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April 30, 1998

36th Parliament, 2nd Session

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Hansard Transcripts

vol. A

Hansard Transcripts

vol. B

Votes and Proceedings

Orders and Notices

L005a - Thu 30 Apr 1998 / Jeu 30 Avr 1998 1

PRIVATE MEMBERS' PUBLIC BUSINESS

HIGHWAY TRAFFIC AMENDMENT ACT (DRIVERS' LICENCES OF CERTAIN SCHOOL PUPILS), 1998 / LOI DE 1998 MODIFIANT LE CODE DE LA ROUTE (PERMIS DE CONDUIRE DE CERTAINS ÉLÈVES)

CHILDREN'S SERVICES

HIGHWAY TRAFFIC AMENDMENT ACT (DRIVERS' LICENCES OF CERTAIN SCHOOL PUPILS), 1998 / LOI DE 1998 MODIFIANT LE CODE DE LA ROUTE (PERMIS DE CONDUIRE DE CERTAINS ÉLÈVES)

CHILDREN'S SERVICES

SEXUAL ASSAULT PREVENTION MONTH

ISRAELI INDEPENDENCE COMMEMORATION

ORAL QUESTIONS

COMPENSATION FOR HEPATITIS C PATIENTS

HOME CARE

COMPENSATION FOR HEPATITIS C PATIENTS

LONG-TERM CARE

HOME CARE

HOSPITAL FUNDING

WILD TURKEY HUNT

EMERGENCY SERVICES

DISCLOSURE OF CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION

WORKFARE

HOMELESSNESS

LAND USE PLANNING

TRUCKING SAFETY

INTRODUCTION OF BILLS

VETERANS' MEMORIAL PARKWAY ACT, 1998 / LOI DE 1998 SUR LA PROMENADE COMMÉMORATIVE DES ANCIENS COMBATTANTS

ENDANGERED, THREATENED AND VULNERABLE SPECIES ACT, 1998 / LOI DE 1998 SUR LES ESPÈCES VULNÉRABLES, MENACÉES OU EN VOIE DE DISPARITION

NORTHERN SERVICES IMPROVEMENT ACT, 1998 / LOI DE 1998 SUR L'AMÉLIORATION DES SERVICES PUBLICS DANS LE NORD DE L'ONTARIO

MEMBERS' STATEMENTS

CHARITABLE GAMING

PROPERTY TAXATION

ICE STORM

EDUCATION FUNDING

DENTAL CARE

LONG-TERM CARE

NATURAL GAS SUPPLIERS

HAMILTON POLICE CHIEF

WAYNE MIDDAUGH

PETITIONS

DISPONIBILITÉ D'UNE ÉCOLE

EDUCATION REFORM

SCHOOL FACILITIES

PROTECTION FOR HEALTH CARE WORKERS

OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND SAFETY

CURRICULUM

EDUCATION REFORM

CHIROPRACTIC HEALTH CARE

OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND SAFETY

PROTECTION FOR HEALTH CARE WORKERS

SCHOOL SAFETY

ORDERS OF THE DAY

THRONE SPEECH DEBATE

The House met at 0957.

Prayers.

PRIVATE MEMBERS' PUBLIC BUSINESS

HIGHWAY TRAFFIC AMENDMENT ACT (DRIVERS' LICENCES OF CERTAIN SCHOOL PUPILS), 1998 / LOI DE 1998 MODIFIANT LE CODE DE LA ROUTE (PERMIS DE CONDUIRE DE CERTAINS ÉLÈVES)

Mr Wettlaufer moved second reading of the following bill:

Bill 4,

An Act to amend the Highway Traffic Act with respect to the drivers' licences of certain school pupils / Projet de loi 4, Loi modifiant le Code de la route en ce qui concerne le permis de conduire de certains élèves.

The Acting Speaker (Mr Gilles E. Morin): Pursuant to standing order 95(c)(i), the honourable member has 10 minutes for his presentation.

Mr Wayne Wettlaufer (Kitchener): I'm very proud to be putting forward this amendment to the Highway Traffic Act. I am putting it forward for a number of reasons, one of which is not contained within the amendment itself but rather how the amendment was proposed, how it was developed. It was a concept which I can't take credit for. It's a concept that was a direct result of a parents' council meeting held in a high school in my area. It's an inner-city school. It is populated by 64, I believe, different nationalities speaking 41 different languages. It's Cameron Heights Collegiate Institute.

The suggestion originated in the form of a question. It was, if you will recall, the dispute, the concern surrounding Bill 160. It was a suggestion which originated in the form of a question along the lines of what our government would do to help keep students in the classroom. It was a good question: "What is the government going to do to help educators in the province who in many schools face truancy rates of up to 20%?"

The truancy rates, as a result of the research that I've done into various states and provinces in North America, have a direct relationship to the violence that we face in our communities today. It has a direct relationship to the drugs that we face in our communities today - drug use, drug pushing. It has a direct relationship to poor driving. It has a direct relationship to underage liquor use. It has a direct relationship to juvenile delinquency.

I didn't have an immediate answer to that question, but I responded that I would be willing to look into it.

This amendment directly links the ability of students to obtain and maintain a driver's licence. The suggestion came from the principal of Cameron Heights Collegiate, Mr Dick Beresford.

Since that parents' council meeting, I took

part in a number of other meetings to discuss the proposal, meetings with students, meetings with educators, meetings with parents who have no relationship to parents' councils.

I would like to direct the members' attention to the gallery, to some members from Cameron Heights Collegiate who came here today: Mr Harry Vanderzand, the chairman of the parents' council of Cameron Heights Collegiate; Mr Doug Simpson of the Cameron Heights special education department. I have three students: Aaron Wudrick, Thomas Campbell and Stephanie Schott. I want to express my thanks to these individuals and to the principal of Cameron Heights Collegiate, Dick Beresford, for their contributions made.

The amendment is simple but it's effective. The government has taken the position that students should be spending more time in the classroom with their teachers, and this amendment provides one method of accomplishing this.

What is appealing about the amendment - again, as I have read in the research I did pertaining to other states and provinces - is that this is not a penalty. This is a motivational tool, the carrot before the stick; the stick if necessary but not necessarily the stick.

Members of this House can reflect back on the days when they were in school and looked forward with eager anticipation to the time when they would qualify to get their driver's licences, particularly the men because as boys we considered that obtaining a driver's licence was one of the methods of passage into manhood.

Members can remember the tremendous sense of pride we experienced when we passed our drivers' tests and when we were able to drive a car for the first time. It is with this same sense of anticipation that today's student looks forward to obtaining a driver's licence. It is with this same sense of pride of accomplishment that today's student passes his or her driver's test and obtains the licence to drive.

To many students, obtaining a driver's licence is at least as important as actually graduating. Surprise, right? It is because of the high value young people place on obtaining a driver's licence that this amendment has the potential to become a very valuable tool in rewarding positive behaviour. Few students will want to jeopardize their opportunity to obtain or maintain their licence. The amendment, in its simplicity, provides every parent in the province with a valuable tool, a tool the parents can use to encourage their young teenagers to go to school and attend classes.

Imagine a young man showing up at the door for a date. I, as the father, notice that the young man shows up without wheels. I want to know why he has shown up without wheels. Is he going to walk downtown with my daughter? Is he a bad student? Has he been involved in drugs or some other crime? Why does he not have wheels?

The amendment provides a valuable tool for educators. It is easy to visualize a teacher asking a student if the student really wants to lose the privilege of driving a car just to skip class. Perhaps even more important, this amendment provides a valuable tool for many students who face negative peer pressure to skip classes.

It is easy to visualize a dialogue between two students, with one urging the other to skip classes to go downtown for a smoke. This amendment provides an effective tool which the more responsible student can use to counteract this form of negative peer pressure. If giving in to negative peer pressure to skip class has the potential to cause the student to lose the opportunity to qualify for his or her driver's licence, or worse still, lose his or her driver's licence, the chances are the student will refuse to follow the negative influence and will stay in class.

Fifteen states in the United States have enacted legislation, with different variables, similar to this legislation, states such as California, Idaho, Illinois, Kentucky, Indiana. They have all experienced success. In the case of West Virginia, which enacted the legislation in 1988, in 1989 they experienced an immediate increase in attendance at class in school. It went up from 80-odd per cent to 95%, and in cases to as high as 98%. It had an immediate impact.

I ask the members here today to please support this bill.

Mr David Caplan (Oriole): I'm really pleased to have the opportunity to join the debate. I'd just like to point out, at the outset, that I am not supportive of this bill, and I'm going to outline my reasons why. This bill has a particularly close parallel to one introduced in the previous session, Bill 134, by the member for Halton Centre, Mr Young. I must tell you I was happy to see that bill die on the order paper and I hope the members do not have the poor sense to give this bill any life either.

I would like to talk about two aspects: the intent of this bill and the methods for punishment this bill is suggesting. This bill in meant, in the words of the member for Kitchener, to "reduce crime in and around schools and to increase attendance and therefore the learning ability of students." I must be very frank with the members that I don't see the intent of this bill in exactly in the same light. To me, this bill is an extreme and an inefficient and ineffective way to address the problems of youth crime and truancy. I don't think the punitive and short-term measures that the member is suggesting, and that seem to be the member's intent, are the way to go.

The purpose of this bill seems to be to enforce a system of discrimination against youth. In fact, it does quite a bit more than that. It sets up a whole additional level of bureaucracy that would be needed to enforce it. I will come to a bit about that later, but I am curious whether or not the member has run this by the member for Lincoln, the head of the government's vaunted Red Tape Commission, for what the practical effect would be should this bill become law.

Creating another level of bureaucracy for punishing young people will be more expensive for all the jurisdictions concerned: the criminal justice system, the education system, the incarceration system, and the federal government because this covers wide-ranging levels of government.

I want to talk a little bit about the methodology of this bill. The first question I would pose is: Is this legislation really necessary? The stated purpose is to prevent those young people who are enrolled in school and have been found guilty of an offence involving drugs, violence or the use of alcohol - is it not true that young persons and the laws governing them are adequately served by legislation and policy directives that are already in place?

I will cite a few examples. Smoking by young people and smoking on school property is covered by local bylaws, by board of education policies and covered by the Tobacco Products Control Act. The use of alcohol by people under the age of 19 is controlled by provincial offences as well as the Criminal Code. Possession, sale and ingestion of intoxicating drugs is governed by the Food and Drugs Act and the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act; in fact it's incorrectly identified as the former Narcotic Control Act in this bill.

Is it really necessary to introduce further legislation when these acts, and indeed the scope of punishment, is already covered under these acts I've mentioned? If that's the case, that already existing legislation covers the penalties the member seeks - as an example, a judge could impose a sanction similar to what the member is seeking here - then does this bill not fail the test that the government has stated, that they want to create less paper and more jobs? What this bill will do is exactly the opposite. It will create more paper and fewer jobs.

Why a member of the Progressive Conservative government with that avowed goal would want to create another level of administration and bureaucracy to achieve the same penalties that already exist in law is beyond me. So it's an unnecessary overlap and increased paperwork from competing legislation.

The implementation and enforcement would no doubt be inefficient and costly. I would quote to you an

article from the Kitchener-Waterloo Record where Principal Beresford says that he is uncertain how well such a bill could be enforced, so there are concerns there.

The member indicated in his comments that this is working well in all the jurisdictions that have tried this type of legislation. That's not exactly correct. There is at least one jurisdiction - I am not certain where - but Principal Beresford goes on to say there was one area that has dropped this practice because of concerns that it wasn't being enforced uniformly, so certainly questions of how it is going to be enforced are very timely and very topical.

The part of this about discouraging truancy is particularly concerning to me. That is one of the major objectives of this bill, to promote kids going to school. There are already tools within the school system and disciplines that can be imposed that can address this problem. Young people don't really need a coercive tool like this to get them to go to school. Actions should be to keep them in class and not affect their right to drive, in my opinion.

I'd like to be very clear with the members what this means, because the way the Education Act reads right now you can check yourself out of school when you turn 16. If your right to drive is affected by this piece of legislation because you do not meet the test of attendance in school, all you have to do is drop out. You can get your licence. Is that what we want to encourage?

Mr Frank Klees (York-Mackenzie): No, we want to change that too.

Mr Caplan: The member says they'd like to change that. There were over 1,000 changes to the Education Act and I don't remember the member or the government proposing that particular change. If it does happen, that would certainly be a very progressive move, but it has not happened and this will potentially encourage young people to drop out of school. I don't think that any member in this House would want to encourage such an activity. This really amounts to an illegitimate use of power by adults against kids.

There was one other area I wanted to address and that was whether or not a young person who has been convicted of an offence under the Young Offenders Act, whether that information - and government members will be aware and all members of this House will be aware of the problems of communicating the names of offenders to other agencies. We have seen how individuals can run afoul of that portion of the law and some of the very serious consequences that it has.

Would it be possible under the law for that information to be transmitted to a school possibly, but to the Ministry of Transportation? I have been in touch with a legal clinic which specializes in laws pertaining to children and youth and it would seem that this would be quite problematic and in fact would offend part of the Criminal Code of Canada.

I would again suggest to members that you not move really all that swiftly on something which is going to have serious repercussions as far as contravening sections of the Criminal Code. We have seen what the results can be with the unfortunate circumstances surrounding the government's failed throne speech.

As I was saying earlier, this amounts to an illegitimate use of power by adults against kids. The approach of this bill is strictly punitive in nature. It does nothing to promote why kids should stay in school, it does nothing to prevent some of the offences. With all of the lists and all of the remedies available to the courts, to schools and to local jurisdictions, this is a back door way of finding another penalty and another punitive approach. In fact, I can see no rational connection between this legislation and the ability to drive and controlling the behaviour of young people.

Study after study after study has demonstrated that, and I think members would certainly want to do some investigation and familiarize themselves with facts.

This piece of legislation, this suggestion, amounts in my opinion to an unfair attack on our young people. I don't see adults being penalized in the same kinds of ways that this bill does. If the member for Kitchener argues that they are covered in existing legislation, then that legislation applies to everyone, so why would this bill be even necessary? The answer is simple. It's not. A discriminatory piece of legislation which targets young people is unfair.

The law should apply to everyone, and if the intention of the member or of any member of this House is to have discriminatory laws, I wish that they would stand up and say that very clearly. As I said, this bill amounts to an illegitimate use of power by adults against young people.

I have been travelling the province for the past several months talking to young people. They tell me that they don't have a lot of trust for adults, because they see how they're treated differently. They feel they have been discriminated against by adults, by members of government. They would like equal treatment and equal standing within the confines of the law and in the way they are treated by the institutions that we uphold.

This reinforces that perception that young people have, that there is going to be one law for adults and one law for young people, that we are going to have changes to the laws that we have in more punitive ways that are going to come through the back door. I don't think that's the kind of message we want to send to our young people.

I really do think that this bill will continue the feeling of alienation that our young people are feeling. It will continue the sense that no one is listening to them, no one is listening to their concerns, no one is prepared to stand up and say: "We're going to treat you fairly. We're going to listen to you."

The government has a track record of not listening to the people of Ontario, and I think that's specifically true in the case of our young people. You saw the case where students literally took to the streets of Ontario. They occupied office buildings to highlight the problem of high tuition and of student debt. What was the response of the government? Was it to extend a hand and say, "We're listening to you, we want to work with you, we want to help you"? No.

In the economic statement of December 15 by the Minister of Finance, you said, "We're going to increase your tuition 10% next year, 10% the year after. Not only that, but we're going to deregulate tuitions in graduate and professional programs," ultimately increasing the cost to students and their families, also increasing the debt burden that our young people are facing, so very much a difference between what young people are saying and what the government does in response. This bill is very similar along those lines.

I point out to members that maybe they should listen to their own experts. They have the rural youth strategy group, which was highlighted in the throne speech, which said that access to transportation and to drivers' licences ought to be relaxed for kids in rural areas. Very, very interesting. This piece of legislation contravenes that particular notion. The government in the throne speech said, "We will act on the recommendations of that group."

You have this very interesting dichotomy, very interesting approach to "young criminals," to young offenders, "We're going to punish them," but government experts are telling them something quite different, so I'm having some difficulty understanding why the member is bringing forward this type of legislation in light of the fact that their own experts, and they have promised to act on those recommendations, tell them to do something opposite.

I think you can see from my comments that this type of legislation is not only ridiculous, not only unnecessary, but will reinforce and will cause young people to lose even what small confidence they have that this government is at all caring about their interests and is at all listening to the messages they have. I encourage all members of this assembly to reject this piece of legislation.

Mr Wayne Lessard (Windsor-Riverside): I want to start out by talking about some of the principles that I agree with, and those include governments taking initiatives that attempt to prevent young people from being involved in drugs, being involved in alcohol before they are of legal drinking age, and trying to prevent them from being involved in criminal activities. I also agree with the principle that we should try and encourage students to remain in school for as long as possible and that we need to instil in young people that being able to operate a motor vehicle in Ontario is a privilege and that it's not a right that comes without responsibilities.

Having said that, however, I just want to express my reservations about this legislation and its attempts to try and address those principles with which I indicate I agree. The member, in his opening remarks, said that this is an amendment that is simple. It certainly is, and we have seen from previous experience here that many times simple amendments don't accomplish what they set out to achieve.

One of the things that concerns me about this legislation is that it imposes additional sanctions flowing from convictions for criminal offences, and there are other examples where that takes place. I can think of convictions for impaired driving under the Criminal Code, for example, where there is an automatic suspension of a person's driving licence for a minimum of one year and increasing depending on the number of previous convictions that a driver may have.

That's something that is acceptable, because it refers specifically to driving restrictions and deals with an offence where a person was involved in criminal activity while they were driving their car, so it makes sense in that case. As well, it is a restriction that has universal application, and as the member for Oriole pointed out, the laws in Canada do have universal application, so that if you are convicted of an offence under the Criminal Code, the penalty should be the same no matter what your age. There are exceptions with respect to that as well, and we see those in the Young Offenders Act.

However, in this case I would like the member to address the reason why he would think there should be additional sanctions if you are convicted of some types of offences depending on your age. In order to do that, he needs to address the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which says there shall not be any discrimination in the application of laws in this country. That's a very important factor to take into account. I would be interested in knowing how he addresses that issue, because I'm not sure that's the message we want to present to young people, that it's okay to have discrimination in some of our laws that increase penalties towards young people.

I am also concerned about the information about the conviction of persons, which in many cases, for this law to be effective, is going to apply to persons who are young offenders. How is the Ministry of Transportation going to obtain the names of young offenders? That's something that I hope the member addresses in his remarks as well. We have seen an example of the release of information that would tend to identify a young offender in the throne speech last week.

It led to the resignation of the Solicitor General, and as far as I know, it's still the law that information that leads to the identification of a young offender can't be released without the young offender's consent. I don't know how that is going to be addressed either.

In the events that followed the throne speech, the former Solicitor General tended to indicate that the ends justify the means and that there are certain occasions where it's reasonable, if it's effective, to release information that would tend to identify young offenders. I disagree with that. I think that's another message we can't be presenting to young people: that the end justifies the means even if that may be contrary to the law.

Something we really need to focus on is the reason that young people become involved in criminal activity and why they may not be attending school. That's something this government needs to pay serious attention to. Although sanctioning young people with the suspension of their driver's licence may encourage them to stay in school longer, who knows whether that's the case or not? I think that there may be other examples, many good examples, of why young people become involved in criminal activity and why they're not attending school.

Study after study shows that if there is not a sufficient investment in people when they are young, even before they're going to school, even before they're born - we're going to be debating a resolution later on that talks about how important it is to invest in babies. It's also important to invest in young mothers before they have children so that those children grow up to be healthy. We know that if children get a good start in life, they tend not to become involved in criminal activities.

We know that if you invest $1 in young persons before they even start attending school, the return on that investment is at $7 later on. The return on that investment comes from reduced costs towards involvement in criminal activity, court costs, custody costs, the costs of drug and alcohol rehabilitation programs, costs in the health care system as well, because we know that children who are well taken care of when they're young don't tend to get sick as often.

I think that's where we need to be focusing our attention, because by the time a person is old enough to drive, sanctions such as this are punitive and are not going to have, in all cases, the anticipated results that we're trying to achieve.

Those are just some of the concerns I have with respect to this bill. I also share the concern about young people who may be encouraged just to drop out of school when they're 16. I'd like to know how the member intends to deal with that issue as well, because that may be encouraging our students to drop out of school and not to stay in school. That's certainly not a principle I agree with, as I indicated when I first began my remarks. Those are the concerns I have with respect to this bill.

My friend from Welland-Thorold has a few remarks to make. I'll give him an opportunity to make those.

Mr John Hastings (Etobicoke-Rexdale): I'm particularly delighted to join in this deliberation regarding the member for Kitchener's bill linking attendance at school with driving privileges on Ontario's road system. I'd like to commend the member for presenting the idea and trying to achieve what I think he has in the bill, the objective of safer roads, because all of us share a fundamental concern about the high incidence of tragedies and fatalities on our highways, not only in Ontario but across Canada, particularly with our younger people. He has listened to the folks of Cameron Heights secondary school.

He has tried to fashion a bill which meets the concerns and express wishes of these young people. I believe there are probably other young people around the province who have looked at this bill on its Internet site and sent in some messages that favour it.

However, the Ministry of Transportation does have some specific concerns regarding the implementation of the bill, should it ever become law.

The first fundamental concern, which is the foundation of the bill, is the strategic linkage between attendance at school, presumably a secondary school - it could be a college, I guess - and driving on the roadways in Ontario. The problem with the attendance concept, as I understand attendance today in many schools and in many school boards across Ontario, is that when you get to grade 12, certainly when you get to your OACs, there is a voluntary sign-in system. That particular concern would have to be examined, should the member decide to have this bill go to a committee.

That's one of the key policy areas one would have to look at, particularly with how it applied to the states where he has cited that the linkage of the idea has provided success and greater safety for young people using our road system.

The second concern for the Ministry of Transportation relates to the administrative dimensions of this particular concept, because the ministry is concerned to a great degree about linking a non-driving activity, in this case attendance at a secondary school, with driving a vehicle, which many people still consider a privilege in Ontario. How do you create a strategic linkage and yet at the same time preserve the integrity of the driver registration system throughout this province?

The third concern the ministry has is the potential for creating a questionable precedent, because that is based on the tenuous relationship at this point, as set out in the bill, linking attendance to driving performance on our highways. There is some concern from the ministry as to what could occur should this bill ever become law structured the way it is.

Those three particular items are the principal concerns of the ministry. I think within that context, there has to be considerable detail and great scrutiny of this bill from those three perspectives.

Let me just conclude by stating, however, that I listened to the member of Oriole, as I always do, with some delight to see whether he had any alternative in terms of trying to create a linkage. As per usual, I find his new-found interest in red tape bills absolutely bizarre. It was the member's relationship with the previous occupant of the riding of Oriole, if you go back and look at the long lengths and strands of red tape we're facing at the Red Tape Commission, that is directly linked to what occurred in many, many areas of public policy through the Peterson administration. It's great to hear that the member has suddenly discovered an interest in red tape.

To conclude, related to the bill for the member for Kitchener, it is a concept or a principle that needs to be worked on with great vigour should it go to committee, otherwise the Ministry of Transportation still would have its principal concerns related to the computer application of the bill, how this particular idea could impact the integrity of the driver registration system throughout the province and the strategic linkage of attendance to driving.

Mr Peter Kormos (Welland-Thorold): I looked with great interest at this bill from Mr Wettlaufer. Having heard the parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Transportation, I find myself reviewing my position on the bill. I at first found some merit to this, and I know that the motives of the member are sound, and I am not by any stretch of the imagination about to criticize them.

But listening to the parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Transportation, as everyone has done - and I appreciate Mr Hastings's contribution to this debate - it appears that Mr Wettlaufer's own colleague from the Ministry of Transportation has been effective at scuttling support for Mr Wettlaufer's bill.

I told Mr Wettlaufer that had the bill been left with just the first half dealing with the matter of convictions under drug offences or liquor offences, the Criminal Code, it may well have been a valuable bill to send to committee for refinement and for discussion and debate. I, along with Mr Hastings, the parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Transportation - and you know, it's not often that I agree with Mr Hastings. As a matter of fact, this is the first time I've found myself in agreement with Mr Hastings. It's the first time Mr Hastings has been right.

I am pleased to be able to acknowledge that and announce that here in the House, that Mr Hastings today was correct in his analysis. It's two and a half years down the road, but Mr Hastings has finally got it right. As I say, I've been persuaded, and I trust other members have as well.

Mr Lessard from our caucus, from Windsor-Riverside, has spoken to the rather wacky component of the bill and that's the business of school attendance. I suppose some would accuse me of having some self-interest, because if this bill had been in effect, requiring school attendance before one was eligible for a driver's licence, I wouldn't have received my licence till I was around 35 years old and it would have interfered with a whole lot of opportunities that a driver's licence gives to young people.

Maybe, rather than these purported solutions - I don't think this is a solution to the problem Mr Wettlaufer identifies - maybe the solutions, rather than coming from middle-aged members of the Legislative Assembly, should be coming from young people themselves. I would look forward quite frankly - and again I respect the fact that Mr Wettlaufer received guidance from educators, the principal, the guidance counsellor and the parent council of this school. I understand this is modelled on what may well be successful experiences in other jurisdictions - American ones again.

The obsession this government has with the American right wing is no longer remarkable because it's become the norm rather than the exception.

It would be so nice to have a chat with young people. I've got to tell you, I suspect the real problems young people identify that they themselves are facing go well beyond the intent of Mr Wettlaufer's bill. The real issues are things like jobs and work. The reality down in Niagara region - I suspect it's not dissimilar from any other part of the province - is that the jobs young people used to do as students, that I did and Mr Lessard did and Ms Lankin did when we were students, the part-time, minimum-wage jobs, are no longer available to students because their parents are working at those jobs.

So young people are finding it increasingly difficult, and we know that the rate of unemployment among young people is double that of their parents. The despair that creates surely is profound.

There is the fear young people have, never mind of finishing high school, of being able to pursue post-secondary education, be it at the college level or the university level, because of the massive increases in tuition costs, and every indication that they're going to increase even further. That seems to me to be a far more profound problem - not to diminish the intent of Mr Wettlaufer - that I would have hoped Mr Wettlaufer would have wanted to address.

I have great fears for the future of young people in this province. I know that the children of the very wealthy will manage to do just fine, thank you kindly, but I fear that the children of the rest of Ontario, those who don't share in the wealth, that the number, the size of that group of people is becoming larger and larger every day with this government's policy, aided and abetted by Jean Chrétien in Ottawa, no two ways about it.

Mike Harris and Jean Chrétien have far more in common than they do separate in terms of their fiscal policies, in terms of incorporating Americana and American fiscal policies - dead American fiscal policies, those that date back to Ronald Reagan - into Canadian and Ontario life.

Unfortunately, I find myself in a position where I'm not going to be able to support this bill either. I want to thank Mr Hastings for his guidance in this matter. I appreciate that and I want to acknowledge that clearly.

Mr Klees: I am pleased to rise to speak in support of this bill, brought forward by my colleague from Kitchener, primarily because I agree with the principle that I believe the honourable member is addressing. I find it difficult that any member of this House would have difficulty with that principle, namely, that there should be consequences for offences that relate to a conviction resulting from the use of drugs or violence or alcohol.

I think specifically there has been so much discussion about the fact that in this province and in this country, while there may be penalties prescribed, all too often those penalties are never carried out, that when there are convictions, when incarceration is prescribed, a very small part of that sentence is ever really carried out.

It would be very valuable for members of this Legislature to pay a visit to institutions that are housing young offenders, that are housing individuals in the province who have been convicted, and see what the very uncomfortable circumstances are, the sadness of the state of affairs that people are dealing with who have lost their freedom as a result of breaking the law.

Rightfully so that they be there, but let me suggest that what the member is trying to address in this proposal is that we build into our law some prevention so that young people have an opportunity to assess their choices before they make them - some matters of consequence their very lifestyle, something they consider important.

I agree with the member that for a young person to get his or her driver's licence is a very important passage in their lifetime. To have the sense that perhaps by making the wrong choice, to engage either in the use of drugs or alcohol, or to participate in a violent act, that may have the consequence not just simply of being designated a young offender - because unfortunately that today doesn't bear with it the appropriate consequences that are necessary to dissuade that kind of behaviour. I believe that the member with this particular recommendation is getting to the heart, as he put it, of motivation in the lives of young people. Let's build in some consequences.

Someone has said that as we consider legislation or the drafting of laws, we should be considering three aspects. First, is it morally right? Second, is it legally defensible? Third, is it practical and reasonable for implementation at this time?

On the question of whether it is morally right, members opposite obviously feel it's not. I can tell you I feel that it's also not morally right that in this province and in this country we have come to the point where the laws of our land actually undermine the authority of parents, the authority of teachers and the authority of institutions to the point where there is, in many cases, very little respect left for authority. I suggest to you that it rests with members of this House to restore that kind of respect and authority, that respect for the laws of our land, and that we build in consequences.

I ask the members opposite, is it morally right to build in significant consequences to wrong choices in people's lives, particularly at an early age? I believe that it is not only morally right, I believe it is our moral obligation as legislators to ensure that incorporated into the laws of this province there are the necessary consequences that cause young people particularly to pause before they make the choices that are before them. I think we have an opportunity here to do exactly that.

Is it legally defensible? Members argue Charter of Rights, members argue discrimination. I can say to you that I believe that has become, unfortunately, a very convenient argument in legislatures across our country when someone perhaps doesn't have the courage to take a stand on something that, yes, will have some opposition. It probably will not be popular. It may not be popular with those young people with whom you've had a lot of dialogue, I say to the member for Oriole. Any time that we build consequences into people's lives it's uncomfortable and we would rather not have them be there.

But I can tell you from young people I've spoken to - and this is the vast majority of young people in our province, who are law-abiding, who do not want to have the kinds of activities around their schools like violence, drug use and alcohol abuse - they do not want that kind of activity interfering with their activities in and near their schools. The majority of the young people in our province, I believe, would in principle as well support this.

Is this being done anywhere? The member from Windsor suggested that this has serious legal implications. It is being done. It's being done in our country right now. It's being done in the province of Manitoba. Manitoba for a number of years has been using drivers' licences to control the behaviour of young people in that province. I suggest to you that we would do well to follow a solid example. There has been no challenge against that activity in Manitoba. Perhaps over the years they have had legislators who have had much more courage than legislators in this House. I think this is our opportunity to step up to the plate, take on the challenge and work with this.

Is it legally defensible? Is it practical? My recommendation would be that we refer this bill to the standing committee on administration of justice, because clearly there are some aspects of this that need to be reassessed, that perhaps need some refinement, and to ensure that it fits into the overall framework. I would support that.

I commend the honourable member for bringing this forward. I thank the young people with whom he has been working, with their creativity and their support for it, and I believe it's the right thing for Ontario.

Mr Jerry J. Ouellette (Oshawa): It's a pleasure to rise today. As all members do, I've done research on this bill and talked with constituents, but in a meeting I had with students from three schools this morning we briefly discussed the issue and I asked for their input. They were from my riding. The schools were Eastdale, Central, and my old school, Mclaughlin, as well as a group of exchange students from France. I must add that it was a pleasure to see a teacher of mine when I was schooled at Mclaughlin - Ms Grabowski at that time, now Ms Gadd - was there.

What surprised me was that there was concern about the issue of the impact it would have on individuals of that age and trying to get jobs. The overwhelming position of the students at that time supported the piece of legislation that's before the House at this time. It was that position that swayed me now. I will be supporting that and recommending it go to committee to finalize all the details at that time.

The Acting Speaker: Member for Kitchener, you have two minutes to reply.

Mr Wettlaufer: I appreciate the members for Oriole, Windsor-Riverside, Etobicoke-Rexdale, Welland-Thorold, York-Mackenzie and Oshawa taking part.

There is concern about enforcement implementation and would there be uniformity in enforcement. I submit to the members here that this is why we have committees, to do studies on how

an act would be implemented, to ensure there would be uniformity.

There is concern about the voluntary sign-in re absenteeism. That should also be addressed by committee. That's why we have committees. There is concern about the Young Offenders Act. There is concern about the Young Offenders Act all through this country, so much concern that the federal justice minister, Anne McLellan, has suggested that it will be amended and that the young offenders will be named.

There is concern about dropouts, that this might actually increase the rate of dropout. The experience in the United States, in those states which implemented this legislation, proves the exact opposite; it actually increased the number of students staying in school.

The member for Welland-Thorold raised the concern of young people and he said their concern was jobs. I find it rather ironic that this member, who was a cabinet minister in a former government, would raise the concern of young people's jobs when it was during that government that the rate of unemployment, particularly among young people, increased. I was an operator of a small business during the term of that government, and you know, how to operate a successful business is to start with a big one and elect an NDP government.

The Acting Speaker: The first ballot item has expired.

CHILDREN'S SERVICES

Mr Ted Arnott (Wellington): I move that in the opinion of this House the provincial government should expand the Healthy Babies, Healthy Children program, so that children identified through the program who are at risk of social, emotional, physical or learning challenges, receive the necessary services to support their healthy growth and development.

The Acting Speaker (Mr Gilles E. Morin): Pursuant to standing order 95(c)(i), the member has 10 minutes for his presentation.

Mr Arnott: I'm very pleased to bring forward this resolution this morning, intended to draw attention to this excellent program, and to speak in support of its expansion.

When we think of society's most vulnerable members, babies and children are certainly at the top of our list. They are completely dependent on adults for their care, for their nourishment, for their start in life. The care they receive at this critical stage determines to a great degree their future prospects in life.

As a government, I believe that vulnerable children at risk of poor development have to be among our highest priorities. We need to ensure that parents receive the support and advice they may need to adequately meet the needs of their children. That's why I'm so pleased that the Minister of Health has recognized this area as a priority, with the establishment of the Healthy Babies, Healthy Children program. Recently I was very pleased to join her at the announcement of funding in the amount of over $130,000 for the Healthy Babies program serving Wellington county.

I would also like to thank the Minister of Community and Social Services and the minister responsible for children's issues and recognize their important work in the development of this program. We also owe a great debt of gratitude to our public health nurses, whose expertise in identifying and supporting families with babies and young children at risk forms the basis for the development of this crucial early intervention program.

The old saying that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure is certainly applicable in the Healthy Babies program. The Healthy Babies program identifies families who have the potential to be at risk, linking them with existing social, health and educational programs in their communities. All children in Ontario will be screened at the hospital or prenatally by physicians, midwives or nurses. Assessment of all at-risk families is conducted by these professionals, and an in-depth home assessment is undertaken by visiting public health nurses, intending to help the families who may be at high risk.

Parents of children who are deemed to be potentially at high risk may be offered home visits by nurses or home support visitors specially trained and supported by public health nurses. Home visitors are parents from the community who are trained in child development and are knowledgeable about services in the community that would be of benefit to parents and their babies.

Through education, advice and support, parents who would otherwise feel isolated and apprehensive about child-rearing are given a helping hand to alleviate the pressures of parenting, meet the needs of their children and create an environment where obstacles to a child's development and abuse and neglect are less likely to occur. The services are as broad as the problems the families may be encountering, from mother-and-infant programs to literacy, employment services and family counselling.

Research on early intervention programs seems to demonstrate that the most important feature is the home visiting component. The Healthy Babies program provides provincial funding for some high-risk families to receive an average of 13 visits over a two-year period. That amounts to about one visit every two months until the child is two. My resolution this morning speaks to the need to expand healthy babies so that all children at risk receive sufficient home visits, with the number of visits tailored to the needs of the family.

I firmly believe that if we want the healthy babies program to reach its full potential in helping vulnerable children, the government must devote more financial resources to the program so that at-risk children and their families receive continuous, frequent and prolonged support through home visiting. Research has told us that home visiting in early intervention programs is the single most important factor in promoting healthy mental, emotional and physical development of children, while reducing the incidence of abuse and neglect.

Success of early intervention programs in other jurisdictions, most notably the Healthy Start program in Hawaii, has hinged on the frequency and duration of home visits to all families at risk. Healthy Start boasts an incredible 99% success rate in preventing abuse and neglect for families enrolled in their program, which is tremendous success. All families participating in the Healthy Start program start with weekly visits by a support worker. These visits can continue until the child is five years old. As families become more stable and secure, the frequency of visits declines substantially, for the need is diminished.

Key elements of the Healthy Start model are being replicated in many jurisdictions in the United States and are supported by the National Committee to Prevent Child Abuse through the Healthy Families initiative.

Successful intervention programs show us that when families receive visits on a regular and frequent basis over a long period, a rapport develops between the family and the home visitor or nurse. This special and trusted person is viewed as a helpful friend, rather than a stranger, and the family becomes more comfortable in identifying problems that the nurse or home visitor can attempt to help them resolve. The nurses and home visitors are the links, the lifelines for some families, to advice and services that help them to properly care for their child.

The government should also support and encourage municipalities that may wish to devote their own resources to supplement this program. I recognize that with the realignment of services, municipalities have many new challenges and are attempting to make the most efficient use of their resources. Municipal governments have a record of responding to the needs of their communities by delivering necessary services efficiently and at a reasonable cost. Local governments in Wellington have demonstrated this fiscal prudence over the years while delivering the services that people need efficiently and effectively.

If municipal governments feel that the healthy babies program is worthwhile - I believe they will - I hope they would give consideration to devoting more resources to the program, to supplement the government's support.

I believe that volunteers could also make a valuable contribution to the Healthy Babies program. For three years, before I was elected in 1990, I volunteered as a Big Brother in my home town of Arthur. Big Brothers attempts to team boys without fathers with a positive male role model. This program is very successful in providing boys with a male presence in their lives. Its success, I believe, is due to the one-on-one personal attention that children receive and the friendship that inevitably follows.

The same concept could be employed to supplement home visits in the Healthy Babies program. In Wellington county there are many parents who have a great deal of child-rearing experience and who I know would be prepared to contribute to their communities in this positive way. Many parents would derive great satisfaction by helping families with their time, knowledge, advice and support. I urge the government to examine closely how we can make better use of volunteers in the Healthy Babies program to stretch our resources and help more families.

I would like to now read excerpts from letters and submissions I've received in support of expanding the Healthy Babies program from organizations and people devoted to protecting and promoting the health of children.

Dr Douglas Kittle, who is in the Legislature today, of the Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Health Unit, has written, "I strongly support your efforts to ensure that funding be made available to allow this important program to be successful in its support of families."

Moe Brubacher, who is the executive director of Family and Children's Services of Guelph and Wellington County, has written: "We are convinced that prevention programs can be an effective and cost-effective way to alleviate problems arising from child maltreatment. Thus we strongly support your resolution."

Dr Paul Steinhauer, who is one of Canada's foremost children's psychiatrists, and who works at the Hospital for Sick Children, writes, "I look forward to being able to help you in any way I can with your private member's bill in support of greater funding for Healthy Babies, Healthy Children."

Peter Ringrose, executive director of Family and Children's Services of Waterloo Region, writes, "Expand the Healthy babies program to include pre-birth visiting where needed, and longer periods of post-birth visiting and support through the use of well-trained volunteers."

Gordon White, who is the executive director of the Association of Local Official Health Agencies, has written, "Your government has shown leadership and vision by implementing this program and can now go farther by ensuring it is adequately funded to really achieve the goal of healthier babies and children."

Mary McConville, executive director of the Ontario Association of Children's Aid Societies, has written: "Experience has taught us that home visiting, where needed, should be extended at least until a young child reaches the school age or is enrolled in a preschool child care program. Continuing to invest in prevention will reap long-term rewards for our children and for the province of Ontario."

Sandra Randell, who is president of the Association of Nursing Directors of Official Health Agencies, a group that represents public health nursing management in Ontario, writes, "Using a prevention/early intervention approach, Healthy Babies, Healthy Children has the potential to create a lasting impact on the shape of Ontario in the future by promoting the optimal growth and development of all children in Ontario - our future citizens and our leaders."

By bringing together all of our resources as a society, we can ensure that the needs of all children are met, that they grow up in a safe and nurturing environment. If the provincial government can provide parents with the skills and coping tools they need to catch potential problems from the beginning, before they develop, children will be the big winners.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I look forward to the debate this morning.

Mrs Sandra Pupatello (Windsor-Sandwich): I'm very pleased to say that the Ontario Liberal Party will wholeheartedly endorse the private member's bill being brought forward today by the member for Wellington.

I must say to the member that I enjoyed my visit on Tuesday, when I spent the day in his region, and in fact encouraged the member to go further in forwarding the cause that the Ontario Liberal Party has been forwarding for some time. We know that the page today has been taken directly from our report, from the McGuinty Task Force on Children, called First Steps and we're very pleased to see that he is endorsing our proposal, that in fact his private member's bill relates directly to what we are proposing in First Steps.

We welcome the people who are here in the gallery today from that region. I very much enjoyed speaking specifically about First Steps in the Waterloo-Wellington region just this week. I had the opportunity to speak with students at the Waterloo-Oxford District Secondary School, who gave various concerns about the provincial government, and in the afternoon spent a good deal of time at a round table with educators who came to listen and discuss various aspects of the First Steps program that the Ontario Liberal Party is putting forward. So I applaud the member from Waterloo region who is coming forward to say First Steps is exactly where the government must be in making children a priority.

We certainly have had concerns over the last several years that the focus of government has not been on children. This morning we talked with listeners of CHIN radio, much of the Italian community. We talked to the Italian community this morning about First Steps. We had callers from the Toronto area, from the Italian community, calling in to give us commentary on our discussion of the First Steps program. They were asking us questions about day care, asking us questions about what we intend to do.

Many of the comments from the Italian listeners were about their experiences when they're having babies in hospitals. One of the key planks of the First Steps program discusses the first 48 hours of a child's life. We know those are very crucial days and certainly a crucial part of those first zero-to-three years.

We propose that we introduce a minimum stay of 48 hours for all moms when they're having babies - they can certainly choose to leave earlier if it's not a new experience - but in particular for new moms, who have to use those first few hours to rest, to be educated about some very basic things like bathing new babies, to discuss issues like breast feeding with professionals at the hospital.

I have to raise a concern. While we laud the introduction of this kind of private member's bill and certainly will support it, at the same time this very same government, through various ministries, actually is moving in the reverse direction where it affects children. For example, this member today should be speaking about what home visits will find in the homes of children who actually have that intervention.

Mr John L. Parker (York East): On a point of order, Mr Speaker.

Mrs Pupatello: Mr Speaker, if he's going to interrupt, you should stop the clock.

The Acting Speaker: It's a point of order. It's unfortunate, but that's the way it works.

Mr Parker: Mr Speaker, it's one thing to lift a document to make a demonstration; it's another thing to keep the prop on display throughout one's remarks. I think it's time to put the -

The Acting Speaker: I think that's a bit farfetched, because I've seen quite often documents by this government being used as a referral text. I don't call this, in my opinion, a prop. If you don't agree with my decision, you can always challenge me.

Mrs Pupatello: We have little enough time in this House to discuss children, so I don't enjoy the fact that I'd be interrupted on this most important issue.

For those people who choose to call us to get a copy of the First Steps program, the back of it - which is what I'm referring to - will show the building blocks that are a significant foundation of the First Steps program. Right on that, you will see it says, "Forty-eight-hour hospital care for new mothers."

It's a very important step and new moms should know about what it is we are advancing. The point is that when we introduce more home visits, which is what this member is choosing to do today - he's actually saying that if we discover that there are issues that families need to contend with once they've had a home visit, we have to have the opportunity in our communities to address issues with these families.

That means services available in the community to address need, whether that be through children's mental health agencies, which this government has cut, or whether that means programs through children's aid societies, which this government has cut. We have a great deal of difficulty that while the member comes forward to try to push the government forward in the direction the Ontario Liberal Party would like to see us go, his government is moving in the reverse direction on a number of fronts that affect children.

We heard the member today talk about the importance of local public health. This is the same government that downloaded the cost of the public health units on cities and towns right across Ontario. We can only hope that there will be the opportunity for those local city councillors and town councillors to have the finances to continue to provide necessary programs like nurses. Public health units have been cut back year after year after year, and when we went around Ontario and talked about children we met with public health units, public health nurses, who had significant concerns about what they weren't able to do because they simply didn't have the finances.

I would encourage this same member from the Waterloo region to go to his own caucus and his own cabinet to say, "What this government needs is a children-first policy directive," so that when every single ministry of the Ontario government chooses to bring a new policy or a new initiative, the first filter they use is, what effect will that change have on children in Ontario? If the government had used that in its last three years, my view is that many children would not have had negative effects from this very same government.

Just a couple of weeks ago we heard the Premier himself talk about why he felt it was necessary to take nutrition moneys from pregnant mothers. I find it very hard to parallel those remarks by the Premier with the member who brings forward a private member's bill today. They're completely opposed. We know that nutrition is most important for pregnant moms whether they're on assistance or not. The last thing the government should be doing through regulation or through bills in this House is making it more difficult for mothers to be good moms.

We all know that it's a parent's responsibility to take care of their children, and the role of the Ontario government should be to provide the kind of policies and direction and leadership to allow parents to do their job well and to give support when sometimes that kind of support is necessary.

Let me conclude by saying that we will be supporting the private member's bill today. I'm happy to share my time with other members of the Liberal caucus who also will be supporting the initiative. We can only hope this member will go further than that, will go further in speaking to his colleagues, his colleagues in the cabinet of the Conservative Party, who are moving in the reverse direction. I hope this member will be capable of putting the brakes on that direction.

The Acting Speaker: I'd like to make a brief comment. If you have a document in front of you and you refer to it, that is acceptable. But if you do it in such a way as to taunt the opposition, it becomes iffy, it becomes nearly a prop. I think you have to trust your own judgement on that. The Speaker was quite adamant, quite clear, on props. If you have a document in your hand and you refer to it, occasionally you show it, but if you do it purposely, if you hold it in front of you to arouse the ire, if I can put it this way, of the government or the opposition, it's not acceptable. I think it's a question of judgement.

Let's proceed with the debate.

Ms Frances Lankin (Beaches-Woodbine): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I feel somewhat hard done by in that you've made your ruling just before I hold up and taunt the government with my document, but I'm actually going to refer to it and not just hold it.

I want to begin by saying that I certainly, on behalf of my caucus, indicate that we will be supporting the resolution of the member for Wellington. The member for Wellington knows that I have a great deal of respect for him personally and I know his commitment in this area and believe that his resolution comes very genuinely from the heart and is something he cares about.

I have to say to him that I wish the same were true of his government. In part my remarks today will be in support of his resolution, but I must point out some of the contradictions in terms of what's happening in the province today.

Let me begin by talking about the Healthy Babies, Healthy Children program. In the limited start we have with it, it is a program this government has initiated which I am very supportive of. You referred to what I think is considered worldwide the successful pilot project, in a sense, in Hawaii; we have had longitudinal studies from that to show us the success that program has had and the difference it has made in people's lives. Surely, that's what being government is about and surely that's what these programs are about, to make a difference in people's lives.

We have seen from all kinds of research around the world, whether it be the United States, the UK, western Europe, that these kinds of programs of early intervention and support mean so much. The years zero to three - zero to six, but primarily zero to three - are the critical formation years for children, and anything we can do to support kids in their healthy development during that period of time is of such importance in terms of their future success.

I had an opportunity during my period as Minister of Health in this province to work on building and expanding the Better Beginnings, Better Futures program, again designed to provide supports to families in the early days. This is an area that the member for Wellington referred to as the ounce of prevention, and I fully support governments using resources in a wise way, using resources in the front end to prevent problems, to support wellness, to support healthy development when it comes to children.

I've had the extreme pleasure and honour over the years to meet with, speak with, and work with, in some circumstances, some of the people the member for Wellington referred to in the testimonial letters he read out, people like Paul Steinhauer. You didn't mention Fraser Mustard, but I know Fraser would be completely supportive of this initiative as well, and Dan Offer, people like that, who have spent years doing the research and trying to convince governments of all stripes of the importance of moving forward in very comprehensive way in dealing with children.

The problem I have is that while I support what the member wants to do in expansion of this program and think that could make a big difference, we have to take a look at this program not in isolation but in the context within which it fits in the province of Ontario right now. The member referred to the fact that one of the things the program does and can do is to help make links for children and families at risk to other services out there, to social services and health services and family services.

I'm about to recite a litany of cuts from this Harris government to those very services. The very services needed to support families in our communities are being stripped back. We may be able to get the early identification, which is very important - please don't get me wrong; I support that completely - but where people go from there and where they get the supports, the other umbrella of support, the safety net in our community, there are holes in that. It is fraying right now. We must look to rebuilding that safety net, that support for families in our neighbourhoods and in our communities.

When I think of some of the specifics - I had a meeting recently with an official from the Toronto District School Board. This is just one school board, but these stories are being replicated around the province. As they're dealing with the cuts in education funding, the new funding formula and how it's structured, they're telling me what the results of some of that would mean in terms of programs that are going to be lost to the board.

The parenting support program for teen moms who are in school, the very families who will be at risk, who will be visited occasionally by public health nurses, which will be very important, but who are getting daily support in the school for those who are attending school - that program is going. That is a crime. It's going because of this government's cuts.

The breakfast program: The government made a great ballyhoo a year ago or so about putting some money for a period of time into the breakfast programs. The breakfast nutrition programs in the Toronto District School Board are likely going to be cut, again as the result of the changes in funding.

I refer just briefly to one of a number of documents from Putting Children First, a report that our leader, Howard Hampton, and I, as children's critic, were involved in producing and distributing about a year or a year and a half ago, a major report on responding to the government's proposed child care reforms and a number of other areas dealing with children's services. This particular folder is called A Litany of Cuts to Children. It's four pages, but I'm just going to highlight some of them. I think you'll see, I say to the member for Wellington, the importance of also pushing the government to restore supports and services in some of these other areas.

First of all, half a million Ontario children were affected by this first extreme action of the Harris government, which was the social assistance rate cut of 21.6%. Half of the people in Ontario on social assistance were children. Those children are worse off today, children who are more at risk, more in need of the program that you want to expand. There have been cuts to child care subsidies, forcing many municipalities to abandon those spaces.

If you look at reports like the Perry report out of the States which looked at children at risk, early childhood education and supports, that's where the figure that the investment of $1 gets you $7 down the road came from. That's dealing particularly with families at risk. The loss of support services in our communities comes at a critical time, when families are poor and facing many more difficulties.

Recreational programs are cut, like Little Beavers for native children. They abolished the community support program that funded training and development programs for youth. It was specifically targeted at young single moms, people who need the supports to ensure that their kids aren't at risk. That has gone; that's been abolished. Those supports aren't there for them any more.

There are cuts to public funding for public libraries, one of the only places where her kids can get books. There were cuts to the children's aid society. We lost 450 front-line staff in the children's aid societies, people who were supposed to be part of early identification of kids at risk and child welfare and child protection. They eliminated the children's services coordinating advisory groups, which coordinated the patchwork of programs, tried to bring services together. They cut maternity homes, residential and non-residential programs for teen moms by 25%.

If there is a group that is obviously more at risk than others, it is young single moms who need these kinds of supports, yet the government has cut those supports.

They have cut programs aimed at tackling family violence through early intervention or prevention. They cut, and in some cases eliminated, family counselling programs. In your remarks, you referred to one of the things that early intervention and supports can do: provide supports for the mom, like literacy. Those pro-literacy programs have been cut. The training programs have been cut. You mentioned family counselling. In some cases, they've been cut. In some cases, they've been totally eliminated as a result of the cuts of the Harris government.

This report goes on and talks about the proposed changes in child care. It talks about cuts to violence-against-women programs, which puts children in danger, and the fiasco at the family support plan. If you want to talk about supports to families, the family support plan, the economic support, what happened when your government laid off 290 experienced and trained staff and closed nine regional offices and centralized everything? They were all in boxes and there were computers all over the place, and families were not getting their cheques. How many kids did you put at risk during that period of time?

I have referred to some of the cuts in education, the loss of junior kindergarten. The new funding formula that has come out is a recipe for fewer services for early childhood education rather than more. The rhetoric sounds great, but when you look at how it is implemented and you look at the choices school boards are going to have to make with respect to enhancements in grades 1 to 3, when supports to the classroom have been cut, teaching assistants and other sorts of things, you'll see that the money will go there. That's the option that has been given, as opposed to putting it into JK and SK. It's going to mean less early childhood education.

Of course, we know that the fastest growing group of individuals using shelters in Metro Toronto, for example, is children. Affordable housing is an issue for kids.

There are many others I could refer to, I say to the member for Wellington, but I want to share my time with other members of my caucus. I believe your sincerity in your desire to have your government expand this program. I join with you in that request to the Harris government to expand this program. It is important. It would be worthwhile to expand this program.

But I have to say that doing that in isolation, without looking at all of the other areas in which the government's actions have made kids' lives worse - just read some of the reports that have come out: the McConville report two days ago, the Finlay, the child advocate report, yesterday, and we're waiting for the three reports the minister won't release. We know there are huge gaps in the system between child welfare, children's mental health, the young offender system and family supports. All of these areas, along with the litany of cuts I read off, are areas the government must also pay attention to.

We will be voting in favour of your resolution, but it is with the strongest advice that you work equally hard to ensure your government restores funding to these other critical areas for families and children.

Mrs Helen Johns (Huron): I stand today to support my colleague the member for Wellington in this important bill. What I am going to be talking about today is what's actually happening with this program in my area of Huron county. I have talked to some people who are involved with children in my area, and I think it's important for people to understand exactly what the funds for Healthy Babies, Healthy Children are being used for. So far, $10 million has been put into this program. My riding, which is very rural, got very little of the money.

I want to talk about how they've stretched those dollars and what we would do if we had more funds, if we had more support for Healthy Babies, Healthy Children.

I would first like to say that I have two very active boys. I can only imagine what it must be like when things are different in your family and you might be a family that is classified as at risk or as needing help from the community.

When the Ministry of Health, and in my case the Huron county public health board, talks about a family at risk, what they're really talking about is a family that lacks supports, for example, not having family to fall back on, not having a mother who comes for two weeks when your baby is born, or when you're sick, someone who comes in and says, "I'll give you a hand." They lack family supports in some cases.

They have, in other cases, very poor parental role models. They might have had a disturbing life as a child themselves or they grew up in an abusive situation. We want to make sure that those people get all the benefits that a community has to give these people a hand up.

In my riding, because we don't have a public transportation system, we also deal with the isolation issue. We have people in our community who have a baby, they're home with the baby for the four months' maternity leave or for a longer period of time, and they can't get out of the house. We have to be concerned about them and how they are coping with little baby and Mom at home alone and nobody else for most of the day. That's a tough issue too.

In our area there are some services, and people don't know what those services are. That's another issue where we think a family might be at risk. They might, in that particular case, just need knowledge.

The last case, which I think we all deal with at some time in our lives, is family stress. That can be as a result of a baby that has health problems when they're born, or just financial matters, or any of those things that are day-to-day matters that we deal with. That puts a family at risk.

We're saying, when the mother is at the hospital and any of those situations exist, we as a community need to look at that family grouping and ask, "Is there anything we can do to help these people?" Nurses come into the hospital - in my case, the county of Huron public health offices - and they say: "We think we have a family that's at risk here. We would like you to look at this family and to decide what should be done."

This program is run, as you heard earlier, by the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Community and Social Services, but there are many people in the community who make this system work. Our advisory board that makes this work includes children's aid, day care, public health. It includes a great program we have in our community called rural response for healthy children. There are a great number of people who work to make sure that this program works for the people of Ontario.

When you talk about who might be at risk, if you don't know your community or you're in a specific segment of your community, you might not recognize that the numbers are just as high as they are. The Ministry of Health has given statistics, which are basically being confirmed by my community, that say for every 100 children born, 25 of those children have some factors that might put them at risk. Of those 25, 12 are at high risk. I think those are the people we're trying to focus on. We're trying to ask, "What can we do to make sure that those children have an existence we're all happy with and that they are safe and healthy in the future?" because we know that's a very important part.

In Huron county, a case worker comes into the family, and they first of all ask if they want help. Hopefully they do in those 12 cases out of 100, because there is a real opportunity to make the lives of those children better. We try to find people they consider to be people who can help them. We don't say: "You will have a person from the public health office. You will have X, Y and Z." We say, "Who do you think in the community can help you to go through this process?" We put people together.

In our community, we have two lay resource visitors who will come into the community and help the family to deal with all these difficult issues. We've got those lay resource people coming in, and as the member for Wellington said earlier, they try to build a rapport to help the family grow, to nurture the children, to move a healthy family along.

What we see is a problem with where we are right now and what we would do if we had more resources available to us in Huron county is that we would look at providing more services for the children between zero and two years old. Right now, the public health office takes money from their budget and makes sure that they come into that house once a month, every month, as opposed to 13 times over two years, because too many things can happen when a child is at risk.

The second thing we'd like to do is to expand the program to age five. Those kids are at home with Mom or with their parents, and what happens is that no one could see that child from two until five. We need to make sure the community is involved in that child's daily life.

The third thing is that we would like to see more public health nurses involved, dieticians, so the betterment of health is being worked with.

Also, if we ever had the opportunity, we'd like to be able to help people when they're pregnant, to work on that prenatal stage, which really sets a child on a very good course.

I think our program is working. We have a number of consultants we can pull into the family to help them. Children's aid, public health, CPRI, hospitals, consumers, lactation consultants, people from Rural Response for Healthy Children, day cares - all of these people are working to ensure that our kids are safe and healthy in the community, and that's a very important aspect.

I'd like to thank two people in my community who I believe are doing a terrific job to set this program up with limited resources, and that's Marlene Price, from the public health office, and Jane Hoy, from Rural Response for Healthy Children. They've done a terrific job, and I know our program is going to be very good.

Thank you to the member for Wellington for such a fine proposal.

Mr Richard Patten (Ottawa Centre): I'm very pleased this morning to stand in support of the resolution by Mr Arnott. I believe it's sound. The member for Huron likewise was supportive and gave some examples of some of the things that should be expanded, should be increased. But it seems to be quite obvious that some of the resources at the moment are not there, and I would assume that one of the motivations for Mr Arnott's resolution is that we are not doing enough at this stage.

That was clear. My colleague the member for Windsor-Sandwich identified a task force that went around the province, in fact spoke to 70 different groups and individuals in places like Belleville, Barrie, Windsor, Fort Frances, Toronto, Sudbury, Thunder Bay, Ottawa, plus e-mails and faxes and letters and phone calls that were received when our party was looking at the whole issue of children. And what were some of the things we heard? We heard people from these groups say that children are not a priority for this government at this time.

Therefore, the resolution is in keeping with what we're picking up from parents and from those who spoke to us, that parents are having difficulty balancing their responsibilities at home and at work and, as a result, families are under tremendous stress. We heard that we're not doing enough to ensure the healthy development of children and their learning capacity. Finally, we heard about the unprecedented number of children suffering the effects of poverty, hunger, neglect and abuse. We've heard this being raised many times in question period, asking the government.

We're well aware that the government has a minister without portfolio for children. I gather she's busy this morning; otherwise I'm sure she'd be with us, because I'm sure she'd want to hear the particular debate.

It seems to me, as my colleague from Windsor-Sandwich has suggested, that by placing children first you have a criterion by which you make decisions. You say, "What's the impact on children and how is this going to affect the support of children, the rearing of children, the protection of children?" As we know, that's got to be a primary investment, and heretofore that investment and that concern and priority, it seems to us, have not been the government's primary concern. It has been the economic bottom line.

I think more and more members now, though, as illustrated this morning in this House, have seen that if you focus only on economics, then the human dimension and those who are most vulnerable - and of course children don't vote and they don't have the same kind of capacity to debate, to raise their voices. All they can do is cry out. Do we hear them when they cry out? I think there's a growing groundswell throughout the province in all quarters that indeed we're not doing enough, that in fact we've damaged some of the systems we've had.

I would like to quote a few people who in the task force we had and First Steps said: "Children first as a primary principle is needed: What is important is that at each turn of the way, at each point of decision, we put the wellbeing and the emotional health of children at the central point of our concerns and endeavour."

This was Dr Brenda Wattie, the director of the Canadian Mental Health Association.

The Canadian Mental Health Association of course is an organization with tremendous expertise and a knowledge of what is needed to provide a healthy environment for children, the supports for children and the impact on mental health. We're not only talking about the mental health of children here, of course; we're talking about the mental, physical and spiritual health and growth of children. We know that if we don't provide the nourishment, if we don't make the investment in the early years - the government has engaged Fraser Mustard as a world-renowned expert on child development.

Fraser Mustard will tell you that we will cause unseen damage to children if we don't provide the nourishment, that the growth and development of children in their early years is extremely important. That's why junior kindergarten is extremely important. It's extremely important for those families who are squeezed and under pressure and are finding it difficult to spend the kind of time they would like to with their children and provide the resources available to help nurture children in the early years. That is another one.

Time is running out. I just want to say to Mr Arnott that I support the resolution, as our party does. We believe it's extremely important. We hope that following the passage of this today, there indeed there will be some lobbying internally to really impress upon the government that all members feel it's important to support children in their development.

Mr Wayne Lessard (Windsor-Riverside): I want to indicate my unqualified support for the member for Wellington's resolution calling for the expansion of the Healthy Babies, Healthy Children program in Ontario. It's a welcome resolution and it's one that's refreshing coming from a member of a government that really isn't seen as having children as one of its main priorities.

We saw that exhibited in the speech from the throne last week. There was a lot of emphasis placed on how this government measures success. They talk about retail sales, consumer and business confidence, housing starts, shrinking welfare rolls, agricultural production, things like that. I think what we need to be focusing on more is that we measure prosperity in our economy by the impact it has on people, especially on children.

I'd like to see measurements of success by seeing a decrease in the number of children living in poverty, for example, a decrease in the number of children who require the services of children's aid societies and of the courts. I believe that's how we should be measuring success in this province as well.

There was scant mention of what this government was going to do with respect to helping vulnerable children in the throne speech. There was mention of a Learning, Earning and Parenting initiative to encourage young, single parents to stay in school and complete their education. That was about the only mention of how this government plans to help children. I hope the member for Wellington's resolution is going to have an impact on the government's commitment to children and will increase and expand the Healthy Babies, Healthy Children program.

A couple of weeks ago in Windsor we had a forum on child care, put on by the Canadian Union of Public Employees. We heard speaker after speaker - people from children's aid societies, child care workers, parents of autistic children - indicating the problems they were experiencing as a result of this government's cuts to children's programs. They mentioned specifically the impact that the reduction of social assistance benefits of 21.6% back in October 1995 had on them, and we see the impact of that in our own community.

The Canadian Union of Public Employees forums are going to be visiting other cities throughout Ontario, and I encourage people to attend those hearings and express their concerns about this government's initiatives as they relate to children.

We live in a very prosperous economy, and Windsor is one of those places that is doing very well. But at the same time we're seeing an increase in the use of food banks, especially by children. Why is that? That indicates to me there are some people who are benefiting by the improvements in this economy, and in increasing numbers there are people who aren't benefiting from that improved economy. Many times we see that it's children who are suffering the most from this government's initiatives.

I support the member's motion. I wish him luck in his efforts to get this government to expand the Healthy Babies, Healthy Children program.

Mrs Lillian Ross (Hamilton West): I too am pleased to rise in support of Mr Arnott's private member's resolution. I am a firm believer in looking at programs that work and in building on programs that work, so I want to highlight some of the programs that work around these types of initiatives.

Mr Arnott referred to Hawaii's early intervention program. It's called the healthy start program. It's a voluntary program in Hawaii, which is surprising in that less than 1% of people actually take

part in that program, even though it is voluntary. It has a success rate of 99% in preventing child abuse and neglect, which is pretty phenomenal. A three-year study of this program confirmed a great improvement in child development and parent-child relationships, as well as a reduction in the use of punitive discipline while virtually eliminating abuse, yet ensuring quick identification and early intervention in the few cases of abuse that do occur.

When parents learn effective parenting skills, it helps them to feel much more comfortable and at ease with their children; it takes away a lot of the stress they worry about and allows them to not only care for their children but enjoy caring for their children. For the babies, early intervention programs are of course invaluable, because the most critical brain development occurs in these early years.

In New Brunswick, they have an intervention program which helps expectant mothers who are at risk for health problems that could affect their own health and the health of their child. The intervention program got into full swing in 1994, so it's too early yet to evaluate the outcomes of that program. However, judging by statistics in the 1996-97 year, 97.7% of eligible expectant women voluntarily took

part in the program. So, it would appear that it is serving a need in the community.

In New York state, in Elmira they have an early infancy project, which is considered one of the most thorough controlled studies of the home visitor model. The study reported a reduction in child abuse rates from 19% in the control group to 4% in the nurse-visited mothers. The report concluded that the program would pay for itself before the child even began school, because of reduced hospital costs from abuse, better nutrition in the family, less subsequent pregnancies and greater employability for the parent.

Closer to home, there's another example of an innovative prevention program. It's at the Helen Tufts Nursery School in Kingston. This school is a real example of being ahead of its time. It has had a program there since 1966 that looks at providing services to three- and four-year-olds from economically disadvantaged homes. One of the unique features of that particular nursery school is that it provides a bus which picks up the children to take them to the school and delivers them back home.

I want to draw your attention to an

article that was in the Toronto Star earlier this week. I always like to bring forward anything that's happening in Hamilton. This particular

article was written about the Healthy Babies, Healthy Children program that's working in Hamilton. I want to quote Bonnie Bridle, who is the program manager with the Hamilton-Wentworth regional public health department, who states:

"We know that providing families with adequate support and access to resources very early in the game can have tremendous impacts on the health and wellbeing of children....

"Trudy Cooper, clinical manager of obstetrics for Hamilton Health Sciences Corp, says, `Healthy Babies, Healthy Children is about preventing problems, rather than intervening after there has already been a crisis.'"

I think we in this government agree that we need to look at programs that work. We need to develop those programs, because a child's early years lay the foundation for all that follows in their lives. Instead of spending money treating the consequences of child abuse or poor childhood outcomes, we can now tackle the problem where we should be tackling the problem, at its root, through early intervention, and help improve the lives of defenceless children.

I am very proud to support this resolution and I'm pretty confident and hopeful that everyone else in this House will.

Mr Derwyn Shea (High Park-Swansea): I am very pleased to rise and lend my support as well to the resolution. It has been put forward by the member for Wellington, who is known for his compassion, particularly for those most vulnerable. I'm not surprised he would bring forward a recommendation that would call upon the Minister of Finance to give serious consideration to the extension of a program that is proving itself across this province.

The Healthy Babies, Healthy Children program is working well, but clearly what the member is identifying is the need to expand that program. It's a need now to recognize the importance of adding another building block, and I applaud his resolution.

The fact is that the current program is a sound investment in our children and in our province's future and I think we ought not to forget that. The program is part of the government's long-term commitment in developing an integrated system of effective services for vulnerable children which will increase and strengthen existing services for families and children.

Therein lies the issue that has been addressed by the member for Huron and by my colleague from Hamilton West: the concern of extending this program within the fiscal capabilities of this province; beginning to recognize the importance of adding services that go beyond the age of two, that go perhaps to the age of five, that certainly begin to take advantage of some of the government's policies.

Let me remind us of nurse practitioners, beginning to take advantage of their great skills across this province in assessment and in interdiction, to in fact begin to bring together the agencies, to coordinate the services, so that those both in the prenatal condition and in the postnatal condition are in fact receiving the kind of care and attention they rightfully should expect.

I am very pleased to lend my full support and endorsement to this resolution. I am pleased to hear what seems to be unanimous support of that and I hope that will be the case.

Mr John Hastings (Etobicoke-Rexdale): I would just like to congratulate the member for Wellington for pressing for this idea. Also, concomitant with and parallel to is the Metropolitan Toronto District Health Council's $3.1-million investment in preschool children's language programming.

The Acting Speaker: Thank you. The member for Wellington, you have two minutes to reply.

Mr Arnott: I really sincerely appreciate the comments I've heard from my colleagues in the House. I want to thank the member for Windsor-Sandwich, the member for Beaches-Woodbine, the member for Huron, the member for Ottawa Centre, the member for Windsor-Riverside, the member for Hamilton West, the member for High Park-Swansea, and the member for Etobicoke-Rexdale for his brief contribution. I really appreciate the support and want to thank you sincerely for that.

I want to respond to a couple of points in the brief time that I have. Responding to the member for Beaches-Woodbine, she listed a litany of what she perceives to be spending cuts that the government has had to undertake. Certainly we have had to reduce expenditures in quite a number of key areas. But we know and we are encouraged by the fact that our funding partners have done a terrific job of trying to do better for less. We've challenged them to do that and they've been up to the challenge to a large degree. Also, we are motivated by a desire to save those important programs, and certainly that's our primary objective with reducing them.

I want to respond also to the comments of the member for Windsor-Sandwich. I appreciated the report that came out by the Liberal caucus. I don't want to taunt you with it but it's here, the Report of the McGuinty Task Force on Children, which I researched. I want you to know, and perhaps remind you, that I brought forward this resolution on Healthy Babies, Healthy Children last December. It was scheduled for debate the last day that the House sat, but of course we were pre-empted for government business.

I spoke to your leader to wish him a merry Christmas outside the chamber afterwards and he said, "This is the kind of thing that we support." Then I was pleased to see two months later it was included in your report, so I want to thank you very much for that. I can't say it was my idea, but certainly I appreciate the support that you have shown.

I want to thank also Dr Doug Kittle for being here this morning from our Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Health Unit and to thank him for his advice and his support. I also acknowledge Diane Bewick from the Public Health Nursing Management of Ontario for her presence and her support, and also acknowledge the great help that I received from my executive assistant, Joanna Willis. Thank you, Joanna, for your help.

Thank you all members of the House for being here today. I appreciate your support.

The Acting Speaker: The time for private members' business has expired.

HIGHWAY TRAFFIC AMENDMENT ACT (DRIVERS' LICENCES OF CERTAIN SCHOOL PUPILS), 1998 / LOI DE 1998 MODIFIANT LE CODE DE LA ROUTE (PERMIS DE CONDUIRE DE CERTAINS ÉLÈVES)

The Acting Speaker (Mr Gilles E. Morin): We will now deal with the first ballot item in the name of Mr Wettlaufer, ballot item number 5.

Mr Wettlaufer has moved second reading of Bill 4. Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry?

All those in favour, say "aye."

All those opposed, say "nay."

In my opinion, the ayes have it. I declare the motion carried.

Pursuant to standing order 95(j), the bill is referred to the committee of the whole House.

Mr Wayne Wettlaufer (Kitchener): I'd like to submit that the bill get submitted to the justice committee.

The Acting Speaker: Agreed? Agreed.

CHILDREN'S SERVICES

The Acting Speaker (Mr Gilles E. Morin): We will now deal with ballot item number 6, standing in the name of Mr Arnott.

Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry? Carried.

All matters relating to private members' public business having been completed, I do now leave the chair and the House will resume at 1:30 of the clock this afternoon.

The House recessed from 1159 to 1328.

The Speaker (Hon Chris Stockwell): It is now time for oral questions.

Interjection.

The Speaker: We made an agreement yesterday.

Interjection: Is there agreement on unanimous consent?

The Speaker: I thought we had it yesterday.

Hon Dianne Cunningham (Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs, minister responsible for women's issues): Mr Speaker, I believe there is an all-party agreement for one speaker from each party to make a brief statement on Sexual Assault Prevention Month.

Mrs Lyn McLeod (Fort William): I understood there was consent to begin with the unanimous consent. Is it also my understanding that would be followed by statements and then by questions?

The Speaker: I never know of these unanimous consents. What we agreed to yesterday was that question period would begin the routine proceedings and then we'd go through them as normal but question period would be the first order of business.

This request for unanimous consent: Agreed? Agreed. The unanimous consent will take place for the three speakers, and then we'll go directly into question period.

Apparently we have another one after that.

Mr Bud Wildman (Algoma): There are two.

The Speaker: Right. So never mind.

SEXUAL ASSAULT PREVENTION MONTH

Hon Dianne Cunningham (Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs, minister responsible for women's issues): May is Sexual Assault Prevention Month in Ontario. This government, like every government since Sexual Assault Prevention Month was first recognized in 1988, is committed to stopping the violence and to creating an environment where women are free of sexual assault.

As my colleagues across Canada know, it is a difficult but necessary struggle. It is a struggle that our government, like others across the country, continues, community by community, to work to stop the violence.

The costs for victims of sexual assault and their families are impossible to comprehend. Sexual assault has an enormous impact on society as a whole. For women who have suffered the pain, whose potential has been restricted, whose independence has been diminished, we must commit ourselves to stopping the violence. For crisis intervention workers, the front-line workers in shelters, police, counsellors, nurses, physicians, for neighbours and indeed for whole communities, the effects of this violence are both long-term and far-reaching.

The statistics speak for themselves. According to Statistics Canada, only six of every 100 sexual assaults are reported to police. Some 60% of Canadian women are afraid to walk alone in their communities. One in five teenaged girls has experienced abuse in a dating relationship. Between March 1996 and April 1997 the Ontario Human Rights Commission received 225 sexual harassment complaints. These statistics are appalling. They represent conditions in Ontario which are simply not acceptable.

Whether we are political leaders, professionals, business people, neighbours or friends, each one of us, individually and together, must take responsibility for the prevention of violence. We must continue to work towards safe homes, safe communities and safe workplaces. We must overcome violence aimed at women and their children.

To succeed, we must educate our young people. Just as each new generation must be educated on the dangers of drinking and driving, each new generation of children must be made aware of violence issues in terms they can appreciate and understand.

To reach out to our young people, we have achieved a number of successes with our private community and public sector partners. Last November we launched two anti-violence television productions for young Ontarians. With our Partners for Change network we produced Peace Breaks on TVO and You Oughta Know: Teens Talk About Teen Dating and Abuse on YTV. Just this morning I was informed that You Oughta Know has been nominated for a Golden Sheaf Award at the Yorkton International Film and Video Festival in the education category.

We also have implemented and expanded The Joke's Over, an educational tool to teach kids that sexual harassment is not okay and that it can escalate into sexual assault. These projects will ensure that awareness and prevention activities touch and educate every age group, every part of our population, and we must work hard together to make certain that the resources we have developed together are used appropriately and in a timely manner in our schools.

My colleague the member for London South, as minister with responsibility for women's issues, stated in May 1993: "It may take time before we see the results for which we are hoping because it takes time to dispel the myths; but dispel these myths we must, and to ensure the safety of women and children and to take us one step closer to equality in this society we must continue to dedicate ourselves to education around sexual assault."

I want to pay tribute to past work done to create a foundation in this province for violence prevention initiatives and also to pay tribute to the work that we have done, including:

A series of public education campaigns including brochures on date rape and sexual assault in 20 languages; training manuals and workshops; award-winning television, radio and print public service campaigns to educate the public on this issue; passing the Victims' Bill of Rights in 1995, identifying and protecting specific rights for victims of violent crime, more than half of whom are women; developing a Partners Against Crime strategy to develop an infrastructure of partnerships of all key stakeholders to target serious crime and crime prevention - I might add, with the assistance of our former Solicitor General - and the strategy includes grants to communities and front-line policing, partnership with the private sector and community, establishment of the Ontario Partners Against Crime Council and the use of technology for information sharing problem-solving; establishing a victim support line to provide around-the-clock, person-to-person referral to local victim services and updates on an offender's status; expanding the victim-witness assistance program and the victim crisis assistance and referral service through the victims' justice fund which was established to support victims of crime, along with the support of my friend the Attorney General.

In addition to approximately $100 million annually our government invests in programs to address and prevent violence against women and their children, in 1997 we announced $27 million over four years in new funding for programs and services to break the cycle of violence against women and children.

In addition, our Agenda for Action strategic framework includes a number of innovative initiatives. We've implemented services at six sexual assault treatment centres to ensure victims of domestic violence have access to emergency hospital-based medical care and counselling. We continue to work on a training package for children's aid society workers to help them deal more effectively with children who have witnessed domestic violence. We've delivered French-language assault prevention training for teachers and parents in five communities across this province.

We've implemented eight new domestic violence courts. Police, crown attorneys and victim-witness assistance staff are trained on the issues of domestic violence, and a mandatory male batterer program is a component of each court. We've supported 19 male batterer programs and eliminated the backlog. We've increased availability of emergency legal aid services for abused women. This year we supported 36 new community-based violence prevention projects through the Ontario women's directorate priority project funding program, and we represented approximately, in this instance, 136 innovative partnerships to educate on the issue of violence against women and their children.

There are many initiatives within our Agenda for Action for education and prevention, including establishing 47 new school-based service projects in school boards to ensure children who witness domestic violence receive appropriate care through the schools, and we have much more to do; developing and delivering a series of teaching tools to assist ESL teachers in integrating violence prevention education activities in our ESL classrooms; developing public education campaigns with private sector partners to promote violence prevention.

In closing, I would like to share with you the comments of Dianne Poole, the Liberal MPP for Eglinton, who said in May 1994: "One of the very encouraging factors in combating the myths surrounding sexual assault is that the members of this House treat it as a serious problem and in a non-partisan way. I think this is vitally important, that we in this House set the standard and work together to make a difference."

Mrs Lyn McLeod (Fort William): I willingly join with my colleagues on behalf of my caucus in the recognition of Sexual Assault Prevention Month. I believe this recognition is important because it focuses our attention on the need to make every effort to raise the awareness of the continuance of sexual assault, sexual assault which, taken to the extreme, too often means violent rape and even death but which is intolerable in any way, in any form, in any place.

I hope we are making some gains in our awareness of the realities of sexual assault. I'm not sure that we are making any real progress in its prevention.

Rape crisis centres report that their statistics are going up. This is hopefully because more women are seeking help and not because there are more incidents. The problem is that we just don't know, because for too long women have been afraid to come forward, afraid the support will not be there for them if they do.

Although there has been an increase in women coming into rape crisis centres, there are fewer women reporting their attacks to the police. They are increasingly concerned about how they will be dealt with in the justice system. Challenges to the rape shield law and to the law that protects the confidentiality of sexual counselling records have heightened those concerns.

Let us hope that the Supreme Court clarifies the constitutionality of these laws quickly and positively in the support of justice for victims. We cannot hope to prevent violent sexual assault unless it is treated as a crime and is punished, but the crime cannot be punished unless there is a conviction, and there can't be convictions unless women are able to go to court with confidence that they won't be battered there too. Nor can we prevent sexual assault unless we understand the ways in which sexual assault in some forms and in some places is condoned.

The Ontario Coalition of Rape Crisis Centres has asked the provincial government to declare the first week in June as Sexual Harassment Awareness Week in order to focus attention on this very serious issue. This was asked for last year and didn't happen. I hope this year there will be a positive response, because here too we need to raise consciousness. We need to be able to identify sexual harassment, to define it, to recognize its causes as well as its manifestations.

But to do this, if we're to be able to do this, women have got to be able to report their experiences of sexual harassment, and they won't do this unless they know they are going to be taken serious and unless they know they will not be punished for speaking out.

There was a study done for the federal government that was reported last November that states there are insufficient police resources to investigate criminal harassment cases and that this in turn leads to weak depositions in court, and as a result more than 60% of harassment cases are withdrawn by the crown and 75% of those convicted receive suspended sentences or probation.

Having raised that concern, let me recognize that I'm confident that all of us in this House do indeed take the issue of sexual assault seriously. I know that some of the small amount of money that has been given to the minister responsible for women's issues to address all of the issues of concern to women has been directed towards rape crisis centres. I am concerned, and I won't belabour it today, that those funds are not adequate and that they are not flowing to community-based rape crisis centres that are providing such important support to women in a non-institutional setting.

The bottom line - and I agree with the minister on this - is that we are not doing enough, either as a government or as a society. We're not doing enough when 39% of Canadian women experience at least one incident of sexual assault after the age of 16. We're not doing enough when 83% of women report that they're afraid to walk alone to their cars and 76% report that they are worried about using public transportation after dark. I wonder what has happened to our focused efforts to take back the night and to keep our streets safe for women. Surely we're not guilty of saying that we've done all that and we shouldn't have to keep working at it.

We're not doing enough when 80% of women with a disability will be victims of sexual abuse in their lifetime and when senior women are at higher risk of violence than men simply because they are women. We're not doing enough when women are prevented from accessing support services because of disability or language limitations. We're not doing enough when there is an increase in sexual assaults involving rape drugs, which make women even more vulnerable and more readily victimized. And we're not doing enough when women can't be tested for the presence of these drugs, which must be done within 12 hours, unless they are prepared first to lay charges.

We need to do more. We need to do more to encourage victims to break the silence, and we need to do more to provide support when they do. We need to do more to understand what is happening, and we need to do more to understand the dynamics that allow it to happen. We need to be open and honest about sexual assault in our communities, and we need to commit ourselves to policies and actions that confirm our willingness to deal with the reality of violence against women. We need to be clear not just in our words but in our actions that we will not tolerate abuse.

Ms Marilyn Churley (Riverdale): I am pleased to represent my caucus this afternoon on Sexual Assault Prevention Month. I attended a press conference this morning that was put on by the Ontario Coalition of Rape Crisis Centres. The president, Barbara MacQuarrie, and the vice-president, Rhonda Roffey, held this press conference to declare the month of May as Sexual Assault Awareness Month.

They focused this morning on three areas that they talked about as new challenges facing them this year. One of them both of you, I believe, alluded to, and that is that the statistics at the rape crisis centres continue to go up and the number of women who are choosing to report to the police has decreased.

"Women have clearly lost faith in the justice system. Not surprising in a year that saw challenges to both Bills C-46 and C-49, two bills created to protect victims of sexual assault from revictimization within the justice system."

That is a direct quote from the press release they put out this morning.

A second concern they raised was, and again I quote, "Centres report an increase in reports of sexual assaults involving `rape drugs.' Rape crisis centres across the province have been educating women and service providers about support to victims and prevention."

Let me say that we have been hearing for some time now about these new kinds of drugs that are being used to sedate young women who are then raped. What we are hearing today from the women who gave the press conference is very serious. It's something that, although it may be more a federal responsibility and I'd like to see the federal government act on this, this government should look into. Women are saying that in some locations they are unable to get tested to see if this drug was used on them unless they're willing beforehand to say they'll press charges, before they know exactly what's going on. That is unacceptable.

The third issue raised this morning was sexual harassment in the workplace, which you didn't really go into very much today, Minister. I was hoping that you would take the recommendation, which I understand almost happened last year but didn't, and announce it today. What is being asked for here is that the first week of June be deemed Sexual Harassment Awareness Week.

You may know and the whole House may know where this came from. We have all heard in the media over the past while about Theresa Vince, who was murdered in 1996 by a harasser who, after he killed her, killed himself. This woman, Theresa Vince, worked at Sears and had complained and sought help and advice and didn't get it. Eventually, she was murdered. That is an extreme case of what can happen in the workplace to a woman when she is being harassed. It happened. There was an inquest and there were recommendations which came out of this inquest.

One of the recommendations was that Chatham proclaim that week as Sexual Harassment Awareness Week. I would recommend, as the Coalition of Rape Crisis Centres and others are recommending, that the week be proclaimed as Sexual Harassment Awareness Week.

The problem of sexual harassment in the workplace is a very serious problem. It permeates a woman's life completely when this happens on a day-to-day basis in the workplace. If there are people here who don't quite understand or don't take it seriously, I would suggest that you always put your sister or your mother into the position of the person, not just a faceless woman but somebody you love and care about in that position. I would like to see all members of this House ask the Harris government to proclaim this week Sexual Harassment Awareness Week.

One of the things I enjoyed this morning at the press conference was a letter read out, from Men Walking Against Male Violence. I'm going to read this letter to you. This is from a group in Dunnville, Ontario, and it reads:

"Men Walking Against Male Violence wish to add our voices with the Ontario Coalition of Rape Crisis Centres in raising sexual assault awareness.

"We wish to stand in solidarity with the Ontario Coalition of Rape Crisis Centres, the women who support and assist survivors of sexual assault, who courageously resist, and speak publicly of the casualties, the numbers and the dominant sexist culture that allow it.

"Men Walking Against Male Violence cannot be present at this press conference, because from April 29th to May 15th, we are maintaining a visible street presence in two dozen communities. Between Windsor and Ottawa, thousands of women and men are protesting together in these walks, challenging male violence and male opposition to women's equality.

"In solidarity for justice

"Dean McKay, for Men Walking Against Male Violence."

I think this is a good opportunity for the male members in the Legislature to find out if there are walks happening in their own ridings, to get involved with Men Walking Against Male Violence. There is the white ribbon campaign. There are more and more men walking together, working together to walk side by side with women in challenging the dominant culture, which I would say sometimes promotes violence against women. It is time that men started to stand up and walk side by side with women and fight together to stop this insidious kind of violence against women.

I would like to end by thanking the minister today for her words. I believe it is an issue we all need to work together on, and I am committed to work with her and with the government to do everything we can in this House as legislators to stop violence against women in Ontario.

ISRAELI INDEPENDENCE COMMEMORATION

Hon Charles Harnick (Attorney General, minister responsible for native affairs): Mr Speaker, I believe we have unanimous consent for one representative of each party to speak in recognition of the 50th