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May 13, 2003

37th Parliament, 4th Session

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Hansard Transcripts

Votes and Proceedings

Orders and Notices

Hansard Transcripts 2003-May-13 (PDF)

LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY OF ONTARIO

ASSEMBLÉE LÉGISLATIVE DE L'ONTARIO

Tuesday 13 May 2003 Mardi 13 mai 2003

VISITOR

CONTEMPT OF PARLIAMENT /

OUTRAGE AU PARLEMENT

Tuesday 13 May 2003 Mardi 13 mai 2003

The House met at 1330.

Prayers.

VISITOR

Mr Michael Gravelle (Thunder Bay-Superior North): On a point of order, Mr Speaker: If I could beg the indulgence of the House, I want to let

them know that our fine, hard-working page from Marathon, Brian Donohue, has a special guest here today, his uncle Chuck Donohue, who is in the members' gallery. We welcome you, Mr Donohue.

CONTEMPT OF PARLIAMENT /

OUTRAGE AU PARLEMENT

Mr Tony Martin (Sault Ste Marie): Thank you very much, Speaker, for this opportunity this afternoon. I appreciate the opportunity, although I

have to tell you it's not a happy time. It's not something I am pleased to have to do, which is to speak here today on the issue of contempt by the government for this place and for the traditions

of this House and of parliamentary democracy. It's a disappointing and troubling day, or should be, for all of us in this place to actually have to consider the actions of the government and their

disrespect for the natural order of things, the way we develop the public policy and deliver on the responsibility we're all given when we are elected to this place, no matter what our political

persuasion, to participate in debate and discussion about things that affect the everyday lives of each one of us, our families, our community members and the citizens of Ontario.

However, having said that and having expressed my displeasure, I also have to say that it really comes as no surprise, because there has been a buildup of things

that have happened over the last years in this province that indicate that this government really has no respect or consideration for government and the role of government and the important job of

government in a jurisdiction like Ontario to order the public business of the day so that everybody has equal access and equal opportunity. If we lose our respect and support and understanding of

the important role that government plays, we sooner than later turn into a system of anarchy where individuals and organizations and groups of people fight with each other over the resources that

are available, and eventually those who are most vulnerable and at risk lose out more often than not.

In speaking to my not being surprised, Speaker, I also want to say that I wasn't surprised at your ruling. I've watched you in this place over the last few years

as you've acted as Chair of the House and presided over the very important public debate that sometimes breaks out here, I suggest probably to the surprise of the government, which orchestrates it

such that there is very limited opportunity for real debate to happen. But when it does happen, you preside in a way that is fair and dignified and professional. I have to say that I admired your

courage in the stand you took almost immediately in response to the announcement that we all heard back in our ridings, back at home in our neighbourhoods, to the news that the government was going

to bring down a budget and that they were going to deliver it not in this place but in the boardroom or training centre of one of their biggest supporters and benefactors, Magna International.

The fact that you as a Conservative, somebody who was elected to this place carrying that flag, would have the intestinal fortitude and the courage to stand up

at that point, and then later when the House came back, to make the ruling you did, I think speaks well to the opportunity we have here to correct that mistake, to say to the government very

clearly, "You cannot do that; you cannot act in this authoritarian, singularly focused, arrogant way in front of this House and the people of Ontario and you must in fact follow the traditions, if

not the rules, of this place in the things that you do."

The hue and cry that followed or happened at the same time that you made the decision to speak out I think supports the credibility in your stand and the courage

that you showed. I don't think there was a newspaper across this province that didn't, in an editorial or in an

article of some sort, indicate displeasure and disappointment and dismay with the

decision of the government to deliver this bill in the way it did, in the place it did.

It speaks of a government that believes that the public debate, the public policy development that happens in this place should more and more happen, if not in

the backroom of the Premier's office and those in power in this day, then in the backroom of some of the bigger corporate interests in the province. That's a problem because it doesn't allow for

others to participate; it doesn't allow for the interests of other people to be brought to the fore and placed before the decision-making authorities. So we should not be surprised if at the end of

the day it begins to hurt people. The kinds of things we're beginning to see in communities across this province I think indicate very clearly the damage that is caused by this kind of

single-minded commitment to doing it your way, come hell or high water. This sort of arrogant, I-know-better approach is in fact showing itself.

I have to say to you that I was brought to reflect, the day you stood up and we all found out that the government was going to deliver the budget in this way, on

my own experience in that chair, sitting there day after day, presiding over public discussion about things that affect the lives of all the people I represent out of Sault Ste Marie, and never

hearing anything of a public debate around decisions that affect those who are most vulnerable and at risk in our communities: every other day a new decision being made behind closed doors, a new

regulation being made re the services we will provide or not provide for those who are most in need of them, those who are most vulnerable and at risk; every day another attack, every day another

raising of the bar, every day making it more difficult, taking away opportunity from those who need our assistance the most.

Anybody who has followed government or understands it or who has a keen interest or love of public discourse and the way that civil society organizes itself will

understand that the true measure of any society in the long haul is in the way it deals with and supports and helps out those who are most at risk and most vulnerable within their jurisdiction.

This government has shown, almost since the very day it was elected, a total disregard and misunderstanding and almost a dismissive attitude toward those in our community who are most at risk; as a

matter of fact, to the point where they've actually turned over the development of public policy and the tools of delivering support to those who are most at risk and vulnerable to the private

sector.

We're connecting here this government's decision to release its budget in the training centre of one of its largest corporate supporters with the decision they

made very early on in their time in government to in fact turn over the further development of public response to the most vulnerable and at risk of our citizens to a private sector corporation,

Andersen Consulting, who since then have morphed into Accenture. We see their tentacles in almost every facet of life now where resources from government are distributed to those who need it and

then are collected back in some way over a period of time. So it shouldn't surprise us.

It was the realization in my own mind that that is what was happening back when I was in that chair that brought me to a decision that I could not lend whatever

credibility I brought to that position, given that I had worked before I came here as a person overseeing a soup kitchen operation that delivered services to those who are most vulnerable and at

risk in my own community and the thought that maybe somebody watching this place might say, "Tony's in that chair. He's a guy that has some history in dealing with the poor, so I shouldn't be too

worried about what's going on or how the public responds to the needs of poor people is concerned."

I could no longer lend whatever small credibility or legitimacy was there by my being in that chair any more. I felt I had to make a statement in a public way,

not dissimilar, yet different, to the way you stood up a couple of months ago to say to this government, "This is wrong." I was saying as well on that day that to turn over the delivery of services

and programs, resources and support to those people in our jurisdiction who are most at risk and vulnerable to the private sector, to a corporation that has a spotted track record to begin within

other jurisdictions where they've been brought in to do that, was absolutely wrong, not in keeping with the traditions and the raison d'être for government in the first place, which, I

believe, first and foremost, is always our primary responsibility: to look after those things and those folks and those issues among us who are most vulnerable and most at risk.

I have to say that I'm also reminded of the very strong reaction of our leader, Howard Hampton, to the issue of the reordering of the way we're going to manage

the hydroelectric system, the electricity or the power system in this province; the sense we got early on that this government was going to, as they've done with the delivery of services to the

poor, turning it over to Accenture, turn the generation, transmission and distribution of power and electricity to the people of this province -- my constituents, my friends and neighbours, people

in all of our constituents across this province, in rural and northern Ontario in particular -- to the private sector so that they could charge whatever it is they felt they could get, given the

nature of the market out there, without being challenged publicly for in fact doing that.

We know the result. We know it very clearly. The purest face actually of the impact of the privatization and the deregulation of hydro is seen no more directly

or obviously than in the town of Wawa. Our leader, Howard Hampton, and myself were up there yesterday to speak to the people of Wawa to get a sense of what was happening to them, how turning over

complete control of pricing, distribution and transmission of hydro in the way it has unfolded with the deregulation of hydro to Great Lakes Power has affected very dramatically that community, how

they've put them on the precipice of complete and total disaster. There are industries shutting down. A big mill in Dubreuilville has laid off over 100 people because this government has decided to

turn over the management of our hydroelectric system, completely and totally deregulated, to the whim of the private sector.

Small businesses in Wawa are closing down. A store in that town that I in fact as a young boy used to work at, used to carry out groceries and stock shelves at,

that's been there since almost the inception of that town, has now announced that it's closing down. It was the centre and the core and the very heart of that community, right beside a clothing

store that has also announced that it's going to close down, and it was there then too.

It's heartbreaking to go into a town like Wawa and see the impact the decisions of your government are making and how they affect them, how they have become the

purest face, the purest example that we can find of the impact of turning over the public discourse and control of these things that are so important to the everyday life of all of us and our

communities to the private sector so that they can make as much profit as they can on it. And to suggest for a second that somehow in the long haul that is going to be good for all of us just flies

in the face of the reality, particularly where this small town of Wawa is concerned.

They've been trying to get a meeting with the Minister of Energy for almost a year now, the person who holds ultimate and final responsibility for this, who

could make decisions, who could make decisions today to change their lot, to make a difference, to save some of the investments that have been made in that community in homes and in small

businesses and in industry so that those folks can look forward to a future in Wawa, in northern Ontario, looking after their children and growing the economy and contributing to the economy of

this great province in the way that we who call northern Ontario home have been proud to do for literally hundreds of years. That they're not even able to get a meeting with the minister speaks to

the thread that runs through the debate we're having here today about contempt of this Legislature, contempt of the people of the province, not even being willing to meet with the folks who are

being most directly and immediately affected so that they can make their argument, so that they can put the issue on the table, so that they can challenge you, Minister, in a way that would help

you understand that you need to do something to change this so that these folks can be given back the hope and the optimism and the excitement they used to have in the future that they thought was

there for them in northern Ontario and in the town of Wawa.

I plead with you. In keeping with the tone of the debate that's going on here, where I think almost everybody will agree that there has to be more respect for

this place, there has to be more respect for the processes and the responsibility that each of us has, you in particular as the Minister of Energy has, for the ordering of the public life, for the

delivery of those resources and systems that we all depend on for everyday livelihood, Mr Speaker and Mr Minister.

You begin to put it all together and you begin to see a pattern that, unless it's stopped in its tracks, will literally decimate the governance traditions that

all of us contributed to putting in place, that all of us committed long hours and thought and energy to respecting and supporting and building up in this province.

Again, the role you played in that I think has to be held out there, front and centre, and we have to thank you and encourage the courage that you have shown so

that others in the same position or with the same opportunity will in fact do the right thing, as you have done in this instance, because if we don't, we will find ourselves going down a road in

this province where none of us will have any kind of real say any more.

I remember when I was sitting in your chair one afternoon, debate was going on in the House and there was a vote called. The opposition voted against something

that the government was proposing, and of course they lost, because 99.9% of the time we do in this place, particularly where you have a majority government that's bound and determined to get its

platform and its agenda through. The government side then, on a second vote, made the suggestion that, well, it would just be the same vote over, and the opposition stood up and said, "No. We want

the opportunity to vote again."

It's interesting. I was listening to the now House leader of the government party, who was, I believe, in the last couple of days so critical of the decision

that you made, kind of whisper to the member sitting beside him, "Oh, let them have their vote. It's the only thing they have left." It is, and I felt bad about that. I felt bad for myself and I

felt bad for my constituents, and I felt bad for every member of the opposition in this place. It's the only thing you have left: the ability to get up every now and again and vote, to say no to

some issues -- or support some issues -- that this government puts forward. They want to take that away from us. They don't want to allow us to do that any more. They want to deliver more and more

of the public policy of this government outside of this chamber. They don't even like the fact that we get, from time to time, a chance to stand up -- even though we lose, 99.9% of the time -- and

say, "No."

The member from St Catharines knows. He has fought in this House, over and over again for years, changes in rules that parties of every ilk have brought forward

to diminish the opportunity of members to actually participate in the public debate that must happen here around issues that affect all of us and our constituents.

So, Mr Speaker, I end my few minutes here this afternoon in debate over this issue of contempt of the government for the legislative and governing traditions of

this province by again thanking you for the courageous stand that you took. I thank those in the House, in my own caucus and the official opposition caucus, for standing up as well and saying, "No,

this is not acceptable. This isn't on. This isn't in keeping with what we need to be doing in this place if we're going to be respectful of the needs and desires of all of the citizens of Ontario

out there, to know that their government speaks for them, to know that their government, when considering public business, considers their interests first, and at the end of the day decides in that

way on issues that come before us, including things as important as the budget of this House."

Hon Helen Johns (Minister of Agriculture and Food): I want to tell you that I'm very excited to have this opportunity to be able to speak, not

only to the House but of course to the constituents in my riding of Huron-Bruce. It's a great riding. I feel privileged to be here and I feel privileged to be able to speak on behalf of them in

this Legislature.

Let me say that sometimes in politics there are dilemmas. I never want to be a Premier of the province of Ontario, but I think our Premier had a very difficult

deck of cards dealt to him a number of months ago. He had promised the government that he would come out and give multi-year funding to a number of our transfer partners. Coming from a financial

background, I appreciate just how important that is in communities, in hospitals, in education and in municipal politics. They need to have a longer-term perspective to be able to make good

decisions so that they can move forward. The Premier made that promise, and in so doing he got himself caught in an unfortunate situation. What happened was he said to call the House back together

by the end of March --

Interjections.

Hon Mrs Johns: So much for the democratic process, Mr Speaker.

He wanted very much to be able to give these people the multi-year funding that they deserved, and that he had promised he would do. But when he said that he was

not going to call the House back, of course there was talk immediately that there was going to be a promise broken. There was no way that, if the House didn't come back, he would be able to deliver

multi-year funding. So from that perspective, what we see is the Premier trying to do the right thing in the province of Ontario. He gives the budget to the people who need it the most, the people

who need multi-year funding. At the same time, he allows me, in my work as Minister of Agriculture and Food, to travel the province, to consult with the people of the province to make sure that I

know what it is they want when it comes to the throne speech, when it comes to the budget, when it comes to important issues in the province. I want to say very clearly that that's exactly what I

did. I got in the car, I travelled all across the province and asked farm groups and farmers in the agricultural community and the rural community to tell me exactly what it was that they wanted

from this government in the throne speech, in the budget and in our future endeavours. And believe me, they told me.

Interjections.

Hon Mrs Johns: So much for the democratic process again. If they speak louder than me, I will go away.

So what happened was that I travelled to the east, I travelled to the north, I travelled to the west. I hit a lot of agricultural groups in my car, I have to

say, and ate a lot of McDonald's on the way, and I learned a lot about what the farm groups wanted and what we should do to set a vision for Ontario that would take us into 2004, 2005, 2006. I

guess today my thought is that I should spend some time and thank the people who came out to hear me, talk to me and tell me where the government should go in the future. That's what I did in the

time I wasn't in the House.

I can't speak for others, but I can speak for the people I saw in Kemptville and Norfolk, whom I saw in Marcel Beaubien's riding, whom I saw in Powassan. I can

speak about those people who came to me and said, "This is what I think the government's vision for the future should be." So from that standpoint the Premier fulfilled two important objectives: he

ensured that people got multi-year funding, as he had promised, and he ensured that farm groups in this province and agricultural communities in this province got the opportunity to talk to their

minister and tell this government where we should go in the future, and that got incorporated into the documents.

I also want to say that we had a wonderful opportunity -- maybe some people take this for granted, but we certainly don't in the riding of Huron-Bruce -- to have

pre-budget consultations this year in Goderich. At that time we brought together a number of different groups who spoke about the things they would like to see in the budget. I have to tell you

that the school boards were there, the hospitals were there, businesses were there, farmers were there, and individuals from the community who just had an idea about where they would like to be;

all of them came to Goderich to be able to talk in the pre-budget consultations. Many more wrote to me and talked to me about the throne speech and the pre-budget consultations we did in that

particular place.

I want to say there are some people who really went out of their way. From the agricultural perspective, the Ontario Federation of Agriculture, under the

leadership of Ron Bonnett, talked to us about nutrient management and about the agricultural policy framework we're working very hard on. I had a number of different organizations, from the

Christian farmers through to all the commodity groups, talk to me about how we might proceed to have a strong vision for agriculture. I had people in my constituency of Huron-Bruce talk about the

wonderful opportunities that come to our community because we're a rural riding and because we're concerned about the future and the vision.

One of the things I'm particularly proud about, and an individual who I think is someone who should be recognized by the whole House from my riding, is Cathy

Ritsema. Cathy is a person who works for Alzheimer's. This is an important society that is very close to my heart; I support it almost any time I can. I have an aunt who has Alzheimer's, and it's

very hard on her family. So I have been really pleased and thought it was very visionary when the government decided in 1995 that we needed an Alzheimer's strategy and that it would be a program

that would focus on and ensure that we did the best we could for people with dementia in Ontario.

Some of the insightful things we've done, both inside the riding and outside: of course we've invested more in Alzheimer's, we've done more research, we've put

more drugs on the formulary tied to Alzheimer's. When we're building new long-term-care facilities, the thing we also do is build facilities that work for people with dementia: no corners; rounded

walls, walkways that continue to allow them to pace -- important things that will help people with dementia to lead lives that we all want them to live. So from that standpoint, it's important that

we have strong social programs like our Alzheimer's program, and to get that, we obviously have to have a strong economic pillar in Ontario.

I want to say that one of the strong economic pillars in the province is tied closely to something in my riding, and of course that would be Bruce Power. Bruce

Power is an organization within my riding that I am particularly proud of, and this government has made a huge difference in their livelihood. This government, through Bill 35, allowed them the

opportunity to come in and run this nuclear generating station. This generating station has done things that were not possible under the old Ontario Hydro. While all three parties were in power,

what happened was that four of the reactors at Bruce nuclear were taken out of production. Since Bruce Power has come in to Bruce, which was after 1999, they have been working to bring back two of

the reactors, which will be coming back this spring. I've watched them with their timelines, and I've watched the management of this organization make this work.

Believe me, I am incredibly proud of Duncan Hawthorne and his management team, as he has moved Bruce Power to produce more megawatt hours in the province,

probably about 1,500 by July 1. That will make a huge difference to the economic engine in the province. It will make a huge difference to energy capacity in the province. It will make a huge

difference to the some 3,000 people in Huron-Bruce who work there. It's good for Huron-Bruce, it's good for Ontario, it's good for Canada. We in this House should all be proud of the work we did to

allow that to happen when we voted for Bill 35.

I also want to say that in the province of Ontario since 1995, the government recognized that there was a need for communities to decide on investments that

should happen in their communities. The government, under Mike Harris, decided that we needed to invest funds in the Trillium Foundation. What we do is --

Mr Gilles Bisson (Timmins-James Bay): On a point of order, Mr Speaker: You have asked us to deliberate on the issue you've put before us, which

is contempt of the House. I'm looking for the government to explain either why they did what they did or to say that they recant. What we're hearing now is a litany of what they did or didn't do

while they were in government. Bring them back to order.

The Speaker (Hon Gary Carr): The minister may continue. I know all members have tended to get off a little bit during this debate.

Hon Mrs Johns: I'm talking about the accomplishments, obviously, of this government and the important things that have happened in Huron-Bruce,

and the consultations that happened with respect to the budget and where the budget has allowed us to go in this place.

I was talking about the Trillium Foundation. Maybe people across the floor don't like the fact that this government has done so many things for local

communities. But when you're in your local community and you hear about the Ontario Trillium Foundation, lots of times you don't understand that those are taxpayer dollars that were established by

this government to ensure that we have local investments. In my community, that's really important -- $100 million across the province, some of it allocated to our local communities, much of it set

aside so we can have the services we need in rural and urban Ontario.

Let me say that I have some people who agreed to be on this committee for me who would do incredible work. I think about Nelson Robertson from Port Elgin. I

think about Harry Thede, who is a farmer and was once the warden of Bruce county. I think about Ellen Connelly, past president of Community Living and past president of the Alexandria Marine and

General Hospital. I also think about Mary Ellen Jasper from Goderich, a local volunteer who has active on so many committees. They deserve to have a chance to talk about the things they want to do.

They deserve to be able to get an opportunity to talk to us about a vision for the future.

One of the people on the Trillium Foundation whom I know my colleague beside me, Minister Tsubouchi, would really like to meet is Gloria Day from Grand Bend. She

was involved in community cultural activities. She has been really instrumental in keeping our local playhouse going, and she works tirelessly to make sure we have cultural investments from the

Trillium Foundation. We also have Conny Detzier from Mildmay, who is a farmer and a member of the South Bruce agricultural advisory council.

I heard a lot about how we need to invest in agricultural communities. I heard about why we need to move forward to make sure we do the right things to

strengthen agriculture in the province. Of course, as a result of my travelling during this time, when we took the opportunity to speak to Ontarians, that's one of the things I heard.

I also have Bill McGrath from Wingham, who works heavily in the Trillium Foundation and also works heavily in the community. He's president of the Wingham junior

C Hockey Club and a member of the Knights of Columbus. I'll tell you, you can't find somebody who volunteers more than Bill McGrath in the town of Wingham.

I've just appointed someone who has asked to be on, and his name is Joe Steffler from Seaforth. I know that he's going to make a very big difference to the

community too. He's very tied to his local community, to Seaforth and the surrounding area. I know that without a doubt he will be another person who provides excellent opportunities for my

community.

Along with those people who have provided me with excellent advice over my eight years of being here, there are other people involved in different transfer

payment agencies who have helped me out. Let me say that Cathy Cove is one of the people who advises me on education on a regular basis. She talks about education a fair amount of the time. Of

course, she wants to ensure that kids in rural Ontario have the same opportunities as kids in urban Ontario. She wants to ensure that we have the quality education we need to have to make sure our

children can go on to university and do other things. So, from that perspective, I had a chance to hear from her also.

One of the things that's pretty important to the agricultural community and which I've had a lot of talk about -- and when we get back to talking about the bills

in the House, I know we're going to move forward very quickly with this bill -- is the rural red tape bill. I have a number of farm dealers -- and I think about MacGavins in Walton, John Deere in

Exeter and many more, some in Bruce too -- who have called me and asked that we move the farm implement dealers portion of the rural red tape bill through as quickly as possible because it's an

important part of where they need to go in the future to be competitive and to be able to continue the family businesses they have and which they're very proud of.

Sometimes you get great advice from people you don't necessarily expect to get good advice from. I laugh as I say that one of the people who has provided me with

the most help when it comes to agriculture over the last little while is Bob Down from Exeter. He has been an inspiration while we've been dealing with tough issues such as the agricultural policy

framework and the nutrient management plan. It shows me that many times, people come together and stand behind their MPP, no matter what their political views are, because they think it's important

to make a difference in their community and in their counties. So, from my perspective, I want to thank him for the work he has done.

I also want to thank John Maakant for the work he has done. He is the past president of the Chicken Farmers of Ontario and has been instrumental in the nutrient

management plan. He lives near Benmiller in my riding. He has worked hard with me to ensure that we have the right solutions when it comes to agriculture and the future of agriculture and a vision

for agriculture.

So I once again want to say that the time we had when I travelled the province was a time I got the opportunity to speak to these people and to reinforce what

they want to say, and I think we did the right thing.

Dale Ratcliffe from Zurich is one of my chicken hatchery people. He has met with me a fair number of times to talk about chicken hatcheries and that business in

the province, and he has been a proud spokesman for the agricultural community too.

So there are lots of people who have made a difference. Oh, I don't want to forget one more person in agriculture, and that's Tom Fritz from Chepstow, who has

done a lot of work in trying to move the province to new issues when we talk about nutrient management: how we can better find new technologies that will be a vision for us in the future to be able

to utilize so we can make the very best decisions when it comes to protecting the environment and our wonderful water assets in the province. He gives me continual advice. I'm very grateful to him

and very grateful for his vision.

There's not only agriculture in the riding of Huron-Bruce, of course. Tourism is a very big issue. We have a wonderful resource when we think about Lake Huron.

Let me tell you that the tourism industry is growing and strengthening in Huron and Bruce. We have a wonderful trail that goes up through the lake where you can weave through bed and breakfasts,

and wonderful opportunities to see agriculture interface with tourism and to see rural communities at their best and brightest. So from that standpoint, I want to thank Cass Bayley from Hensall for

the work that she gives us, and Cam Ivey, the mayor or reeve of Grand Bend, for his vision about where rural communities should go in the future. These two people we should be very, very proud

of.

I talked earlier about delivering a multi-year budget for hospitals and education and municipalities and why the budget had to be delivered before March 31 so

the Premier could keep his commitment on that. I have had extensive talk with Art Ross from Seaforth and Stan Connelly from Goderich, who are on the boards of both of the hospitals. They of course

are very grateful that they have the opportunity to know what their budget will be over the course of the next three years. So from that perspective you can see that delivering a budget by March 31

was an important issue in the management of all those organizations who are transfer partners to the government.

I don't want to forget the big businesses in my community, the small businesses in my community, who have come to talk to me. I have aggregate producers, I have

Westcast Industries, which is under the capable leadership of Ray Finney. He's the CEO of Westcast, not only from my community, but for Brant, so I think the Liberals should listen carefully, and

also for Stratford and many other areas. He's a wonderful person who drives our local community and he makes my community a better place to be, to live and to raise one's family.

I think you can see that admittedly there are some reasons why people may talk about this budget, they may be concerned about this budget, but when the Premier

made a decision to give the communities, the transfer payers, the vision about the dollars that they needed for the next three years, that was a very important part of managing the financial

resources of this great province that we call Ontario.

I can speak for some of my constituents when they say they are grateful that they had the opportunity to hold consultations, be involved in the throne speech, be

involved in the pre-budget consultations. For that, I am very grateful.

Mr Sean G. Conway (Renfrew-Nipissing-Pembroke): I want to be clear: I rise this afternoon to speak to the amendment to my motion tabled

yesterday by my friend the member from Timmins-James Bay.

I appreciate the comments of other members to this debate and I listened with real interest to what the Minister of Agriculture just had to say in her

remarks.

I want to, as I deal with the Bisson amendment, reflect again on why I feel so strongly about why we're here having this debate. It is my view about one of the

fundamental, if not the fundamental, responsibilities that Parliament has to hold the government to account for what government does, and most especially to hold government to account for the

raising of and the spending of public money. We are all here to represent the taxpayers, and the Minister of Agriculture rightly points out that we have a lot of constituents who will be very

pleased to hear the good news about spending on programs that will affect individuals or communities. But I repeat: at the core of our system of responsible parliamentary government is the

essential doctrine that Parliament must grant supply. Only this chamber, with duly elected members here, has the ability to grant the cabinet the spending authority that any cabinet requires to do

business.

I received in the mail yesterday some information that I think is very material to this debate, and I raise it this afternoon because I think it is information

that every member of this Legislature, as a member of the Legislature, must reflect upon as we contemplate the motion before the House and, more important, what it is we are here to do and how we

see our responsibilities as trustees for taxpayers, particularly as it relates to the raising of and the spending of public money.

I want to very briefly review the circumstances again of March 2003. It is well-known, I think, by all honourable members that on March 12, five days before we

were expected to reconvene for the opening of the spring session, the Lieutenant Governor, on the advice of Premier Eves, prorogued the former session of the Legislature and announced that a new

session would begin on April 30, 2003.

On the same day, March 12, the Minister of Finance, Mrs Ecker, announced that she and her colleagues in the Eves government would be presenting the provincial

budget outside of the Legislature in a place at that time not yet decided -- though we later found out, it would be at the Magna training centre in Brampton on Thursday, March 27 -- because, the

minister said, "The Eves government wanted to take the budget to the people in an innovative and creative way."

That was done, consistent with Minister Ecker and Premier Eves's announcement, on Thursday, March 27, 2003, in the afternoon, at Brampton; that was March 27,

Last night, I received in my parliamentary mail a copy of order in council 769/2003, dated March 26, 2003. This order in council -- recommended by Minister

Ecker and concurred in by my colleague Bob Runciman, the Chair of cabinet -- was signed on March 26, about 24 hours before the so-called "People's Budget" was presented outside of the

Legislature.

What does this order in council, dated March 26, 2003, say? I'll provide copies to all honourable members. Let me just say, in a very serious way, that getting

a copy of this order in council is not easy. I had a seasoned legislative assistant go over to the Cabinet Office this afternoon to see if it was available. Interestingly, order in council 769/2003

is not available on the afternoon of May 13, 2003 -- what is that, six weeks after it was executed by the provincial cabinet?

Let's come back -- and I say in a very serious way to my friends on both sides of aisle -- to the content of the order in council. It says:

"Whereas the Minister of Finance hereby reports that there is no appropriation or provision by the Legislature for the fiscal year commencing on April 1, 2003

for the general and necessary government expenditures as set out in the" attached "schedule...;

"And

whereas the treasury board hereby reports that it estimates that the sums set out in the

schedule hereto are the sums required for the general and

necessary government expenditures to be incurred by the ministries and authorities for which such sums are shown in the" attached "schedule....

"And

whereas the Legislature is not now in session" -- and we know why; it had just been prorogued and an announcement for recall had been made for April 30,"

but it is observed in the very important and timely order in council dated March 26 that the Legislature is not now in session.

Finally, it observes that: under the Treasury Board Act, 1991, there is a provision for the issuance of a special warrant "where a matter arises when the

Legislature is not in session that requires the incurring of expenditures during a fiscal year ... on or after April 1, 2003 for which there is no appropriation by the Legislature;

"Therefore," we -- the cabinet ministers Ecker and Runciman -- recommend to His Honour the signing of two special warrants which His Honour did then sign. I

want to read what those two warrants provide for.

The first warrant, signed by His Honour the Lieutenant Governor, James Bartleman, sometime on the afternoon of March 26, provides for a warrant in the amount

of $73,236,500 for the general and necessary expenditures of four offices: the office of the Legislative Assembly, the office of the Provincial Auditor, the office of the Chief Election Officer and

the office of the Ontario Ombudsman -- four offices, to receive by special warrant $73,236,500.

Then comes the second request for and grant of, by special cabinet order, the following warrant: for the sum of $36,249,948,600 -- I repeat, a special warrant

in the amount of $36.2 billion -- for what? For a spending plan that is contained on one flimsy piece of paper. What does it tell us? It tells us that with the signing of this secret cabinet order

-- and, as far as I know, it is virtually still secret -- we find appropriations in the amount of over $36 billion, and what are we told? Well, roughly $16.5 billion is to go to health. For what

purpose? Who knows? We are told, to be fair, that most of it is operating. We're told that community and social services is to get $4.5 billion; we're told that education is to get $4.9 billion. My

friends: a special warrant, authorized by the cabinet in secret to appropriate 36 billion, 250 million bucks. That was March 26.

It is well-known to me what the history of special warrants is. I will say quite honestly, in the spirit of this debate which I began some days ago, that

special warrants, over the last number of years, have in fact been used with increasing laxity. Eugene Forsey, one of my favourite authorities, in one of his submissions to the Parliament of Canada

not that many years ago, raises a real concern, as have countless Provincial Auditors, the Auditor General for Canada, and a number of public accounts committees, that special warrants are, by

their very nature, intended to be for emergency provisions while Parliament is not in session. They are not intended to be, and we as a self-respecting Legislature surely can never let them become,

what apparently they became on March 26, 2003: namely, the setting up of what looks like an election slush fund for this government.

Let me just cite what Professor Forsey observed in his testimony to Parliament some years ago: "It should be made impossible," he says, for any cabinet "to

drive a coach-and-four through the most fundamental right and power of the House of Commons, its ultimate control over the expenditure of public money."

Well, we have just seen, with this order in council, a coach-and-four, a Mack truck, being driven right through our fundamental responsibility to ensure that

taxpayers' money is spent under a set of conditions that are clearly understood, for purposes that are clearly set out in Parliament by a cabinet and approved by Parliament.

I ask you, as you look -- this is the spending plan for 36-plus billion dollars. This is it, more than half the budget; $36.3 billion is about 54% or 55% of

the spending plan that Ms Ecker has laid out in other places for the fiscal year that began a few weeks ago. Over 50% of the spending plan is now underway, not with the sanction of Parliament, not

with a budget, not with spending estimates, but rather with a secret cabinet order made seven weeks ago on the advice of Ms Ecker, concurred in by Bob Runciman -- I don't know how many of the

cabinet knew -- with this spending plan.

Let me tell my colleagues on both side of the aisle: this is unprecedented. I have checked, in the last 12 hours, and on the basis of my research, the order in

council that was signed by the Eves government on March 26, 2003, represents the largest appropriation made by special cabinet order in the history of Ontario, in the history of Canada, and as far

as I can tell, in the history of the Commonwealth: $36,350,000,000-odd dollars. It is unprecedented, and it ought to give this House and every self-respecting member in it real pause. But it gets

worse.

Special warrants -- we now call them treasury board orders -- are intended to bridge a gap when Parliament is not in session. It is May 13 today. We are almost

two weeks into the spring session. Parliament is now in session. Where, I ask my friends in the Eves government, is the motion for interim supply? I can't find it on the order paper; it does not

yet exist. I tell you, go and find, if you can, order in council 769/2003. Let me just say this to all my friends on both sides of the aisle: it's bad enough that this has been done; it's bad

enough that a special emergency provision has been prostituted in this way, but that honourable members of this Legislature should have to go high and low to find this document is even more

disgraceful. I challenge you to go and find it. I sent an assistant to where I would normally expect to find it, namely at the Cabinet Office. The last report I got, just a few minutes before I

stood up, was that orders in council up to 769/2003 were there and a number of orders after 769/2003 were there. Conspicuously, this is missing.

I note, for example, that while this was done the day before the so-called people's budget was presented in Markham, the Minister of Finance, who has spoken in

this House and outside on several occasions, has not hinted a word of it -- not a word of it. Not only has she not hinted a word of it, she has not done her duty as an honourable member

representing the crown to come to this place with an interim supply motion. Understand there can be at the end of the day no valid appropriation that you, we as honourable members, do not

approve.

Yesterday, my friend Bradley observed that this week's Maclean's magazine has 30 pages of glossy advertising. The Pembroke Observer, the Toronto Star, radio

and television are full of advertising about what government is doing. There has not been a word in this place, outside of this place or in any of this government advertising that an unbelievable,

unprecedented special warrant, decided at a secret cabinet meeting on March 26, 2003, has appropriated $36,350,000,000 of taxpayers' dollars for God knows what purposes. You certainly can't tell a

hell of a lot by reading this; and not a word in the advertising, not a word here, not a word in the debate.

My friends, I repeat, you are all hard-working, good people. This is taxpayers' money. We have a public duty to account for taxpayers' money.

Of course the Minister of Agriculture is right about the good works that you want to do. But there are rules to this game, and fundamental to our rules is that

cabinets must come to Parliament with their spending plan. That's what the budget is and that's why you're in trouble for what happened that day, on March 27, 2003. It was at best a faux budget, a

show budget. It's not a real budget because it's not a budget legally until the minister stands here in her place and moves the necessary motion: that this House approves in general the budgetary

policy of this government. From that motion begins a very critical aspect of our parliamentary liturgy, and in that liturgy the voting of supply is absolutely essential. This is no way to run a

railroad.

I'm going to tell you that if I were a taxpayer and I looked at this, it would be hard for me not to conclude that this was not a set-up for the election that

surely must have been contemplated back in mid-March, when this strategy was developed. I've been there and I understand the pressures that governments are under as they head into the election

cycle. But I repeat: by secret cabinet order, behind closed doors on March 26, on the advice of Ms Ecker and Mr Runciman, the Eves government, in an unbelievable and unprecedented way, appropriated

by virtue of a special warrant, now called a treasury order, $36,350,000,000, representing more than 50% of the spending for this year. That is unbelievable. That's something about which Parliament

has to be concerned.

I want to say as I resume my seat, my friends, that if we are prepared to tolerate this kind of gamesmanship, this kind of outrage to Parliament and our

accountability and responsibilities, what on earth are any of us doing here? And I repeat again: why would any bright, hard-working, self-respecting member of any political party work so hard for

35 days to come back here? This is our duty at its core and we are not doing our duty. Support my motion so this kind of activity can stop.

The Speaker: In the rotation, the independent member, la députée d'Ottawa-Vanier.

M me Claudette Boyer (Ottawa-Vanier): Merci, monsieur le Président, de me donner l'occasion de m'exprimer sur la recommandation

de --

Interjections.

The Speaker: I apologize. We'll start again. If we could just restart the clock; the member didn't have a fair chance.

M me Boyer: Encore une fois merci, monsieur le Président, de me donner l'occasion de m'exprimer sur la recommandation de mon

collègue Sean Conway qui stipule que c'est « le droit indéniable de l'Assemblée législative, rassemblée dans ce parlement, d'être les premiers

récipiendaires du budget de l'Ontario. »

J'aimerais vous féliciter de la façon de laquelle vous avez pris vos responsabilités face à l'indignation soulevée par mon

collègue Sean Conway au sujet de la lecture du budget le 27 mars dernier, lecture faite en dehors de cette Chambre.

Je tiens d'abord à féliciter le Président de cette assemblée d'avoir eu le courage de se prononcer sur ce sujet épineux.

To adjudicate a contentious item, an issue, requires courage and impartiality. It requires knowledge and independent thinking. It requires an ability to

consult and seek out information. I believe that you, Mr Speaker, have given this House an example of the role of the Speaker at its best. On behalf of all Ontarians, especially the constituents of

Ottawa-Vanier, I thank you.

Je désire aussi féliciter mon collègue Sean Conway, qui a soulevé le point en demandant au Président de se prononcer.

It is thanks to the Liberal member for Renfrew-Nipissing-Pembroke that the issue was placed before this House and that the Speaker was asked to make a

determination as to the appropriateness of the manner in which the budget was presented. I think, and I believe it is clear, from all that has been said and from the ruling of the Speaker, that

there indeed has been a contempt of this Parliament. The budget, from the beginning of our parliamentary process, has been presented first to its members assembled in the Legislative Assembly. We

are the elected ones. We are the ones responsible to the people. We have the duty and the responsibility to react on behalf of the taxpayers of this province. That right has thus far been

denied.

Que ce soit inconstitutionnel ou non, le fait demeure que le premier ministre a rompu avec une tradition qui date depuis le début du Parlement ontarien.

Un des principes fondamentaux de notre système parlementaire veut que les propositions des dépenses et de taxation publique soient présentées d'abord aux membres élus de la

province. À

titre de membre élu de ce Parlement, j'étais offusquée, même fâchée, de voir supprimer ma responsabilité première envers mes commettants et

mes commettantes et mon droit de questionner le budget en leur nom.

My constituency office has been swamped with letters, memos, telephone calls and e-mails objecting to the high-handed manner in which the budget was presented

to a chosen, restricted group of corporate associates and Progressive Conservative supporters. I have been asked repeatedly to intervene, to bring pressure to the House and to make sure that future

budget presentations be made in the appropriate manner that our democratic process requires and demands. I was so appalled that Premier Eves chose to present his budget outside the Legislature that

I even wrote to my local papers to decry the gesture. What an insult to the democratic process. What an abuse of power.

As the Speaker has so ably stated, it is the undisputed right of the Legislature to be first to hear the budget presentation. The Eves government deliberately

chose to circumvent the established process and has been found in contempt of Parliament. It would be only fair for Premier Eves to rise before this House and admit the error of his government. But

believe me, I'm not sure and I'm not willing to hold my breath waiting for that to happen.

Autant que je voudrais bien entendre M. Eves admettre son erreur afin que nous puissions avancer, clore ce débat et passer à d'autres questions,

je ne suis pas certaine d'entendre des excuses de ce parti.

I really believe that we had a healthy debate on this issue. Many of us from all sides of the House have had an opportunity to express our opinions. Some of us

have agreed with you; some have not. Some have been more expressive than others. Some of us even had the chance to congratulate others for being number one on the debate. I do believe that this

matter has been discussed long enough. It's time to vote on this motion and get back to the business before us.

The important thing for all of us, and for the government in particular, is to acknowledge the mistake and make sure it does not happen again. Let there be

steps taken so that all future budgets are presented as they should be, in the proper manner: respectful of tradition, respectful of all elected members and respectful of the parliamentary process

established in the province of Ontario.

Que ce soit une leçon et que jamais plus, ni les membres de cette Assemblée, ni les citoyennes et citoyens de cette province ne soient assujettis

à un tel outrage de la part de notre gouvernement.

Interjections.

The Speaker : Order, please. The government House leader has the floor.

Hon Chris Stockwell (Minister of the Environment, Government House Leader): With some help, I think I'll try and set the record for the

government with respect to special warrants. Again, I was very --

The Speaker: Order. All members were very quiet for the member for Renfrew, so I'd ask for the same co-operation for the government House

leader.

Minister?

Hon Mr Stockwell: Government House leader. I promise I won't heckle myself.

Special warrants have been around forever. It's a process that reeks of some kind of dial-up indignation. All governments pass special warrants. They all did.

The NDP I think sat for a very brief period of time in the last year of their mandate.

Interjection.

Hon Mr Stockwell: Three weeks, was it? They practically operated permanently on special warrants. Again, the word "secret" comes out. First,

let's get something clear: an order in council is posted across the street on the sixth floor, a public document --

Interjections.

The Speaker: Again, the member was very co-operative when listening to the member for Renfrew. I think it is only fair that he have

co-operation. He's trying to make some points. The member for Renfrew had an opportunity to do it, and in this place we listen to all members.

I know we all would like opportunities to shout out at the other side. But, to be fair, the government members did listen very quietly to the member for

Renfrew and I think the government House leader deserves that same co-operation.

It is very difficult, when you're talking about an issue like this, to have people yelling that close. I would ask all members to please give the co-operation

to the government House leader that he gave to the member for Renfrew.

Sorry again, Minister.

Hon Mr Stockwell: OICs are public documents. OICs are posted and all members, all of the public will get an OIC. They can see any OIC. OICs --

orders in council -- are public documents. So let's discount this secrecy thing. It's impossible to have secrecy regarding an order in council. So let's start with that.

The second thing we have to discuss is special warrants. All governments pass special warrants. I was in the process of explaining that during the last year of

the mandate of the NDP government they sat for a very brief period of time -- three weeks, I think. They operated almost exclusively on special warrants because they needed to have them in order to

continue the business of the government.

That's a fundamental understanding of special warrants: to continue to do the business of the government. It is in order to pay the employees.

Interjection.

Hon Mr Stockwell: I appreciate that. I'm trying to help you.

It's in order to run hospitals; it's in order to run schools and pay teachers. We all operated on special warrants at one time or another.

Now the question you ask yourself is, "OK, you get special warrants. How do you then go about qualifying special warrants? All the members of the House will

know that there are processes to qualifying special warrants -- interim supply, for example. You all know very well that last June in every sitting there was an interim supply motion filed and

debated, thereby giving you the authority to spend that money during those periods of time.

We had an interim supply debate last June. You can only have it when you sit. So you pass an interim supply practically every session that you sit -- every

session. Generally speaking, to the members opposite, it's done near the end of a sitting rather than the beginning -- generally. Lots of times House leaders try to negotiate consent for interim

supply. Very rarely do they get it -- I don't think we ever got it -- but sometimes they do. That's how you qualify your special warrants, through interim supply.

How does interim supply work with respect to special warrants? To my friend across the floor from Renfrew -- I know he knows this -- if you've sat on this

bench for any period of time in your life, you'd know that you have orders in council for special warrants.

Mr Richard Patten (Ottawa Centre): Thirty-six billion.

Hon Mr Stockwell: I say to the member opposite, you have no idea of the numbers and levels of special warrants that have been passed in the

past.

Mr Patten: Sixty per cent of the annual budget.

Hon Mr Stockwell: All kinds of them. Is it the largest in a whole number? Probably. As a percentage of the budget? I'm not sure; we're looking

into that. I don't know, because a percentage of a budget -- there were special warrants passed when I was in this place and we weren't in government that were fairly substantial. The reason we

didn't argue with them was because you debate special warrants through processes -- interim supply -- and then you must have a budget motion that's filed.

It's funny you guys should talk about that. The reason we're not debating the budget motion that was filed is because of the Speaker's ruling. It's on the

order paper. It's there to be debated. It's the first order of business. Why are we not doing this and are listening to the dial-up indignation is because we are caught in this situation of

debating Mr Conway's motion. That's on the order paper.

So we have three things I've tried to get across at this time. First, everybody passes special warrants; everybody, every government, has passed special

warrants, practically operated on special warrants for a whole year. Secondly, you get interim supply to debate those special warrants that are passed as orders in council. Thirdly, orders in

council aren't secret; they're posted; anyone can get them. Fourthly, you've got to file the budget motion, which is filed and which will be debated. We are debating the budget motion as soon as

humanly possible. Why? Because when you have a throne speech, you have to finish debating the throne speech before you can go to any other government business. The next order of business is the

budget debate, as normal.

Ms Marilyn Churley (Toronto-Danforth): No kidding. We didn't know that. Thank you.

Hon Mr Stockwell: You're more than welcome.

That's not all. This is how the process works.

Interjection.

Hon Mr Stockwell: OK, what happens next, I say to the member. What's the next order of business after that?

Interjection.

Hon Mr Stockwell: I thought so. The next order of business -- and I'm sure you'll know this after I tell you -- is that estimates must be

tabled. The estimates are tabled and you debate the estimates. They can be debated in committee and get reported to the House. Estimates are debated. That is also a process to deal with special

warrants, which you all passed and in which you all followed exactly the same process.

It is truly dial-up indignation. It is truly a speech, I will say, that reeks of newness, reeks of a process that was just brought to this member's attention.

But the reality is this member knows exactly how special warrants work and knows exactly how governments are held to account for special warrants. There are many ways to be held to account. I say

to members opposite, before you convince yourselves this is some kind of secret, nefarious process --

Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines): It is.

Hon Mr Stockwell: I'm sure the member for St Catharines thinks so; he still finds Communists under rocks.

But before you think this is some kind of nefarious, secret process, check your standing orders, check the Legislative Assembly Act, check all those bills we

passed and all the standing orders we work under that hold the government to account on how they can and cannot spend money.

Interjection: This one wasn't available.

Hon Mr Stockwell: I hear the member saying, "This one wasn't available." I say to the member opposite, if you didn't think it was available,

it's only because you didn't know how to get it. All you have to do is go get the OIC that's passed.

Interjection.

Mr Dwight Duncan (Windsor-St Clair): It wasn't there.

Hon Mr Stockwell: You said that on the last OIC when I was in this place that you said was secret. I walked across the street, went up to the

fourth floor and it was posted, right there -- a secret document posted on the bulletin board for everyone to read, including the fire evacuation plan and who was in charge on that floor and all

the OICs you could want; and they said it was a secret.

Interjections.

Hon Mr Stockwell: They said it was a secret. Now they're telling me special warrants and orders in council are secrets, even though you have

to do interim supply, budget motions, debate of the estimates, go through all those processes to deal with interim supply, of which we have the budget motion filed. We will have interim supply

debated this session, and we had the proper processes, through the OICs, in place. And all of you, in your previous incarnations, if there were incarnations during government times --

Mr Patten: It's not available.

Hon Mr Stockwell: I say to members such as Patten -- and Ramsay would have been there, Kwinter would have been there, Curling; I know Ruprecht

was there.

Interjection: Cleary.

Hon Mr Stockwell: Cleary, you were there. You all passed special warrants. You all did exactly the same thing.

Interjections.

Hon Mr Stockwell: Oh, yes. You did. You all did OICs. You all posted the OICs. You all had interim supply debates. You all had budget motions

filed. You all had estimates tabled. You all went to committee and debated those estimates. You all did this in government. And suddenly, today, you didn't know any of this stuff. Suddenly it's a

big secret, special warrants. Suddenly, "I don't know anything about how this place works. I just found out that the government passes special warrants and we have interim supply debates and we

have estimates committees. Wow. I found late-breaking news: the government passes special warrants."

Mr Bradley: A brown envelope.

Hon Mr Stockwell: You've got brown envelopes, I say to the member for St Catharines. You could have gone to your library and got them. That's

all you had to do.

Mr Bradley: We looked.

Hon Mr Stockwell: You didn't look. Don't tell me you went to the library and looked, member for St Catharines. I don't believe that for a

second. You couldn't even tell me where it is, let alone that you went there and looked. So, pardon me.

Mr Duncan: It's just a big joke.

Hon Mr Stockwell: Well, to some degree it is a big joke. I really do find this somewhat offensive. It is a big joke.

Interjection: Why is it a big joke?

Hon Mr Stockwell: Why? Because this is how we've done business for decades. This is how we've done --

Interjection.

Hon Mr Stockwell: The standing committee on the Legislative Assembly, yes; you should know this. Estimates for the budget -- Chair. Oh, here

are the guys who would even talk about how this would work.

Interjection.

Hon Mr Stockwell: Thank you so much, Newman.

These are the guys who would talk about how this would work. They would actually be on the estimates committee, analyzing, going through -- guess what? --

special warrants. We've got the Chair. Wasn't this surprising? Do you know what? The Chair is Gerard Kennedy, a Liberal. Alvin Curling is a member. Steve Peters is on there.

So as long as you've been here, you've gone to the estimates committee -- for, in some instances, 10 years, and in Mr Curling's case probably up to 17 or 18

years. You've gone to estimates committee and you've been debating special warrants for 18 years.

Mr David Ramsay (Timiskaming-Cochrane): Because we knew about them. This was secret.

Hon Mr Stockwell: How was it secret? My God. Eighteen years you've been coming to this place, 18 years you've been talking about special

warrants at committees, and today you rise up and you're surprised that we passed a special warrant.

Mr John Gerretsen (Kingston and the Islands): No, it's the amount.

Hon Mr Stockwell: Oh, hold it. First it's a secret. Now I've got a new angle from the member for Kingston. First it's a secret, then they

decide, "OK, that's not working, because it can't be a secret. We sit on committees. We sit in the House. We debate interim supply. We do estimates. We have the budget motions filed. We do all the

supply bills. So it's not a secret. Oh, it's a lot." Well, it's a lot.

The argument can be put -- I would bet money that when the NDP were in office for that year they operated almost exclusively on special warrants -- almost

exclusively. I bet you almost all of their spending was special warrants because they didn't sit in the House to get the budget passed or the estimates approved.

Furthermore, I will guarantee you that Mr Nixon, who was the finance minister; Mr Bradley, the Minister of the Environment; Mr Conway, House leader and

Minister of Education; guarantee -- Ramsay was in there for a short time. He used to be with you guys. Then he got over there, and then he went into cabinet. You know this. You passed orders in

council for special warrants. You did.

Mr Gerretsen: That's not the issue.

Hon Mr Stockwell: Apparently, every time we make a point that says -- this is dial-up indignation, because you said it was a secret. We all

know it couldn't be a secret. Then you say it's the amount. Then I talk about the amount, and you say, "That's not the issue." What's the issue? The issue is, if the entire thrust, if this is

Interjection.

Hon Mr Stockwell: The point is, that's not true. Don't you get it, member for Kingston and the Islands? You could pass every penny through a

special warrant if you like. Every last nickel can be passed through a special warrant. That matters not. You still must file all the appropriate motions and all the appropriate bills. You must

pass interim supply. You must debate estimates. You must do all of those things, even if every nickel, every last nickel, the government spent is spent through a special warrant. You get out of

nothing. There isn't one process, one responsibility, one thing that you can avoid by passing a special warrant. Nothing. You still have to come to the House to debate it. You still have to go to

committee. You still have to get your interim supply. You still have to file a budget motion. You still have to debate it in this House. This is synthetic indignation.

Interjection: Again.

Hon Mr Stockwell: Again. This is synthetic indignation. This is you people discovering North America in 1975. That's what this is. It is.

Honestly, it is. You people are saying that you've made some amazing discovery. You've told the world that you've split the atom. Guys, it was split before.

I don't mind discussing this motion with respect to the motion on Conway's thing; I don't mind that. But standing in your place today and talking about special

warrants as some kind of amazing new discovery, that this government somehow subverted the process -- everybody has passed special warrants. This is the process. This is what you do. We didn't do a

darn thing differently. It wasn't a secret; it's posted. Every OIC can be found. Let's get back to talking about the motion that Mr Conway filed. Let's get away from this synthetic, dial-up

indignation because you believe you've just discovered North America.

Mr George Smitherman (Toronto Centre-Rosedale): I'm pleased to join the debate on this motion. I just want to give a warm welcome to the

students from Rosedale Heights School of the Arts and especially to their teacher, Frank Rioux, who used to spend more time around this place.

If ever anyone needed an example of dial-up indignation, they just got a 17-minute tape of it from the government House leader, frothing at the mouth trying to

indicate something that, in point of fact, he was wrong about. He's part of a government that has not yet come to terms with the facts that are before them. The fact is that the $36-billion

warrant, with one page of backup, stands out as just one further piece of evidence about the extent to which that government was involved in a manipulation designed to circumvent the legislative

process. That is the essence of why we're involved today in this debate.

I want to start by saying that this place means something to me. When I was a kid, I sat in that gallery when the David Peterson government was here. I thought

to myself that this is a place that someday I wanted to be. Later on in the life of that government, I had the honour of sitting in those chairs just behind the Speaker's dais, where I served as a

note-passer to David Peterson and cabinet ministers during question period.

When I came to this place after my election in June 1999, I felt a certain sense of delight at the prospect that I would have the opportunity, on behalf of

115,000 or 120,000 constituents in the great riding of Toronto Centre-Rosedale, to be their voice, to be their representative, to bring their issues to the Legislature. But instead what we've been

faced with by a government that I think no longer has the requisite amount of respect for their own individual roles as MPPs and for their role collectively as a government has been the really

disheartening reality that a budget, one of the most significant, if not the most significant, things that occur in this place, would be taken from here and turned -- the government House leader

used the word "synthetic." If there was a better word to describe the environment the government chose to move that budget speech to, it was to a synthetic environment, an environment that was

contrived and an environment that had but one purpose, and that was to give the government an opportunity to manipulate the process in a way that this place no longer seemed to serve well enough

for them. If we can make decisions that are that expedient, that hundreds of years of parliamentary tradition can be so easily overthrown for the sake of the need to get a good media hit, then I

think that's a sad statement about the extent to which members in this place value their own role and their own commitment and their own responsibilities to their constituents.

I have a bit of a motto. In Toronto Centre-Rosedale, we like to say that we practise politics with passion. We do that in part because sometimes it excuses the

wild excesses of our rhetoric, but mostly because we like to demonstrate to our constituents -- and in my riding I'm talking about people who have come from every corner of the earth, who reflect

every face that is on the face of the world, and in many of those cases we take seriously the responsibility to teach them about democracy. In my election training process, we're training people in

six languages. But we're not just training them to go and knock on doors; we're giving them some education, some information about our democracy.

Interjection.

Mr Smitherman: What do we have to show them from this spring in the Ontario Legislature? We have a government loaded with members just like

that one, who are quite content to see their own power, their own role and their own voice usurped and diminished by the powers that be. Regrettably, in that government the powers that be no longer

reside in those benches, save but one or two. They reside in the polling and communications firms that dot the landscape of downtown Toronto. This is no longer a government. It's a polling

operation with a communications arm, and these are some of their agents. They stand in their places and read the scripts that have been produced for them in all kinds of faraway places.

But today, and in the course of this debate, we have an opportunity, and I'd encourage members to seize upon it. It is from the wise words of Sean Conway. We

can learn a lesson that can help us all -- not just them and not just us but all of us -- to recapture before it's too late some sense about the important role this place can play and the important

role that we as MPPs within it can play.

I'm offering myself for re-election in my riding. I'm 39 years old. These are the best years of my life in terms of my energy and my experience, and I have

very little interest in spending that kind of time, with the commitment we all make to public life, working in an operation where my voice can be so easily ripped from me, where my responsibility

to speak on behalf of the 115,000 or 120,000 constituents in Toronto Centre-Rosedale can be so easily taken from me, that the government can choose to move a time-honoured and essential element of

our role and put that in a TV studio somewhere.

Sean Conway's legacy, despite the fact that some people don't like to hear the words, will be to show us a different way, a different route, a different

opportunity and to remind us before it is too late that this place is losing its relevance. And there can be no doubt but that that is the case.

This is not a warning that he offers only as he makes maybe his last stand as a parliamentarian. This is something that through the course of his time in

office and through the course of the time that I've had the honour of sharing a table with him in a caucus room he has reminded us of: what this place was like in 1975, when he first arrived here;

and of the challenges that have occurred over time, where one after the other down a slippery slope this place has been changed by successive governments, and following too often on the heels of

governments operating in other parliamentary jurisdictions. But if we do not stand and fight that fight, then we are really bringing into serious question why we want to be here.

I want to be here because I can play a role in connecting the constituents in my riding to what happens in their government. The member from Scarborough East

has that delightful smirk on his face. I don't know what his role is. But I know that I work to animate communities, I work to educate communities and to be involved with them and to fight for

them. That member, we don't know why he's here.

I want to talk about a commitment of the political party that is led by my leader, Dalton McGuinty, to re-establish our commitment to democracy. If 50% voter

turnout is anything, it's the share price of politics, and it is the public's reflection on the value of the work we do and the relevance of the work we have. Our party stands and says that 50% is

not good enough for those of us who aspire to political office, for those of us who have passion for government and for assisting people, for those of us who believe in democracy. Why would we

stand still in face of a number like 50%, which says that only every second person thinks it's important to vote in a provincial election when issues like health care, education, the environment,

how our kids live and grow and how disabled people live in our society -- if only 50% of people are voting -- are the issues that are at stake? What is that a sign of, and what are we doing about

it? From the government we got the answer: "We're doing all that we can to deliver a fatal death blow to the quality of our democracy in this province."

As I stand on this motion, I want to say that the clarion call goes out from Sean Conway and that we, as parliamentarians, have a responsibility to listen to

that message and to ensure that it does not fall by the wayside.

I want to spend just a little bit of time talking about some of the commitments the political party that I'm part of makes toward policies for good

government.

Interjection.

Mr Smitherman: I hear the moans and groans from the member from Timmins.

Interjection.

Mr Smitherman: Perhaps it was the member from Beaches-East York, then.

I've had a lot of respect for the work that other people have done in this place, talking about proportional representation and doing what we can to make sure

all of the voices that are out there are heard. My riding is one of those ridings that provide an awfully good glimpse of the fact that unanimity does not often come, a riding so diverse by any

measure -- by sexual orientation, by ethnicity, by income level, by the nature of where one lives. My riding is a diverse place. We want to talk about re-establishing a government that works for

you.

One of the things I've had an awful lot of opportunity, thanks to this government, to talk about is fixed-date elections. When you look at the issue around

that warrant -- $36 billion, with one page of backup -- that is part of a manipulation which is all around, trying to make sure the government gets the most advantage out of its current right to

set election dates.

I want to say that the government has helped us immeasurably in making our case to the people of Ontario about taking the date of election calls out of the

hands of government. I think that in this coming election, watching how this government has operated around election calls will make that policy a very, very successful one for our party and, more

importantly, a successful one for the quality of our democracy.

We want to introduce technologies that will enable more people to vote. We want to look at increasing voter turnout by 10%.

The government opposite is a money-raising machine; at least they used to be.

Mr Gregory S. Sorbara (Vaughan-King-Aurora): Not any more.

Mr Smitherman: They used to be. We saw the wheelbarrows being wheeled up to the various leadership contestants hardly more than a year ago.

The money in Ontario politics is something which has to be brought back under control. Loopholes so big that you could drive through the very same Brink's trucks that were rolling up the dough to

Ernie Eves's campaign have no place in Ontario politics, and we need to bring some order to that.

With respect to partisan government advertising, today in Maclean's magazine we have a government that buys 30 pages of advertising. The backs of letter

carriers are being broken as this orgy of government spending --

Hon Dianne Cunningham (Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities, minister responsible for women's issues): Oh, don't overdo it.

Mr Smitherman: You carry 1,200 glossy pieces from corner to corner. You haven't been out on the streets long enough to know that you're

breaking the backs of letter carriers with the sheer weight and volume of the partisan government advertising you're making the taxpayers pay for, and it's unconscionable.

Interjection.

Mr Smitherman: There's no picture of the Prime Minister in there.

It's unconscionable, Madam Minister, that you sit there in your place and heckle, because you see the cash-deprived colleges and universities which could

benefit from the more than a quarter of a billion dollars you've spent on this stuff.

We want to have voting reform that re-encourages full public debate. We want to take a very hard look at whether it's time for the overhaul of our voting

process in this province, to encourage more people to vote and to participate in this election. We think that encouraging a debate among people is a good thing and that, on the quality of our

voting system, it's our responsibility to give people an opportunity through referendum to make some comment about that.

We think that in a healthy parliamentary environment, members of provincial parties and government parties should have the opportunity to offer more criticism

of their own government's policies. Last Thursday, here in this House, we got yet another example of the extent to which the mentality exists around here that disagreement on any point is a sign

not of strength but of weakness. Some members of our party divided on an item in private members' hour last week. There were two different points of view about a bill, and this was met with some

Interjection.

Mr Smitherman: You're so rarely talkative. It's so nice to have you today.

On those sorts of issues, we should be encouraging MPPs to bring forward their views and the views of their constituents and to divide. We think that division

or differences of opinion are a sign of strength, not of weakness.

We want to bring in legislation which says that cabinet ministers have a responsibility to be here during question period. In the standing orders, it's not

appropriate to raise the attendance of any member, but Mike Harris is no longer here. When I first sat in that seat and came to this place -- I remember when I worked for David Peterson. When I

worked for David Peterson, on those very rare days that he missed question period -- because his attendance rate was over 80%, and I've got the stats for you -- he'd phone in and see what

happened.

Then I came and took a look at the stats and saw that we had a Premier in this province who came to work about every third day. That was a very ample

demonstration of his commitment to accountable government in Ontario. He would not be here and be held accountable, but we held him accountable in the end and he ran. And when we brought forward

legislation that would have made it incumbent upon government members and ministers to hit a certain target or have their pay docked, they voted against it because accountability is good for

everybody else but it's not so good for them. They've got their own judges and juries, and apparently those are just pollsters.

We think that public hearings on significant government legislation should not be something to be wrangled out by the opposition, wrangled out of government by

some big concession. Public hearings are opportunities for MPPs to get out there and hear directly from people about legislation that is before the House. We think that government needs to be more

transparent.

Earlier, we listened to a 20-minute speech by the government House Leader that looked a little bit to me like a dog chasing its tail. He worked very, very hard

to say that of course these orders in council are not secret. They're pinned up on the wall over across the way on the fourth floor in the Whitney Block. The point of fact is, on the issue of the

$36-billion warrant raised by my friend the member from Pembroke, that order in council was not publicly available. We need a government that, when it's spending $36 billion of taxpayers' money, is

not afraid to be clear about that.

So as my opportunity to participate in this debate winds down, let me say that as someone who first ran for office in 1999 and who will be present again when

the government has the courage to go to polls, I want to be part of a government, and I believe that I will be, that makes a commitment to restoring the quality of our democracy here in the

province of Ontario. We send a signal to the people of Ontario that we take ourselves seriously: that we will not stand idly by as some pollster-contrived idea goes out of control. Instead, we will

find our voice and we will rise up and say that this place is relevant and that for it to be relevant always, we must be dedicated to the task of making it so. Sean Conway, the retiring member from

Pembroke, has shown us the way. I encourage government members who believe in their own roles and responsibility to vote in favour of the motion, as I will.

Ms Shelley Martel (Nickel Belt): As I begin my remarks this afternoon, I want to go first to the comments that were made by the government

House Leader. I guess in the beginning, I would say that maybe some others appreciated the civics lesson about how the place operates. I've been here 15 years and I don't think I really needed much

of a lesson in civics today. But I guess, Speaker, if I were in the position of the government House Leader, I would want to be avoiding the contempt that you have said the government has dealt

with too. I would be doing everything I can to talk about everything but the fact that you found this government in contempt with respect to its off-site presentation of the budget in the

infomercial, the dog-and-pony show that went on at Magna Corp.

Secondly, if I was in his shoes I would probably want to avoid what is the more important issue that arises from the warrants themselves. The most important

issue for me that arises from the warrants is one that the government members have tried to hide behind in dismissing the contempt. That is to say, "The Premier said that the House was coming back

and the budget was going to be tabled."

The excessive amounts in the warrants make it really clear that the Premier had no intention of bringing this House back. The Premier had no intention of

having a throne speech; the Premier had no intention of bringing us back to table a budget; the Premier had every intention, after the dog-and-pony show up at Magna, to call the election.

The Premier has tried to play the media and the public and his backbenchers and you, Speaker, and the rest of us as fools by trying to tell us otherwise. March

26: Mr Runciman and Madam Ecker signed a warrant in the amount of $73 million to fund the operations of the Provincial Auditor and the Legislative Assembly and the office of the Chief Electoral

Officer. That amount is $73 million. Now, I know, because I sit on the Provincial Auditor's committee, that a big chunk of that was not going to the operating budget for the Provincial Auditor, and

I suspect a big chunk of that was not going to the Ombudsman or to the Legislative Assembly. The majority of that $73 million was going to the Chief Electoral Officer because that's where we were

going after the dog-and-pony show up at Magna.

It's clear: $36 billion, one page, not very clearly outlined what that expenditure was going to be for in terms of very precise programs. It's clear. The

government was setting up a slush fund. The government was going after the dog-and-pony show. The government had absolutely no intention of recalling this assembly or of presenting a budget in this

place. Frankly, that's what I think the importance of the special warrants really demonstrates to us: that the Premier was trying to play everybody for a fool, that the Premier said one thing to

the media, to his backbenchers, to you, Speaker, and to the public, but behind the scenes, to a couple of his cabinet colleagues, he was doing and setting up something very different. His members

signed warrants for huge amounts of money that were directly attributable to an election that was going to be called. He told us one thing publicly and was doing something different with his

cabinet colleagues. That's not terribly honest, in my opinion. That demonstrates to me the clear contempt that the Premier has -- not just with respect to having the budget off-site, up at Magna --

but the contempt that he displayed for Ontarians when he told them, on the one hand, "Don't worry, the Legislature will be recalled," and on the other was giving clear direction to the Treasurer of

this province and a second cabinet minister to sign warrants that clearly were leading us to an election -- not a month or two down the road, but right after the dog-and-pony show up at Magna.

I think that's what people should be so incensed about with respect to the warrants. That's what they should really be concerned about: that the Premier of the

province could so glibly and flippantly say one thing to the public and to his backbenchers and to members of this assembly and to the media, and so clearly be doing something so completely

different behind the scenes. He had no intention of bringing this House back in order to table the budget here, none at all. That's clear with respect to the timing of those warrants and the

amounts of those warrants as well. I think the Premier should be apologizing to the public today for being not so very honest about what his intentions really were.

So for all of those government members who've been trying to use the argument in this place and outside that it wasn't really contempt because the Premier said

very publicly, and he did, that the budget was going to be tabled: well, don't use that argument any more, friends, because it's clear from the existence of the special warrants and the amounts

that the Premier wasn't telling his backbenchers the truth either when he was dealing with this very matter. I think that's regrettable.

Speaker, I'm sorry. I should not have said that. I apologize. I withdraw.

Let me go back to reading on page 10 of your response to the motions themselves. This is what you said:

"When the government or any member claims that a budget presentation is needed outside the House well before it happens inside the House in order to

communicate directly with the people or because of a perceived flaw in the parliamentary institution, there is a danger that the representative role of each and every member of this House is

undermined, that respect for the institution is diminished, and that Parliament is rendered irrelevant. Parliamentary democracy is not vindicated by the government conducting a generally one-sided

public relations event on the budget, well in advance of members having an opportunity to hold the government to account for the budget in this chamber."

That is exactly what the government was up to. The worst part of it is that it was something that was so premeditated. It was something the government was so

interested in doing. It was something the government was clearly intent on having happen, despite the very public criticism from the get-go, from the first day the Premier announced his intention

not to recall the House and to have the budget outside this place. There have been a number of references to editorials that were very negative from newspapers that are generally very supportive of

this Conservative government. Even they thought something was wrong.

I know that I got calls and e-mails, and I know that Conservative members got calls too, despite what Mr Wettlaufer said in this House yesterday. I remember an

article that was published in the newspaper and Mr Miller, who is here today, talking about how many people were coming and complaining in his office about the government's intention to hold the

budget off-site and not have it when the Legislature was in session. But the government clearly, even after hearing that criticism from some of the very papers that are generally very supportive of

this government, just continued down the same path.

The Minister of Finance, in a press release on March 12, stated: "The Eves government will change the way budgets are presented in Ontario."

Well, they surely did that.

"Janet Ecker, the Minister of Finance, underscored the point when she acknowledged that, while past finance ministers have gone outside the chamber to present

budgets due to a parliamentary filibuster or leak," and I quote Mrs Ecker, "`What is ... important is that this, the actual initial communication of this to the public will occur outside the

Legislature. That has occurred in some circumstances before,'" but "`not in this kind of circumstance....'"

The government was way down the road in thinking this was okay and not understanding the problem, and frankly not caring about years and years of parliamentary

tradition just being swept right under carpet -- thrown out the door -- because they were more interested in a public relations exercise than they were in bringing the budget here.

The government had time. When the government initially talked about its intentions, when the Premier talked about the infomercial and what was going to be

done, the government still had enough time to change its mind in the face of very adverse public reaction. Did the government do that? Oh no. This government got its back against the wall even

more, decided it knew everything and anything there was to know about this matter, couldn't care about parliamentary tradition. It was just onward and upward and forward from there. This was the

way it was going to be, and this was how it was going to be done -- who cared about parliamentary tradition, and who cared about the criticisms?

From the get-go on this issue, the government, the cabinet, the Premier showed nothing but contempt for the rest of us, who are duly elected and have a role to

play in a parliamentary democracy -- a role, I would argue, that most of us take very seriously. The government showed nothing but contempt and disdain for the public, who have a right to know

their elected members will be here on the day the budget is presented and will be in their places and able to listen to it and make comments about it. The government showed contempt and disdain for

people who would normally come to this place on the day of the budget and be part of the process -- for the government or against the government, but at least would be part of the process -- by

having an invite-only dog-and-pony show up at Magna. From the very beginning, when this plan was hatched -- God knows who hatched it, and God knows who was involved in it -- from the very moment

that the powers that be in the Premier's office decided to go down this road, they showed nothing but contempt and disdain for the public, for MPPs, for the media and for decades of parliamentary

tradition with their decision to go off-site.

Speaker, we have had two motions put before us to deal with your ruling that the government is in contempt. The first was put forward by Mr Conway and says:

"That this House declares that it is the undisputed right of the Legislative Assembly, in Parliament assembled, to be the first recipient of the budget of Ontario."

My colleague from Timmins-James Bay, Mr Bisson, has moved and amendment to Mr Conway's original motion. That amendment reads: "and not to present the budget in

this way constitutes a clear contempt of the House."

I listened with interest to some of the government members' reactions to this as they joined in the debate yesterday. I listened quite carefully to Mr Clark,

who made the argument that this amendment should be seen as an expression of non-confidence in the government and that was the way the opposition was going to portray it. So it was going to be

difficult, if not impossible, for government members to support the motion, because the opposition would stand up and say, "This is a vote of non-confidence and you've just voted as not being

confident in your own government." He was worried about what he was going to do because that's the way he saw it.

First of all I don't believe that this motion has anything to do with a non-confidence motion. But even if I did, my response to the honourable member is:

that's your problem, isn't it? It was you and your government that took yourselves down the road to expressing such disdain for parliamentary tradition in deciding to hold the budget outside of the

Legislature. That's not my decision; that's not my problem. You were told by any number of people, your own supporters, "Don't go down this road." You had every opportunity, ample opportunity, and

lots of time to change your minds, but the more the criticism of the government grew, the more the government got its back up against the wall, determined to hold the dog-and-pony show off-site.

Then they went to Magna, to boot, to make it even worse.

I say to Mr Clark, even if I thought it was a motion of non-confidence, you'll get no sympathy from me for your dilemma. You're not getting any pity from me

about the situation you're in. You guys made a conscious decision to go down this road and it has been contemptuous of the rest of us, the media and the public and you've got to bear the

responsibility for that.

I don't even believe the argument that Mr Clark made. I don't believe for one moment that the motion we're debating should or can be seen as a motion of

non-confidence in the government. Was what the government did stupid? Yes, it certainly was. Did it show contempt? Yes, it certainly did, and the Speaker has proven that. But is it a non-confidence

motion in the government? No, it is not. Issues of non-confidence generally involve the budget itself, the fiscal policy and the monetary details and we are not dealing with that here. We're

dealing with where it was held, not the contents of it.

Second, you would have a non-confidence motion with respect to the throne speech. We're not dealing with that issue here at all. That's not the context within

which we're having this debate.

Third, if we were dealing with a money bill, and the government lost a vote on a money bill, that would be a vote of non-confidence. But we're not dealing with

that at this time either. We're not dealing with any details of the budget. We haven't yet dealt with the bills that have come from the budget. So that's not an argument either.

The fourth scenario in which you would have what might be a bill or motion of non-confidence would be where the government itself deemed a bill or motion to be

one of non-confidence, as the Liberals did in Ottawa several weeks ago with respect to trying to get more money from the gun registry. But we're not dealing with that here either.

I completely dismiss the argument that was used yesterday by Mr Clark that he is somehow in an awkward position of how he has to vote because this motion

should clearly be seen as one of non-confidence. It is not. It certainly makes it very clear that the government was wrong and that the government should not be so contemptuous as to try to hold a

budget off-site. But it is not a motion of non-confidence; it is a motion that this government should be voting for.

I also heard a member yesterday try to use as part of her argument -- this was the Minister of Community, Family and Childrens' Services -- that, "In my

judgment, I had to think about whether we did the right or wrong thing. Did we do the right or the correct thing in having the budget off-site?" Speaker, you already ruled on that issue. That

argument is over. All she was trying to do yesterday, and so was one of her colleagues, was essentially to challenge your ruling about that. You have made the decision that contempt was shown. It's

not for the government members now to question publicly or question in this House whether or not they made the right decision. You have said very clearly in your ruling that they made the wrong

decision. They should be dealing with the fact that they made the wrong decision instead of standing in their place yesterday coming very, very close to challenging your ruling, which is what

happened in here yesterday.

I say to the government members, you folks should do yourselves a favour. You should get up and admit that you were wrong, that you made a mistake, that it was

a dumb idea to thumb your nose at decades of parliamentary tradition and to make a conscious decision to hold the budget somewhere else. It was a dumb decision. I don't know whose idea it was and I

don't really care, but the fact of the matter is that public reaction to it has clearly shown how dumb it was.

Speaker, more importantly, your ruling in this chamber has shown that the government held us in contempt by what they did. I think the government could have

gotten out of this mess so quickly last Thursday, if they had wanted to, if someone from that side had merely stood up and said, "Yes, we made a mistake. Yes, we are interested in bringing forward

and supporting a motion that would say, `From now on the budget will be presented in this assembly.'" Do you know how quickly the government could have gotten out of the mess it's now in if someone

over there had been smart enough just to come to this place and do that? But the fact that we are still here three days later -- we have a government House leader who is more interested in giving

us a civics lesson on how this place operates than dealing with the fact that the government had no intention of coming back here, and that's clear by the warrants that were signed just days before

the dog-and-pony show at Magna.

You know the government --

Interjection.

Ms Martel: Here we go again -- is not interested. I don't think the government really is sorry. I don't think the government believes that

they have shown contempt. I think the Minister of Community, Family and Children's Services was right yesterday when she said, "Well, you know, in my judgment, did we do the right or wrong thing?"

Never mind what the Speaker has ruled. "What did we do, the right or wrong thing?" You did the wrong thing, folks. Do yourselves a favour and get out of it. Decide today that you're going to

support a motion that very clearly says that from now on in the province of Ontario no government is going to show disdain or contempt by having the budget outside of the Ontario Legislature; from

now on the Ontario Legislature is going to be the first recipient of the budget of the province of Ontario, and it's going to happen here in this chamber, where all MPPs can be present and where

the public can participate; that's what's going to happen from now on. That's what your government should be in here supporting. Show clearly that you don't hold the Speaker in contempt or the rest

of us in ongoing contempt because you refuse to do that.

This is not a motion of non-confidence. Don't try to portray it like this. Admit you made a mistake and get on with it. Support the motion today, support the

amendment by my colleague Mr Bisson and say from now on you won't show such contempt and disdain for the public and the province.

Hon David Turnbull (Associate Minister of Enterprise, Opportunity and Innovation): I am very pleased to rise today to speak on this motion by

Mr Conway. By way of background, let me first of all review your ruling. In your ruling, you found no case established of privilege being offended in this Legislature. Additionally, you found that

no House rules were broken and no practices were offended, because in fact the budget had been presented outside of this House on more than one occasion. I'll speak a little bit more to that later.

It was done both by the Liberals and the NDP. In your ruling, you said that any discussion of constitutional law was best left to the courts, and that of course is appropriate. I note you offered

no opinion that would suggest that this government did anything wrong with regard to privilege. You did not find that the government was in contempt.

Based upon the arguments that were presented, you said last week that a prima facie case was established. I looked up in Webster's dictionary the definition to

make sure that I understood it correctly, and indeed that was my understanding. It says that "prima facie" means "as it seems at first sight." Of course, you ruled that it would be up to this House

to decide, and then you moved to allow Mr Conway to present a motion to the House for discussion, debate and ultimately a vote. It is clear that that is what we're doing now.

Let me speak to the fact that budgets have been presented outside of this House before. We know that in 1988 Liberal Treasurer Robert Nixon read one outside of

this assembly and it was not ruled a contemptuous act. Then our friends in the NDP -- and of course both you and I, Mr Speaker, were sitting in this House when this happened. Remember the social

contract? That, of course, was a budget statement, and that was read outside of this House. I note, as I look back over history, there have been several budgets that the NDP brought down and indeed

some that the Liberals brought down where there was ultimately no vote on the budget. I would suggest if there was anything which was out of order, surely not having a vote on that would seem to be

more serious.

Turning to what we did in presenting the budget in a facility outside of this House, let me say that in no way were we trying to truncate the process but

rather to expand it, and in fact in this respect we had a very broad-ranging pre-budget consultation which involved several thousands of people across this great province. Indeed, during those

consultations I consulted with my constituents in the great riding of Don Valley West, and those thoughts were submitted to the finance minister for her consideration in preparing the budget.

On the day of the budget, the budget papers were presented and tabled with the Clerk of the assembly. There was a budget lock-up for the media and for

parliamentarians of all parties in the normal way. Of course, opposition members were all invited to the reading of the speech by the finance minister. As is tradition, on the day that the budget

is read, only the finance minister presents a speech and then there is an adjournment. You do not in those ways have the opposition speaking to it, other than to the press. Of course, the

opposition spoke to it to the press in the normal way on the day that the budget was presented.

This government has undertaken to table budgets in a timely fashion before the end of the fiscal year, and indeed this is what we did. This is the first time,

if I remember correctly, that this has been done since the 1970s, which allows our transfer partners to have some level of certainty in preparing their own fiscal arrangements for that year.

There will of course be budget bills presented in this House, and they will be debated. They will be debated as soon as we get out of this debate. The first

order of business obviously was the throne speech, and then we will move on to budget debate. There will be a full debate, and ultimately our government will bring it to a vote, something which the

NDP on several occasions didn't bother to do.

Let us turn to some of the things that were in the budget and speak about that in a little bit more detail. But first I just want to parenthetically mention

that I find that the H word that we are not allowed to use in this House comes to mind when I hear the protestations of the Liberals and the NDP, given the fact that budgets have been presented by

both the Liberals and the NDP outside of this House. One has to wonder about the level of self-indignation that is being brought on.

Let's look at the details of this budget, which was a very good budget for Ontario. It's a budget which will strengthen this province's economy. We know that

in the years since we formed the government, we have had over one million net new jobs in this province, and indeed growth in this province today is the best of all of the G7 nations; it is better

than Canada itself. Canada is leading the G7 nations, but Ontario's economy is in fact better than all the rest of Canada. Indeed, the economists suggest that next year we will once again lead the

G7 nations. This is not by accident; it's because we have worked away at making this province more successful by having lower taxes and less red tape, which encourages businesses to invest in this

province. Only through that investment do we get the jobs which were sadly lacking as a result of the actions of the two previous governments. You will recall, of course, that we had over a million

people on welfare in this province when we formed the government. Today we have an economy which is doing well. We have done this by making hard decisions, but they are principled decisions which

we have taken to the people, and they have endorsed us.

We have the fifth consecutive balanced budget in this province. It's amazing that the last time there were five balanced budgets in a row was 1908. Think about

that -- 1908. That means all of those governments in between have once in a while balanced a budget.

Let me turn to the Liberals. It's very interesting that in 1990 they claimed they were going to have a balanced budget. It was the first time. They brought

down a budget which said it was balanced, but in point of fact the auditor has pointed out that whilst you claimed a balanced budget, it was some $3.029 billion in deficit when the NDP took

over.

Back the year before that, in 1989, in the budget documents that were presented it was suggested by the government of the day, the Liberals, that they would

have a $550-million deficit. In fact, it was only because of an unusually large amount of money, which was unanticipated, which the government of the day received from the federal government that

they were able to suggest there was a balance. They got $888 million, which wasn't anticipated, and yet notwithstanding that, they claimed only to have a $90-million surplus. We know they created

that by something known as pre-flow, where you flow your revenue which should have been recognized in the following year into that year and you put off till future years expenditures that should

have been recognized then. It was complete sleight of hand. So for the Liberals to talk about budgeting is quite ridiculous, because they wouldn't understand the budgeting process if they fell over

it.

Over the years, we have reduced taxes substantially in this province. In our first mandate, we committed to reducing the personal portion of provincial income

taxes by an average of 30%; we delivered on that. Now we will complete our 20% personal income tax reduction by January 1, providing $900 million a year in additional tax relief.

I particularly address the NDP in this. It's interesting that they always say, "But what about the poor people? You're helping your friends." In point of fact,

this budget will eliminate another 45,000 people from the Ontario provincial tax rolls. This will bring the total up to 700,000 people who will no longer pay provincial income taxes, but still many

of those people are considered rich enough for your friends the federal Liberal Party to tax. I say shame on them. They should follow our model and take those people off the tax rolls, because I

believe the people know how to spend their money a lot better than Liberals.

In this budget we have --

Interjection.

Hon Mr Turnbull: I think that the Liberals take it as a joke that we are removing people from the tax rolls and yet the federal Liberals

continue to tax those people. It's unfortunate that that's their attitude. But, indeed, it does confirm the attitude that the Liberals do believe that they know how to spend people's money better

than the people themselves.

Turning to health care: this budget projects a $28.1-billion expenditure on health care. That's an increase of $1.9 billion over last year. In fact, going back

to when we formed the government seven and a half years ago, the previous government was spending $17.6 billion. In other words we have added, in those seven and a half short years, $10 billion, or

more than 55%, to the budget for health care in this province. Put another way, we have taken the expenditures on health care from 32% of the operating budget all the way up to 46% of the operating

budget today.

Over the years, seniors have told me that they didn't mind paying their fair share of taxes, but have said that a lot of the burden of education should fall

off when they become seniors. Indeed, that is what we are moving on with this budget. We are removing seniors through the property tax credit, for both those people who rent their accommodation and

those people who own their accommodation. Across this province, this will mean an average saving of some $475 per household.

We have not forgotten family caregivers and the disabled in this budget. They will receive an increase in the annual tax credit of approximately $300.

One thing which is tremendously important to all of us is our children and the education they receive. This budget is investing over $2 billion over the next

three years to implement the recommendations of Dr Rozanski in his report. It allows for an additional 20,000 spaces to be added to our colleges and universities to address the so-called double

cohort. This will bring a total of 135,000 new spaces that have been added to the capacity of colleges and universities across this great province.

In conclusion, our priorities as a government remain: making sure that we're prosperous by ensuring that the infrastructure of the province is addressed,

something that the last two governments neglected; and by increasing the capacities of our colleges and universities. All across this province, we have cranes around the hospitals increasing the

capacity and the abilities of hospitals. We believe sincerely that people know how to spend their own money better than governments. That's why we are leaving more of their money in their own

pockets, because we believe that the most important things are our citizens and our way of life. We are protecting it.

The motion that has been brought by Mr Conway is something which I think is specious, given the fact that they, in fact, brought forward a budget outside of

this House. The NDP also brought forward a budget outside of this House. Yet, this is pure, unbridled politics that they're playing. I'm proud to say that I will be voting against the motion.

Ms Sandra Pupatello (Windsor West): I am happy to join the debate and support my colleague from Renfrew, Sean Conway, and his motion.

I believe that the House was in contempt when the budget was delivered outside of this House. I believe that on the eve of this budget production at Magna -- I

think it might have been after 5 o'clock the night before -- a fax came through to my office here at Queen's Park. All of a sudden my invitation arrived to participate the next day. Of course, I

was in the city of Windsor, and many of the members were in their home ridings, waiting to see whether they'd even have a seat at the table. The evening before, someone clearly thought, "Well,

maybe we can just send them along an invitation." It's the kind of invitation you send when you really don't want people to be there. You send it to them at the 11th hour, and obviously you know

that their plans won't allow them to get there.

I marvel about the audacity that the government has to pull this kind of a stunt. Everybody knows we're in the midst of an election here; we're just waiting

for the call of it. We knew that this document would be more an election document than a budget document, but at a minimum, had it been delivered in this House it would carry the full weight of

being an official document of the House as a budget.

As it is right now, in our second week back into session, the government has yet to table the budget bill. I marvelled, when we did sit here last week and

listen through the throne speech, at the number of things I heard delivered through the media at the fake budget announcement from Magna, a number of items that did not appear the next week or the

week after in the throne speech.

I'm glad to see that our friend Bob Runciman is in the House today to listen to this debate. I marvelled at what Sean Conway was able to deliver to the House

today, not because anyone else could access this order in council, and I look at the amount in an interim agreement that he signed giving public safety and security less than $1 billion for the

several months that this will account for. I wonder if this amount includes the helicopter that was announced at the fake budget at the Magna plant. Is the helicopter included in this amount that

he signed? I didn't hear about the helicopter for the Toronto police force in the throne speech, but I did hear about it through the media at the Magna fake budget presentation.

Elements like that get thrown out like trial balloons: "Let's see how people are going to react." Well, in the time between the fake budget presentation at

Magna and the throne speech, somebody called Bob -- I like to call him Rambo Bob -- said, "Hey, the Toronto police force doesn't have the operating budget to continue to operate the helicopter even

if they handed it to them on a silver platter." Lo and behold, the helicopter did not appear as an announcement in the throne speech, and I marvel at that. What else did we hear through the media

and the fake budget speech at Magna that is not in a budget document that has yet to be tabled in this House?

When Sean Conway stood in the House today and spoke about the special warrant that was issued, I saw that the House leader on the opposite side scrambled to

get information in time for his little show that followed about how governments do this all the time. That's nonsense. Governments don't do this all the time. Governments have a responsibility to

provide a budget bill in this House so that each one of us, duly elected by our voters, can look at it at the same time. We should have equal access to these kinds of documents. We should have the

ability to know the kind of detail that is in a budget bill that drives the process of every ministry in this government and affects my riding and my residents every day of every week of the year.

I should be able to access that. Whether we won our own seats in this House by a huge, whopping majority or a slim majority, we've earned the right to be here, and that means we've earned the right

to access information at the same time as all of you on that side of the House.

Do you know what's worse? When you hear the stories from the Conservative backbenchers, some of them knew as little as we did on