how they look—because people like me, God knows, need all the help we can get—and in regards to how they feel in regards to their overall physical health.

I’ve really been amazed by what’s happened over the last little while, because most of the people—we know them all. They live in our communities. And with most of the people who are in this program, you can see the difference. Not only have they become healthier, but you can see their mental health situation has improved. Why? Because they feel better about themselves.

I think there is no one answer, and I think that’s probably what you heard. As I looked at the committee report very quickly, there isn’t one answer. But what is clear is that we need to resource the sector properly. We have to break down the silos that prevent interaction between agencies, and help people to give consumers better choices and better information. We have to empower the families in some way so that they’re better able to deal with the family member when it comes to helping make the choices that have to happen.

And, God knows, at the end of the day we have to have lots of patience and lots of love for the folks, because I’ll tell you, mental health issues and addiction issues are not easy to deal with. It takes lots of patience and it takes a lot of love coming from the family.

The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Julia Munro): The member from Guelph.

Mrs. Liz Sandals: I’d like to begin by thanking my colleagues on the Select Committee on Mental Health and Addictions. As the others have said, it was difficult work, but it was very rewarding to be able to come to a consensus and put forward the report.

I’d particularly like to thank the member for Whitby–Oshawa, who brought forward the motion suggesting the select committee, and the member from Oakville, who managed to keep acting as Chair and managed to keep us moving forward, however slowly.

Like the member from Dufferin–Caledon—since we published the report, there has been a tremendous amount of positive feedback, both from organizations and from individuals saying, “Yes, we think you’ve hit the right tone here.”

I’d like to thank the member from Timmins–James Bay, because the testimony he has just given is very similar to the testimony that we heard from so many people all around the province of Ontario.

I’d like to begin by reflecting briefly on what we said in our interim report, which reflected on the testimony that we heard.

One of the themes that came out very clearly in what we heard from the people who came to talk to us was the whole problem of gaps in service. We heard about gaps in geography. If you lived in one community you could get access to a children’s residential program. If you lived in another community, you couldn’t get access to a children’s program.

We heard about age gaps. If you had a child who was 15 and had an addiction problem, you could get service, but if you had a child who was 14 or 13, maybe you couldn’t get them into that program because they just happened to be the wrong age.

We heard about gaps that were based on diagnosis. There might be a mental health program and there might be developmental services, but if you were so unfortunate as to have a dual diagnosis, that is, somebody who’s developmentally delayed and who also has a mental health issue, no agency would touch you. If you happened to have mental health and addiction problems—and many of the people who have been diagnosed with mental health issues also have substance abuse issues—again, the addiction agency wouldn’t take you because you had mental health problems and the mental health agency wouldn’t take you because you had addiction problems. There was no place to go if you had both.

Over and over and over again, this theme came through, that despite the fact that we have over 300 adult mental health agencies and over 400 children’s mental health agencies funded in the province of Ontario—that gives us something to the tune of 750 community agencies—there’s still a tremendous number of gaps in service. Just having a lot of agencies doesn’t do it.

That’s why the select committee landed on saying that we need a central agency, which we called Mental Health and Addictions Ontario. One organization needs to be responsible for steering the ship.

From an institutional and service provider point of view, they need to be able to decide what the core services are that should be either locally available or at least accessible by referral in every community in Ontario. Then, again from an institutional point of view, they need to be able to look at each individual community and say, “What are the gaps and how do we fill the gaps?” The answer is going to be different in different communities because the gaps are different in different communities.

We need somebody to organize the service so that everybody has access, but we also need somebody who is responsible for dealing with the individuals who are the clients of the service and their families, as the member from Timmins–James Bay pointed out, and help people to navigate the system and to find those services—the mental health, the addiction and also the community services—to find their way through the maze, because so often, services might be available, but the individual who needs the service can’t find the service. That’s what we want the central agency to do.

The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Julia Munro): Further debate?

Mr. Jeff Leal: It really is a privilege to provide some remarks this morning.

Winston Churchill once reflected that the camel was the result of a government committee trying to design a race horse. He reflected that parliamentary democracy has its shortcomings, but there’s no other system in the world.

For people who look at us and our work here, perhaps question period sometimes brings out the worst in parliamentarians. The select committee that I had the privilege of serving on brings out the best in parliamentarians. I think from time to time we should look at amending our standing orders to incorporate the opportunity to have four or five select committees that work during the life of a Parliament, because it really provides the opportunities for parliamentarians to come together in common cause.

There is no question in my mind that we have all dealt, in our constituency offices, with people who face the particular challenges of dealing with mental illness or families that are dealing with mental illness, but for me personally one of the great testimonies that I heard in this area was a number of years ago by Michael Wilson, the former very distinguished finance minister for Canada, a very distinguished Canadian ambassador to the United States. Michael and his wife, Mrs. Wilson, lost their son at 15 years due to mental illness; he committed suicide. You could see the feelings of Mr.

Wilson when he shared, in a very extensive interview, what should have been done and could have been done for his young son, an individual who grappled with mental illness from very early years in elementary school to the tragic end to his life at age 15.

I think that part of the testimony and the work of the committee—we heard from parents and caregivers that the struggle with mental illness is something that lasts a lifetime, when an individual, perhaps in elementary school, is indeed assessed and diagnosed and there’s the real challenge to stay with that individual through their lifelong journey. One of the things that we concluded, one of the recommendations, is the need to stay with that individual through their lifelong journey, to make sure that we have an approach in Ontario that stays with that individual and stays with that family through that lifelong journey.

I want to reflect, because I was on the committee—I volunteered on the committee, because at the time I was parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs. I want to reflect for a few moments on our visit to Sandy Lake, a First Nations community that is in a very isolated part of northwestern Ontario. I can say to the chief of Sandy Lake and its residents that I may never get back to Sandy Lake, but I’ll never forget that experience.

When you hear first-hand that a large number of their population are addicted to Percocet and OxyContin that are smuggled into that First Nations community from Winnipeg, when you look at the local graves in that community and the headstones, and when you see all the young people who are buried there, many of them as a result of suicide, you know that we can no longer turn our backs on our first citizens of our province.

One of the things that is critically important is the recommendation that provides for a common basket of services for all citizens in Ontario. You and I, Madam Speaker, believe that that is a fundamental right for citizens who live in the province, whether you are in Kenora or Cornwall or Peterborough or Petrolia or Sandy Lake or Sarnia, that you have to have that opportunity to have access to that common basket of services.

In our visits to First Nations communities, when they reflect upon the impact of residential schools, the impact of losing four generations of parenting in those communities, and you can see that that has directly caused a social breakdown in the structure of many of our First Nations communities—certainly we took the time to reflect upon that.

The report is a number of recommendations. In many government reports, of course, we have witnessed in the past, there has been a multitude of recommendations. Half of them take you in one direction and the other half go in another direction. But I think it’s important that this particular report provides a great framework for the future.

I’ll just finish with the words of Lester Pearson, who, in April 1968, when he delivered his last speech as Prime Minister of Canada, said that a wise man once reflected that failures are only made by those who fail to dare, not by those who dare to fail. This indeed is a daring report, and Ontario cannot allow this to fail.

The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Julia Munro): The member for Scarborough–Rouge River.

Mr. Bas Balkissoon: Let me start out by saying I was honoured to serve on the Select Committee on Mental Health, and I want to thank all my colleagues who served on that committee. I think we should all be very proud of the report that we finally came up with, because we all made major contributions in, if I could say, a very jovial manner, as my colleagues have said previously.

But I think the most important thing is this was a select committee. Members were selected because they indicated their interest to their own House leaders.

And you know, by the formation of the committee, we were lucky to have a committee that had a very broad experience level: My colleague from Nickel Belt, being a former nurse and servant in the health care field, was very helpful; my colleague from Whitby–Oshawa, being a lawyer with the experience of the justice system—a system that has failed us drastically in the past—had first-hand knowledge of what has happened in our court system; and my colleague sitting next to me here, who has had experience as a former medical officer of health, and my other colleagues who have had various community experiences or experiences in agencies in their own riding or family and friends.

I have to say that because of the broad knowledge of our committee, I think we’ve landed on a report that this Legislature should be very proud of. I’m hopeful that the recommendations that we came up with will be implemented, and implemented in the very near future.

I just want to comment that the reason I wanted to serve on this committee is that I had a personal, personal friend of mine who suffered mental health illness, and I have to agree with my colleague from Whitby–Oshawa that today’s economy—there’s probably $30 billion a year being wasted because of people who suffer from mental health illness, and it’s not well coordinated, it’s not well managed. My friend worked for a government agency. He was a senior executive of that agency. He suffered mental illness, and all they did was put him on disability and pay him over $70,000 a year for seven years, until he took his life.

That was just one person, and if you look at the 12 million or so people who live in our province, there must be many, many others. So I have to agree with my colleague that employers today are failing to deal with mental health issues in our economy, and we need to reach out to them that they need to do a better job. They do a very good job on workplace safety, workplace hazardous systems, where they train their employees.

I think they need to move to recognize that mental health is a contributor to lost productivity and they need to do something in the workplace, because my friend would probably still be around and would be a person contributing to society today had the workplace recognized mental health is an issue.

I want to tell you, the committee landed on Mental Health and Addictions Ontario, and we could have stopped there. But we recognized that if we had done that, we would have left the job to someone else to decide what that agency should do, and we spent the hours dedicated and committed by everybody to go beyond the agency and create a structure which was the strategic goals. I hope the Minister of Health, when she receives this particular report, will take the necessary action, and I’m looking forward to it. Thank you very much.

Debate deemed adjourned.

The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Julia Munro): Thank you very much. This concludes the time available, and so the House stands recessed until 10:30.

The House recessed from 1014 to 1030.

INTRODUCTION OF VISITORS

Mr. John Yakabuski: I’d like to introduce Marilyn Lee, who is in the public gallery and who is the mother of page Chloé St. Amand.

Mr. Dave Levac: I rise to introduce the mother of our page Caelan Meggs. Mrs. Lisa Meggs is in the members’ gallery on my right. I welcome her to Queen’s Park and ask her to not post judgment on anybody; just enjoy the festivities.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): I’d like to take this opportunity, on behalf of page Rodney Ramos and the member from Davenport, to welcome his mother, Rowena, and his father, Noel, to the public gallery today. Welcome to Queen’s Park.

We have with us in the Speaker’s gallery today the new Consul General of the People’s Republic of China at Toronto, Mr. Ligang Chen. He’s accompanied today by Deputy Consul General Madam Zhang and Consul Ms. Wang. Please join me in welcoming our guests today.

LEGISLATIVE PAGES

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): I would like to ask all members to join me in welcoming this group of Legislative pages serving in the second session of the 39th Parliament and would ask the pages to form for introduction, please.

Noor Bakir, Vaughan; Megan Brian, Essex; Brandon Chan, St. Paul’s; Anika Chowdhury, Trinity–Spadina; Ioana Crant, Windsor West; Thomas Davidson, Ottawa Centre; Henry Dennis, Scarborough Southwest; Brigid Goulem, Haliburton–Kawartha Lakes–Brock; Emily Goldberg, York Centre; Ziwen (Nick) Jiang, Oak Ridges–Markham; Lina Ly, Scarborough–Agincourt; Caelan Meggs, Brant—

Interjection.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): He’s also a Leaf fan.

Christopher Millar, Simcoe–Grey; Rodney Ramos, Davenport; Emily Rempel, Kitchener–Conestoga; Alex Schmidt, Cambridge; Chloé St. Amand, Renfrew–Nipissing–Pembroke; Audrey Steele, Sault Ste. Marie; Shanthos Thangalingam, York South–Weston; and Lathiha Thillainadarajah, Don Valley West.

Welcome to our new pages. Enjoy the session.

GOVERNMENT REGULATIONS

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): The member for Lanark–Frontenac–Lennox and Addington has given me written notice of his intention to raise a point of privilege, as required by standing order 21(c). I would like to thank the member for giving me sufficient time to review this matter.

I wish to advise that I will be deciding on this matter without further hearing directly from the member at this time, as standing order 21(

d) permits me to do.

The member’s point of privilege concerns regulation 233/10, made on June 2, 2010, under the Public Works Protection Act. This regulation established a geographical area in the city of Toronto to be designated a “public work” for the purposes of the act, for the period June 21 to June 28, 2010. This period of time encompassed the dates on which the G20 summit was held.

The member has asked me to find that two things about this regulation have breached his privileges: first, its promulgation without prior consultation of the Legislative Assembly, and second, the failure of the Premier and the then Minister of Community Safety and Correctional Services to clarify confusion the member believes existed about the scope of application of the regulation.

With respect to the first issue, it is simply the case that any regulation, made in accordance with the statute conferring the authority for it to be made, does not require the prior agreement of the House. Or, more accurately, a statute conferring the authority for future regulations represents a prior delegation by the House of the legal, moral and political sanction to the government of the day to make such regulations. There is no case for complaint by the House or any of its members when this power is validly exercised, for it was indeed previously delegated by the House itself.

The House, in its wisdom, did have its say when it passed the parent statute, thereby giving its prior consent for such a regulation to be made.

Obviously the House can never foresee in advance all of the circumstances and scenarios that might give rise to a regulation being made under a statute, or what exact form or reach a regulation might have. Nevertheless, the Legislature very routinely passes legislation embedded with regulation-making authority. When the House passes legislation that includes the power to make regulations, it is effectively waiving its privilege to have a say and to have a role in exactly what regulations say or when they are made.

With respect to the second issue, I am certain the member can appreciate that it is not for the Speaker to dictate what a government can or cannot, should or should not, have to say about any given issue except that which is bound by the rules of this House; nor can a Speaker interpret or divine what the various reactions and understandings of the public might be about any government action or statement, or a government’s decision not to act or speak in a way someone might wish, or the motives, if any, of anyone in this equation.

The privileges that members individually, and the House collectively, enjoy are focused and limited and revolve principally around the right to participate in parliamentary proceedings freely and without obstruction or hindrance. Given the exact heads of privilege in the context of what I have just said about this matter, I cannot find that the member for Lanark–Frontenac–Lennox and Addington has made out a prima facie case for a breach of privilege or a contempt of the House.

ORAL QUESTIONS

GOVERNMENT’S RECORD

Mr. Tim Hudak: A question for the Premier: Premier, yesterday I raised the concerns of Ontario families and how they shared with me that your expensive experiments have made life a lot more unaffordable in Ontario. Dalton McGuinty showed just how out of touch he has now become when he suggested that he has a “more intelligent understanding” of Ontario families’ concerns than they do.

Premier, isn’t this Premier Dad routine growing a little thin?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: I just want to speak to one of those unaffordable experiments that my honourable colleague likes to refer to with respect to full-day kindergarten. In the riding of Niagara West–Glanbrook, there are four schools. We decided, as you know, to move ahead this September with full-day kindergarten.

In St. Joseph Separate School in Grimsby, there are 55 students enrolled in two classes of full-day kindergarten. Our Lady of the Assumption in Stoney Creek: 52 children. In College Street Public School in Smithville—

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Premier, sorry.

I’m going to call the members on comments that they’re making in reference to the Premier. I just warn you that, even under your breath, it’s not acceptable to the Speaker.

Premier?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: Again, I just want to speak on behalf of the families living in the riding of Niagara West–Glanbrook.

The final school I make reference to is College Street Public School in Smithville, with 81 children there. In Senator Gibson, there are 111 children who have been enrolled in full-day kindergarten. That speaks to meeting the demands of Ontario families.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Supplementary?

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): The members will please come to order.

Supplementary?

Mr. Tim Hudak: Premier, let me talk more about your so-called more intelligent understanding of what families’ concerns are. There is no doubt that over seven years you’ve displayed that you see families as a collection of two-year-olds, incapable of making priorities and decisions for themselves. Your meddling is usually restricted to banning plastic bags in the kitchen, regulating pizza days in the schools and what kind of pets people can own, but now you are moving to all new territory—

Hon. Sandra Pupatello: You’re an insult to families.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): The Minister of Economic Development will withdraw the comment she just made.

Hon. Sandra Pupatello: I withdraw.

Mr. Tim Hudak: Now the Premier is moving to brand new territory by telling seniors, through his smart meter tax grab, to wash their clothes and their dishes at midnight. You’re forcing upon communities industrial wind farm experiments that they don’t want to host.

Premier, over these last seven years, when did you decide for yourself that you know better what’s best for families and neighbourhoods than they themselves do?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: We’re aware that the leader of the official opposition opposes full-day kindergarten, notwithstanding the tremendous support shown for that initiative in his own riding.

Something else that he doesn’t like are our family health teams. I want to make reference to two family health teams in the riding of Niagara West–Glanbrook. There is one in Beamsville; it has hired 10 doctors and it’s providing care to 9,273 patients. There’s another in Smithville; they’ve hired eight doctors and they are providing care to 8,282 patients. These are two family health teams meeting the needs of 17,565 people living in that community. That is very important to families living in that community.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Final supplementary?

Mr. Tim Hudak: The Premier’s “more intelligent understanding” means that Premier McGuinty believes that he knows how to spend the family budget better than families themselves do. We disagree. We believe families should be making those decisions. We believe they should be making their own choices, and they will have a choice between a leader who understands that average, hard-working families need a breather, they need a chance to catch up, and a Premier Dad who wants to keep spending their money on his expensive experiments and pet projects.

The health tax hit families hard, and your HST tax grab, eco taxes, tire taxes, hydro rate hikes—it goes on and on. Families can no longer afford the Dalton McGuinty government that is chasing jobs from our province and holding families back.

Premier, did you change? I think so, because now families want to see a change in our province.

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: If my honourable colleague criticizes me, my party and our government for investing in full-day kindergarten, that is a criticism that we embrace. If they criticize us for investing in family health teams for our families, we embrace that criticism. If they criticize us for investing in clean air for our families, we embrace that. If they criticize us for partnering with businesses and creating jobs, we embrace that criticism. We’ll do what it takes to stand up for Ontario families.

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Stop the clock. You guys are egging them on. Start the clock.

New question.

TAXATION

Mr. Tim Hudak: Back to the Premier—who, by that last answer, has proven he never bothered to step one foot out of his bubble this past summer. If you would have heard what I heard about the impact of your eco tax grab, your HST tax grab that added 8% to hydro bills, gasoline and average, everyday activities like getting your hair cut, you would understand that Ontario families need a break today. They can’t afford—

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): I would just remind the honourable members that this is an important time of the day for not only the members here but for people viewing at home. I, too, want to hear what is going on. But one of the things that troubles me is some of the more personal shots that go across the floor, and I just ask members to be respectful of the positions that each of us brings to the chamber and not to bring it to a level of a personal attack on one another.

Please continue.

Mr. Tim Hudak: Here’s something, hopefully, Premier, that pierced your bubble: You took $1,000 out of the pockets of hard-working Ontario families for your HST tax credit, and then you say you’re going to give them $50 back through an activity tax credit. Basically, you take a grand out of their wallets and give them back five 10s. How did you become so cynical that you believe that Ontario families are actually going to be fooled by this cheap PR stunt?

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Stop the clock. Members will please come to order.

Premier?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: We’ve had the opportunity at some length to talk about the HST. My honourable colleague continues to claim that he adamantly opposes that particular tax initiative. Again, though, he is not prepared to do anything to remove it. He also refuses to acknowledge that, in fact, as part of a broader package of tax reforms, it’s accompanied by corporate tax reductions, the elimination of the capital tax, personal income tax reductions, a transition benefit, a sales tax credit and a new northern energy tax credit.

My colleague says that he’s in favour of helping out families with respect to costs. We put forward an initiative. It provides some modest support for families, and it has been well received by families. It’s the new children’s activity tax credit.

My colleague says that he opposes that, so I ask him, on behalf of families: How can he say that he wants to help out families at the same time he opposes the new initiative to help families with the cost of activities for their children?

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Supplementary?

Mr. Tim Hudak: Clearly, after seven years in office, Dalton McGuinty has changed. And now, Ontario families want to see change.

Premier, by your own admission just now, you called your so-called tax credit “modest.” But this Premier is so out of touch that if he actually talked to hard-working families in the province, he’d hear them use the word “meagre” at best when talking about the tax credit. Premier, quite frankly, that’s when they’re being polite. It is not a tax credit; it’s an insult to hard-working families in our province.

The $1,000 that you took away through your HST tax grab was a long weekend’s stay at the Great Wolf Lodge and a trip to Marineland, and you’re giving them back a movie night. Premier, it’s an insult.

When exactly did you get so out of touch with the needs of Ontario families?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: For a family with two children, $100 is $100. I think that’s not insignificant. My colleague might say it is. He—

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Members will please come to order. Stop the clock. The member from Renfrew will please come to order. If the honourable members want me to start naming members for heckling, I will start to do that. I really would prefer not to.

Premier?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: I want to draw my colleague’s attention once again to a report put out by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. It concluded, “The Ontario government’s HST plan is virtually revenue neutral when viewed as part of a total tax package that includes increased sales and property tax credits and a significant decrease in personal income tax rates.

“No group is significantly worse off or better off as a result of the province’s HST plan. Assertions that this is a tax grab have no foundation in reality.”

I would strongly recommend that report and so many others to my honourable colleague. Again, on behalf of Ontario families, I ask him to support our new children’s activity tax credit.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Final supplementary.

Mr. Tim Hudak: The Premier says when a family has two children, “$100 is $100.” Well, Premier, whether a family has one, two, three children or it’s Kate Plus Eight, $1,000 is $1,000 and a massive tax grab on the backs of Ontario families that they simply can no longer afford.

We’re seeing the same Premier Dad approach when it comes to auto insurance in the province of Ontario as well. The Premier says that his auto insurance changes offer families a choice. But, Premier, you know that you’re basically robbing families of their current coverage unless they’re willing to pay a lot more.

The Premier is so out of touch, he doesn’t even know that when the hard-working families of our province hear the word “choice,” they know another tax grab is coming from Dalton McGuinty.

Premier, why, every time they hear you bring forward a new idea, do families know it means that life will get more expensive?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: I think Ontarians would be appreciative of a more expansive view of reality. I want to remind my honourable colleague that he voted against our personal income tax cuts, which, for the average family, result in a $400 reduction in taxes.

They voted against our transition benefit of $1,000 for a family. They voted against our new sales tax credit, which will give families who qualify $1,040 every year. They’re apparently going to vote against our children’s activity tax credit, which gives an average family $100; our northern Ontario energy credit, which is up to $200 per family; and our senior homeowners property tax grants, which we’re doubling this year to $500.

Those are all specific initiatives that help address some of the concerns of our families when it comes to their home economics. Every time my colleague has the opportunity, he votes against that specific support that we will continue to put in place for our families.

HYDRO RATES

Ms. Andrea Horwath: My question is to the Premier. When the Premier first launched his smart meter scheme, he promised, “It will pay for itself.” Can the Premier produce any evidence showing that smart meters are saving people money or, in fact, helping people to conserve energy?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: I’m pleased to take the first question on this. I know that my honourable colleague is in fact supportive of smart meters and that she would want us to do what environmentalists and many progressive observers of the use and generation of electricity have been calling for for a long time.

The smart meter, of course, is something that we put in place to enable us to lay the foundation for a smart grid, and in particular is there to ensure that consumers can avail themselves of lower rates during off-peak hours so that they can generate some benefits when it comes to their personal billing. That’s the purpose of a smart meter.

We will continue to put those in place. I know that my honourable colleague, in fact, supports the use and implementation of smart meters in the province of Ontario.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Supplementary?

Ms. Andrea Horwath: Ten thousand households in Toronto have been billed using so-called smart meters since 2009. Toronto Hydro has provided some details about how the program is working for these households. Can the Premier explain why consistently, for over a year now, an average of 80% of those people have been paying higher hydro rates?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: To the Minister of Energy.

Hon. Brad Duguid: There are a number of factors that go into our hydro rates, and I think the member opposite knows that. But what surprises me is that she seems to be backing away from what I thought was a commitment that she and her critic had to the modernization of our energy infrastructure. If we’re going to build a strong, reliable and clean energy system in this province, we need to modernize our energy infrastructure.

My question to the member opposite is, do you have the courage to make the decisions necessary to move us forward and modernize our energy infrastructure so we can build that strong, reliable and clean energy system?

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Final supplementary?

Ms. Andrea Horwath: The information we’ve received from Toronto Hydro shows that people are paying more. That’s the bottom line. It also shows that they are not conserving energy—they are not conserving energy. Month after month, the data shows hardly any changes at all. Can the Premier explain why he spent a billion and a half dollars on a scheme that doesn’t conserve energy, but does raise people’s hydro rates?

Hon. Brad Duguid: I find it hard to believe that the NDP would be against an initiative that’s going to modernize our energy infrastructure, that’s going to provide our consumers with the opportunity to shift their use off of peak usage and that’s going to provide consumers the opportunity to make choices about how they consume energy. This is an important but small part of our efforts to build that stronger, more reliable and cleaner energy system.

I would think we would have the support of that party when we’re moving in that direction. Instead, she seems to want to go back to where Tim Hudak is now, and that’s back to that dirty system of energy that we inherited, that weakening system of energy, that unreliable system of energy. The leader of the opposition either should get on the bus or off the bus, but the people of Ontario deserve to know: Do you support our efforts to build a stronger energy system in this province—

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Thank you. New question.

HYDRO RATES

Ms. Andrea Horwath: My next question is also to the Premier of the province. When the Premier first launched the smart meter scheme, he promised—and I will quote again—“It will pay for itself.” Five years later, we have a scheme that leaves 80% of the people paying higher rates, doesn’t conserve energy and has left Ontario families on the hook for $1.5 billion. This smart meter scheme is making eHealth look like a bargain.

How long has the Premier known that this program wasn’t working, and why hasn’t he shared the facts with Ontarians?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: To the Minister of Energy.

Hon. Brad Duguid: The fact of the matter is, we’re in the process now. We’ve installed 4.1 million smart meters on the road to installing 4.5 million smart meters. We’re on track. We’re on budget.

Now, time of use is starting to roll out. Barely a million people in this province now have access to time of use, so it’s still early, but the early signs are that people are shifting their use, and that’s saving the system money. That’s ensuring that we don’t have to create more supply.

Our government has saved 1,700 megawatts of energy since we’ve come to office. They, when they were in office, cut conservation measures. We’re now beginning to see where their real heart lies: They don’t support conservation at all.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Supplementary?

Ms. Andrea Horwath: The Premier doesn’t need experts to tell him his smart meter scheme isn’t working. If he asks people who have them, they can tell him very clearly. One senior wrote this to me: “I keep my house now at 60 degrees in the winter ... I shudder to think I will have to lower the thermostat even further just to pay the bill. Smart meters may be fine if a person is away all day, but definitely not people who are home.”

When was the Premier planning to admit that his smart meter program isn’t nearly as smart as he originally claimed?

Hon. Brad Duguid: As I said, this program is helping to give consumers the ability to shift their use. It provides incentives for them to shift their use off of peak time.

If the NDP is suggesting that we change that differential, stand up and say so now. If you want us to change that differential now without doing the due diligence that we’re doing now to make sure we get that differential right, then say that, because we want to make sure that as we roll in this program—it’s a new program—we’re not unduly harming those who cannot shift.

There are seniors in our province who have expressed concerns about their opportunity to shift off peak use, so we’re going to bring this program in. We’re going to do it smartly. We’re going to do it and take the time we need to make sure we get it right. We’re not going to take the advice of a party that cut conservation programs when they were in office.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Final supplementary?

Ms. Andrea Horwath: Across Ontario, people have been telling us what the Premier already knows: They’re paying more and electricity isn’t being saved—some conservation program. Even with smart meters, energy is not being conserved.

Wendy Roussell of Brantford writes this: “I’m on CPP disability and my spouse makes minimum wage.... The combination of the HST with the so-called ‘smart meters’ have me terrified of my first hydro bill.” Only in Dalton McGuinty’s Ontario are people literally terrified of their hydro bill.

Given all the information that’s emerging, will the Premier now acknowledge that his multi-billion-dollar smart meter scheme might turn out to be one of his most ill-conceived and costliest ideas yet?

Hon. Brad Duguid: I think what’s very clear today is that the NDP have a choice to make: Ontarians deserve to know whether they’re getting on the bus or whether they’re getting off the bus. We know where the McGuinty government stands. We stand for making these critical investments that are needed to build a strong, reliable, clean energy system. We know—

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): The member from Halton, the member from Hamilton East and the member from Oxford, please come to order.

Minister?

Hon. Brad Duguid: We know where the Tories stand: They left us with a weak, unreliable and dirty system of energy seven years ago. Tim Hudak has not learned from his mistakes. He wants to take us back to where we were before.

The question, I think, to Ontarians is: Where do you stand? Are you going to be strong enough to stand with us, to make the decisions we need to make to create a strong, reliable and clean energy system in this province, or are you going to join Tim Hudak and go back to where we were seven years ago?

We’re proud of the investments—

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Thank you. New question.

RENEWABLE ENERGY

Mr. John Yakabuski: My question is for the Premier. Premier, a year ago, you, through your former energy minister, George Smitherman, said the Green Energy Act would cost families “approximately 1% per year,” but the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters association says your multi-billion-dollar sweetheart deal with Samsung will add $732 a year to the energy bills of struggling Ontario families. Your energy schemes have Ontario families afraid to open their hydro bills.

Why did you tell Ontario families who are struggling to keep up that their energy bills would go up by only 1% when you knew they would go up by much more?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: To the Minister of Energy.

Hon. Brad Duguid: We believe in a strong, reliable and clean energy system that families and businesses in this province of Ontario can count on. Ontarians expect us to keep the lights on and they know that to build the energy supply we need to make the necessary investments to ensure that we can do that. These critical—

Mr. John Yakabuski: You used to say “affordable.”

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): The member from Renfrew, you just asked the question. When you’re heckling, I don’t know how you can hear the answer. If you’re not satisfied in the end with the answer, you can call for a late show.

Minister?

Hon. Brad Duguid: These critical investments that are needed now are needed because previous governments neglected this responsibility. The Tory system we inherited in 2003 was in shambles. It was weak, it was unreliable, it was dirty. Tim Hudak didn’t get it then when he was sitting in cabinet. He does not get it now.

Not only is our energy plan creating strong, reliable, clean energy, it’s also creating 50,000 jobs, jobs that they—

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Thank you. Supplementary?

Mr. John Yakabuski: I think the minister needs some new notes.

Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters are not alone in sounding the alarm about your out-of-control green energy experiment. A September 2010 report prepared for BMO Capital Markets entitled Basic Points took note of Dalton McGuinty’s so-called Green Energy Act. They call it a “bizarre electric generation construction program based on very optimistic costs for building wind farms, and wildly optimistic expectations for their effectiveness.”

What more do you need said to understand that struggling Ontario families cannot afford to pay for your experiments any longer?

Hon. Brad Duguid: Not only is our Green Energy Act building a strong, reliable and clean energy system, it’s creating 50,000 jobs across Ontario and attracting billions of dollars of investment into our green energy economy. Ontarians need to know this, and maybe the member should listen for a second—Ontarians deserve to know this: Tim Hudak wants to kill those jobs and destroy the strong, reliable and clean energy system that Ontarians have worked so hard for.

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): The members will please come to order. Order.

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Stop the clock for a moment.

Hon. Sandra Pupatello: Oh, it’s Sarah Palin over there.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Withdraw the comment, Minister.

Hon. Sandra Pupatello: I withdraw.

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Members will please come to order. We are only into the second question period of this final session. I realize that things are going to be elevated, but there is important business that needs to be conducted.

I reminded members earlier, I’m going to remind them again and I will remind you all in a statement that I will be delivering tomorrow that it is important that we have debate within this chamber, but debate can take place without personal attacks on one another. I will have more to say about that tomorrow.

New question.

PENSION REFORM

Mr. Paul Miller: My question is to the Premier. Over the past few years we have witnessed threats to the retirement security of Ontarians like never before, with mighty corporations taking hits to their viability and pensioners’ security, like Nortel, where there’s still faint hope for reasonable, growth-oriented pension solutions.

Will the Premier tell the Nortel pensioners today that he’s willing to suspend the September 30 Nortel windup process and work towards a financial sponsorship model for stranded pensions?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: To the Minister of Finance.

Hon. Dwight Duncan: The member opposite knows full well that even if we were able to, we can’t do that. He is referring to an agreement that was signed among a number of participants, including the Nortel pensioners, with respect to the windup of Nortel and with respect to the overall pension account. The member should know full well that it’s governed by the bankruptcy act; it’s been sealed by a court. Regardless of what our views are in these matters, that is not something that is within our purview to do.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Supplementary?

Mr. Paul Miller: The Premier knows it’s critical that Ontarians who deferred their wages to their pension plan deserve to have a retirement for which they have planned. Nortel pensioners did their homework, consulted with actuaries, examined the British and Quebec models and have made a sound proposal.

The Premier has the opportunity to take decisive, bold action now to start the growing-up process rather than winding up Ontario’s stranded pension plans. Will he do it? The minister is well aware that this is doable with change in legislation.

Hon. Dwight Duncan: The British model failed completely; that needs to be understood.

What the member is advocating is taking hard-earned pension money and putting it into more risky investments. The member opposite is also ignoring a substantial number of Nortel pensioners who do not want to do that. Those are pensioners who are disabled former employees who have said passionately that they don’t want this plan followed.

Our government is proud that we were able to put $250 million into the Nortel pension benefit guarantee fund through our budget initiatives, which that member and his party did not support. We will continue to work with Nortel pensioners and all Ontarians to build a stronger, better and better-managed pension system for all Ontarians.

ACADEMIC TESTING

Ms. Helena Jaczek: My question is for the Minister of Education. Minister, your office announced the test results of the 2009-10 school year from the EQAO. The results were met with calls to place a moratorium on the large-scale testing that takes place every year. Advocates of a moratorium suggest that the test places a burden on teachers and students, and that the $100 million dedicated to administering the test and related literacy and numeracy secretariat initiatives would be better spent on other areas in the education system.

Minister, is the money spent to administer EQAO tests money well spent? How will this help Ontario students, specifically those in my riding of Oak Ridges–Markham? Do these tests really provide an accurate picture of our education system?

Hon. Leona Dombrowsky: I think that it’s a very important question. I have the opportunity to clarify why provincial tests are so important and I think that they do provide a very clear snapshot of where all students in the province are with respect to their understanding of the provincial curriculum. It is one measure that we use, and we know that the work done by our classroom teachers always plays a very key role in informing students and families about their progress.

What I can say is how our government has used the results of the tests. Those results have enabled us to drive resources into the classroom. We have increased spending in education by 40% since coming together and we use the results of the test to understand how we can better support teachers in our schools and enable students to be more successful. That’s a good investment for the people of Ontario.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Supplementary?

Ms. Helena Jaczek: Minister, your ministry released the province-wide test results for elementary and grade 9 students in August. Later this week, I’m looking forward to receiving the results for the York Region District School Board and the York Catholic District School Board because they are usually some of the top in the province.

While this year’s provincial results have increased, the release of these results brought a warning from some that the slowing increase in results achieved demonstrates that we are very close to a results plateau. I understand that the ministry’s target of having 75% of students achieving the provincial standard is not likely to be reached.

Minister, what results have we seen this year? Are we indeed facing a plateau in test results? What is this government doing to prevent this?

Hon. Leona Dombrowsky: What I can say, first of all, is that when we came to government, 54% of our students were achieving the provincial average. Today, the most recent results demonstrate that 68% of students are achieving the provincial average. And it’s important to clarify that the provincial average in the province of Ontario is a B; in many other jurisdictions, even other provinces in Canada, it’s a C or even a pass. So our kids are doing extraordinarily well, and we will continue to use the test results to inform us how we can continue to support teachers in our schools with the resources that they need to enable school success.

Student achievement is very important to this government, and I think that it’s important—I would expect it would be important—to all members of this House to understand how we, with the 40% increase in funding, continue to drive those resources into our front-line classrooms that enable—

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Thank you. New question.

TAXATION

Ms. Lisa MacLeod: My question is for the Premier. When Dalton McGuinty was caught trying to slip through eco taxes onto 9,000 new products this past summer, he offered a mea culpa. He said, “We came up short.” If struggling Ontario families think they’ve heard that before, it is because they have. After he was caught in the billion-dollar eHealth boondoggle, he said, “We should have done more to protect the public.”

Since you didn’t keep your word during last summer’s billion-dollar eHealth boondoggle, why should any Ontarian believe you will keep your promise during this summer’s biggest eco fee fiasco?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: To the Minister of the Environment.

Hon. John Wilkinson: I want to start by saying, and I think we tried to establish this yesterday, that we believe it is important that we keep hazardous materials that are in our households from ever getting into our landfills. I am surprised that there would even be a question here about whether or not that is the right policy objective.

Now, how we do that is another issue, and I want to thank the Premier, because he decided that we needed to have a review. At our ministry, we are in the midst of that review, and I look forward to sharing with you in this House the results of that review. We know that consumers want to do the right thing, but what we have to do is make it easy for them. It needs to be accountable. It needs to be transparent. That’s why our ministry is doing that review, and I look forward to sharing that with the House. But we are determined to keep hazardous materials out of our landfills so that they are not discovered by our children and our grandchildren one day.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Supplementary?

Ms. Lisa MacLeod: Well, it seems that Dalton McGuinty found inspiration in Britney Spears: Oops, he’s done it again. When Dalton McGuinty was caught handing out millions of dollars to Liberal-friendly cricket clubs, he said, “I think we can do better.” It took an Ombudsman report that said that property assessments in Ontario were hurting Ontario families with significantly higher tax bills, and guess what he said? “We think we can do better.” When the disgraceful conditions of nursing homes in this province were exposed in 2008, he said—guess what?—“We think we can do better.”

The pattern of mea culpas with this Premier rivals his taxes and his spending. I’ve got a question for him: Does he really think Ontario families believe a leopard can change its spots?

Hon. John Wilkinson: This party was elected by the good people of Ontario because your party—

Interjections.

Mr. Bill Murdoch: Stop the clock.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): No, the clock’s not stopping. I’m quite content to just let it run. I do apologize to the third party because they have been well behaved, and they are being penalized as a result of actions by both sides of the House.

New question.

Ma question est simple : pourquoi M. Brière n’a-t-il pas les mêmes choix?

L’hon. Madeleine Meilleur: J’apprécie beaucoup la question que vous posez. En fait, les plaques devraient être disponibles partout en Ontario, et je vais m’assurer, avec la ministre responsable du transport, que ce point soit corrigé. Ce n’est pas la première fois qu’on me pose cette question-là, et on a été capable de régler les problèmes ailleurs. J’espère que tous les francophones qui voudront avoir une plaque avec « Tant à découvrir » pourront acheter leur plaque près de chez eux.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Supplementary?

Pourquoi, avec les libéraux de M. McGuinty, les francophones n’ont-ils jamais les mêmes droits? Il faut toujours revendiquer ce qui devrait être notre dû.

L’hon. Madeleine Meilleur: Je ne peux pas entendre et accepter une question de la sorte, parce que s’il y a un gouvernement qui a supporté les francophones en Ontario, c’est bien le gouvernement de Dalton McGuinty.

Tout récemment on a voté en faveur d’une

loi sur la journée des francophones en Ontario, et on va célébrer, le 25 septembre prochain, la journée des francophones. Alors, je voudrais demander aux Ontariens de réfléchir à ce que les néo-démocrates, quand ils étaient au pouvoir, ont fait pour les francophones.

HYDRO ONE

Mr. David Zimmer: My question is for the Minister of Energy. On July 5, many people in the city of Toronto lost power due to a fire at Hydro One’s Manby transformer station. The outage lasted a couple of hours. People’s daily routines were disrupted. It was an especially frightening couple of hours for many stuck in elevators or at home without air conditioning on one of the hottest days in the summer.

Torontonians remembered the panic and the anxiety that set in on August 14, 2003, when power failed in this city and across most of the province. Given the hot summer that we’ve just had, the lights going out reminded us of that summer seven years ago when they went out and did not come back for days.

Minister, what happened at Manby? Is the problem fixed? Torontonians want to know.

Hon. Brad Duguid: I just want to assure the member that Hydro One is pursuing a full investigation into the incident at the Manby station and will make their findings known. Hydro One has indicated that this was an unusual occurrence caused by the failure of a circuit breaker.

I think Ontarians need to be aware that according to Hydro One, the important investments that the McGuinty government has made over the last six years in our energy infrastructure—investments that are not supported by the opposition, obviously—played an important role in three ways. Number one, they were critical in identifying the initial outage immediately; number two, they were critical in containing the extent of the outage; and number three, they were critical in helping to get the lights back on in a timely way.

The outage in Toronto this summer stands as a shining example of how important the investments we are making are in building a strong, more reliable energy system.

I dare say, had we taken the advice of the Leader of the Opposition, that outage would probably have resembled the one we saw back in—

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Thank you. Supplementary?

Mr. David Zimmer: Minister, fires at transformer stations are pretty serious occurrences, not just because of the dangers to the workers at the station but because shutdowns at stations like Manby place a higher strain on the rest of the grid.

This kind of emergency load shifting can be a pretty tricky process if there’s not enough flexibility and redundancy built into the system. If the system is not equipped to handle accidents like this one, we could quickly be looking at a chain reaction of outages throughout the grid in Ontario.

Minister, what are we doing to ensure reliability in our electricity system, especially in the future?

Hon. Brad Duguid: I’d like to first commend the Toronto firefighters who fought this fire for their, as usual, heroic and effective work. I’d also like to thank Hydro One staff for their quick response to the outage.

To the member’s point: This enhanced reliability in our energy system is a direct result of the investments the McGuinty government has made. Our investments in new generation, transmission and our energy infrastructure were all critical factors in ensuring that this outage did not result in a chain reaction that could have catapulted across the province.

Ontarians need to know that had we taken the opposition’s advice, or had a similar outage occurred seven years ago when the Leader of the Opposition was in cabinet, Toronto could have been shut down for days.

Replacing the Tories’ weak, unreliable and dirty energy system has not been easy. It has required investment, and that’s what triggered the rising cost of electricity. But Ontarians demand and deserve a strong, reliable and clean energy system and—

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Thank you. New question.

POWER PLANT

Mr. Ted Chudleigh: My question is to the Minister of Energy, who likes to rewrite history.

Oakville residents have called on you to change the location of the proposed Oakville power plant. Your ministry recognizes the Clarkson-Oakville airshed is overtaxed and is incapable of accepting additional pollutant loadings. This summer, Dr. David Balsillie’s action plan, which your government commissioned, echoed this concern.

I have listened to the people of Oakville, and I agree with them. Will you listen to the people of Oakville, change your mind and move the location of this power plant?

Hon. Brad Duguid: We absolutely have been listening to the people of Oakville. We’ve always been listening to the people of Oakville. We have a member of provincial Parliament in this Legislature by the name of Kevin Flynn who would have it no other way. Kevin Flynn has been working relentlessly in his community on a number of different issues. He has ensured that the voice of his community is being heard—

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): The member from Lanark and the member from Nepean will please come to order.

Please continue.

Hon. Brad Duguid: Kevin Flynn has ensured that the voice of the people of Oakville has been heard on this and many other issues.

We will continue to talk to the people of Oakville, to work with the people of Oakville. We have some challenges in this particular part of the greater Toronto area. We’re going to do everything we can to meet those challenges.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Supplementary?

Mr. Ted Chudleigh: Perhaps the minister will do what he can to see that that bill comes forward from the member from Oakville to third reading.

Minister, toxic pollutants are discharged into the air by gas-fired power plants. Children are particularly susceptible. Already in Halton, respiratory diseases are the number one reason children are admitted to our hospitals. Yet this power plant will be in an overtaxed airshed within two kilometres of approximately 16 schools and 5,000 homes.

Nanticoke is a willing host. They want this power plant. Halton’s airshed cannot handle it. You have the facts from Dr. Balsillie and a viable alternative. Again, will you move that power plant?

Hon. Brad Duguid: Only an outdated, right-wing Tory party is going to be against cleaner sources of energy. Only a right-wing Tory party is going to be against our efforts to get out of coal by the year 2014.

We are going to do everything we can to work with the people of Oakville and the people right across this province to—

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): The member from Simcoe–Grey, the member from Lanark and the member from Nepean–Carleton will please come to order.

Interjection.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): The member from Halton as well.

Minister?

Hon. Brad Duguid: We’re going to do everything we can, working with people right across this province, to ensure that we build a strong, reliable and clean energy system in this province. One thing we won’t do is do what they want us to do, and that’s to go back to the past. That’s to go back to the weak system, the unreliable system, the dirty system that polluted our air and impacted the health of ourselves and our kids and our grandkids.

LOCAL HEALTH INTEGRATION NETWORKS

Ms. Andrea Horwath: My question is to the Premier. Two years ago, I wrote to the Ombudsman, asking him to investigate the Hamilton Niagara Haldimand Brant LHIN and its failure to represent the interests of its community. A scathing report was delivered by the Ombudsman just last month, and it pointed to a number of things, including illegal meetings and a community decision-making process that was nothing more than a sham.

My question is a simple one: How could this LHIN have strayed so far off course, and what does it say for the rest of the LHINs across this province?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: We were pleased to receive the report from the Ombudsman. As my honourable colleague knows, the LHINs are a relatively recent creation in the history of Ontario health care. I know that my honourable colleague does, in fact, support local decision-making. I know that she supports moving away from the seven regional health offices and the 16 district health councils that used to be there instead. And I know that she really embraces this concept of giving communities greater say in terms of establishing their own priorities when it comes to meeting their health care needs.

As I say, we accept the recommendations offered by the Ombudsman, and I can also assure my colleague that we have followed each and every one of those.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Supplementary?

Ms. Andrea Horwath: Rather than denial, deflection and excuses, will the Premier admit to Ontarians, like the ones living in Hamilton, Niagara, Haldimand and Brant, that his out-of-control LHINs need to be reined in and that the wrong-headed decisions, like the closing of emergency rooms, that were made by that LHIN need to be reversed?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: Again, I have a continuing and abiding faith in the ability of communities to establish their priorities when it comes to their health care.

The alternative being proposed by some—I’m not clear as to where the leader of the NDP is coming from on this score—is that we eliminate the LHINs and restore seven regional health offices and 16 district health councils. That’s not a concept that we support. We are very much supportive of this idea of giving local communities local influence into their locally delivered health care.

There are some challenges that will be encountered along the way. As those become apparent, we will continue to find ways to address them so that we can continue to find ways—all of us working together—to deliver the very best possible health care to all our families, regardless of where they live.

EMPLOYMENT STANDARDS

Mrs. Liz Sandals: My question is for the Minister of Labour. Minister, constituents often contact my office regarding the status of employment standards claims that they have filed with your ministry. I know that Bill 68 amendments are intended to encourage faster resolution of claims. However, a related concern has been brought to my attention.

Minister, why is your ministry proposing this change, and what are you doing to address this particular concern?

Hon. Peter Fonseca: I’d like to thank the member for Guelph for her question and for being such a tireless champion for her constituents’ rights.

We’ve made great strides on this side of the House, on this side of the floor, to help vulnerable workers, to protect vulnerable workers, and we’re going to continue to do just that.

Bill 68, if passed, encourages employees to contact their employer first, as a first step, before filing an employment standards claim. We know from experience that providing early notification encourages an early resolution. This means getting money back into the pockets of hard-working Ontarians faster, and this is what we are going to do. Although we do know that some employees have barriers, we are providing information to those employees in over 20 different languages. Also, if an employee feels threatened or uncomfortable, they can go directly to contact our employment standards office for help.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Supplementary?

Mrs. Liz Sandals: Thank you, Minister, because that clarification is important for my constituents, particularly those who are vulnerable.

Hon. Peter Fonseca: Again, I want to thank the member for the question. I’m glad to hear that vulnerable workers are on everyone’s minds here in this Legislature.

This government is moving forward with a plan. It’s a positive plan. Bill 68—

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Thank you. New question.

SERVICES FOR THE DEVELOPMENTALLY DISABLED

Mr. Robert Bailey: My question is for the Minister of Community and Social Services. Wendy and Marc Trottier of Brights Grove have accepted the responsibility of providing daily support for their daughter Amber for the past 26 years. Amber needs 24-hour care. She spends most of her day in a wheelchair and is prone to seizures. They’re worried about where Amber will live when they can no longer afford to take care of her.

Some 110 people are currently on a wait list for residential services in my riding through Lambton County Developmental Services. Minister, when can families like the Trottiers expect action on this important issue?

Hon. Madeleine Meilleur: First of all, let me say thank you to this family, la famille Trottier, for all the work that they’re doing in developmental disabilities. We need these parents who are so involved to lobby and to be the advocates for their sons and daughters, and I really do appreciate that.

I have to say that I’m very proud of the investment of this government in developmental disabilities. We have opened more beds in the developmental disability sector than any government before, and we will continue to do so. Every year, there are more requests for services, either to go into care or to have some respite, and that’s what—

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Thank you. Supplementary? The member from Dufferin–Caledon.

Ms. Sylvia Jones: Minister, there’s no doubt of the dedication of the Trottier family. There is doubt, however, about the dedication of your ministry in actually supporting these families. The Trottiers are tired of empty promises from your government. When can they expect action from you to decrease the wait list in developmental services?

Hon. Madeleine Meilleur: Every year, this government invests in different services for the developmental disabilities sector. We have invested—

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): There are a number of—

Interjection.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Minister.

Mr. Bill Murdoch: Stop the clock.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Stop the clock. Thanks, Speaker from Bruce–Grey–Owen Sound.

There are a number of cross-conversations taking place here and it’s always healthy, but when they elevate to a level that makes it difficult to hear, it’s a challenge for everyone. I would just encourage the members that if they want to have a cross-conversation, that’s what the chambers on either side of the lobby are for.

Minister.

Hon. Madeleine Meilleur: Since taking office we have committed over $176 million in funding to help adults with developmental disabilities live in the community, creating service and supports for more than 2,700 people. Also, this government has created the Passport program, which helps parents with their sons and daughters with developmental disabilities. Every year we’re adding to that envelope and we will continue to do so.

SKILLS TRAINING

Mr. Gilles Bisson: My question is to the Premier. Premier, I raise this issue on behalf of a constituent in Smooth Rock Falls, Angele Lacroix, whose family has been devastated since the closure of the Tembec mill in Smooth Rock Falls. She writes the following:

“I’m presently enrolled in a two-year registered practical nurse course through Ontario’s Second Career program. I hope to convince you that the Second Career program’s new guidelines are restrictive and do not allow enough flexibility in assessing and meeting the specific financial needs of candidates like myself in special circumstances. The new guidelines have created added financial hardship on me and others, thereby, in my opinion, the program will fall short of its objectives to help train unemployed workers for new careers.

“Although I am grateful for the opportunity to participate in the program, unless I am provided with adequate financial assistance, I will be unable to finish my two-year program.”

Premier, what is your government prepared to do to make sure she’s able to stay in the program and complete it, and go to a job that she has been promised?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: To the Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities.

Hon. John Milloy: I appreciate the honourable member’s question. Obviously I can’t comment on a specific case but I’d be happy, if he provides me with the information, to look into it.

But let me take this opportunity to talk about the Second Career program. A report to this Legislature said that as of, I believe, a week ago Friday we have close to 35,000 Ontarians who have benefited from the Second Career program.

Despite the continuing criticism that came from the New Democratic Party, we moved forward and established the first program of its kind in Canada. We have worked to make sure that it’s responsive to the needs of workers. Last June, in fact, we issued new directives to make the guidelines more flexible based on the feedback that we had heard from both those who were applying to Second Career and from those who are administering the program. Changes to the program in June of last year in turn changed eligibility and brought forward things like a reduction in the number of weeks of active job search that a candidate needed. We reduced the duration of unemployment by half—

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Thank you. Supplementary?

Mr. Gilles Bisson: Minister, it just doesn’t cut it. Angele is going to be forced not to complete this program because your Second Career program does not provide her with the support that she needs to be able to complete it. My office, my constituency staff and myself have already raised this issue with your ministry and the MPP liaison on numerous occasions in order to intervene. That’s the reason I asked the Premier to intervene, because your office has said, “There’s nothing we can do.”

So my question to you is simply this: Angele wants to stay in school. She has been offered a full-time job at the end of her training. Are you, yes or no, going to fix the issue so that she gets the support that she needs