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October 27, 2010

39th Parliament, 2nd Session

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Hansard Transcripts

Votes and Proceedings

Orders and Notices

Hansard Transcripts 2010-Oct-27 (PDF)

L061 - Wed 27 Oct 2010 / Mer 27 oct 2010

LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY OF ONTARIO

ASSEMBLÉE LÉGISLATIVE DE L’ONTARIO

Wednesday 27 October 2010 Mercredi 27 octobre 2010

ORDERS OF THE DAY

BROADER PUBLIC SECTOR

ACCOUNTABILITY ACT, 2010 /

LOI DE 2010 SUR

LA RESPONSABILISATION

DU SECTEUR PARAPUBLIC

INTRODUCTION OF VISITORS

ORAL QUESTIONS

PREMIER’S RECORD

CONSULTANTS

CONSULTANTS

MINISTERIAL CONDUCT

MINISTERIAL CONDUCT

TAXATION

MINING INDUSTRY

AGENCY INVESTIGATION

HAZARDOUS WASTE

STUDENT ASSESSMENT

ABORIGINAL LAND CLAIMS

WORKERS’ COMPENSATION

MISSING CHILDREN

WORKERS’ COMPENSATION

NARCOTICS SAFETY

WORKPLACE SAFETY

NOTICE OF DISSATISFACTION

VISITORS

MEMBERS’ STATEMENTS

BROCKVILLE FARMERS’ MARKET

PUBLIC TRANSIT

OTTAWA GYMNASTICS CENTRE

WIND TURBINES

HUMBER RIVER REGIONAL HOSPITAL

ANTI-BULLYING INITIATIVES

ROTHWELL-OSNABRUCK SCHOOL

EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION

GREEN ENERGY

REPORTS BY COMMITTEES

STANDING COMMITTEE ON

REGULATIONS AND PRIVATE BILLS

STANDING COMMITTEE ON

SOCIAL POLICY

STATEMENTS BY THE MINISTRY

AND RESPONSES

CHILD CARE /

GARDE D’ENFANTS

PETITIONS

HIGHWAY IMPROVEMENT

PROTECTION FOR PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES

REPLACEMENT WORKERS

MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS TREATMENT

DIAGNOSTIC SERVICES

KIDNEY DISEASE

ONTARIO SOCIETY

FOR THE PREVENTION

OF CRUELTY TO ANIMALS

REPLACEMENT WORKERS

ONTARIO SOCIETY

FOR THE PREVENTION

OF CRUELTY TO ANIMALS

MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS TREATMENT

DENTAL CARE

BRITISH HOME CHILDREN

HIGHWAY IMPROVEMENT

CHILD CUSTODY

OPPOSITION DAY

GOVERNMENT CONTRACT

ADJOURNMENT DEBATE

WORKERS’ COMPENSATION

The House met at 0900.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Good morning. Please remain standing for the Lord’s Prayer, followed by the Hindu prayer.

Prayers.

ORDERS OF THE DAY

BROADER PUBLIC SECTOR

ACCOUNTABILITY ACT, 2010 /

LOI DE 2010 SUR

LA RESPONSABILISATION

DU SECTEUR PARAPUBLIC

Resuming the debate adjourned on October 26, 2010, on the motion for second reading of Bill 122,

An Act to increase the financial accountability of organizations in the broader public sector / Projet de loi 122, Loi visant à accroître la responsabilisation financière des organismes du secteur parapublic.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Further debate?

M me France Gélinas: It is my pleasure this morning to add my voice to Bill 122. This is something I’m really passionate about: our public health care system, the need for accountability and the need for using every penny that is devoted to care toward care. I want to give the listeners this morning a little bit of a background as to how we came to have this bill in front of this House.

I will be going through what happened when the Auditor General put out the report on eHealth and the lessons that were learned then about health care spending and accountability, and then the request that was made of the Auditor General to look into the use of consultants. Then, when the Auditor General tabled his report a couple of weeks ago, what did this report tell us? Then I’ll go into what’s in Bill 122—because all of this is linked together.

I also want to say that I’m sorry I missed the minister’s lead and the parliamentary assistant’s lead yesterday. I tried really hard to make it to Queen’s Park, but there was fog in Sudbury for Monday and Tuesday that was just incredible. I spent a lot of time at the Sudbury airport, but no planes were coming in or taking off. Nobody was more surprised than my husband, actually, when at 10:30 Monday night I ended up back at home, because since 6 o’ clock that morning no planes had come or gone. I ended up driving yesterday morning through the fog. It was a hell of a trip, but here I am.

I did read the Hansard of the comments that were made by the minister, as well as by her parliamentary assistant, and I will be referring to this in my remarks.

I want to bring us back to Ontario’s Electronic Health Records Initiative, the report from the Auditor General. It was last year, at about this time of the year, actually, that this report was made public. It all started with kind of nickel-and-dime expenses. We saw things like consultants being paid $3,000 a day but billing for a $1.65 tea at Tim Hortons, or $3.95 Choco Bites, or a $30 car wash, billing for child care expenses—and the list went on and on. The eHealth report showed that we had paid $25,000 of taxpayers’ money for a speech.

That’s like hundreds of dollars a second for every one of those words that were said in that speech. After the eHealth scandal rolled out, we saw that the CEO was let go—not without a $317,000 severance. But what we saw really was a long list that the Auditor General gave us of money—taxpayers’ money—that was supposed to help health care, that was supposed to give us an electronic health record, that really did not give us value for money.

He talked about having 300 consultants at eHealth, versus 30 staff. This is a lot of consultants. He showed us that from 2002, the number of consultants had increased by 10,000%, to reach 328 by the time the report was done. We saw that some of the consultants had been on the payroll for six years. That looks pretty much like a job to me, if you’ve been doing the same thing for the same employers for six years. We saw consultants awarded $1.3-million contracts; that was a consultant awarding contracts to his own company. We saw sole-sourcing by a consultant to hire 15 senior management positions.

Millions of dollars were paid in untendered consulting contracts, and the auditor keeps showing us that there was very little to show for this; there was very little value for money.

He put down in his report a rigged bidding system where, although it looked like a bidding system was in place, they already knew whom they wanted to hire, and would hire those people no matter what. He showed us favouritism in the awarding of contracts. In one bid, a senior manager awarded a bid to a consultant whose bid was five times the amount of the next highest competitor, which was already much higher than the budget that had been allocated to this.

He showed us a revolving door between work at the ministry and work for high-priced consultants. If the rules of the ministry didn’t allow you to get the money you wanted, you would simply open up your consultant shop and be hired at the price you wanted, and you didn’t have to bother with salary scales or value for money. It went on and on. We also saw a board of directors that had been hesitant because the CEO had been hand-picked by the Premier of this province.

What do we have? We have, in Ontario, a province that is at the back of the pack when it comes to electronic health records and an auditor who is telling us that the value of this investment has not been realized—those are all quotes. Ontarians expect way more from their government. They expect way more from their health care dollars than what they have been getting at eHealth.

After all this was made public by the Auditor General for everybody to see, heads started to roll. We saw the Minister of Health lose his portfolio; the Deputy Minister of Health left; the executive director of eHealth left, although handsomely paid; the president of the board left. We saw an outcry from every Ontarian about what had been going on: The use of our taxpayers’ money is not to make consultants rich. It made the headlines of the papers for weeks on end in every corner of this province. People were shocked; they were disgusted; they wanted change.

The government said they would implement the changes in the Auditor General’s report. They were outraged as much as everybody else. They had done the honourable thing: The Minister of Health was gone, the deputy minister was gone, the chief of eHealth was gone and the president and half the board were gone. We were starting fresh. We had sent a clear message that the use of overpriced consultants was not to be tolerated in this province. The message was clear: “Health care providers, listen up: The money you get is for health care and nothing else.”

That was last year. That was eHealth. In the midst of all this, I introduced a motion that basically asked the Auditor General to not only look at what had been happening in eHealth, but look at the use of consultants in other health care providers. It was brought in front of the public accounts committee—I happened to be a member of public accounts at the time; I still am. The motion, which passed at public accounts, asked the Auditor General to look at the use of consultants within other parts of our health care system, and the auditor went on and did his work.

He published another report, which just came out this last week, called Special Report on Consultant Use in Selected Health Care Organizations, October 2010. What do we see in it? The picture is not much better than what we saw at eHealth. We saw the use of public health care dollars that was completely unacceptable by whoever looks at it. There is no way to justify this. I will give you a few examples of what we found in the Auditor General’s report.

We found that a $275,000-a-year hospital consultant claimed $97,000 in fees for other consultants and $50,000 in administrative support services fees. Neither of those was in his contract. The consultant billed the hospital twice for over $7,000 relating to a salary bonus, foreign exchange fees and a Christmas luncheon. The consultant then expensed his accommodation cost of $400 per night for three nights in Chicago, along with a $500 hotel phone charge—that was a lot of phone calls.

He expensed accommodation of $510 per night on a second four-night trip to Chicago; accommodation at $700 per night for five nights in Singapore; and dinners in the greater Toronto area, one costing $300 for three people, including $140 worth of alcohol, and another costing $350 for three people, including $215 worth of alcohol. This is all there for everybody to see. This is sickening.

How can this be happening? Those are health care dollars given to health care organizations to provide care to people who need it, and we’re buying $215 worth of alcohol through an overpriced consultant? This is mind-boggling. How could this be happening? We had eHealth. We already told the world that the use of consultants was not acceptable, that to wine and dine on the public’s back was not acceptable, but it is still happening.

Another example: One sole-source consultant CEO earned a per diem of $1,100 for an eight-hour day. The consultant billed for 250 days each year, meaning that he billed for every single weekday for the last three years, excluding statutory holidays.

“In May 2008, he received approval from the hospital for a one-week trip to Hong Kong to attend a business-related conference as an invited guest speaker. However, he added a personal one-week trip to Japan as part of the excursion. We noted that the hospital paid the consultant’s airfare claim of $7,800, which included the airfare for his personal trip to Japan, and also paid his fees billed for every work day during the month, which included the two-week trip to both Hong Kong and Japan.”

How can you be paid $1,100 a day as a consultant and yet be paid for your one-week holiday trip to Japan and bill $1,100 a day as a consultant? This makes no sense. This is sickening. This is not acceptable.

A third example: One hospital sole-sourced a contract to a consultant without any documentation whatsoever. The total cost ended up being $58,000 higher than the contract ceiling price, but there was no documentation to support anything.

Example number four: A hospital sole-sourced a consultant for $398 an hour. This consultant ended up billing $2.6 million to that hospital, with no fixed-ceiling price, and no specific project deliverables were ever established. The hospital agreed to pay $398 per hour—this is more than people working part-time on minimum wage make in an entire week. This is what we were paying that person for one hour of work, with no deliverables and no cap on expenses.

Example number five: One hospital didn’t provide sufficient records and didn’t obtain receipts because—get this—the consultant would have charged them $3,000 to give them the receipts. Did everybody get that? He didn’t submit any receipts and asked to be reimbursed, and the hospital reimbursed the consultant. When the auditor comes in and says, “Well, you have to show receipts for all of those expenses,” the consultant says, “I will charge you $3,000 to go get those receipts.” This is unbelievable. This is going on with taxpayers’ money right here, right now in this province under the McGuinty watch.

Another example: A hospital single-sourced a contract of over $170,000 to a consulting firm to provide Workplace Safety and Insurance Board claims management services from June 2007 to May 2009. There was no documentation supporting the single-sourcing of the contract. Did we get value for money? We’ll never know. And at the time of the audit, the hospital could not locate a signed copy of this contract. We noted that the consulting firm continued to provide services to the hospital after the contract had expired, although nobody could find the contract.

As a result, total payments to date have amounted to $235,000, or $65,000 over the original contract price, which was $170,000, without any supporting documentation or proper contract renewal.

In this day and age, when the government has introduced new procurement rules after eHealth, we are still seeing sole-source contracts; we are still seeing consultants continuing to bill, with no deliverable. We are still seeing those kinds of examples.

The example of a LHIN, a local health integration network—those are new agencies in the health care spectrum—that single-sourced a $716,000 contract, but a business case was only completed in the second year of the contract term—so basically, they started paying without having any idea of what would be the deliverable.

One hospital engaged a former management employee as a consultant within one month of the employee’s leaving the hospital at fees that total about $240,000 annually, which was $100,000 more than his previous salary. Can we see the old boys’ club in action here? A hospital executive leaves and then comes back and does the same thing for $100,000 more? This is sickening. We all expect and deserve better care of our health care dollars.

The Ministry of Health gave preferential treatment to a bidder on a $1,850-a-day contract and awarded a $750,000 single-source contract. This is the Ministry of Health, the same ministry whose minister had to resign after eHealth and the deputy minister had to go. They all stood here in this House and said, “What happened at eHealth with the use of consultants was not acceptable.” They acted, the minister was let go, the deputy minister was let go, and then they turn around and do the exact same thing that led to the demise of the previous Minister of Health and Long-Term Care, exactly the same thing: sole-sourcing expensive contracts with no deliverable.

The list keeps on: One hospital awarded a contract based on a consultant’s proposal that skyrocketed from $94,000 to $210,000, even though the scope of the project, key deliverables, remuneration, ceiling price and timing were all absent. This is what I would call a pretty good gig. You sign on for a $94,000 contract, you end up billing for $210,000, you get paid and you have no deliverable, no ceiling price, no timing and no scope of the project. That means you pretty well get to do what you want, when you want, at the price you want on the taxpayers’ bill; on the backs of sick people who are denied care in our hospitals. You get to do that.

A hospital prepaid a sole-source contract worth nearly $400,000 to enhance employees’ leadership skills. Nothing wrong with investing into continuing education for your employees, but when we look at what happened with that money, it was not really getting value for the money spent. When a hospital hired three consultants as executives and paid them upward of $300,000 annually, without a competitive process—do you know what that means? That means that they knew exactly the people they wanted to hire.

Their internal policy would not allow them to pay that kind of money, so they hired them as consultants to do exactly the work of what an employee should do. And they really treat them like employees, because on their departure, one vice-president received termination pay of $170,000 and the second one received termination pay of $105,000. They also had access to benefits and access to what a regular employment contract would have given you at a much more reasonable salary.

Let me give you another example: One hospital single-sourced a contract to a consultant, without any documentation or justification, that ended up costing $58,000 higher than the contract’s ceiling price of $264,000.

The whole list goes on and on. The Auditor General’s report has 32 pages. I gave you but 10 examples of what was in there, enough to give you a flavour of how we were not getting value for money; to give you the flavour that we live under a government’s watch that has allowed this culture of entitlement to bloom, to continue, to foster, to expand. It is okay to pay friends of the Liberal government to go and lobby their friends. It is okay to hand-pick consultants and give them lucrative contracts. All of this is disgusting. All of this is sickening. All of this needs to change.

The auditor makes recommendations. I want to read the recommendations because the government—I read the Hansard last night—said that they have implemented every recommendation of the Auditor General. I will show you what the Auditor General’s recommendations are and what we have in Bill 122, and to me, they are far apart. Some of the recommendations have been implemented. Some of them—frankly, it’s a stretch to think that what we have in Bill 122 meets the recommendations of our auditor.

The Auditor General makes those recommendations: “To ensure that its consulting services are acquired and managed appropriately and economically, the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care should make certain that its processes, decisions, and actions comply with the formal requirements as well as the spirit of the Management Board of Cabinet’s procurement directive.”

What does that mean in simple lingo? It means: Do what you’re supposed to do. We have procurement policies in place; follow them. We don’t have to reinvent them. The procurement policies that existed in Ontario before eHealth and that exist after eHealth are there. They are good, according to our Auditor General—he knows a thing or two about accounting—but they are not being followed. All that the Auditor General is saying is, follow your own rules and things will improve dramatically.

Second recommendation: “To ensure that LHINs consistently comply with the requirements of Management Board of Cabinet’s procurement directive as it pertains to the engagement and use of consultants, the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care should consider requiring each LHIN to provide its board of directors and the ministry with a comprehensive annual report on its procurement and use of consultants similar to the reports required by ministries.

To help demonstrate compliance with the directive, this report should include information on the nature and timing of the assignments, the ceiling amounts of the contracts, the extent of follow-on contracts, the total amount paid, and how the consultants were procured.”

This is clear. The Auditor General goes through and says the LHINs should report back to the ministry as to who they hire when they hire them, what did they do and how much did they cost. Give us the whole picture. You will see that in Bill 122 we kind of go in that direction with a vague statement that says, “They will be reporting,” but it falls way short of going through the detail that this reporting should have. The Auditor General took the time, effort and energy to put those down on paper because if you don’t have the whole story, then you don’t have a story at all. But what do we have in Bill 122?

We have an intention of having disclosure, but we certainly do not have mandatory disclosure of the nature, the timing, the assignment, the ceiling amount, the follow-on contract, the amount paid, the procurement—we don’t have any of this. We have an intention that says, “There will be disclosure.” When, where, how, how much? Well, nobody knows.

This is where I see a bit of a disconnect. You cannot say, “We followed every recommendation of the Auditor General,” because the Auditor General’s recommendations are detailed. They are there to protect the public so that we get value for money. Then we get this bill that has one line with no details. It’s kind of aimed in the right direction, for sure, but there is room to get off target quite easily. Why not implement?

We’ve tried this before. We had eHealth. You tightened up the procurements. Even after that, we continue to see this blatant abuse of taxpayers’ money going towards consultants, going towards lobbyists, that everybody agrees should not be tolerated and should not be happening here in Ontario in 2010.

The third recommendation from the auditor: “To ensure that hospitals implement the necessary policies, procedures, and processes for the cost-effective planning, acquisition, and management of consulting services:

“—Hospital boards of directors should ensure that recent mandatory supply-chain procurement policies for goods and services are implemented and enforced, and that open, fair, and competitive procurement processes are in place; and

“—Hospitals should track and regularly report to local health integration networks (LHINs) on their use of consultants in a manner that demonstrates their compliance with required policies and sound public-sector business practices.”

Here again, in layman’s terms, the Auditor General is saying that the hospitals will have to be accountable. They will have to show how they hire those people, who they hire, how much they pay them and what the deliverables are, and they will have to make that public and transparent so we have accountability in the system—a pretty strong recommendation. The parliamentary assistant yesterday said, and so did the minister, actually, that they are implementing each of the recommendations of the auditor—but only partially.

They don’t say that part about “only partially.” All you see in the bill is that they will be reporting, but it doesn’t give the details that would allow us to have complete transparency and the accountability that every one of us desires.

Health care is such an important portfolio. It is such an important government service, and it is so big: $22 billion for hospital services alone; $42 billion for the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care. It is so big. We need transparency; we need accountability. Our Auditor General goes into great detail as to how you can have strong and robust accountability so that you get this transparency, you get value for money. In the bill, we see that they will be reporting by hospital, but it is vague; we don’t know when, we don’t know where, we don’t know how often and we don’t know what this reporting will entail.

Why not implement, like you said you would? Why not implement the recommendations that were made by our Auditor General? We’ve lived through two of those reports showing us the exact same thing: the abuse of taxpayers’ money by overpriced consultants not giving us value for money.

The Auditor General is clear. He puts forward recommendations that will bring transparency, that have an opportunity to stop this process that has been allowed to flourish under the McGuinty government, but the bill only goes in that general direction. It doesn’t go far. It doesn’t give details. It allows for a lot of loopholes.

The Auditor General continues and says, “The Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care should discontinue the use of transfer payment funding to acquire consulting services for either its own or LHIN use and should assess the appropriateness of hospitals’ use of government funds to engage consultants to lobby the ministry and their LHINs for increased operating and capital funding.”

This is sort of the cherry on the cake, if that could ever be called a cake. I could think of other metaphors for what is happening, but let’s stick to that one for now.

The government gives money to a hospital to provide care to people who are sick. This money is used to hire lobbyists who are friends of the government so that—if they give money to friends of the McGuinty government, their friends go to the government, which gives the hospital more money. No wonder they all fell over one another to hire lobbyists. It works. If you give money to friends of the McGuinty Liberals, you get money back. How could you go wrong? You give a little bit of money to their friends, and the government gives you millions of dollars.

Mr. Mike Colle: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker: The member is impugning motive, and I think it’s totally out of order for her to do that. I think she should withdraw her statement.

The Deputy Speaker (Mr. Bruce Crozier): I think the member understands about impugning motive. Do you know what he means?

M me France Gélinas: Yes, I do.

The Deputy Speaker (Mr. Bruce Crozier): We’d like you to refrain from doing that, okay?

M me France Gélinas: I will be very careful.

I will stick to what the Auditor General says. He says that they “should assess the appropriateness of hospitals’ use of government funds to engage consultants to lobby the ministry ... for increased operating and capital funding.”

The NDP has done its own research. We have, on paper for everybody to see—go to our website—the list of 14 that disclosed to us—they don’t have to; they voluntarily disclosed to us—that they paid consultants to go and lobby on their behalf. Those are hospitals that receive operating funding from this ministry; they take that money and hire consultants to go lobby on their behalf. I’m just stating the facts.

When we start to look at who the consultants are that they hired, the names that come up are names of people that we know. Why do we know those people? We know them because they used to be staff in Mr. McGuinty’s office. They used to be the staff of some of the ministers. I’m guessing that if they used to work for them, it’s because you get along pretty well. But I won’t go there; I won’t impugn motive. But the facts speak for themselves. We have 14 hospitals that have hired people who used to work for Mr. McGuinty—sorry; used to work for the Premier—or used to work for some of the ministers.

They hire them, they give them money, and those people go back and talk to their old boss, because they used to work for them, and then their old boss, who happens to be the Premier or the minister, gives your agency money. This is a pretty good racket, don’t you think? This is—

Interjection.

M me France Gélinas: Sorry.

The Deputy Speaker (Mr. Bruce Crozier): Withdraw it.

M me France Gélinas: It’s withdrawn; absolutely.

Pretty good gig—is “gig” okay? It’s a pretty good gig, if you can get it.

Anyway, the last part of the Auditor General’s report is all about what the NDP had uncovered; that is, the use of lobbyists by hospitals, by universities and by other parts of the broader public service. This is something that I will talk about in greater detail once I get into the bill itself.

I wanted to really show the history of this bill. We had eHealth. We had the uproar that came after the Auditor General showed us a billion dollars that were spent on eHealth with very little to show for it. He showed us that, mainly through the use of consultants, we were not getting value for money. We were not getting deliverables. This is not to say that we don’t need an electronic health record. I and everybody else who has ever worked in the health care system will tell you how good it would be to have a functioning electronic health record right here, right now in Ontario. Other jurisdictions have it and are reaping the benefits. We are, I would say, light-years behind them.

We’re just working on Bill 101 right now for the use of narcotics. If we had an electronic health record, a big part of this bill would not be needed at all. We would have a drug information system as part of our electronic health record. We would know who is prescribing narcotics, who is dispensing them, who is receiving them, how often, by whom etc., because this is what an electronic health record gives you. It gives you information. But we don’t have any of this, and the billion-dollar eHealth scandal did not bring us any closer. But it rang alarm bells.

It showed us that although eHealth meant well—they meant to deliver something that was going to be of use to Ontarians—they did it with no respect for the taxpayers’ money. They did it in a way that allowed consultants lucrative contracts of a magnitude that is hard to wrap your head around, and all of this under this government’s watch.

Then I asked the Auditor General to look at: Was it only at eHealth that consultants were misused? So he went and did a spot audit of hospitals and LHINs, and what he found was just as horrifying as what we had found under eHealth. I read a few of them. So what did the government do? They introduced Bill 122. Bill 122 is called

An Act to increase the financial accountability of organizations in the broader public sector—nothing wrong with that. We all want accountability. We all want the taxpayers’ dollars that go to health to actually be accounted for. As I said, a $42-billion health care budget, $22 billion going to hospital care alone: This is a lot of money. We want accountability, we want to know where this money is being spent, who is getting treatment for it; and if it’s not for treatment, well, you have some explaining to do. This is what we have.

I talked about the value of trust. When eHealth came out, it sent a shockwave through the health care providers’ community. Because of what had happened, it was shaking up people’s confidence in our health care system. Our health care system is one of the cherished programs from the government in this province and all of Canada. We are all proud of our public health care system. One of the pillars of that system is trust. You have to trust your providers. What your health care providers ask you to do is often counter-intuitive. You have to trust them.

But we trust them because they are part of agencies that we trust. They are part of a system that we trust that is there for us to make us better, to help us heal in our times of sickness and to help keep us healthy. So when you shake the trust of any part of that system, you actually make our health care system vulnerable, and the health care providers reacted to this. They did not like that at all. They want accountability. They want people to have full faith, trust and comfort that their money is being used wisely to help them get better.

So, the Auditor General’s report: I characterize it as an orgy of extravagant, high-flying spending on everything from exotic trips to gourmet meals to alcohol—all of this on the taxpayers’ dime. I’ve read some of the details. If it didn’t make you sick, then it’s pretty hard to believe. It makes me sick and I’ve read the report quite a few times. This will lead more Ontarians to lose trust, and this is an awful price to pay.

We have a chance to do things better, but it is, at this point, a hard step to take. This government has been there for seven long years. All of what I read today went on under their watch. It is this culture of entitlement, as I called it, this culture of entitlement where it is okay—we see health care agencies that go into minute details when they buy a new couch. They will have three quotes, they will do the price comparison, they will be able to justify their decision-making to the last penny as to why they bought this, how they procured it and how they got value for money.

But as soon as you go into the use of consultants, then all of this goes out the window: There is no more accountability; there is no more transparency. It’s giving money to people whom you know because it brings—things that I’m not allowed to talk about in here, apparently, because I’ve been called on it.

So we have Bill 122. What is in the bill is that the broader public sector organizations—these are fancy words that mean hospitals, universities, local health integration networks: agencies that receive money from the government. They also include community care access centres, Hydro One, Ontario Power Generation, the Ontario Power Authority, the Independent Electricity System Operator, the children’s aid societies, school boards, and every organization that received more than $10 million in public funds in the previous year. We call them the broader public sector organizations. It’s all of them.

Those organizations will be prohibited from using public funds to hire lobbyists with that money. So if the government gives a hospital money for care, you cannot use that money to hire a lobbyist; or if it gives to a community care access centre or a local health integration network, a LHIN, or children’s aid. The money that the government gives you, you won’t be allowed to use to hire consultants.

It will require LHINs, local health integration networks, and hospitals to publicly report on the use of consultants. The problem is that it isn’t clear what information the reports will include and whether they will be publicly available. I read for you the Auditor General’s recommendations. In his recommendations, it is quite clear what should be included in that report, who should have access to it, the timing of it etc., but not in the bill. The bill goes in that direction, but doesn’t give you the details that the Auditor General has recommended should be included.

It will require LHINs, the 14 local health integration networks, and hospitals, 157 of them, to post expense claims on the website. Here again, very little detail. How agglomerated are they going to be? Are they going to be for all of the executives? Are they going to be per staff? Are they going to include the consultants who do work? The bill is very short on detail.

It will permit Management Board of Cabinet to issue directives requiring those organizations to comply with expense rules. Sounds pretty good. You will have expense rules and you will have to comply with them, but the bill gives no details, so we have no idea what those rules are going to be.

But remember recommendation number one from the Auditor General? Recommendation number one is that the procurement rules that existed before the eHealth scandal, that were tightened up after the eHealth scandal, are adequate. The Auditor General is satisfied with the procurement rules that we have. What is not adequate is that nobody follows the rules. So to say that we will now have organizations comply with expense rules, with no details provided, is a long way from answering the call of the Auditor General, who says that what we want is for everybody to follow the rules that are in place so that we have transparency and our money is used for what it’s supposed to be used for.

The bill makes it an obligation for those organizations to comply with Management Board of Cabinet procurement standards, and it allows Management Board to set guidelines for all publicly funded organizations. For the ones that are named, the ones that are bigger than $10 million, the children’s aid, community care access centres—those are the people who deal with home care—the local health integration networks or hospitals or universities, they will all have to comply. If you are smaller than $10 million but receive government money, there will be guidelines.

There’s nothing wrong with what is in those statements; the problem is, I guess, what is not in there. It’s all fine and good to make rules, but the auditor tells us that we already have good rules in place, that the procurement rules that were there at eHealth were good but were not being followed, that the new procurements that were brought in after eHealth are still very good, but they’re still not being followed. So we will make more rules. Will they be followed? I guess it’s up to each and every one of us to decide on that.

The LHINs and the hospitals will have to prepare attestations demonstrating their compliance with the above provisions: a nice accountability step in there. There are some good things in that bill, and I have no problem pointing them out.

The bill includes the above provision in the accountability of funding agreements between organizations and the government of Ontario.

The bill allows the hospital board to reduce the compensation of senior management when the person has failed to meet a requirement under this act. In theory, that would mean that if a hospital executive does not follow the procurement rules, which means he hires sole-source consultants, hires one of his friends as a consultant, pays an amount of money that is agreed upon or not, does not follow the rules, does not sign a contract, does not go for three bidders, does not have clear, deliverable ceilings, timing, project-achievable, the board could reduce the compensation of the executive. If this ever happens in the province of Ontario, it will be a miracle.

The board signs a contract with their CEO. In that contract, the salary is included. To say that all of a sudden, boards of directors of hospitals, of universities, will be allowed to renege on a contract—we’ll all be retired and our children will be retired by the time this makes its way through the courts. Because if you have a signed contract with somebody that says that you will pay him so much money to do that kind of work, and all of a sudden you reduce that compensation, you’ve just broken a contract. That doesn’t usually fly too well, but I’ll let lawyers argue that one out.

The bill includes hospitals in the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act starting in 2012. This is something that I and every member of the NDP caucus have been asking for for a long time. There is so much resource—$22 billion, remember?—that is being spent by our hospitals. What freedom of access of information means is that if you ask a question, the hospital will have to give you the answer.

Of course, this does not have anything to do with access to people’s private medical records. There are laws in Ontario—PHIPA, it’s called—that protect health information, and none of this would be accessible under freedom of access of information. What would be accessible, though, is: How much did they spend on consultants; how much did such a program cost; has there been an increase or decrease—any question you may have about hospitals, about universities, about community care. Sorry, this only goes for hospitals; universities are already covered.

Any question you have about a hospital, you will be allowed to ask under freedom of access to information, and they will have a duty to answer. You will only be allowed to go back to 2007, so whatever happened before 2007 will continue to be a secret for ever and ever, amen. But at least what happened after 2007 will be accessible under freedom of information, and the NDP thinks it is a good step. We certainly would have liked the step to be immediately followed by Ombudsman oversight.

Did you know that we are the only province in all of Canada, including the three territories, where our Ombudsman does not have oversight of hospitals? The people who are dissatisfied with the services happening in the hospital will go through the hospital problem resolution internally, and if that fails, it stops right there. The people are often not satisfied with the answer the hospital is giving them so they turn to the Ombudsman. The Ombudsman is the person who has the expertise to do that kind of investigation. He gets hundreds of complaints about our hospitals every single year, yet all he can do is tell those people that he’s not allowed to investigate complaints into hospitals.

Why not? If you want true transparency, if you want true accountability, give the Ombudsman oversight of hospitals and put those issues to rest. By refusing to solve problems, you just allow them to simmer and become worse. If you would allow the Ombudsman to go to the bottom of things, to give people the answers that will bring them closure, then a lot of those complaints wouldn’t even happen anymore. We would implement the changes that the people want in order to be satisfied with their hospital services. But this is not in the bill.

After 2012—it’s important to note that the next election is in 2011, so it will be after the next election—we will have access to information in our hospitals from 2007 on. This is something we have been asking for and this is something that this bill will do.

Remember I mentioned that the first thing the bill will do is prohibit those organizations from using public funds to hire lobbyists? Well, there is nothing in the bill that will prohibit a hospital or a university or anybody else using non-public funds for consultants. Hospitals get 85% of their funding from the government, so in general, 15% of the budget of a hospital doesn’t come from the government. To put that in perspective a little bit: 15% of $22 billion. We’re talking over $3-billion worth of revenue that goes to our hospitals that is not covered by this law.

Three billion dollars hires a lot of lobbyists, or a very expensive one. One way or another, this bill doesn’t cover a huge part of hospital budgets. In my book, $3 billion is a lot of money, and I think in most people’s books $3 billion is a lot of money. It is not covered by this bill, so hospitals that want to hire lobbyists will continue to be able to do so. They will have $3 billion at their disposal to do just that because the bill doesn’t say that we’re making the use of lobbyists illegal. We don’t say that.

We go kind of partly toward this in saying that, “Part of the money you get, you’re not allowed to use that money to hire a lobbyist, but the rest of the money that you get, you can use as you see fit”—not exactly the robust recommendation that we had in the Auditor General’s report; actually, far from it.

So you see the disconnect, where we have a minister who says, “We have implemented each and every one of the recommendations in the auditor’s report,” and then we have recommendations like this? A bit of a disconnect. In theory, there’s a $3-billion gap in this law that would allow the paying of a lobbyist—and a consultant, I suppose.

What makes up that 15%? Well, in hospitals you usually have things like parking fees, you have a little bit of fundraising, you have research funds, you have pharmaceutical funds, you have money coming in through paying for private accommodations etc., the sale of everything from crutches to fibreglass casts to everything else you can think of that we or insurance companies pay for when we go to a hospital. This is not considered public funds. It amounts to $3 billion, and it is not covered in this bill.

As I said, the Auditor General recommends specific guidelines and obligations on reporting. There are no specifics in this act. There is intention of goodwill, the intention that we will have to report, but no details as to what will be reported—so same thing.

The consequences for contravening the act are weak, especially in terms of reducing hospital executive pay. That would be at the discretion of the board, because the way it works in Ontario is that our public hospitals have boards of directors. Those boards of directors are made up of people who live in the community, who support their hospitals and come together usually once a month to talk about governance. They also have one employee, and that’s the executive director or the CEO—they have different titles in different hospitals—and then the chief executive officer, executive director etc. is responsible for everything else that goes on in the hospital.

So in theory, the government transfers the public money to the board, the board hires one employee, who is the CEO, the executive director, who then delegates the day-to-day operations of the hospital to that person. Here again, the employment contract that exists between the board and the CEO is just that: a contract. To say that all of a sudden you will be able to change it—I have doubts about this. As I said, there’s the fact that the hospital won’t be included under freedom of access until 2012. I realize it takes a little bit of time to let you know how to answer that kind of request. Maybe we could have done that a little bit faster, but apparently it’s not to be.

I see that I’m running out of time. What I’ve really tried to do today is focus on a series of events that have happened since this government has been in power. We have seen this culture of entitlement to taxpayers’ money and not getting value for money. We’ve seen this continue, grow and flourish to the point that it became disgusting to read report after report of lucrative contracts that you can’t even wrap your head around.

Those are taxpayers’ monies that are supposed to be used for care, that are supposed to be used to get people better, and we see them going to rich consultants so that the rich can get richer on the backs of people needing care. The whole thing is disgusting. We’ve seen this with eHealth and, since the new report of the Auditor General, we’ve seen this in hospitals and in local health integration networks.

It has to change; we all agree it has to change. The message has to be clear. It has to be understood. It has to be acted upon. So what do we get? We get a minister who shows that she is disgusted, who says that she doesn’t want to see this continue, but then puts forward some good ideas that lack details and that don’t bring us the transparency that will be needed.

We need more than just a wake-up call, because the wake-up call was done with eHealth. A billion dollars? That was the wake-up call. It looks like, right after it faded off the front page of the paper, everybody went right back at it and continued to give money to well-connected insiders to do work that did not, in the words of the auditor, bring us value for money. We didn’t get our money’s worth out of those people. They got paid for way more than what they worked for. This has to change. This bill, Bill 122, has some good accountability measures, but there are a lot of half-measures in it that won’t bring the transparency we want.

The Deputy Speaker (Mr. Bruce Crozier): Questions and comments?

Mr. Bill Mauro: I’m pleased to have a couple of minutes to respond this morning.

I think it’s important to remind those who are following this particular piece of legislation on television how it is in fact that we got here today and where we’re at as we’ve discussed Bill 122 over the last little while.

We had a request from the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, which asked the Auditor General if the Auditor General would look into the LHINs and the hospitals and do a value-for-money audit on those particular institutions, which the Auditor General went off and did. He provided his report. We came back and we are here now discussing it. The legislation before you is in response to that work by the Auditor General.

I think it’s important to remind people in the province who have an interest in issues related to transparency and accountability that that request from the Standing Committee on Public Accounts would not have been able to have been made if our government had not, some time ago, given the Auditor General the powers and the authority to go to the hospitals and go to the LHINs and conduct those investigations. Heretofore, he couldn’t have done it, but our government gave him the authority and the power to do it. That’s why we have the information that’s before us and that’s why we’re more than happy to accept his recommendations.

I’ve got a long list of things here that I could recite about what we’ve done as a government around transparency and accountability to improve it and to move the yardsticks forward, but I’ll rhyme off three that aren’t usually on people’s lists.

One, as we go into elections now we’ll never see what happened in 2003 happen again. People are going to know the state of the finances of the province before an election. We did that. Now you’ll know. We won’t be taxed with a hidden deficit that people say isn’t there.

We brought in fixed election dates. We don’t necessarily think about that as a transparency issue. Talk about giving up some authority, some control, some power so that people know when an election’s coming. We brought in fixed election dates.

The third one I would mention as well in response to the member of the third party is that after the 2003 election, that party was not even officially recognized, based on the number of people that were elected. We changed that. We gave them a budget and we gave their leader a $30,000 raise so that they could be there and shine a light on what they felt was important to their constituents.

The Deputy Speaker (Mr. Bruce Crozier): Questions and comments? The member for Ottawa–Orléans.

Ms. Lisa MacLeod: Nepean–Carleton.

It’s a pleasure to respond to the hour-long leadoff speech from my colleague from Nickel Belt.

I want to first congratulate her, because she takes to this place a desire to do what is best for her constituents and for her political party. We may not be in the same one, we may come from different parts of the province, but I certainly appreciate your comments and the heart that you put into your job.

I share many of her concerns with the circumstances that have taken place in Ontario over the last seven years under this Liberal government, which has seen $1 billion squandered which should have been going toward eHealth records but sadly ended up being spent predominantly on Liberal consultants and went really nowhere. Of course, now what we’re talking about is a bill in reaction to eHealth 2.0, where Ontario’s hospitals and local health integration networks have been essentially forced to pay for lobbyists to speak to insiders at the Ministry of Health and in the minister’s own office.

Again, we’ve got very serious concerns in the Progressive Conservative Party, and we will not be supporting this legislation unless they adopt the Truth in Government Act, which was introduced by our party last May, within it and put forward amendments and adopt them. If you will recall, that bill would have prevented many of the abuses that the auditor had uncovered in his most recent report.

Again, in conclusion to where the Progressive Conservatives stand, there is no support for this bill unless those initiatives are adopted, and to my colleague from Nickel Belt, I want to thank her again for what she’s doing here.

The Deputy Speaker (Mr. Bruce Crozier): Questions and comments?

Mr. Peter Tabuns: It’s my pleasure to speak following my colleague from Nickel Belt, who I think surveyed the landscape that we’re dealing with, a landscape in which a small number of people are going growing very wealthy off a system that we need on a daily basis to ensure the health of people in this province.

My colleague went through the abuses of eHealth, of consultants working for hospitals and the weaknesses of this bill. There’s no question that eHealth was a wake-up call to the practices that are going on on the part of this government, and when that wake-up call was heard, the Premier rolled over and hit “snooze,” and things went on.

I want to correct the version of history put forward by the member from Thunder Bay–Atikokan. It was the member from Nickel Belt, in that standing committee, who pressed for the inquiry by the Auditor General to give us the information that we have today. Let’s be very clear: She was the one who made sure that these problems were brought to light.

I want to speak about her comments on the bill itself. If you look at that bill, you’ll note that public money can’t be used for lobbyists, but if a hospital has non-public money, it can use that. And if you’ve worked with accountants, if you’ve heard of fun with numbers, you know that money can be shifted around to cover a multitude of sins. The way this bill is written, it will give certain small steps forward around access to information, but in terms of curbing lobbying, this bill is not going to be adequate to do that. This bill needs to be substantially strengthened to actually deal with the abuses that we’ve seen.

The health care system is at risk. It needs protection. This bill needs to go much further.

The Deputy Speaker (Mr. Bruce Crozier): Questions and comments?

Mr. Mike Colle: I just want to re-emphasize that this is quite a comprehensive bill. It’s going to, essentially, prohibit various activities by lobbyists in 259 classified agencies across this province, like the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, Cancer Care Ontario, community care access centres, hospitals, school boards and universities. This is quite wide-ranging. There’s never been anything this wide-ranging in this Legislature. So this is unprecedented, really. That’s why I urge everybody to support this legislation.

Also, in listening to the member speak, it’s sort of very unnerving because I know the incredible demand on our hospitals—I’ve got one of the world’s finest geriatric care hospitals in my riding, Baycrest hospital—the incredible pressure our hospitals are under because of our aging population.

We can’t paint all hospitals and all agencies as not doing their very, very best to deal with people who are coming into their care every minute of the day, 24/7—the pressures they have to have adequate staff, support services, the facilities, the maintenance, the crunch for money, the volunteers. Baycrest has about 3,000 volunteers. The hospital administration, the hospital board of directors—the board of directors is all done pro bono. These are excellent men and women who have incredible pressures to take care of people, to find the money, to work with government. I want to put that into the perspective of all this. We can’t paint all hospitals with one brush, that they are all bad.

There are too many lobbyists, but at least let’s remember the incredible work done by our hospitals—

The Deputy Speaker (Mr. Bruce Crozier): Thank you. The member for Nickel Belt, you have up to two minutes to respond.

M me France Gélinas: I’ll start by thanking the members from Thunder Bay–Atikokan, Nepean–Carleton, my colleague from Toronto–Danforth and the member from Eglinton–Lawrence.

I spent 25 years of my life as a health care provider. I believe in our public, accountable health care system. I support it. You will hear me say all the time that I am really proud of the health care system we have in Ontario. It is the envy of a huge part of the world. What we have is a jewel, a jewel that is worth protecting. But when problems happen that shake the confidence of the people of Ontario in our health care system, then I react.

I am a politician. For the last three years, I have been a politician. I became a politician because I want to continue the work that I have done before to protect our health care system. I see this—what happened at eHealth, what happened with the latest Auditor General’s report—as a wake-up call to us all. We, as politicians, have a role to play to ensure that one of the pillars of our health care system, which is the trust, the confidence, that the people put in it, is protected and maintained if we want to protect what we cherish so much, which is our health care system.

We have a job to do here, and how do we do this? We do this by having transparency and accountability measures that give results.

When I read Bill 122, it is sheepish. It goes in the right direction, it talks about the right things, it is broad enough, like the member said, but it doesn’t give us the foolproof accountability that we want, and this is a serious flaw.

Second reading debate deemed adjourned.

The Deputy Speaker (Mr. Bruce Crozier): Pursuant to standing order 8, this House is in recess until 10:30 of the clock.

The House recessed from 1016 to 1030.

INTRODUCTION OF VISITORS

Mr. Peter Tabuns: It’s my honour to welcome to the House today Jim, Keelin and Eileen Lawlor, who are the parents and family of page Kieran Lawlor, and who are, for those who follow the history of the Legislature, related to Mr. Pat Lawlor. Welcome to the House.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Joining us today in the Speaker’s gallery will be Georgina Bencsik and one of her mentees from the University of Toronto, Megan Townsend. Welcome to Queen’s Park.

There being no further introductions, it is time for oral questions.

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Order. You can stand down the leader’s question. I’ll go to your first member’s question.

ORAL QUESTIONS

PREMIER’S RECORD

Mr. Norm Miller: My question today is for the Premier about his lack of leadership. Time and again, Premier McGuinty fails tests of leadership. He said nothing that stopped backroom Liberals from a nasty whisper campaign against the Ombudsman. He spent millions of dollars on consultants after he told Ontario families that he had fixed the problem. The ministry didn’t listen to him. LHINs and hospitals don’t listen to you. Liberal-friendly consultants like John Ronson at Courtyard, Will Falk at Accenture and Laurie Lashbrook don’t listen to you. A year later it happens again, and you refuse to name names of Liberal-friendly consultants who got rich.

How can Ontario families have confidence in your leadership when you’ve stopped paying attention?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: This is a matter that we’ve had the opportunity to speak to on a number of occasions now in this Legislature, and I’m pleased to address it once more.

I want to remind my honourable colleague of a specific finding of the Auditor General, when he said, “‘Party politics’” did not enter “into the awarding of contracts.” I would encourage my honourable colleague to carefully weigh those words. I know that we can—and it’s understandable and predictable—have differences of opinion, but this was a specific finding of fact made by an objective, independent expert, a third-party House official. He’s a legislative officer. I would draw that again to my colleague’s attention.

There was a real issue out there with respect to LHINs and hospitals when it came to the appropriate use of taxpayer dollars. We’ve addressed that by putting in place new rules, which we hope will have the support of my honourable colleague.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Supplementary?

Mr. Norm Miller: Premier McGuinty has been coasting on cruise control for a while now. A year ago he said that ministers and top agencies have to post their expenses online, but he doesn’t post his own, so neither do they. He defended sex classes for six-year-olds before admitting that he hadn’t even read the curriculum and didn’t know what was going on. He disappeared for weeks when the police raided his government. He left the public confused about his secret G20 law.

A recent study calls you Canada’s worst Premier when it comes to fiscal leadership: dead last in the country. What will it take for Premier McGuinty to start showing some real leadership?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: I’m always open to advice, some of which I even solicit. What I can say is that it’s no secret that not everyone in the country supports what we’ve been doing here in Ontario. There are those who oppose the fact that we’ve hired 10,000 more nurses. There are those who oppose the fact that we’ve hired 2,900 more doctors. There are those who oppose the fact that we’ve hired back water and meat inspectors. There are those who oppose the fact that we’re building 18 new hospitals. There are those who oppose the fact that we’re building 400 new schools. There are those who oppose the fact that we’ve hired thousands of new teachers.

There are many who oppose the kinds of investments we’ve made on behalf of Ontario families, but I can tell you that when I speak to Ontario families, they very much support those initiatives, which improve their quality of life.

CONSULTANTS

M me France Gélinas: Ma question est pour le premier ministre.

The eHealth scandal should have been the last that Ontario’s families saw of their precious health care dollars squandered on sweetheart consultant deals, but last week’s Auditor General’s report found that consultants at hospitals and LHINs were lining their pockets while families were losing front-line services. Why won’t the Premier call on the Auditor General to audit the rest of the hospitals?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: I’m very grateful for the work that was completed by the Auditor General. If my honourable colleague feels that he ought to pursue this further, then she is, of course, free to suggest that to him, but I continue to repose a tremendous amount of confidence in the Auditor General and his findings. Should he feel that his findings warrant that he take it further, then that’s up to him.

We have acted on the basis of all of his recommendations. We are adopting them in full and wholeheartedly. More than that, we’re taking it a few steps beyond that, to go beyond hospitals and LHINs into the broader public sector; to make sure that precious taxpayer dollars are devoted, as much as possible, to front-line services. That’s what our new Broader Public Sector Accountability Act is all about.

I was very disappointed to learn this morning that the official opposition will not be supporting this legislation. I certainly hope that the third party will, in fact, be supporting it.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Supplementary?

M me France Gélinas: Accountability is what everybody wants. Transparency is what everybody wants, so that instead of paying $275,000 in severance pay to inside consultants, families in Ottawa and families in London could have had 9,000 hours of home care for their loved ones. To make sure that health care dollars aren’t being wasted on insider consultants, why won’t the Premier ask the Auditor General to investigate spending at the other hospitals he didn’t already look at?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: I know my honourable colleague understands this, but I think it’s worthy of me saying it nonetheless. The Auditor General may have confined his investigation to a specific number of hospitals, but the new law that we seek to put in place will have application to all our hospitals. It will govern the behaviour of all those who work inside those hospitals, and the LHINs, and beyond that into the broader public sector. I encourage my honourable colleague to understand that.

Again, as I say, I was disappointed to learn that the official opposition will not be supporting this latest in a series of measures to heighten accountability and transparency. I hope we can count on the third party for their support in this regard.

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

M me France Gélinas: Let’s be clear: The Auditor General discovered that health care dollars were squandered in every one of the 16 hospitals they looked at and at the three LHINs that they looked at, but there are 157 hospitals and there are 14 LHINs. Instead of sole-sourcing a contract at one hospital for $1.1 million, we could have hired 12 more front-line nurses in Sudbury or in Hamilton.

So many questions are left unanswered. By looking at all of the hospitals, you would discover patterns; you would discover they’re not all the same. Why is the Premier refusing to call in the Auditor General to investigate the other hospitals?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: Again, just so we’re clear on the record here, the reason that the Auditor General has authority in the first instance to look at hospitals is because we gave him that authority. That was opposed by the third party and it was opposed by the official opposition.

We’re on this now. We are dealing with it through the Broader Public Sector Accountability Act. Again, I say to my honourable colleague, I ask for her support and the support of her party.

One thing I did want to mention, on a very happy note: This morning, I took the opportunity to celebrate the fact that one million more Ontarians now have access to a family doctor. Since 2003, if you break it down, we have found a family doctor for 16 more Ontarians every hour. That’s moms and dads and their children. That’s a significant step forward. I think it represents real progress, and we’re proud to be able to do that.

CONSULTANTS

M me France Gélinas: Ma question est encore pour le premier ministre.

Ontario’s families have a right to know whether their public health care dollars are being diverted away from front-line care. They also have a right to know which consultants benefited by those sole-source contracts and deals.

Will the Premier release the names of the consultant firms investigated by the Auditor General for everybody to know and to see?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: I think I’ve had an opportunity to speak to this on a number of occasions—just now, in fact. I do want to remind my honourable colleague of what her colleague from Timmins–James Bay argued in 1996. He said, “That the Provincial Auditor should have a duplicate role of going in after they’ve already been audited to do it all over again to make sure that proper policy has been followed ... I say is wrong. It is not the job of the auditor to determine what public policy should be and how it’s being followed.”

What he was doing is arguing against the introduction of greater authority for the Auditor General when it comes to hospitals. We’ve given that authority to the auditor. We’ve done that notwithstanding the objections of the third party. I think he has done a great job for us, and we’re acting on the basis of all his recommendations.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Supplementary?

M me France Gélinas: We all agree it is not the role of the Auditor General to make public policy, and it is not his role either to determine who should be fired in this last scandal.

What I’m asking the Premier to do is to make good on his word to be transparent, to be accountable. These are public dollars that were frittered away on booze, on expensive meals, on ritzy hotel rooms in Singapore. People have the right to know the names of those consultants who benefited. The money could have been spent to reopen closed emergency rooms, maybe, or get people out of the hallways at Sudbury Regional Hospital or the Thunder Bay hospital.

Why is the Premier talking transparency yet continuing to protect the identity of the consultants who squandered millions of precious health care dollars?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: My honourable colleague says she is in favour of progress when it comes to health care for Ontario families, but their party voted against returning standards to long-term-care homes. They voted against funding to reduce wait times and hire nurses. They voted against lowering drug prices, not only for the government but for Ontario families who aren’t covered by a drug plan.

We believe that having a strong health care system in place is very important to our families, and that includes, as necessarily part and parcel of that, ensuring that those precious tax dollars are translated as much as possible into front-line services, and that’s what our new legislation is all about.

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

M me France Gélinas: What is happening right here, right now, in Ontario is important. The Premier talks the talk but refuses to act. We need to go to the bottom, we need transparency and we need accountability so that the trust we need for the health care system to survive will be there. Yet he refuses to share those names.

There is a $3.7-million sole-source contract. That is 90 long-term-care beds that could have been provided. That would make a dent in an ER waiting room, wouldn’t it? If the Premier is serious about accountability, if he is serious about transparency, then he has to walk the talk. He has the right to share with us the names of the consultants who cashed in on this latest scandal. Will he do it?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: My honourable colleague won’t take yes for an answer. We are moving ahead with the Broader Public Sector Accountability Act. We chose to act. She talks about walking the walk. We walked the walk; I think it was about a half-hour after we received the report. We introduced a new bill in this Legislature. We look forward to the support of the member opposite and her party when it comes to this.

What we’re saying to Ontario families is that we completely agree that we should work as hard as we can together to ensure that their precious health care dollars are translated as much as possible into front-line services, whether that’s nurses or doctors, drugs or diagnostics, hospital beds or long-term care, whatever is needed to meet the needs of Ontario families when it comes to ensuring they have access to quality health care. That’s what we’ve always stood for as a government and that’s what we’re going to continue to stand for through our new Broader Public Sector Accountability Act.

MINISTERIAL CONDUCT

Mr. Tim Hudak: My question is to the Premier. On February 14, 1992, you said, “When you serve as a minister of the crown, special standards apply.”

Yesterday, Premier, I asked you about serious allegations made by your hand-picked Minister of Research and Innovation. Despite six opportunities, you refused to comment. I’m going to simply ask you to tell this House whether you personally believe that the minister’s comments were appropriate and meet the special standard that you once said you believed in.

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: My honourable colleague knows that the minister has offered an apology. I believe it is sincere; I believe it is earnest. My honourable colleague raises a serious issue. I accept that.

I think my honourable colleague also understands, on the basis of his experience in politics, that from time to time, we, all being human beings, can slip. We can get carried away. We can say things that in hindsight we regret. The minister has acknowledged this. He has offered a full, sincere and earnest apology.

I think it’s appropriate now for my honourable colleague to accept that. I think it’s time for us to move on. It’s time for us to find a way to work together with those who were newly elected in the municipal elections.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Supplementary?

Mr. Tim Hudak: Premier, here’s the problem: It was not an apology. The right thing would have been for the minister to offer a clear and unconditional apology. You know that was not an apology, I know it was not an apology, because we now see the minister’s own response.

Instead of doing the right thing and clearly apologizing, the minister raises a new set of outrageous and baseless accusations against me and the Ontario PC Party. Premier, you know that this is beneath the dignity that families rightly expect from a minister of the crown.

Premier, I need to ask you: Did you speak directly with the minister before he released his latest statement?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: I’ll refer this to the minister.

Interjection.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): That is not a point of order. The Premier has the ability—

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): The question concerns the conduct of a minister, The Premier has referred that question to the minister, and the minister will have the opportunity to respond to his conduct.

Minister.

Hon. Glen R. Murray: I offered an apology yesterday for the word used on Twitter. I should not have used the word. I should not have used the word in reference to the Leader of the Opposition, the Prime Minister or the mayor-elect of the city of Toronto. I have apologized. My poor choice of words has distracted us from a substantive issue. The real issue for me is the use of homophobic smears in the final days of this week’s municipal campaign.

We experienced three days of unrelenting, hateful, homophobic attacks postering the neighbourhoods gay and lesbian people live in; mailouts denigrating the characters of my friends, my neighbours and their children; and attacks on the radio on the legitimacy of gay and lesbian families. We have come, in some ways, in fighting for the equality of all in this province. I can only hope that all of us and all of our colleagues—

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

Mr. Tim Hudak: Premier, obviously my question was to you: if you had contacted the minister before he released his latest statement, which contained unfounded, outrageous and insulting allegations about me and the Ontario PC Party.

Last night, you made a statement yourself on Twitter that said that the high road is always the best. But your minister furthered his attack with new insulting and absolutely unfounded allegations. His new statement was not in the heat of the moment; it was a carefully crafted public statement, and it was the furthest thing from the high road.

As Premier, if I had a minister who didn’t apologize clearly and unconditionally and do the right thing, the minister would no longer sit in my cabinet. Premier, will you do the right thing?

Hon. Glen R. Murray: All of us in public life have an obligation to speak up when we hear or see homophobic attacks and smears. I’ve regretted the words that I’ve used. I walked the streets of my neighbourhood and I saw posters, and my family and my friends received flyers that I never have seen before. I used a word that I should not have used, and I have apologized very clearly. People do not—

Interjections.

Hon. Glen R. Murray: We should not let that distract us from the real issue. Young people are killing themselves because they are unable to deal with the homophobic experience that they go through every day in schools. We, as elected officials, should be speaking to them so that we get—in the new program it gets better. We must stand up against homophobia.

Mr. Speaker—

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

MINISTERIAL CONDUCT

Mr. Tim Hudak: Back to the Premier: The problem is that in his non-apology, your minister has basically insinuated that the PC Party—members of my team—are behind this type of garbage. That is an outrageous accusation for the minister to make—

Mr. John Yakabuski: And continues to make.

Mr. Tim Hudak: —and the minister may be continuing to make it in his media interviews.

The minister, further, last night was on Twitter and talked about how he was celebrating, wining and dining with venture capitalists in Montreal. I understand it was the minister’s birthday, but I think that this reflects a minister who did not learn from this experience, is hardly humbled and is not sorry.

I would ask you Premier: Could we have a clear and unconditional apology from the minister for the accusations that he continues to make about the PC Party?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: I think the minister has made a couple of things very clear: first of all, that he regrets—

Interjections.

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: I think the minister has made a couple of things clear. One is that he regrets the language that he used. Secondly, he feels very strongly and very passionately about an issue that should be important to all of us. I would encourage my honourable colleagues opposite to recognize that and understand that. There is no intention—I want to make this clear—on the part of our government or any member of our caucus to in any way assign fault or blame or use innuendo or any such thing to malign, defame, slander, undermine the official opposition. I want to make that perfectly clear.

There may be an opportunity for us today to actually come together and to make a statement that I think is important to all Ontarians.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Supplementary?

Mr. Tim Hudak: Premier, I’m pleased that you took my question there and expressed the sentiment. The Ontario PC Party obviously condemns this type of garbage in municipal campaigns and elsewhere.

Here’s the issue: Your very own minister in his non-apology basically makes allegations, sets innuendo and lowers the bar even further by daring to suggest that anybody on our team, anybody in the PC Party, would be behind this type of garbage.

Premier, the minister should have done the right thing and apologized clearly and unconditionally initially, and he should apologize for the further smear tactics and innuendo that he put out in his non-apology. Will you call for that proper, clear apology?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: I think I’ve been pretty clear in terms of articulating the view of our government. I think that my honourable colleague should take some time to consider that. I consider the matter closed.

I think it’s an opportunity for all of us to reflect on how important it is to be prudent in terms of weighing in on matters of public policy. I think it’s an opportunity for us as well to understand that what weighs heavily on the minds of Ontario families today are issues like their health care, their education, economic anxieties that they may be feeling. I think we need to find a way to address those. More than that, we need to find a way to address some of the concerns that are going to be raised by our newly elected councils around the province. I think that’s what Ontario families would ask us to focus on.

I think that represents progress on our part, to find ways to address those kinds of issues.

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

Mr. Tim Hudak: Premier, I want to bring closure to this issue. There is one way to rightly do so. If the minister had clearly and unconditionally apologized, the matter would be closed. But instead of apologizing, the minister continued to spread innuendo about our team and the Ontario PC Party.

Premier, I’m going to ask you very directly if you agree with the minister’s latest accusations, that anybody on our team here across the floor was behind that garbage at the end of the Toronto municipal campaign.

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: I think I’ve been pretty direct on that; I’ve been pretty clear on that. I just don’t think it’s helpful to dwell on it. We are at our best, on behalf of Ontario families, when we fully respect each other, and I think that’s what we’re called upon to do now.

There has been a transgression, a slip on the part of one of the members of my cabinet. There may be some people in the world who never slip and never make mistakes, but I have yet to meet any of them. I think the minister has done the right thing. He has apologized. I think our shared responsibility now is to find a way to work together on behalf of Ontario families.

TAXATION

Mr. Peter Kormos: To the Premier: Can the Premier tell us why he imposed his HST on Canadian Legions’ poppies and wreaths?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: To the Minister of Finance.

Hon. Dwight Duncan: In fact, it has not been imposed. I wrote to the Royal Canadian Legion last week saying that we will refund the provincial portion of it. It does require a change in federal regulation. I’ve had a very good discussion with the federal finance minister, and I believe the regulation will be changed so this won’t occur again.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Supplementary?

Mr. Peter Kormos: When will the minister be writing to homeowners and apartment dwellers across Ontario and telling them that he will remove the HST from their electricity bills?

Hon. Dwight Duncan: This is coming from a member who increased taxes on Ontario’s people 56 times. He raised the sales tax.

His counterparts in Nova Scotia got elected saying that they would take the HST off of energy, and what did they do? They raised the HST. That member says one thing one day and does another thing when he’s in government. That party has no principles, no plan for a brighter future for Ontario. We’re about creating jobs—600,000 net new jobs—for the people across Ontario, including Welland. Where do you stand and what’s your plan other than to drive the recovery back into the ground because of ill-conceived and misunderstood economic priorities?

MINING INDUSTRY

Mr. Bill Mauro: My question is to the Minister of Northern Development, Mines and Forestry. We all know that our province has come through some difficult economic times. Some people estimate that as many as 30 million to 40 million people lost jobs worldwide.

Specifically, we know that lower mineral prices have had an effect on the state of the mining industry in Ontario, and especially in the north, where most of our mines are located.

Despite some of the tough times facing the mining industry, we know that recently there was good news that happened concerning the reopening of a mine. Can you tell us a bit about why this mine may have reopened?

Hon. Michael Gravelle: I thank my colleague for the question. I know he’s just as happy as I am, as we all are, about this very good-news story. Indeed, the mine that my colleague is referring to is North American Palladium’s Lac des Iles mine, which is about 100 kilometres northwest of Thunder Bay. I was able to attend the reopening on October 13, and let me tell you, the workers and the community are incredibly happy about this, and the company as well.

This reopening means that about 200 employees and contractors are going back to work, with a significant number of them working from Gull Bay First Nation, which has developed a very positive relationship with North American Palladium.

The president of North American Palladium, Mr. Bill Biggar, was very clear about his company believing that the life of the mine can be extended for about another 10 years. That’s really in large measure because, even while they had to shut it down for a period of time, they carried on putting dollars into their exploration program, which allowed them to move the mine forward, reopen it and keep it going for another 10 years.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Supplementary?

Mr. Bill Mauro: Minister, thank you for that great news. I do understand that it looks like this mine has potentially another 10 years of life left in it at least and that there may be more major investment coming on the construction side of things in that mine as well.

While this is great news for the company and the community as well, I’m wondering what role our government had in ensuring that North American Palladium wanted to stay in northern Ontario to do business. The cost of doing business in the north, as everyone knows, is higher, and some companies view this as a disincentive. Will the minister please tell us a bit about how our government has created some incentives for these mining companies to stay in the north and what specifically we did to encourage North American Palladium?

Hon. Michael Gravelle: Thank you very much again for the question. He’s quite right: The president of North American Palladium, Mr. Biggar, made it clear that indeed our northern industrial energy rate program that was announced in the 2010 budget was significantly helpful in terms of the reopening of the operation, as well as other incentives we’ve been able to provide. We’ve got some great good-news stories in terms of the mining sector all across northern Ontario, which we’re excited about.

When we look at the northern industrial energy rate program, this is a three-year program—$150 million a year, $450 million over three years—which will work out to provide rebates of two cents per kilowatt hour, which in essence reduces electricity prices for these companies by up to 25%, making a substantial difference.

We had a previous program, as members will know, related to incentives for the forestry industry. The great thing about the northern industrial energy rate program is that it’s now been expanded to the mining sector as well, which is making a huge difference in reemploying hundreds of thousands of northern Ontario residents.

AGENCY INVESTIGATION

Mr. Steve Clark: My question is for the Premier. It is rare for a government to be raided by the police. The McGuinty Liberals were raided at least four times as part of two criminal investigations. On July 15, police raided the offices of the Ontario Realty Corp. as part of what was reported in the media as a corruption probe. My question is, how many more criminal investigations are there against the McGuinty Liberals?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: To the Minister of Infrastructure.

Hon. Bob Chiarelli: I thank the member for the question. First of all, the Ontario Realty Corp. is not under investigation. There’s a private contractor who’s involved in it. The Ontario Realty Corp. has been subjected, as have other ministries, to new procurement rules over the last year and a half or two years, and they are impeccable rules. A significant amount of our procurement is done through Infrastructure Ontario, which has received international recognition for the openness and technical aspects of the procurement. So the member is wrong: The Ontario Realty Corp. is not being investigated.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Supplementary?

Mr. Steve Clark: Trying back to the Premier: It seems coincidental that just before the raid in July, ORC did a sudden and major housecleaning, including getting rid of a vice-president in June. Somewhere, someone in the ORC knew exactly what was going on before the police knocked down the door. Either they briefed the Minister of Energy, who had responsibility for ORC, or the minister was negligent in his oversight of the troubled agency.

My question: When were you and the minister made aware of allegations of corruption against the Ontario Realty Corp.?

Hon. Bob Chiarelli: This is a government that respects public servants—we don’t beat up on our public servants in public—and we’re going to continue to do that. They were a government that embarrassed public servants. When they were in government, they did it. They’re doing it in opposition. That’s not the way we do business.

The investigation that they’re referring to is an investigation in which they responded responsibly. They were asked to provide information for a private investigation for a private contractor. They did so, they did so professionally and they did so appropriately. We don’t accept the premises of the question.

HAZARDOUS WASTE

Mr. Peter Tabuns: My question is for the Minister of Transportation. Ontarians, First Nations, environmental experts, mayors and US senators all oppose the transport of radioactive steam generators from Kincardine to Owen Sound on public roads and then across the Great Lakes to Sweden. Each generator exceeds acceptable safe standards for radioactivity shipped in one vessel. Does the Minister of Transportation support this unnecessary and dangerous plan which so many experts and community leaders oppose?

Hon. Kathleen O. Wynne: I think the member opposite knows full well that the rules and regulations fall within the federal government’s purview.

Obviously we have regulations and safety precautions in the province of Ontario. All of those rules will be followed, but I think the fundamental question about the transportation and the disposition of these materials has to do with federal government legislation. I think that the member opposite would do well to talk with his federal counterparts.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Supplementary?

Mr. Peter Tabuns: I think the minister may have washed her hands of this far too soon. First the Minister of Energy says that the shipment is a federal issue, even though low-level nuclear waste has always been a provincial responsibility, and now the Minister of Transportation says it has nothing to do with her authority, even though the Bruce Power website states that transport permits are required from Ontario’s Ministry of Transportation and discussions are already being held with your ministry. That sort of seems to me, Minister, like you have some connection to this decision.

When will the government stop covering up their involvement on this issue and start meeting with local citizens, First Nations—

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): I’d just ask the honourable member to withdraw the comment, please.

Mr. Peter Tabuns: I will withdraw.

When will the government be open about this issue and start meeting with local citizens, First Nations and mayors who are so concerned about this proposed shipment of waste?

Hon. Kathleen O. Wynne: I was quite clear that we will adhere to and we will honour the rules and regulations that are in place on behalf of the provincial government. We will make sure that every single one of those is followed.

We are absolutely committed to working in collaboration with all levels of government on an important issue such as this one, but at the end of the day, the overarching concern, the overarching issue of how to deal with the disposition of waste and the safety issues concerned has to rest with the federal government. We are partners, obviously, in the transportation; the roads are our responsibility. We have some of the safest roads in North America. We will keep them that way and we will work in partnership with the federal government.

STUDENT ASSESSMENT

Mr. Charles Sousa: My question is to the Minister of Education. Parents in my riding have heard that there have been changes to how students can be graded in the classroom. There’s been a clarification to how teachers can assess student performance. Parents are pleased that students are doing better in the classroom, but they also want to know that students have earned their success. What can I tell parents in my riding about this change and how these new policies are building towards our student success strategy?

Hon. Leona Dombrowsky: I’m delighted that the honourable member has brought to me the concerns of parents in his riding, and I want to say that I have heard from parents in my riding as well. Of course, student success is a goal of our government. We want more students to be successful. We have made significant investments to support their learning and to support teachers in the classroom. We have also clarified, as the honourable member has indicated, how students are assessed in the province of Ontario. It had been presented in some circles that students were not able to get a zero if they didn’t complete work.

Well, in fact, that is the case. Students can be assigned a zero if they have not satisfactorily completed their work.

This is important. Parents do want to be sure that the grades that their children receive have been earned, and we are very happy to continue to work with families. We also thank the teachers, who have—

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

Mr. Charles Sousa: My follow-up to the Minister of Education: Parents in my riding have also heard that report cards have been changed this year. They’re asking what these changes are and what these changes mean. Parents want and deserve to be fully informed of their child’s work at school, as it’s fundamental to ensuring that students get the support they need both at home and at school to achieve success in the classroom.

Minister, could you provide some clarity as to how these changes are going to affect parents and students in my riding? And is it true that parents will be getting less relevant information this year by sending students home with one less report card?

Hon. Leona Dombrowsky: Again, I think it’s very important that I have the opportunity to clarify for everyone in this House that parents will receive three reports on student progress. The first report is a progress report, followed by two report cards.

The progress report is an assessment of the performance of students for the first few weeks of school. It indicates that the students are either progressing well, progressing or having some difficulty. The information that is going home to the parents is really very important. It’s very clear. It provides an opportunity as well for parents, who are always interested in understanding how their children are doing in school, to go and meet with the teacher to talk about the progress of their child, the student, and to understand what strategies are in place to encourage and support the learning of that child going forward.

So there are three reports that are going—

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

ABORIGINAL LAND CLAIMS

Mr. Toby Barrett: My question is for the Premier about the leadership vacuum he has created. If Premier McGuinty needs a sign of what his lack of leadership accomplishes, he need not look further than Caledonia.

Don’t take it from me; Christie Blatchford’s new book charges that you abandoned the rule of law in Caledonia by favouring some citizens over others. While you said you don’t interfere with the police, she cites examples of political meddling by your office that has hamstrung police and put abstract ideology ahead of protecting victims from intimidation, home invasion and assault. Caledonia families detail four years of suffering that you condone, with no end in sight.

What more evidence will it take for you to understand the impact that your failure of leadership has for Ontario families?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: To the Attorney General.

Hon. Christopher Bentley: As Minister of Aboriginal Affairs, we’ve been working very hard with the Six Nations and with people in the surrounding communities, trying to further engage the federal government and our province to resolve the very significant underlying issue here, which is a treaty

interpretation and a land claim that has been in existence for a long period of time.

We have been working very hard and will continue to work very hard, because the fact of the matter is that the people in the surrounding communities, together with those on Six Nations, have been playing together, working together and doing events and charitable causes together for centuries. They want a better future.

I’m looking forward to working with the new mayors and councils and Six Nations to find a very important resolution to this—

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

Mr. Toby Barrett: If your Premier needs another example of how lack of leadership is failing families, look no further than your inaction on the blockading by militants of a new power corridor from Niagara to Caledonia. No wires have been installed and no electricity is flowing. That’s as bad as saying you have a long-term energy plan when you don’t, or, as the Minister of Energy said on September 30, that you would release the new electricity price forecast analysis to Ontario families in mid-October when you didn’t. Promise after promise is broken, deadlines come and go, and nothing happens.

No one is accountable. It’s a failure of leadership. Why does leadership mean breaking promises and breaking the law to Premier McGuinty?

Hon. Christopher Bentley: We all recognize that none of these issues are easy to resolve; otherwise, they would have been resolved many years ago. They do require a lot of understanding. They do require a lot of discussion. They do require knowledge that has not always been in abundance. And there are many different potential approaches to issues which arise around land claims.

As a result of the Ipperwash inquiry and the recommendations that were made then, we are accepting and implementing the recommendations and following the advice and the approach, as a result of that very difficult, tragic event. That is the process we’ll get to which will result in a resolution: discussions and peaceful approaches, and we need the federal government to seriously help resolve a land claim that they are ultimately responsible for.

WORKERS’ COMPENSATION

Mr. Paul Miller: My question is to the Minister of Labour. On September 30, the minister announced approval of the WSIB’s request to appoint respected academic and labour expert Harry Arthurs to the chair of the WSIB’s funding review committee. Four other panel members were then announced. Would the minister please clarify which of these panel members is the injured-worker representative?

Hon. Peter Fonseca: Yes, the WSIB has come forward with a plan to address the unfunded liability. Within that plan, they have put together an expert advisory panel that’s being led by Professor Harry Arthurs. First off, Professor Harry Arthurs has been the dean of Osgoode Hall Law School, and he is a past president of York University.

Within that team that Professor Harry Arthurs has set up, he has some very strong people. I’ll tell you, he has Buzz Hargrove speaking on behalf of labour, and with all his experience and the good work he has done with injured workers across the province and the advocacy he has brought to injured workers, I think that speaks volumes for part of that team. Also, I know that John Tory makes up part of that team, and he is going to be giving advice and being—

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

Mr. Paul Miller: I will reiterate for the minister. The funding review panel is comprised, it’s true, of well-known persons. However, not one of these panellists is an actual injured worker, is someone who has gone through the WSIB system, is someone who can therefore truly represent injured workers in Ontario. In fact, one of the panel members had spoken out against such initiatives as the inclusion of construction workers in the WSIB.

Will this minister agree today to appoint an actual injured worker as a funding review panel member?

Hon. Peter Fonseca: When I have had all the opportunities to speak with injured workers—and I just met with them last week—we did talk about the consultation process and the openness that Professor Harry Arthurs has extended to all groups, especially injured workers. Injured workers have an open door to Professor Harry Arthurs and to Buzz Hargrove. If this member is saying he does not agree that Buzz Hargrove is an advocate, someone who has done so much for injured workers, we feel differently on this side of the floor. Injured workers are the cornerstone of what this consultation is all about.

It’s ensuring that the WSIB is there, that it is strong, that it is stable and will provide those protections for injured workers not only for the century that it has been in place, but for the next century. That’s what I say to the member opposite.

MISSING CHILDREN

Mr. Pat Hoy: My question is for the Minister of Community Safety and Correctional Services. Child abduction is a serious and horrific crime. As a parent and a grandparent, I could not imagine the anguish and pain families must experience when confronted with these heartbreaking situations. My thoughts go out to all of the families that have dealt with these trying ordeals.

When combatting criminal activity such as child abduction, timely information is of the utmost importance, both to the police and to those members of the community who seek that help. Expeditious access and distribution of information is one of the most important tools to combat this type of appalling crime. However, the task facing law enforcement officials is large and complex.

Can the Minister of Community Safety and Correctional Services explain how this province is helping Ontario’s police services in their fight against child abduction?

Hon. James J. Bradley: The member is correct: These are tragic circumstances. When a child is abducted, of course every moment is crucial to their safe return. It’s vital to the search and investigation that critical information about the missing child is relayed to and from the public as quickly as possible. The Amber Alert program is a partnership between the police and the news media to communicate vital child abduction information quickly to the public.

Amber Alert is run by the Ontario Provincial Police to locate children who are abducted. Since its introduction, the Amber Alert program’s communication tools have expanded to include highway Compass signs, lottery terminals and Mac’s convenience stores. When a provincial Amber Alert is issued, a province-wide media release is distributed by the OPP to advise of the alert and request that critical information be broadcast immediately and regularly until further notice.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Supplementary?

Mr. Pat Hoy: We as Ontarians are very grateful for the commendable services that are provided to us by all members of our police services. I know that in my riding of Chatham–Kent–Essex, along with the rest of Ontario, the people are proud of those men and women in uniform.

However, public safety does not begin and end with law enforcement officials. It is crucial that the community work with police to help find a missing child. With a united effort by society, criminal activities like child abduction can be more effectively combated.

In the fight against child abduction, one of the most imperative tools is information. The truth is that the faster our police services can gain access to vital information, the faster they can facilitate the safe return of an abducted child.

Ontario’s police service has access to some of the best resources, but they also need help from the public. Would the Minister of Community Safety and Correctional Services provide us with more information about how this will help fight child—

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

Police believe the first three to five hours are the most important for finding victims of abduction. With the addition of Facebook to the Amber Alert program, police have a greater chance of gaining access to any information the public may have during these crucial hours.

Additionally, an agreement is in place with Canadian wireless telecommunications organizations to have a number of cellphone service carriers provide Amber Alerts via text messaging, free of charge. This expansion of the program is going to be—

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

WORKERS’ COMPENSATION

Mr. Randy Hillier: My question is for the Premier. On October 1, your WSIB raised premiums for over 100,000 struggling Ontario employers just as we were coming out of this recession. Just six weeks ago, you said, “We’ve got to be very careful about doing anything that acts as ... [a] spoke in the wheels of the economy that is recovering at a very modest pace.”

Premier, isn’t it a “spoke in the wheels” to raise WSIB premiums for auto manufacturers by 13.5% just months after you bailed them out with taxpayers’ money?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: To the Minister of Labour.

Hon. Peter Fonseca: I want to thank the member for the opportunity to talk about the comprehensive plan that the WSIB has brought forward to retire the unfunded liability. When it comes to premiums, I’ll let the member know—and he knows this already—that half of all companies covered under WSIB saw zero increase. Some did see a modest increase, and any company that did see an increase can lower their premium rates by getting involved in a number of incentive programs that are provided through the WSIB. Those programs allow companies to better their health and safety records so that they can lower their insurance premiums.

But the reason the WSIB needs to be there for those companies is to protect them from being sued and, if something were to happen, from it wiping that company out—

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

Mr. Randy Hillier: Premier, a month ago you said, “A hike in EI premiums at this point in time runs counter to what we need to do in order to ensure that people regain more confidence every day about a growing economy.” I guess the Minister of Labour wasn’t listening to that speech of yours, because on October 1, the WSIB hiked premiums for nursing homes by 17% and raised premiums for farmers by 20%.

Premier, why do you have it in for Ontario seniors and farmers? Why are you hitting them with yet another Dalton McGuinty tax grab?

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): I’d remind the honourable member about the use of names.

Minister?

Hon. Peter Fonseca: The WSIB has brought forward a comprehensive plan, a prudent plan, a plan that will put the WSIB on a firm financial footing. This is what is needed. The WSIB, within this plan, has also put together a consultation that is happening with all stakeholders. It is being led by Professor Harry Arthurs.

I can see that the word “plan” is a four-letter word to that member over there, maybe because he has no plan and has never had a plan. What I can tell the member is that his colleague the member for Carleton–Mississippi Mills said this is the right thing to do, having a plan and having a consultation.

So we support the WSIB in moving forward to ensure the stability of the WSIB, for the workers of this province as well as for the companies; to ensure that they are insured and that when someone goes to work, they know that if something were to—

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

NARCOTICS SAFETY

M me France Gélinas: Ma question est pour le premier ministre.

A month ago the government introduced Bill 101, the Narcotics Safety and Awareness Act. Yesterday the bill was in committee, and it was obvious how poorly thought out and rushed this bill is. Somehow the government managed to forget that physicians practise in hospitals—it seems pretty obvious to me—that regulatory colleges already play an essential role in ensuring safety and that confidentiality of personal records must be maintained. There are far too many “oops” in this piece of legislation.

Given all of those oversights, can the Premier honestly tell Ontarians that he’s finally on target?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: My honourable colleague is picking on me today; this is her third question. But I never doubt her sincerity and how hard she works on her issues.

What I can say, of course, without being an expert in the area, is that we’ve introduced a bill. It is before the committee. It is there not in a perfect form. We are always listening. It may be that my honourable colleague or others want to introduce amendments to improve the quality of the bill and ensure that it achieves its objective.

I know my honourable colleague will understand that there is a real issue. It’s important that we curb the abuse of narcotic drugs and ensure that these powerful drugs are used appropriately. There has been a 900% increase in one drug’s abuse since 1991, and that’s why we are introducing this bill, in an effort to better manage these dangerous drugs.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Supplementary?

M me France Gélinas: In second reading, in committee and everywhere else I could, I urged the government to slow down, to get the bill right. I pushed for committee hearings in the north and in First Nation communities and was flatly denied, because the way the bill is written right now, it is a one-size-fits-all approach that won’t work for communities that are northern and rural, and it won’t work for First Nations either. But instead of listening to the many, many groups who urged the government to take the time to strengthen the bill, they are rushing it through.

People in mental health are working flat out. The one-week notice was not enough for them to respond, to come and do deputations or to send them in. They had one week. This is not reasonable.

Can the Premier explain why his government is ignoring the advice of all of these groups and is pushing through this flawed legislation?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: We make a real effort to be open to constructive criticism and advice. My colleague referenced some concerns advanced by people in the mental health sector. Well, here’s what Dr. Catherine Zahn, who’s president of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, said: “Ontario’s narcotics strategy addresses the root causes of our province’s problems with prescribed opioids and other substances.”

Dennis Darby, the CEO of the Ontario Pharmacists’ Association, said this: “This strategy marks a step towards a more comprehensive approach to ensuring narcotics are prescribed and used appropriately.”

We don’t lay claim to introducing anything in a perfect form. We will continue to keep an open mind with respect to ways to improve this legislation, but I know my honourable colleague will agree with us that it’s important that we find a way to move forward to better control these dangerous narcotics.

WORKPLACE SAFETY

Mr. David Zimmer: My question is for the Minister of Labour, and it’s about an important employer-employee health issue. Musculoskeletal disorders, commonly known as repetitive strain injuries, are responsible for over 43% of all lost-time injury claims in Ontario. That’s a huge number, and it translates into huge dollars. It’s estimated that from 2003 to 2008—that’s five years—Ontario employers paid more than $1 billion in direct and indirect costs because of musculoskeletal disorders.

I understand that the Minister of Labour is taking a very serious view of that and that you have a heightened enforcement blitz addressing these hazards. Can you give me some details about—

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

Hon. Peter Fonseca: I can give details to the member about that blitz. It started in September, and it does focus on MSDs, musculoskeletal disorders, in sectors such as retail, construction, mining and health care. This blitz is one in a series of our highly focused inspections. It’s conducted under the banner of our Safe at Work Ontario strategy, and it helps workers and employers anticipate those workplace hazards that we all want to eliminate.

Inspectors, when they’re out there, are focusing on particular tasks. These are the tasks that require lifting or pushing or carrying items, and our government is committed to ensuring that workers are protected from injuries and major health hazards on the job.

Since 2003, we’ve been able to change and are working on changing the workplace culture—

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

Mr. David Zimmer: Workplace pains and strains are very serious. They disable employees and they harm the economic efficiency of employers. The consequences are far-reaching for everyone. They’re very costly, in particular, to employers. There are a number of reasons for lost-time claims related to the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board, resulting in these huge costs for Ontario employers.

Minister, what are you doing to help workers and employers prevent musculoskeletal disorders?

Hon. Peter Fonseca: When it comes to workplace safety, the starting point always must be education and awareness. That’s what we’re providing through the Ministry of Labour. That’s why we’ve developed what’s called a musculoskeletal disorder prevention series for employers and workers in Ontario. This helps workers and employers understand and recognize musculoskeletal disorder hazards in the workplace, as well as to control them.

MSDs are entirely preventable—we know this—and my ministry will continue to educate our workers and employers about how to reduce MSDs in the workplace. We’ve seen some really shining examples with companies out in the field that have seen very high incidences of MSDs and that have, in some instances, brought those injuries down in their workplaces to zero. This is good for everybody: It’s good for the workers and good for the bottom line of a company.

NOTICE OF DISSATISFACTION

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Pursuant to standing order 38(a), the member for Hamilton East–Stoney Creek has given notice of his dissatisfaction with the answer to his question given by the Minister of Labour concerning the WSIB review panel. This matter will be debated today at 6 p.m.

VISITORS

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): On behalf of the member from Sarnia–Lambton, we’d like to welcome Les and Marilyn Armstrong in the west gallery today. Welcome to Queen’s Park.

There being no deferred votes, this House stands recessed until 3 p.m. this afternoon.

The House recessed from 1136 to 1500.

MEMBERS’ STATEMENTS

BROCKVILLE FARMERS’ MARKET

Mr. Steve Clark: I’m excited to rise in the House today to congratulate the Brockville Farmers’ Market for being named Entrepreneur of the Year by the Leeds and Grenville Small Business Enterprise Centre. The market has been a fixture on Market Street beside Brockville’s historic city hall since 1832. In fact, it will mark its 178th birthday tomorrow.

For generations, the downtown market attracted people from across my riding and beyond to the shores of the St. Lawrence River to buy the fresh, local products for which eastern Ontario is famous. Over time, as shopping habits changed, the market struggled to attract shoppers and vendors. It’s not a stretch to say it faced an uncertain future.

If you know anything about the work ethic and determination in my riding, you can guess where this story is going. By using fresh ideas, recruiting unique new vendors and promoting the benefits of shopping for local produce, people such as Koren Manneck, Doug Avery and the late Peter Carter planted the seeds for an incredible turnaround. Thanks to their efforts and those of many others, the market is flourishing. In fact, it is now a key part of the economy in Brockville, as it draws thousands of shoppers to the city’s historic downtown.

Although the outdoor season is ending, I urge everyone to see this success story for themselves by visiting the farmers’ market inside the Brockville Museum on Sundays in November and Saturdays and Sundays in December.

PUBLIC TRANSIT

Mr. Peter Tabuns: The election of the new mayor of Toronto has reopened the Transit City issue. Toronto is choking on congestion. Finances are tight. The new mayor has said he wants to build subways and abandon Transit City’s light rail system. Subways are very expensive.

The McGuinty Liberals chopped billions from their commitment to Transit City. The Premier says he’s willing to talk. What else can he say? If he talks with the new mayor on this issue, he must remember that abandonment of Transit City and redirection of provincial funds to subway building would be a monumental mistake. Light rail would be the best value for money. Spending the same money on a subway would dramatically cut the amount of transit provided and deepen the congestion and air pollution problems of Toronto.

We need fully funded transit, and we need Transit City now.

OTTAWA GYMNASTICS CENTRE

Mr. Yasir Naqvi: I’m pleased to share a special anniversary taking place this weekend in my riding of Ottawa Centre. The Ottawa Gymnastics Centre is celebrating its 50th year of providing kids in our community with a rich, healthy, athletic and artistic experience through gymnastics programs, from toddlers to competitive Olympians.

The club has been home to two athletes who were part of the Canadian team at the 2004 Athens Olympics, and the current head coach at OGC, Tobie Gorman, was the team coach in 2004. The not-for-profit club was started in 1960 by Sev Heiberg and today is a thriving hub in Westboro community in my riding of Ottawa Centre.

The 50th-anniversary celebration is taking place in two parts this weekend. An open house will take place from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. this Saturday afternoon, October 30, at the centre—and I look forward to attending that—followed by a gala evening at Tudor Hall. The special guest at both these events is Dr. Steven MacLean, chief astronaut of the Canadian Space Agency and former Ottawa Gymnastics Centre member.

I’d like to congratulate executive director Kellie Hinnells and event chair Kathleen Murphy on organizing this special occasion. I would also like to extend my best wishes to all the OGC alumni, competitors, parents and kids as they celebrate their last 50 years this weekend and look forward to much success in the next 50. Congratulations.

WIND TURBINES

Mr. Ted Arnott: I’m glad that the Minister of the Environment is in the legislative precinct, and I hope he’s listening. Today, the Guelph Mercury reports that up to 1,000 people turned out in the rain to protest a proposed wind farm in Centre Wellington township last night. I was there, too, arriving as soon as I could to hear what my constituents were saying about the wind farm proposal and about the McGuinty government’s energy policies.

I listened to many constituents, and their message was a devastating indictment of this government’s refusal to listen to them before permitting the installation of massive wind farms in their communities. People told me the McGuinty government has stripped away their say as average citizens. They believe this government’s Green Energy Act has stripped away local decision-making authority. I believe they are right.

Again, I call upon this government to complete a comprehensive and independent study of the wind turbines’ effect on human health before any new wind farm proposals go forward.

Again, I call on the Minister of the Environment to account for his contradictory statements on the role municipalities play in the approvals process. Do municipalities have the power to stop them or not? He should address this basic question right here in the Legislature.

Despite this government’s apparent determination to push ahead with wind farms no matter what the cost, no matter what the opposition, there is hope, because when a community is united and when it speaks with one voice, that voice is heard and it cannot be ignored.

HUMBER RIVER REGIONAL HOSPITAL

Mr. Mario Sergio: I’m delighted to report that significant progress is being made on the new state-of-the-art hospital that will soon serve the residents within my riding of York West. Three requests for proposal have been shortlisted for the design, build and financing of the additional Humber River Regional Hospital development project. In addition to the local site located in York West, this new hospital will provide modern equipment for better diagnosis and treatment, increased patient care with additional beds and specialized outpatient services.

I am proud that our government continues to stand by its commitment to quality health care for all Ontarians. This additional hospital will continue to reduce wait times in this province, expand services and create more jobs for nurses.

Since taking office, the McGuinty government has built 18 new hospitals, which not only provide us with better health care services but also create jobs and opportunities which benefit all Ontario families.

I’m looking forward to the positive impact that Humber River Regional Hospital will have on the local community. These economic and health benefits for local constituents help build a healthier, stronger and revitalized York West.

ANTI-BULLYING INITIATIVES

Mrs. Elizabeth Witmer: I rise today to focus the attention of the House on the ongoing problem of bullying in this province and throughout North America.

I had the opportunity to meet with Mike Neuts this