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November 29, 1979

31st Parliament, 3rd Session

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Hansard Transcripts

Hansard Transcripts

L121 - Thu 29 Nov 1979 / Jeu 29 nov 1979

STATEMENTS BY THE MINISTRY

ELLIOT LAKE URANIUM MINES

CORRECTIONAL SERVICES DISPUTE

ORAL QUESTIONS

HYDRO RATES

CORRECTIONAL SERVICES DISPUTE

GAS AND OIL PRICES

OTTAWA COURT FACILITIES

OLC SALE OF LOTS

HEALTH SERVICE CHARGES

NIAGARA RIVER POLLUTION

PETROLEUM ALLOCATION

EAST OF BAY PROJECT

AUTO INDUSTRY

PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION

HOPPER CARS

DREE AGREEMENT

SALES TAX REBATES

PETITION

TELEPHONE RATES

NOTICE OF DISSATISFACTION

REPORTS

STANDING SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT COMMITTEE

STANDING ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE COMMITTEE

MOTION

COMMITTEE MEETINGS

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

ORDERS OF THE DAY

PRIVATE MEMBERS’ PUBLIC BUSINESS

HEALTH INSURANCE AMENDMENT ACT

AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION

HEALTH INSURANCE AMENDMENT ACT

AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS ON NOTICE PAPER

The House met at 2 p.m.

Prayers.

STATEMENTS BY THE MINISTRY

ELLIOT LAKE URANIUM MINES

Hon. Mr. Parrott: Mr. Speaker, I have a national emergency; I just broke my glasses. I don’t know if I’ll get through this statement or not.

Interjections.

Hon. Mr. Parrott: The Treasurer (Mr. F. S. Miller) tells me we’re the same age. I’ll find out if that’s true. Yes, indeed we are. Excuse me, Mr. Speaker.

Honourable members will recall last May I tabled in the House the final report by the Environmental Assessment Board on the expansion of the uranium mines in Elliot Lake. Today I wish to table part one of a two-part government response to the findings and recommendations of the board. I am tabling this on behalf of a number of ministries which are listed in the report; therefore I wish to emphasize at the outset that questions relating to the programs for which my colleagues have direct responsibility should be directed to them.

This part one report deals specifically with the community aspects of the board’s report. It includes the government’s response to matters related to population and housing, hard services and the provision of social services. The second report, to be tabled shortly, will deal with the government’s response to findings and recommendations concerned with mining operations per se.

The rate of community expansion at Elliot Lake is significant in terms of both rapid population growth, relative to other communities in Ontario, and the dependence of this growth on conditions in the uranium mining industry. As a result of the expansion of Rio Algom Limited and Denison Mines Limited and their affiliated companies in the area, we expect the population of Elliot Lake will have grown to 23,700 persons by 1984 from 10,700 in 1977. A further lump is expected to increase population to 28,000 by 1988.

The government has monitored the rapid resurgence of the Elliot Lake area since the uranium mining companies signalled their intention to proceed with the expansion. Very early in this process the government was advised by the municipality of Elliot Lake that council would assume the responsibility for co-ordinating and putting into place the new community infrastructure requfred to support the influx of people expected as the mines expanded.

The municipal decision represented a bold and unique opportunity for a resource-based community to assume responsibility as the developer, particularly in view of the decline suffered in the early 1960s. The government of Ontario welcomed the initiative in the context of its policy to have municipal governments assume a greater role in the planning and administration of rapid growth.

The province, in assessing its role in the expansion of Elliot Lake and the adjacent municipalities, recognized problems could arise as the expansion proceeded, notwithstanding the proficient manner in which matters had been handled to date by local government. Consideration was also given in our assessment to the scale of the expansion, the area’s location in northern Ontario and environmental matters related to uranium mining, milling, waste management, air and water quality and radioactivity.

The hearings and subsequent report of the Environmental Assessment Board assisted greatly in focusing the government’s attention on many of these issues. Having carefully reviewed the situation and the board’s report, the government decided the local municipalities have demonstrated the capability to manage growth and its effects. Normal provincial support programs from the various ministries are applicable, of course, and are being used by the municipality. Special provincial involvement should only be necessary if significant or unusual problems emerge.

The ministries directly or indirectly involved will monitor the situation during the next few years until a measure of stability is achieved in the community. Should significant problems emerge, the Ministry of Northern Affairs would be co-ordinating any necessary activities. Should action by the provincial government be considered necessary at some time during the expansion, the issues will be referred to the cabinet committee for resources development for action.

The report I am tabling today is subdivided into sections following the same sequence as the chapters in part two of the Environmental Assessment Board’s final report, which deals specifically with community assessment. It is, therefore, self-explanatory. Should honourable members have any questions they should direct them to the ministries which are directly concerned.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker; and my thanks to the Treasurer; his glasses have dollar signs written all over them.

CORRECTIONAL SERVICES DISPUTE

Hon. Mr. McCague: Copies of my statement are being handed to the leaders of the other two parties.

As members are aware, the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, representing Ontario government public servants, has requested a separate bargaining category for correctional officers and certain pay-related classes. The government has not acceded to this request as there are many other groups of employees that might make similar arguments for a separate category. This could lead to a doubling or tripling of the number of categories with which the government would be required to bargain.

On the question of salaries, the government still believes the reduction of the existing differential between the salary levels of the province’s correctional officers and those of other jurisdictions can be resolved at the bargaining table. However, in a further attempt to resolve the impasse, I met yesterday with Mr. Sean O’Flynn and several correctional officers on the union’s negotiating committee.

On behalf of the government, I proposed that the question of a separate category for the classes proposed be referred to an independent third party for adjudication and that the parties agree to be bound by the decision of the appointed adjudicator. I further offered to meet the president of the union to consider the names of persons who might be asked to accept this assignment.

Last night -- and I am sorry I must vary from the statement slightly -- Mr. O’Flynn agreed to consider this proposition. I have received at my office a telephone message from him saying the people involved and the union as a whole find this offer acceptable. (See correction below.) I did point out we already have the Shapiro report which is that of an independent body.

ORAL QUESTIONS

HYDRO RATES

Mr. Nixon: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Premier having to do with a statement he made, not in Ottawa, although there are a number of questions arising from that, but which he made in the House a couple of days ago. I quote from page 1435-2 of Instant Hansard. The Premier said, “ ... cost of kilowatts in the rural areas ... compare favourably to any other rural jurisdiction.”

Is he not aware that the cost of electricity in rural Ontario is the highest in Canada west of New Brunswick? Is he not further aware that his former Minister of Energy, the member for Prince Edward-Lennox (Mr. J. A. Taylor), has indicated in a recent statement that 800,000 rural consumers are being ripped off by the policy of the provincial government in that they are paying rates for electricity that are higher than elsewhere in Canada?

Hon. Mr. Davis: I think we really get down to a definition of what is meant by a rural consumer. I am referring primarily to those in the agricultural community. I will give the Acting Leader of the Opposition an example. Up until about two years ago the people in Bramalea, representing some 30,000 to 35,000 customers, were considered as part of rural hydro. They were charged by Ontario Hydro and were paying a higher rate than in the older part of the city of Brampton. They are now part of the city and are paying a common rate. There is still no question that there are people who are sort of in the urban environment who are still customers of Ontario Hydro.

I really haven’t looked at the figures in a definitive sense from all of North America, but in general terms I think what the bona fide farmer is paying in terms of electrical costs is really quite competitive with comparable jurisdictions in this country. There is that grey area where there are a number of customers who are considered in Hydro’s rate structure who, I would acknowledge, are rural by definition but who, in fact, are not farmers or not involved in the agricultural industry and really are part of some urban environment.

I don’t have any other specific examples, but I think I could find these for the Acting Leader of the Opposition.

Mr. Nixon: Supplementary: I must say really that the Premier’s statement encourages me a great deal, because there is a clear indication the information he has, either at his disposal or in the back of his mind, is incorrect.

I am not talking about the farmers who live in Bramalea or who live within a stone’s throw of the Premier’s house in Brampton. We are talking about the ones who live in rural Ontario. Is the Premier not aware that the real farmers are paying higher rates than in any other rural community, than any other farmers in Canada west of New Brunswick? For example, for 1,000 kilowatt-hours in Ontario, the price is $39.50. Even in Newfoundland, it is $34.61 while in Quebec it is $24.40.

Will the Premier take my assurance, and if not will he check it himself, that real farmers, the people milking cows and pumping water and so on, are paying rates higher than farmers elsewhere in Canada? Would he further agree that if those figures are correct he will take steps to correct this situation so that the farmers, in the words of his former Minister of Energy, are not going to be ripped off by the policy of the provincial government?

Hon. Mr. Davis: I would be delighted to get a breakdown of those figures and to give the honourable member the assurance this government has always taken the approach that we do everything we legitimately can to assist the farm community in this province. I think the record speaks for itself what we have done for --

[2:15]

Mr. Riddell: You say that with a smile on your face.

Hon. Mr. Davis: It’s true. The member knows it’s true. The farmers in his community will be the first to admit it. In fact, the farmers next door to him, in his colleague’s community, not only admit it, they give credit to the government of Ontario without any question whatsoever, just like his colleague, when he writes his weekly column, gives credit to the government of Ontario when it suits him -- not always, but when it suits him.

Mr. Cassidy: Supplementary: Could the Premier kindly explain to the House why the government of Ontario, in co-operation with Brewers’ Retail, ensures that beer is available across the province, despite the cost of transportation, at the same price to every consumer, but does not take any comparable steps to ensure that electricity in rural Ontario is not overpriced relative to the price charged to urban consumers?

Hon. Mr. Davis: I won’t ask Mr. Speaker to rule on the validity of that being a supplementary question. I can only say the price of beer, which is equal across this province, does not reflect any personal prejudice on my

part in favour of beer.

Mr. J. Reed: Supplementary: When the Premier is undertaking to correct what is obviously a very serious anomaly in the selling price of electric power, would he also take it upon himself to correct the illusions being created in certain recent publications of Ontario Hydro, certain propaganda publications which tend to indicate people in Ontario really do have a low price for power?

The name of the recent publication escapes me, but it’s facts you wanted to know about Hydro and were afraid to ask. Would the Premier take steps to eliminate these illusions about the price of electric power the utility is now trying to promote?

Hon. Mr. Davis: Mr. Speaker, I don’t think they really are illusions. One can get into a legitimate discussion as to the breakdown of prices between various consumers of Ontario Hydro, whether it’s the municipal utility, whether it’s the direct customers or what have you, but I think it is fair to state that in any relative sense, on any comparative basis, electrical rates in this province compare very favourably with just about every other jurisdiction in North America. I would go so far as to say they are much lower than the majority of other jurisdictions, certainly much lower than in western Europe, much lower than in Japan.

Mr. Nixon: We don’t live there; we live here.

Hon. Mr. Davis: All right. Much lower than almost any other place in Canada.

Mr. Nixon: That’s not a fact.

Hon. Mr. Davis: It is a fact.

Mr. Speaker: Final supplementary, the member for London Centre.

Mr. Peterson: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I do appreciate your recognition after this month and a half in the desert.

May I ask the Premier how he explains the disparity between the energy he has spent trying to fight higher oil prices, and all of the energy of his government has been devoted in that way on a matter over which he really has no control, when here is a matter over which he does have control, and we have seen no energy, no attention and no thought given to that matter over which he does have control? Why the difference?

Hon. Mr. Davis: In fact we have devoted a lot of time and interest with respect to all energy-related matters. I’m very intrigued to hear the member for London Centre say he wonders why we have made the effort we have with respect to energy pricing because it’s something over which we have no control.

I just wish he would communicate that to his leader, because he goes around this province saying the Premier of Ontario can solve all of this. I respect the member for London Centre’s point of view on this far more than his leader’s, because the member happens to be right. At the next leadership convention, he may make it.

Mr. Speaker: The Chairman, Management Board of Cabinet has been trying to catch my eye. I don’t know exactly why.

CORRECTIONAL SERVICES DISPUTE

Hon. Mr. McCague: Mr. Speaker, I’m not sure what this is a point of; however it’s been mentioned to me by three members of the Home that in my remarks I said the union had found my proposition for third-party arbitration on the matter of the ninth category to be acceptable. In fact, I meant to say “unacceptable.”

Mr. Nixon: I could assure the honourable member who rose to correct his statement that it does make a difference. On that basis, I would like to direct a question to the Minister of Correctional Services. Will he explain to the House how he is going to ensure the safekeeping of the inmates of his correctional institutions? Is it a fact that many of the problem prisoners are being let go on temporary absence permits, tickets of leave, special paroles and so on, and that he is solving the problem by --

Mr. Peterson: By opening the door.

Mr. Nixon: -- by opening doors?

Hon. Mr. Walker: Mr. Speaker, let me begin by saying, with respect to the question of so-called problem prisoners being released on temporary absence or any other form of open-door policy, that is not the case; that is just not happening. If it is, I would ensure it was stopped immediately, but I give the member the assurance it is not happening and that is not the case.

With respect to contingency plans, this ministry has contingency plans for virtually every circumstance and every possible happening, including the withdrawal of services. The contingency plans are in place. It is fair to say the jails will remain functional should a strike occur. Remember, it’s an illegal strike, so should a strike occur the jails will remain functional and we will take all steps necessary to protect the public. The member can rest assured of that. The jails will continue to function.

Mr. Nixon: Supplementary: The minister is aware there were a large number of jail guards and people protesting the government policy before the Legislature last night. Is he also aware there is an indication from those who know about these things that the policy, if not the minister’s that of those directing the correctional institutions, is that many problem prisoners are being set free? Since he has made an undertaking that is not the case, will he provide the House, as soon as he can, with the numbers of prisoners who are receiving tickets of leave, temporary absences and so on?

Hon. Mr. Walker: I certainly will, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Mackenzie: Supplementary: Would the minister not use this last minute opportunity to discuss with his colleague, the Chairman of Management Board of Cabinet (Mr. McCague), the possibility of backing off from the hard line position they’ve taken, inasmuch as this has been a request from day one for correctional officers, and grant the separate bargaining category?

Hon. Mr. Walker: Mr. Speaker, let’s just get one thing straight. Five years ago the union agreed to the number of bargaining units which were established at that time; there hasn’t been a change in the circumstances.

Two months ago, I found out about the interest of having the ninth category for the first time. It’s something that would normally be brought to the table as a bargaining point, and bargaining has not even begun. It seems to me logical, on the part of the union, that they consider discussing this matter in the proper forum. There are ways of averting an illegal strike. We have not been the ones who have chosen to go on an illegal strike.

These people have a way of coming forward and discussing these matters; in fact the chairman of management board has indicated today, in a very conciliatory way, the entire matter of a separate ninth category is something he is prepared to put to binding arbitration. How much more conciliatory does the member want us to be?

Mr. Bradley: I have a supplementary to the minister, Mr. Speaker. If the representatives of the union were prepared to give an undertaking to either this minister, or I suppose more appropriately the Chairman of Management Board of Cabinet, that there would not be a further request for yet another category in the foreseeable future, would the minister then be prepared to entertain the possibility of complying with the request in light of the fact that would really remove what has been the number one reason for not allowing the additional category?

Hon. Mr. Walker: The basic concern here, and I think the member appreciates it, is not the question of a separate category, because we have been treating correctional officers in a very separate and distinct way.

Five years ago they received a special consideration far and above what other members of the same unit would receive, and it was the union that refused to permit it. Last year the correctional officers received a special two per cent distinction, so you would have to say that a separate category really has been, in effect, dealt with in a practical way.

The real issue here is one of wages. It is fair to say that there is a legitimate complaint on the part of correctional officers in that there is a large disparity between what is being received by them now, about $16,000 per year, and what, say a first-class OPP constable might be receiving, $21,000 a year. We hope that gap is going to be narrowed. Not only do we hope it is going to be, but the chairman of management board has given an undertaking that he is prepared to extend a special consideration in that case with respect to salaries. Negotiations haven’t even begun yet; they are to start next week and here we are talking about an illegal strike.

Mr. Mancini: I would like to redirect my supplementary to the Chairman of Management Board of Cabinet, Mr. Speaker.

In view of the fact that the union had originally requested 12 categories and had ended up accepting eight; that it always wanted and for the past five years has continued to ask the management board for an extra category, a law enforcement category; in view of the fact that the 3,000 law enforcement employees cannot make their point when they have to negotiate alongside 6,500 health-care employees; in view of the fact that five other provinces across Canada have law enforcement categories; and in view of the fact, Mr. Speaker, that --

Mr. Speaker: Order. A new question, the member for Ottawa Centre.

GAS AND OIL PRICES

Mr. Cassidy: I have a question for the Premier, Mr. Speaker, about the agreement reached this week on oil and gas prices which will raise in Ontario the price of gasoline from $1.05 per gallon to approximately $1.95 by 1983, and which will raise heating oil prices in this province from 70 cents per gallon to $1.30 per gallon by 1983, a cost to every family of $540 for gasoline and $560 for fuel.

Could the Premier say why Ontario has not been pressing the federal government for the $10 billion that will be raised in revenues in this province from the petroleum sales between 1980 to 1983, in order that it may be used in and by this province to cushion consumers, cushion small business and to get this province growing in terms of alternate sources of energy?

Hon. Mr. Davis: Mr. Speaker, I have no comment on Mr. Broadbent’s release. I am under the impression that no agreement has been concluded, that there are still some things outstanding to be resolved. While the NDP national leader apparently made some statements today, I am quite obviously not going to comment on what would be, at this moment, speculation.

In respect to the latter part of the question, if the leader of the New Democratic Party would read once again the things we have been saying, the material that was presented, the paper that was developed in August, he will find all of those matters dealt with at some length in those papers.

[2:30]

Hon. Mr. Davis: I really don’t want to labour it. Please read what we have been saying. The member will find much of that contained therein. Perhaps also he will not find contained therein the acceptance of this government of the general principle of equalization of oil prices across Canada.

I have to confess to the member that I support the use of revenues to have equalization of oil prices across Canada. If he doesn’t happen to support it, I do support it, because I guess I am more interested in the constituents in Ottawa Centre than the member happens to be, because they happen to he the beneficiaries of that policy.

Mr. J. Reed: Supplementary: Since the Premier admitted, very interestingly during a former question, that he had no control over the ultimate price that would be arrived at for petroleum, would he not agree that all of the machinations in which he has engaged over the last few months, creating the illusion that he has some bargaining power at Ottawa, have been a most disappointing hoax on the people of Ontario?

Hon. Mr. Davis: No, because I think the honourable member really knows in his own conscience what he is saying is not factually correct. Certainly it is not supported by recommendations from his own leader, who over the years has been totally inconsistent on this issue.

I said at the very outset that in terms of the negotiating position, or in terms of this province having some legal ability to influence the question of price, these tools were not available to us. This was said in August. It has been said on many occasions. If the member will go back in Hansard and read the things that were debated in 1973-74-75, he will find I was very frank about the same situation.

What the member for Halton-Burlington is suggesting, Mr. Speaker, is that the government of Ontario should have just sat back, acquiesced and not expressed a point of view. I would say, with respect, I think what we have done has been right, and I think what we have said will have some impact on some aspects of what ultimately is decided.

Once again, if the member goes back in history he will find the former government in 1974 was as committed to the philosophy of world price as is the existing administration, if not more so. He will find both of the producing provinces wanted world price then. We had no more cards to deal on that occasion than we have now, and the reality is that for four years we have been substantially below world price.

I have no idea what the ultimate price decision will be, but I will make a prediction for the member that in the current year, or in 1980, much as the producing provinces may want more we will not be at world price at the end of 1980, either.

Mr. Conway: He would bet on the sunrise tomorrow morning.

Hon. Mr. Davis: I will make another prediction for the member. One of the basic questions we have been asking, and one of the basic policies we want to see accepted, is that whatever the ultimate price may be, it will be substantially below that of either the Chicago price or world price, whichever happens to be lower.

If the member will recall the discussions of some two weeks ago -- I know he watched them very carefully in between other chores that were more important to you than watching television -- the first minister said and it was supported, perhaps not by direct response but I think implicitly it was supported, that our price ultimately would be below that of world price, which is significant. It may not be so to the member, but it is to the manufacturing sector and consumers in this province.

Mr. Cassidy: Supplementary: Could the Premier explain why this province is continuing to support the increased export of natural gas from Alberta, which the federal government is now prepared to endorse by allowing a further three and a half trillion cubic feet of natural gas to go from Alberta into the United States, when Canada will need that three and a half trillion cubic feet as one of the essential means of moving towards energy self-sufficiency in the heating sector during the 1980s?

Hon. Mr. Davis: Mr. Speaker, I hardly regard that as a supplementary; that is a separate issue; that is the question of export of natural gas.

Mr. Makarchuk: It is part of the whole package.

Hon. Mr. Davis: I think I replied to this a few days ago. The question was identical, and I said then Ontario was not supporting increased export of natural gas before the National Energy Board at this time. If the honourable member will go back again, if he will listen, I am telling him what was said, and he can either accept it or not accept it. I have made it very clear we were opposed to increased export of natural gas until such time, obviously, as the National Energy Board made its determination, until we knew just what alternatives were available and until there was some national approach to the whole question of energy.

I would only remind the leader of the New Democratic Party that in this country we have to recognize something else. If there are significant surpluses -- and that is the terminology I have used -- and acknowledging that at some point in the far-distant future frontier gas will cost more than existing gas, which no one debates, one has to remember we are still modestly dependent on our American neighbours with respect to coal for Ontario Hydro.

That may come as a surprise. It may be that the member can disassociate us from them on one issue but not on another. I think the honourable member must be very shortsighted. He doesn’t have the perspective he says he has in terms of international relationships if he can say, on one hand, “We have a surplus but we are not going to give you any” -- if, in fact, we have it -- yet on the other hand says, “Please share your coal resources with us because we happen to need it for the generation of our electrical energy.”

I have to say to him human nature doesn’t work that way. That isn’t how human beings deal with one another. With respect, I’m not sure we can have international relationships if we don’t recognize there has to be a two-way street.

Mr. Mancini: Supplementary: On November 2, the Premier responded to a question, which is recorded in Hansard, concerning the excise tax and his government’s position, by saying there was no way he could table a telephone call in the House as to the government’s position.

Would the Premier assure the House he will table all documents he will be sending to Joe Clark which state his government’s position in its opposition to the proposed 25-cent gasoline tax hike?

Hon. Mr. Davis: I don’t want to be unkind, but I would only ask the member for Essex South where he has been for the past two months. I really mean that. I don’t need to table any information. I would just encourage him to read those things I have said. I have made abundantly clear our reaction to a proposed excise tax. There is no tabling of correspondence; there is no need for that. My point of view has been very clearly put. It was put, if he watched, at the first ministers’ meeting. I don’t know how much more evidence he wants of our point of view.

Our opposition to the excise tax has been publicly stated, just as it was stated when the former administration imposed a 10-cent excise tax some three or four years ago. Read it.

OTTAWA COURT FACILITIES

Mr. Cassidy: I have a question of the Premier about the Cartier Square development in Ottawa on which he commented during his visit to Ottawa yesterday. Can the Premier explain why there has been no consultation whatsoever with the community in Ottawa or with local authorities in Ottawa about the proposed swap of the teachers’ college for land for the courthouse in Cartier Square?

In view of the virtually unanimous opinion of people at a community meeting in Ottawa Centre last night, which included the elected officials from the area, that they were opposed to non-public uses, such as the mess in the teachers’ college, and that they wished a three-month freeze on further agreements until there was public consultation, will this government agree to that three-month period so there can be a process of public consultation and input on the future of Cartier Square?

Hon. Mr. Davis: I think what the member for Ottawa Centre is saying is he wants at least a three-month delay or longer of this particular facility.

Mr. Martel: Oh, no.

Hon. Mr. Davis: Well it is what he is saying. I am saying very simply we want to move ahead with the courthouse. We have been criticized by him and some of his colleagues because we have not moved ahead with it. We have had some modest criticism from the member for Ottawa East (Mr. Roy), who, I must inform the House, was at the press conference yesterday about 4:30 o’clock or whenever it was. He was so overwhelmed by the announcement that, obviously, he is still in Ottawa today recovering from that great event, but it was great to see him there.

Mr. Conway: He is in Ottawa watching the Minister of Housing (Mr. Bennett) hand out the contract.

Hon. Mr. Davis: No; I am only guessing that he really wants to get as much experience in the old court facilities as he can before he moves into the new one on a more permanent basis. I can only say to the member for Ottawa Centre that we want to do it in the proper fashion. We are quite prepared, in terms of having the bar association and other groups offer advice, but we are not prepared to delay the project.

I would just ask the honourable member -- this is a little bit of friendly advice -- to go and talk to the construction unions in the Ottawa region and find out if they want this delay for a prolonged period of time. We want to see a little economic activity; we want to see some growth taking place; we want to see jobs created. I know that it’s offensive to the honourable member, but that happens to be our point of view.

Mr. Cassidy: Supplementary: Since the Attorney General’s department has not yet communicated to the Ministry of Government Services exactly what facilities they will require, or what square footage they will require for the building, and since I am told by the ministry that they will not have plans available for the courthouse -- ready for tendering -- until at least September of next year, why will the Premier not accept that there was a mistake made in failing to consult the community and that further agreements relating to Cartier Square should be stopped for three months until that process of consultation can take place?

There is no question that it will take the Ministry of Government Services a period of time to design the facility. This will give people an opportunity to express a point of view, but please don’t urge us to delay a project that is now overdue in the interests of that community, the economy of that community, the aesthetics -- all of those things that we feel are important.

The design and all of those things will take time. There will be a chance for people to contribute a point of view. Please don’t hold up progress in Ottawa Centre. I urge the leader of the NDP, as the local member, to get on the side of progress.

Mr. Sterling: Supplementary: In light of my conversation this morning with the executive of the Local 527 of the construction workers’ union in Ottawa, who said he and the other union executives and members are overjoyed by the announcement of a courthouse in Ottawa and that construction should begin as soon as possible, and in light of the high level of unemployment in the construction industry in Ottawa, will the Premier assure us he will go ahead with the construction process as soon as possible, in full consultation with the community and with the Carleton bar association?

Hon. Mr. Davis: Mr. Speaker, I can give the very distinguished member this assurance: in spite of the objections of the member for Ottawa Centre, we intend to pursue this project just as expeditiously and as reasonably as possible.

Mr. Cassidy: In view of the government’s abdication of any responsibility for consulting with the community in Ottawa, could the Premier explain why the government of this province was prepared to give up jurisdiction to the Ottawa Teachers’ College, a building which has stood open to the public for almost a century? Why was the government prepared to give up jurisdiction to that building without even having any thorough study as to whether or not that teachers’ college could be renovated and expanded to form the courthouse facility?

Hon. Mr. Davis: Mr. Speaker, there was an assessment of the Ottawa Teachers’ College. We have all looked at it. I know the college very well; it’s a great facility. The only problem is that it doesn’t make sense to turn it into a new courthouse.

[2:45]

OLC SALE OF LOTS

Mr. Bradley: In the absence of the Minister of Housing, Mr. Speaker, I will direct this question to the Premier, if I may.

I am in receipt of a letter that is addressed: “To whom it may concern.” It is from the Ontario Land Corporation, and offers serviced lots at favourable prices in the cities of Welland and Niagara Falls, 14,500 in Welland and 11,000 in Niagara Falls. My question to the Premier is this: Could the Premier tell the House who receives this particular letter and what criteria is used to determine who shall be on the list of those receiving this particular letter which offers these lots at favourable prices and under favourable terms?

Hon. Mr. Davis: Mr. Speaker, I am not sure who was on the list. Quite obviously the member for St. Catharines has that. If he wants to make a tender on any of those lots for his own use, I don’t think there would be any conflict in that. It might be a great spot for him to build a house. I have no idea, but in the absence of the Minister of Housing I would be delighted to get that information for him.

If there are any of the honourable member’s constituents who have had that circulated to them, I will undertake to make sure they have that same opportunity.

Mr. Bradley: Supplementary: Since I received a letter from an individual who identifies herself as “to this time of Conservative membership,” and who is complaining of the fact she did not have the same opportunity that apparently only registered builders have, would the Premier undertake to ensure the average citizen in Ontario does have the same opportunity to purchase these serviced lots at this price and not just a selected group?

Hon. Mr. Davis: I think the member will find it is the policy -- and I am only guessing at this -- of the land corporation to offer lots to those people who are in the industry. I doubt they offer them to individuals who wish to build a house of their own; they would be offered to registered builders who are part of the building organization. I will check this out for the honourable member and get an answer for him, but that would be my guess.

HEALTH SERVICE CHARGES

Mr. Breaugh: I have a question fur the Minister of Health. The minister is aware of the case of a Mr. Joe Miller, here in Toronto, who has obtained legal services to protest to the Ontario Medical Association about extra billing without notice. I wonder if he would report on the status of that case.

How does the minister reconcile people who are now getting lawyers to represent them in cases of extra billing with the statement from the communications officer at the OMA that, “It is not possible, however, to resolve third party complaints”? This is in response to a letter from the honourable member for Welland-Thorold (Mr. Swart).

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: Mr. Speaker, I don’t believe I am aware of that particular one, but I will certainly check into it.

My experience has been, with other cases that have been raised by the honourable member and some of his colleagues, that they can and do assist in resolving individual cases and problems. There are examples of that in the media this morning, as a matter of fact, where that did happen.

Mr. Breaugh: It is obvious in at least these two cases it is not working out. Is the minister now prepared to give serious consideration to private member’s Bill 169, which says, in a publicly-funded hospital, using publicly-paid-for equipment, with publicly-funded nurses and technical staff, at least in that situation the doctors would provide it at the OHIP-approved rate?

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: As the member knows, it is the feeling of the government, supported by the hospital association and the medical association, that all services should be available in public hospitals at OHIP rates. That isn’t to say there won’t be some instances where there are misunderstandings or problems, but those can be resolved through the office of the minister, or more particularly through the boards and the administration of the community-owned and community-run hospitals.

NIAGARA RIVER POLLUTION

Mr. Speaker: The Minister of the Environment has the answer to a question asked previously.

Hon. Mr. Parrott: Mr. Speaker, on Monday of last week the member for Niagara Falls asked me some questions concerning Olin Chemical Corporation in Niagara Falls, New York. Frankly, I was somewhat disappointed by the fact the member chose to imply the ministry was unaware of the matter simply because I said I, personally, did not have all the facts at my fingertips.

My regional staff are in regular contact with their counterparts in New York state and much information is exchanged as a matter of course, particularly since the New York state officials are examining landfill sites in their area to see what potential problems may exist and what can be done to solve them. We are continually being advised of the results and programs.

With respect to the Olin Chemical Corporation, I am informed the company engaged a hydrological consultant to prepare a report on any potential problems with this landfill operation. My staff discussed the report with the New York officials. In

summary, the report states it is possible, and I repeat possible, that as much as 1.4 million gallons a year of run-off may be leaching into the Niagara River from this landfill site. The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation has given the company until April 9, 1980 to submit plans for dealing with this leachate problem.

To reassure the residents who use the Niagara River as a source of drinking water, my ministry, as I am sure the member knows, continually tests and samples this river water.

Mr. Kerrio: In regard to the statement the minister just made, the Olin report says the sediment contamination revealed in recent reports almost certainly confirms earlier fears that the chemicals were eventually ending up in the river.

Is the minister aware that while the fish that are caught commercially in Lake Erie are fit for human consumption, the fish in Lake Ontario are not? Isn’t that an indication that the 200 dump sites located along the Niagara frontier should have a very high priority as it relates to our Ministry of the Environment and the officials in Niagara Falls, New York, so that we know exactly what’s going on in a much closer relationship between the two ministries?

Hon. Mr. Parrott: How often do I need to report that the two departments are in continuous contact? I’ve said it a dozen times. I cannot say it more forcefully than that. They are in continuous contact with each other.

Mr. Kerrio: But what is happening?

Hon. Mr. Parrott: The member can say they aren’t, but I tell him they are. Having done so, I put on the record today that the DEC is giving the company until April 9 to bring in plans to solve that particular problem. They have to look after their jurisdiction, as we must on this side of the river, and I think the member would agree that we are doing so.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Scarborough West, with a new question.

Mr. R. F. Johnston: I think I’m out of order.

Mr. Speaker: I’m sorry -- the member for Huron-Middlesex.

Mr. Riddell: Thank you, Mr. Speaker; I’m pleased that you notice there is a distinction.

Mr. Speaker: Duly in rotation.

PETROLEUM ALLOCATION

Mr. Riddell: Mr. Speaker, a question to the Minister of Agriculture and Food: Is the minister aware that under the federal government’s petroleum product allocation plan the agriculture and food processing classification category has been moved from its previous A designation, as critical, to a B classification along with such services as garbage collection and snow removal?

Does he not feel that food supplies would be of critical importance if there was a rationing program? Has the minister protested this change to the Minister of Energy (Mr. Welch), who is supposed to be working very closely with the minister’s federal friends in Ottawa as they develop their contingency plan, and has he made it quite clear that this change is unacceptable?

Hon. Mr. Henderson: I was not aware of the proposal the honourable member has mentioned. We, as the government of Ontario, are ready to support agriculture in any way necessary to see that there’s an adequate supply of energy for agriculture.

Mr. Riddell: That’s a similar response to that which the farmers got this morning at the federation convention. However, let me try this one: Since a former Minister of Energy in this government -- I forget which one it was because they have changed so rapidly -- was so vocal in the government’s opposition to Bill C-42, The Energy Supplies Emergency Act, when the previous federal government introduced it, and went as far as calling it “a camouflaged War Measures Act for which there is no present need,” why is this government so silent on it now that its Tory friends in Ottawa have announced they are going to establish an energy supplies allocation board under the existing legislation?

Hon. Mr. Henderson: The Minister of Energy is not here, and I am sure that he would be only too glad to respond. I, as the Minister of Agriculture and Food, was not aware of this particular part of the proposal.

EAST OF BAY PROJECT

Mr. B. F. Johnston: My question is for the Minister of Government Services and concerns the east-of-Bay superblock. If the minister is aware that in 1973 the Premier (Mr.

Davis) promised to develop this site “compatible with the desires of the city of Toronto”; if he also knows the Ministry of Intergovernmental Affairs has used the words “co-operation, consultation and coordination” as the watchwords of that ministry’s involvement with municipalities; is the minister going to ignore the city of Toronto executives’ request for his participation in a reasonable planning process in order to resolve differing objectives for the superblock, or is his ministry going to continue to be identified by the watchwords “clandestine, closed and covert”?

Hon. Mr. Wiseman: My ministry looked at a plan the mayor of Toronto submitted to us, but it didn’t meet the ministry’s long-term use for this site. I think the member should also knew we did have a meeting this week in which we discussed the possibility of the Y purchasing a piece of this property. At this time, we haven’t decided whether or not we are ready to sell that property to them or whether the government wants to sell it.

Mr. R. F. Johnston: Supplementary: The city has also agreed that the Y can have a portion of that property. Forgetting for a moment that the minister’s unilateral intervention will undermine the city’s attempts to secure a new bus terminal, is the minister not aware of the importance of this site in the city’s policy of providing affordable housing in the downtown area? Does he not agree that detailed planning discussions must take place between the province and the city if those plans are going to develop? Why has the minister taken so long to discuss this matter with the mayor, and why has he told him that he will not discuss it further?

Hon. Mr. Wiseman: We have had some discussions with the bus company for the part along Wellesley and fronting on Bay Street; but there are preliminary discussions and if we went ahead the bus company would have to obtain all clearances from the city of Toronto. If they were to go ahead, we would be looking to the bus company for office space of between 250,000 to 500,000 square feet. This is what would be necessary in the long term to meet some of our requirements for office space.

We haven’t yet decided what we are going to do as far as the Y is concerned, but the matter is still under negotiation. I understand from the honourable member that the mayor is in favour of the Y plan, although that is not the impression I got from my discussions with him the other day. I gathered he wasn’t interested in having the Y on that particular site, unless it were to be on Bay Street, which is not acceptable to us at this time.

Mrs. Campbell: Supplementary: Does this minister not understand that the planned process for the east-of-Bay area has gone on for several years; that many citizens have given freely of their time in order to try to develop, in concert with the government of Ontario, a plan for that area? Does he not understand that unilateral decisions made by this government against that background are shabby and disgraceful? Will he not go back to the municipality at least to discuss both the Y matter and the bus matter?

Hon. Mr. Wiseman: Some time ago the government assembled this piece of land for its use in the future. We are looking at two possible uses for it right now, keeping our needs in mind. I think I have a responsibility to look at the government’s needs for this property as well. If the mayor wants some additional housing property, he can assemble a piece of land in the same way we did.

[3:00]

AUTO INDUSTRY

Mr. Laughren: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Treasurer. Since our trade deficit this year in autos and auto parts is going to exceed $3 million, does he not think it is in keeping with at least the spirit of the auto pact that the auto industry build some of the small-car facilities in this country in view of the down-sizing that is taking place in the market?

Hon. F. S. Miller: Yes.

Mr. Laughren: Is the Treasurer aware that -- I suppose he wouldn’t be until I tell him -- yesterday General Motors’ executives in Oshawa told us they had no intention whatsoever of building any further small-car facilities in this country? In view of that, will the Treasurer call together the industry leaders, the federal government and the union leadership to talk about this problem? Will he insist that this happen -- that some new small-car facilities be built in this country so we can begin the process of protecting Ontario jobs?

Hon. F. S. Miller: Mr. Speaker, the honourable member has often accused us of paying too much attention to the assembly of vehicles versus the construction of component parts. It seems to me the most recent announcements GM made -- I am not defending them -- were that they were investing a good deal of money in the Windsor area for components of the X cars. These are not their current subcompact but their compact model. I also understand that part of their plan was to expand at Oshawa and in St. Catharines. I thought there were engine plant divisions being made in those directions.

PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION

Mr. Haggerty: I have a question fur the Minister of Transportation and Communications. The minister is aware of the federal Minister of Energy’s fuel allocation board relating to all areas of petroleum consumption and the possibility of petroleum rationing. What studies or planning has the provincial ministry completed to date regarding alternatives for public transportation for urban connections beyond the present GO system? Have any contingency plans been initiated to extend the GO system beyond the communities now serviced?

Hon. Mr. Snow: Mr. Speaker, this is somewhat of a confusing question. I said in this House the other day that we do not have any plans to extend the GO rail service beyond the present limits and the announced expansions that are under construction at the present time. In the long range, we’re giving consideration to the possible electrification of the GO rail system as an alternative energy source for that segment of public transportation.

As for the bus industry, I think from an energy point of view buses are buses, regardless of who owns them, who runs them and who rides on them. The private-sector bus industry and the semi-private-sector bus industry is very capable of handling all needs as far as bus transportation is concerned.

Mr. Haggerty: Supplementary: Has this ministry appointed a petroleum conservation committee to study transportation resources operations to review and to improve public transportation in the light of the tightening up of the consumption of petroleum fuel and its supply?

Hon. Mr. Snow: I would say no to that question. We do have a transportation energy management program. I don’t know what the member calls his committee, but we haven’t got one of those anyway. The Ministry of Energy and my ministry have a program called the transportation energy management program. It has been working for a couple of years now on all aspects of transportation energy and what provisions can be made for the preservation of same.

HOPPER CARS

Mr. MacDonald: I have a question of the Minister of Agriculture and Food. Would the minister report to the House what action he has been able to get from his federal counterparts to make hopper cars readily available for the shipping of corn from Ontario to the Atlantic provinces?

Hon. Mr. Henderson: It’s interesting that I just sent that information across to the member’s colleague on his left.

Mr. Breaugh: That’s why we asked the question.

Hon. Mr. Henderson: I realize that. Two weeks ago today I sent a telegram to the Honourable John Wise, Minister of Agriculture, Canada, which said, “We wish to bring to your attention the inadequate performance of Canadian National --”

Mr. MacDonald: What action did the minister get? We know he’s done that.

Hon. Mr. Henderson: What action did I get? I got a response from Mr. R. R. Latimer, a vice-president of CN Rail. In it he admits to a shortage of hopper cars. He points out they need approximately 150 more hopper cars to supply the area. He points out in the telegram -- I can read it if you wish, Mr. Speaker -- that the grain dealers themselves did not ask for sufficient cars, so they were not allocated.

If I might go on further, I would point out to the House that in 1977 Ontario had 155 million bushels of corn. In 1978, we had 140 million bushels. In 1979, the expected crop is approximately 170 million bushels, up about 15 per cent from last year. There was sufficient storage for the corn crop we had in previous years. Due to the exceptional weather for the harvesting period, the corn was harvested in a three-week period instead of the usual six-week period.

Mr. MacDonald: Supplementary: We all know -- and the minister has just confirmed -- we have corn running out our ears and no place to store it. What we want are hopper cars to get it to the market that wants it in the Atlantic provinces.

My supplementary question to the minister is: Since all federal governments, Liberal as well as Conservative, have tended to ignore eastern agriculture and to be preoccupied with western agriculture, will he make representation to his kissing cousins in Ottawa to have Hugh Horner made not just a grain co-ordinator but an agricultural products co-ordinator, so he will lift his sights from the prairies and take a look at the problems of transferring corn from Ontario to the Atlantic provinces?

Hon. Mr. Henderson: I could take up the time of the House. The honourable member has read both our telegrams. We have pointed out the urgency of it, both to CN Rail and to the Minister of Agriculture, Canada. I can assure members it is getting our full consideration.

DREE AGREEMENT

Mr. Villeneuve: I would like to ask the Treasurer if there is any hope of the DREE agreement being signed in the near future with the federal authorities. I have no fewer than 28 municipal drain projects. It’s going to cost the taxpayers in my constituency alone over $980,000 extra in taxes if this agreement is not reached.

Hon. F. S. Miller: Where there’s hope, there’s promise and, as a politician, I make many. I would promise we will be signing this agreement at last, hopefully, within the next 10 days and, hopefully, in the town of Kemptville.

SALES TAX REBATES

Mr. Eakins: Would the minister tell the House if it is his ministry’s policy not to refund retail sales tax paid on the cost of goods sold in a real property transaction, in the event that a buyer goes bankrupt before paying the seller, thereby preventing the seller from receiving either the money for the total sale or the sales tax on the cost of goods that had already been submitted to the ministry? Is it his ministry’s policy not to give back the sales tax that was previously remitted by the merchant in the unfortunate circumstance of dealing with a company that experiences bankruptcy?

Hon. Mr. Maeck: Mr. Speaker, I believe we have some legislation under which some adjustments can be made, up to a period of 18 months, in a matter such as the member has indicated, but in general terms, that’s quite true. If the tax is collected and submitted, the responsibility is on the person selling the product to collect the tax. If he chooses to give credit to someone who goes bankrupt he is out that money, as well as the money they owe him for the product.

In some instances, and I would have to refer to my legislation in detail before I could give the honourable member a definite answer, some adjustments can be made. I think it’s for a period of 18 months.

PETITION

TELEPHONE RATES

Mr. McEwen: Mr. Speaker, I beg leave to present a petition from 954 persons objecting to a rate increase proposed by the Community Telephone Company of Ontario United unless the following conditions are met:

1. Service be improved and billing methods be utilized by the above company which will be satisfactory to all customers;

2. Extended area service be made available for customers who have no other alternative but to use the Inverary exchange.

Out of 1,189 subscribers in this particular area, there are 954 objections. One hundred and thirty-nine cottagers could not be reached for their reaction and 43 permanent residents’ telephones were either not in working order or had been disconnected. Those persons whose telephones were disconnected by the Community Telephone Company of Ontario were not given any reason for the action.

Only nine subscribers have indicated that they are satisfied with the above-mentioned telephone company.

There are also two resolutions with this petition. One is from the council of the township of Loughborough and the other is from the council of the township of Storrington, and they protest the proposed increase and the service given to subscribers by the Community Telephone Company of Ontario. In addition, there are eight letters from individuals complaining about the service and the proposed increase.

NOTICE OF DISSATISFACTION

Mr. R. F. Johnston: I was dissatisfied with the response from the Minister of Government Services (Mr. Wiseman). I rise, pursuant to standing order 28(a), and request the debate of the matter at the adjournment of the House.

REPORTS

STANDING SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT COMMITTEE

Mr. Gaunt from the standing social development committee reported the following resolution:

That supply in the following amounts and to defray the expenses of the Ministry of Education be granted Her Majesty for the fiscal year ending March 31, 1980:

Ministry administration program, $23,083,600; education program, $2,130,571,400; services to education program, $165,190,100.

STANDING ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE COMMITTEE

Mr. Philip from the standing administration of justice committee reported the following resolution:

That supply in the following amounts and to defray the expenses of the Ministry of the Attorney General be granted Her Majesty for the fiscal year ending March 31, 1980:

Law officer of the crown program, $3,486,500; administrative services program, $37,173,400; crown legal services program, $16,641,100; legislative counsel services program, $992,900; courts administration program, $76,295,700; administrative tribunals program, $8,163,400.

[3:15]

MOTION

COMMITTEE MEETINGS

Hon. Mr. Wells moved the standing general government committee be authorized to meet this afternoon and evening to consider Bill 164,

An Act to amend the Assessment Act.

Motion agreed to.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Hon. Mr. Wells: Mr. Speaker, this is not a motion, but I would like to inform the House that although the printed order calls for us this evening to resume the adjourned debate on the motion for adoption of the first and second reports of the standing statutory instruments committee dated June and November 1977 and then, if time permitted, continue the budget debate, it has now been decided that this evening we would consider Bill 160 in committee of the whole House stage and we would then consider in second reading and committee of the whole House Bills 148, 149 and 150.

ORDERS OF THE DAY

PRIVATE MEMBERS’ PUBLIC BUSINESS

HEALTH INSURANCE AMENDMENT ACT

Mr. Cassidy, on behalf of Mr. Lawlor, moved second reading of Bill 168,

An Act to amend the Health Insurance Act, 1972.

Mr. Speaker: The honourable member has up to 20 minutes, and if he wishes to reserve any time, he can notify us.

Mr. Cassidy: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I will reserve any time left at the end of my speech.

I am proud this afternoon to propose the bill to restore one-price medicare to Ontario and to bring to an end the extra billing of patients, which has become too common a feature of our medical scene in this province over the last year and a half. I am particularly proud because this bill,

An Act to amend the Health Insurance Act, is so widely supported by the people of Ontario.

Over the course of the last month, over 275,000 people have signed the NDP’s petition opposing the cutbacks in health care and opposing extra billing by doctors. Not only that; 75,000 people signed the similar medicare campaign petitions or ballots of the Ontario Federation of Labour. That makes more than 350,000 residents of Ontario who are calling with the New Democratic Party for an end to health cutbacks and an end to extra billing by doctors.

These people will finally give their verdict on the government’s handling of the health system when we come to the next provincial election, but we need action now to rectify the most urgent problems by stopping the hardships that are created on people who are having to pay doctors their extra bills.

I want to say to whatever few members of the government have stayed in the chamber for this debate, it is not too late to join with us and get back to the original intention of medicare. I ask the government party not to block this bill, but to allow it to come to a vote and for it to become law in Ontario.

I want to remove any possible confusion which has been created by the Minister of Health (Mr. Timbrell), who seems so puzzled by NDP policy. Bill 168 does not remove the doctors’ right to opt out. We fully understand some doctors were never in and other doctors have stayed out because of the administrative hassles of dealing with OHIP under a Tory administration.

What we are saying is that opting out should no longer be of expense to the patients, because they already pay once for their health care through premiums and twice through taxes. They should not have to pay a third time by means of the doctors’ extra billing. What the bill does, though, is to remove the doctor’s option to charge his patients any more than OHIP will pay.

To give them credit, it is significant that 82 per cent of the doctors in Ontario remain within the plan and are content with the OHIP fee as a fair fee. We give them credit for that. What we deplore is the fact that other doctors have chosen to opt out and to charge extra fees which in some cases are quite extortionate.

I want to point out some of the problems we are facing with opting out right now with which this bill attempts to deal. In the first nine years of medicare the opted-out fee

schedule under the Ontario Medical Association was approximately 11 per cent higher than what OHIP paid. In my opinion 11 per cent is too much. Nevertheless, most of those doctors -- the few doctors who remained opted out -- were billing privately at a rate that was only marginally above what the patient got back from OHIP.

Effective in May of last year, however, the Ontario Medical Association acted unilaterally and raised the rates to the point where they now are an average of 43 per cent higher than the rates paid by OHIP. In other words, a surcharge which was an annoyance has become a surcharge which is a real deterrent for many and is a complete obstacle for some people in the province to getting health care from the doctor.

In the second place, the averages about opting out don’t tell the full story. Eighteen per cent of the doctors in this province have now opted out, but if you look at specific areas you find the degree of opting out is much greater. Forty per cent of the doctors are out in the region of York, 25 per cent in the city of Toronto, almost all the family doctors in Stoney Creek and in some hospitals, like Women’s College Hospital, all the gynaecologists have opted out.

In a number of hospitals across the province all of the anaesthetists have opted out -- they seem to be the worst in terms of refusing to tell their patients in advance that extra billing is going to take place. In my area in Ottawa 42 per cent of the allergists, 48 per cent of the obstetricians, 45 per cent of the ophthalmologists, 40 per cent of the radiologists and 40 per cent of the cardiovascular surgeons are out of the plan. The averages conceal the true story.

Third, even if you accept the figures that have been given to this House by the Minister of Health, they show there is an enormous amount of extra billing in the province and that extra billing ought to stop.

The minister told us the other day there had been 38 million claims paid by OHIP since April. He said that effectively opted-out doctors were billing above the rate about half the time; that is because some of them bill through the hospital at the OHIP rate. That means that three million times in the course of the last six months people have had to face that extra doctor’s bill. What it doesn’t tell us is in how many other cases did they have to go down on their knees to beg, did they have to fight with the collection agency, did they have to decide not to go to the doctor because they feared the doctor was going to extra-bill them.

If 18 per cent of this province’s teachers came to school on Monday morning of next week and told the students that before class could begin the students were going to have to come up with a fee equal to 40 per cent over what the province and local municipalities pay for education, it is clear the province wouldn’t put up with that kind of behaviour; they would deal with it. Yet this is precisely what is happening in terms of medicare and the province is not dealing with it.

Mr. Conway: Do you know much about separate high schools?

Mr. Cassidy: Separate high schools are an exception, that is right. But in the public high schools it is as though teachers were being allowed to opt out.

I ask the government, would they allow teachers to opt out and to charge extra? I am sure the answer is no. Why then should it be the case that doctors, who earn two and a half times as much as teachers, should have that privilege?

Ellen Roseman, who has been following this matter in the Globe and Mail, quoted one patient this morning. After her doctor extra-billed her she said, “I waited until the OHIP cheque came in and then sent out a cheque for the same amount. I haven’t heard anything since, but I am now worried about my status at the hospital. Can I be blacklisted and refused treatment by anaesthetists in the future?”

She might have asked, “Will I risk the collection agency coming after me in the future?” Those things are happening in the province right now because of bills generated by opted-out doctors.

Two of my colleagues have submitted bills which are to be read in conjunction with Bill 168, which essentially say it should not be allowed for collection agencies to intrude on the doctor-patient relationship. We should get collection agencies out of the consulting rooms and we should ensure the doctor-patient relationship is based on caring and not just on cash.

I see the member for Carleton-Grenville (Mr. Sterling) is very disturbed; he looks disturbed over this matter. I ask him to join with our party in supporting this bill and to defend the residents of his riding who also signed this petition in large numbers.

The bill will end the iniquitous practice of extra-billing patients who didn’t know before they were billed that the doctor was opted out of OHIP. We have brought those cases before the minister again and again. They have gone to collection agencies, they have gone to the college of physicians and surgeons. They have gone to the Ontario Medical Association and they have come to individual members of this party. The minister has failed to respond.

He came up with a gentleman’s agreement in the spring. That gentleman’s agreement has been proven to be not worth the paper it was written on or the words with which it was uttered. We have kept proving that. Even after the minister told the OMA for the second time they had to shape up, they have failed to do so.

I think it’s offensive that the president of the Ontario Medical Association, Dr. Douglas Caldwell -- I am not sure if he is here today -- is not only himself an opted-out anaesthetist, but he publicly admits that as a matter of practice he does not adhere to the gentleman’s agreement which has been put forward by the government, under which he is meant to tell the patient in advance if he is going to extra-bill. That particular doctor doesn’t tell the patient in advance and then quite cheerfully extra-bills at the end.

His most recent letter to the profession said if they didn’t tell the patient in advance, they should take the opportunity of telling the patient that they were going to extra-bill before they submitted the bill.

That is some gentleman’s agreement. We have had enough of trying to get the minister to recognize the failure of his agreement and to get the minister to recognize the need to act toughly to make his agreement stick.

The bill before us today amends the Health Disciplines Act in such a way that it will be professional misconduct to bill over OHIP without prior notification. There too, the voluntary route which was tried in the spring hasn’t worked. We believe doctors will adhere to the law if the law is firmly put down. We deplore the fact the government hasn’t been prepared to change the law. That’s why we are bringing forward this bill which will change the Health Insurance Act and will define it as professional misconduct for a doctor to consistently charge over the OHIP rate or to fail to reimburse a patient for an overpayment after it’s been discovered.

The principle of this bill is simply that OHIP should once again take full financial care of patients as it has, throughout the history of our health insurance plan, taken such generous care of our doctors. I want to comment on that for a moment because I am sure one or two members of the government are going to talk about that as well.

There isn’t anyone in this House who is going to maintain doctors should be paid the same rate as apprentices who are working in a factory for their first year. In fact, there is general support in this province, as in other provinces, for the principle that after eight or 10 years of training and because of the demanding and responsible work they do, doctors should be relatively well rewarded.

However, when their average incomes are three and a half times as high as the average industrial wage in Ontario; when doctors in thi5 province earn, after expenses, in net terms, $55,000 a year and when specialists earn $62,000 net a year, then one has to ask whether some of the demands they have been making in terms of opting out and their very hefty fee increases are justified.

[3:30]

The OMA has preferred to focus on what has happened to medical incomes over the last few years. They don’t talk about the big increases in incomes that doctors enjoyed with the introduction of OMSIP, with the private medical schemes that came in during the 1960s and with the introduction of the present medical scheme in 1969. Those had the effect of paying doctors for services to patients whom they used to treat for free. They had the effect of eliminating the need for doctors to wipe out or to forget bad debts.

There was an enormous increase in incomes at that time, which they are welcome to, but they should not now turn around and say, “Well, we want it again and again and again,” nor should the public of this province be made to pay because of an argument that general practitioners are underpaid. When one looks at the maldistribution of medical incomes that prevails right now, clearly there’s a problem of GPs getting too little in relation to specialists. The answer there is to redistribute incomes within the medical fraternity, rather than giving specialists as well as GPs a big extra bonus.

We feel, as well, the surge in medical incomes has reflected the bias in favour of costly medical treatment that comes with a fee-for-service system of payment and the failure of the government over 10 years to bring in community clinics, community medicine and medicine which is outside of the hospitals and to get away from the high- technology, high-cost type of medicine we have tended to practise in Ontario.

I should tell the government if it looks at the doctors who are opting out, too often the people who are opting out -- who can afford to opt out -- are the specialists and not the GPs, the best-paid doctors and not the worst-paid doctors, the doctors in Toronto and places like that which are already well serviced by medical services and not the doctors up in Timiskaming, North Bay and northwestern Ontario. if there was ever a case to pay doctors extra for dedication, for time on the job and for constant and relenting devotion to duty, it surely would be with the doctors who serve tens of thousands of square miles in serving the people of northern Ontario.

Yet, in the main, they are the opted-in doctors, because the economic conditions of the people they look after cannot permit them to opt out. So the doctors who may deserve a bonus don’t get it, while the doctors living down in the major cities like Toronto, Ottawa, Hamilton, London and Peterborough, are the ones who have opted out.

I would like to spend some more time spelling out in detail what this party feels about the current stress on fee-for-service medicine. We think there should be alternatives. We think doctors should have the option of working on a capitation fee. We think clinics should he made available. We think all of these changes ought to have been made many years ago. We have talked about them many times as well because we want to see a move to less institutional care and more preventive care to get health care into the community.

What I do want to note, however, is that there is now increasing support for the kind of alternatives we have spelled out in our health green paper some time ago, which have been implemented by the steelworkers in the group clinic up in Sault Ste. Marie which has been operating since 1963. The medical reform group, a ginger group of doctors, is saying “Stop the extra billing. Get community medicine. Let’s do preventive work.” A third of the doctors in the province at the very least are clearly at odds with what their leadership is saying, when the leadership resents and rejects any change in the medical system.

As far as the public is concerned, there is enormous support for major changes in terms of the medical system.

I want to turn, finally, to the negotiating process between the medical association and the government with respect to the payment of physicians. I recall the government’s announcing this process in the spring and saying the aim was to come up with a fair negotiated settlement. We understand what that means. We are familiar with labour negotiations. We are familiar with what a fair settlement can be. If that’s what they come up with, then more power to them. We think, however, if there is a fair income agreed to in the negotiations, it doesn’t need to be supplemented.

I ask the government members to defend how one doctor should be able to opt out and get an income which by definition is too high and, therefore, unfair while eight other doctors decide to stay in the plan and to take the OHIP rate. If the rate is fair, it’s fair and that’s the end of it. In the hope and expectation a fair fee

schedule will be agreed to between the OMA and the ministry, I am today moving this legislation. It says very plainly that doctors may not charge their patients above the negotiated fair rate in Ontario.

I have to say that the medical profession operates as a closed shop, if anything, far more closed than anything that has been demanded from such retrograde employers as Radio Shack or Blue Cross or Butcher Engineering. There are rights of discipline and rights of control in the medical profession that make Ontario’s trade union movement look like a bunch of softies.

We resent the fact that the doctors have unilaterally taken for themselves an 11.9 per cent increase in the OMA fee schedule. They have expressed themselves as dissatisfied with 11.25 per cent coming from OHIP -- which is on the table right now -- while at the same time they have sat silently by while health-care workers earning as little as $180 or $200 a week have been forced to settle, under our antiquated laws, for increases of between four and six per cent.

If the increase that comes through is to be fair to doctors, it must also be fair to the people of Ontario. The fair increase given to doctors must define the limit. We believe that in the negotiations now going on, the government of Ontario should insist, as a condition of the new OHIP fee

schedule for 1980, that the doctors bring a complete end to extra billing. That should be an unequivocal condition of our negotiations with the doctors of the province.

It is to that end and to return Ontario to one-price medicare that I am moving this piece of legislation. I am moving second reading of Bill 168.

Mr. Sterling: You might say I was opted into this particular speaking engagement. The honourable member who had anticipated speaking on this particular bill had to chair the standing general government committee this afternoon so, as I said, I was opted in. I do so with a lot of conviction.

Mr. Cassidy: Are you in favour of the bill? Yes or no?

Mr. Sterling: That is pretty easy to answer. There isn’t very much to support in the bill, as far as I view it. I really am quite amazed.

I will have to look a little closer at the petition that was presented here by the NDP because I wasn’t aware of all the problems that exist in my riding in relation to health care. I tell you, Mr. Speaker, there are probably few politicians in this Legislature who are in closer contact with the people than I am.

I know that at this time we are arguing with the Ottawa-Carleton Health Council to obtain a nursing home in one of the areas in the township of Osgoode, but that has no relation to this particular piece of legislation.

The framing of this bill is an indication of a fundamental difference of opinion about the medical profession in Ontario. I think they have done, and are doing, a tremendous service for us today. It is obvious that this opinion is not shared by the third party.

In the last 10 years this province has undergone a great deal of change. Certain factors have remained constant, like our need for health insurance. Others have expanded, such as our population, obviously. Some have diminished, such as our spending power. All of us must reorder our priorities and programs to cope with the demands placed on our health-care system.

This government is committed to maintaining our health insurance system, in spite of what I deem to be an hysterical smear campaign launched in this province by the New Democratic Party. Okay, the system is not perfect, but we try harder every day. I think we end up with a great deal of success.

Let me outline the system because I really do fear that the members of the NDP have come to their conclusions without really understanding them.

First, any person in this province can visit a doctor -- any doctor -- of his or her choice. Second, doctors may bill their patients within the health insurance plan or they may bill their patients directly.

The first paragraph of this bill says, “The bills submitted to the patients in respect of insured services cannot exceed the amounts that have been determined by the plan.”

This government does not believe in this type of control. Basically, we don’t believe our doctors should be civil servants. In the past, the government and the medical profession have been able to reach reasonable accord. Doctors have demonstrated high standards of professional service, which this government fully recognizes.

Since April 1 of this year no fewer than 38 million claims have been processed by OHIP and only nine per cent of these have been done on an opted-out basis. We heard the leader of the third party indicate that 18 or 19 per cent of the doctors had opted out, so it’s interesting to note that only nine per cent of the billings are from opted-out doctors. In fact, there have been fewer than 100 complaints since the government and the OMA signed their agreement in the spring.

Mr. Conway: It is one thing to be McMurtry’s lackey, Norm, but now to be Timbrell’s as well.

Mr. Sterling: Mr. Speaker, I’m having a little difficulty speaking above the interjections here.

If insurmountable problems did arise this government would intervene to protect the interests of the people. But it is our opinion that this situation has not arisen, nor is it likely to because we and the OMA have a sensible and rational attitude towards health care. If this is such a desperate situation, why do we have today in Ontario 19 per cent more doctors than we had six years ago? Our population over that period of time has only increased by 7.5 per cent.

From time to time we hear a member bring forward a problem revolving around a single incident and such problems have been brought to this Legislature. I might add that there have been cases brought to this Legislature where names have been given but where patients haven’t given permission to use their names, which I think is a questionable thing to do.

Do the opposition parties, or does the NDP really want to improve the system and solve individual problems? That party deliberately ignores letters sent to them by the OMA requesting that it be notified of such problems when they exist in their constituencies. The NDP ignores that service.

This bill would turn the government into the judge, jury and executioner of the medical profession. The Health Disciplines Act states -- and I will read this portion: “It is the duty of the minister to ensure that the activities of health disciplines are effectively regulated and co-ordinated in the public interest, to have appropriate standards of practice developed and ensure that these are maintained, and ensure that the rights of individuals to the services provided by health disciplines of their choice are maintained.”

No one, Mr. Speaker, can fulfill this mandate without the co-operation of all concerned groups. This bill would destroy any further co-operation as it has existed between the medical profession and the government of Ontario.

I am beginning to think, really, that the third party is truly upset that our health system is working as well as it is -- and it is working very well. In fact, we continually have delegations from foreign jurisdictions come to our province to visit with our Minister of Health to find out about our system, because they think it is an example that should be followed in their jurisdictions.

[3:45]

Mr. Dukszta: Has it ever entered your mind to see why it doesn’t work?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order.

Mr. Sterling: That certainly isn’t the indication we get from most people.

Mr. Conway: Has the shah asked to come here yet?

Mr. Sterling: The shah has not been invited.

The ideas contained in this bill constitute a serious, misleading threat to the health-care system of our province.

The Ministry of Health is responding to long-term planning challenges. The demands on our health system are becoming greater. Perhaps the members have forgotten the period prior to 1969 when a government-sponsored health insurance plan did not exist. There was a need for a universal insurance system in this province and we believe that need has been met.

The bottom line of this debate is that the province is getting a damned good health-care system for its money. I only wish that the NDP would quit using the medical profession as a whipping person.

Mr. Stong: I rise to speak on this bill, not as a major speaker for my party because I will be followed by the critic, but as the first speaker with respect to some of the principles in the bill.

Bill 168 represents a hodge-podge of contradictory, inconsistent and confused principles. It undermines the principle of the Health Disciplines Act and it denies a basic freedom of choice to a very legitimate professional sector of our communities in Ontario. This bill represents the illegal governmental interference with an overregulation of a very necessary discipline. It represents only the beginning, in my respectful submission, of the NDP’s intentional restriction of the freedom of all professional disciplines.

This member supports the principle that was enunciated by resolution in the Ruston plan, introduced by my colleague from Essex North (Mr. Ruston) and debated in this House in June. I might say that the bill before us goes far beyond what is legitimate and proper draftsmanship. It demonstrates either an ignorance of or an utter disregard for the acceptable and recognized principles of draftsmanship in legislation. It denies or it ignores the clarity of statement of principle; it denies or ignores the simplicity of statement of that principle; and it ignores the observation of the inherent rights and freedoms and protection of those same inalienable attributes.

Bill 168 goes far beyond meeting and dealing with those problems mentioned by the member for Ottawa Centre. It is therefore unnecessary legislation and inasmuch as it is unnecessary, it is bad legislation and it must not be supported. The bill is tantamount to killing a mosquito with a sledgehammer.

I might refer to a letter I received from the vice-president of the Ontario Medical Association and the branch in the regional municipality of York. He says, “This letter is simply written to reiterate my feeling as a private physician that I will be given the chance to continue with freedom in the practice of medicine in Ontario and not be a legislative civil servant. As a private citizen in Ontario I also reiterate the necessity for the Ontario Legislature to introduce more freedom in the health-care system and allow me, as a private citizen, to get 100 per cent physician-care coverage on an insurance basis, or at least allow insurance companies to give 100 per cent coverage.

“As you are well aware, at the moment only OHIP is allowed to cover physician services and legislation allows only 70 per cent coverage of that service. This, I feel, is a breach of civil liberties and should be corrected in the near future.”

If we can refer to the bill itself for a few moments, I will demonstrate the confusion and the contradictions and inconsistencies of principles enunciated in that bill. If we look for a moment at

section 1 of the bill, we notice it reads, “Where a physician or practitioner submits an account to a patient with respect of insured services, the amount charged by the physician or practitioner shall not exceed the amount payable by the plan for the insured services.” The words are quite explicit. “shall not.”

If we go down to subsection 4 of that

section we come across the word “consistently,” which indicates and recognizes the fact that the words “shall not” are not mandatory -- are not in fact meaningful. In fact, there is a very inconsistent and confused principle between those two sections.

The member for Ottawa Centre also says this bill guarantees a physician’s right and freedom of choice to opt out of the OHIP plan. He says the bill allows and does not interfere with that freedom of choice.

But when you read the bill, Mr. Speaker, you find that a physician who opts out and chooses to follow his choice can charge only a predetermined amount for his services -- a predetermined amount which is consistent only with the plan from which he intends to extricate himself. Some freedom of choice; some hollow protection of principle.

If we look at the bill and deal particularly with the word “consistently,” first, the bill does contradict the Health Disciplines Act. In that sense it is unnecessary; again, in that sense, it is inconsistent legislation. It sets sip a professional misconduct for a consistent action.

What is a consistent action? Where is “consistent” defined in this bill, pray tell? When does it become consistent? The ninth time? The 10th time? The first time? Is it inconsistent if a person charges the same patient over and above the OHIP plan? Is it consistent if he charges two different patients different prices?

The bill is vague; the bill is inconsistent. The bill does not observe the recognized principles of draftsmanship. The draftsmanship is vague; it is indefinite and it is inherently discriminatory. The principles are contradictory. They are confused. For those reasons, we cannot support this bill in principle.

Mr. Dukszta: The New Democratic Party leader, in introducing Bill 168, documents the importance our party attaches to health care. The intrinsic importance of that bill is that the Ontario government has allowed physicians to opt out of OHIP in increasing numbers until the foundations of our publicly-funded health-care system are threatened.

The system is being destroyed by the collusive actions of the government, whose increasing right wing ideology, uncaringness, incompetence, negligence in the discharge of its public trust, and irresponsibility on behalf of working people, combined with mean-spirited, irresponsible and greedily organized medicine is leading to the destruction of the system.

There are three aspects to our party’s historic concern for health care. First, we believe that health care is a right, not a privilege. All members of society have a stake in the health system. Consequently, quality health care must be equally accessible to all and all people must participate in making the decisions which directly affect their own health. In the same way, doctors must be put under some kind of control by the community at large and not left to their own devices.

Second, health and social services are part of the social wage, on the same lines as the money wage. Consequently, the fight for universal health care is a significant part of our party’s struggle to equalize the distribution of wealth and income in our society. It is very important for all doctors to remain in OHIP, since for the one in five patients who goes to a physician and has to pay extra, it seriously affects his income, especially if he is on the lower wage scale.

The health-care system is also a business and a major component of our economic system. Ontario citizens must have a say in running this business and not allow private entrepreneurs, like physicians, to do what they feel like doing.

The implications of this are quite clear. The health-care system must be universal and accessible wherever one lives, of quality compatible with what is best and modern without financial barriers and the profits, if there are any, must belong to all Ontarians and not to the few physicians or American corporations that provide us with health and hospital supplies.

When we look at the whole health-care system, we have to look seriously at the role of the physician, since the bill really deals with that more than anything else. There are two aspects of the role of the physician. First, I would like to deal with the way in which the physician plays a major role in the general delivery of health care and, second, at the way the physician is paid.

Under the present system, the physician is paramount in our health system and plays a very significant role. He will always play a significant role because he has been trained to do a particular role. In our party’s updating in a new and more modern proposal for restructuring Ontario’s health-care system, the physician will play a role only in co-operation with other health professionals. It is really idiotic of us to say the physician is the only person who delivers health care in our system. There are a number of other health professionals who share co-equally in that responsibility in terms of health care.

Because of a distortion in the system of paying physicians, we concentrate only on physicians. The role of the physician at the moment is that of someone who is in charge of the system,

whereas we must move to a physician’s being a part of the system and a part of the team.

The second part that is important is that a physician gets paid quite differently from all other health professionals. A physician gets paid a fee for service, which is a system which has its own problems. It’s a traditional method of payment to the physician. Unfortunately, the behaviour of the provider, which in this case are the physicians because they are almost the only ones who get paid on a fee-for-service basis, is biased towards overservicing.

Before universal medical insurance, the penury of a large portion of people acted to limit demands on utilization of medical services. Since then, however, the number of services has gone up sixfold in the last 15 years. It is the fee-for-service system which rewards overservicing done by physicians.

It isn’t the patient who demands more and more service. Quite often, the patient does not know what he needs, so he consults a physician. It is the physician in his position as a provider who, in effect, decides what kind of service the patient will get or not get. It is the physician who, because he is rewarded by fee for the service provided, tends to repeat service after service and produce the overservicing. Most of the time people will say it is the patient who does it, but actually it is the physician who does it. It is related directly to the fee-for-service system.

There are other ways of dealing with it. One of the major disadvantages of fee for service is it is probably the main cause of the present excessive number of unnecessary surgical operations performed in our province. Someone once said Canada doesn’t lead the world in many things but it most definitely leads the world in unnecessary surgery. It may be related to the behaviour of our physicians in the sense of overservicing and also to the way they get paid.

There are other ways of paying a physician which are much better. If we move a physician towards being a member of the team, it is illogical for a physician to be paid so differently and so much more than other health professionals. I base this argument very simply. When one looks at a situation where a number of people are involved in providing health care to an individual, it isn’t the physician alone who does most of the work.

[4:00]

In hospitals, very clearly, there are nurses, social workers, lab technicians, X-ray technicians and a whole support stuff that provide health care. Only physicians make that claim and only the physician gets paid as excessively as he does at the moment. When I say “excessively,” note the physician gets paid four times as much as the composite industrial wage and his income has increased progressively since the introduction of the original insurance scheme. It may he a little less now than it was a couple of years ago, but it is still significantly higher.

It is that increase which is so distorting in terms of the relationship and the direct provision of health care by the various health professionals. We must move out. One way of doing it without moving towards the general destruction of the system is paying physicians either a capitation fee or a salary or a combination of ways. This party is committed to a multiple approach paying physicians. At the moment, we’re saying physicians should only charge what OHIP will pay.

If physicians are allowed to be paid more than OHIP would provide, if they are permitted to charge whatever they want, they will destroy the universality of the system as well as any attempt to control the course or the co-operativeness of the health professions.

The physician must, in effect, be stopped at the level OHIP now pays, which is quite generous.

We should look at the role of the physician and consider what was said in the letter read by the member for York Centre about freedom of action as a physician. I am a great believer that physicians indeed must have some freedom in terms of clinical decisions, but even then, the other people who participate in the provision of health care, including the patient, must have a direct input into what kind of health care they get. On the whole, a technician -- and that’s what a physician is -- can be trusted, at least within the limits of delivering health care, to make a good clinical judgement.

I see no reason why a physician should, at the same time, be able to make a decision about how he should be paid and how much he should be paid. That amount would seem to be as much as the market can bear. That is what the parties mean. The physicians who cry all the time about the free-enterprise system and their freedom to perform, really are crying to be free in the sense of monopoly of the delivery of health care and how they get paid.

Not since Louis XIV controlled the salt trade so completely in France has there been such a group as the physicians of Ontario, who totally control the delivery of health care.

I would like to conclude by saying --

Mr. Acting Speaker: The honourable member’s time has expired.

Mr. Dukszta: Let me just conclude with one sentence. I am a physician, a member of organized medicine, and I wish my co-workers would wake up to the fact that they are being greedy more than anything else. They should realize their responsibility to deliver good clinical health care to Ontario residents.

Mr. Jones: Mr. Speaker, I am saddened to hear the comments by the last speaker, the member for Parkdale. First, he feels so many of his colleagues are greedy. I don’t think that’s a word I would want to see applied to doctors and those who deliver the wide range of health care in this province.

I am also shocked and upset to hear he took issue with the letter from a doctor read by the member for York Centre, when he spoke about something as basic as freedom and as we in this debate discuss it relative to the bill before us.

Above and beyond that, I am deeply distressed about the increasing attacks against our health-care system in the last two or three months and the charges and the accusations hurled across this House. They represent a threat to those beyond the daily politics in which all of us participate and observe in public life.

The people of Ontario are being given the impression -- and, I submit, an unfounded impression -- that our health-care system somehow needs to be saved. From what? It needs to be saved from the fabrication of the opposition, particularly the third party. We in Ontario are in the enviable position of having many excellent, natural human resources to draw on. There have been significant advances made in medical technology and public health and we here in Ontario have been a leader with the system we operate and under which we have those services delivered to us.

We have become entranced, I suppose, with the sophistication and growth of research and diagnosis. Things have come a long way since the days when needles were used over and over again. Doctors have achieved a high regard in the community and we are lulled into thinking our limitations as physical beings might be solved by a shot, a pill, an x-ray or some new wonder drug.

I don’t wish to undermine the importance of these developments, but they have come at a cost. It is a cost that most of us realize we have to pay. Compared to our neighbours to the south and people in other jurisdictions in the developed world, we have it pretty good here in Ontario.

What do we really expect from our health-care system? What happens when it doesn’t live up to our expectations? What price are we willing to pay? At the same time, can we ignore our responsibility to look after ourselves? These are only some of the questions that are being asked by health-care professionals and the people of Ontario.

How do we go about meeting these high expectations in a way that is fair and equitable to the majority? We assist our senior citizens, the handicapped, the medical students, the hospitals and others. This province devotes 28 per cent of its budget to health-care financing and planning.

It is a system in transition, and the changes we are making now will serve us well in the future. There will always be cases in dispute between a doctor or a patient and the structure designed to facilitate health payments.

However, to use isolated cases -- and we heard that again from the leader of the third party when he referred, in his opening comments in the debate, to a particular case outlined by someone in the Globe and Mail. I suggest there is a danger in using isolated cases as proof that the system in total is faulty when millions upon millions of doctor and patient claims are successful. It is deceptive and irresponsible.

Mr. Cassidy : Three million were double-billed by doctors in the last six months.

Mr. Jones: I heard the numbers the member referred to. He took a percentage of the total. No one will deny they are large. But when he takes a system that size and tries to point out individual cases, I say it is deceptive and I say it is irresponsible.

The members of this House are well aware of the government health-care policies. They pretend not to be, but I know they are. They are also aware that the hospital administrators, the doctors and the nurses are doing their level best to find new ways to adapt to the changing demands of patients. In the midst of this fine work, members of the opposition -- particularly the third party with its present little vote-getting cause -- are doing their darnedest to incite a conflict where in fact it doesn’t exist.

Ontario is fortunate in having skilled doctors. Like all individuals in this society, they have the freedom to practise their profession when and where they wish. The member referred to the fact that 82 per cent of the doctors in this province are within the OHIP system for their services and many of the remaining doctors bill OHIP through billing groups. The doctors and this government are concerned that everyone gets a fair deal. Let me repeat that. Both the doctors and the government want everyone to get a fair deal.

There sits our Minister of Health who works untiringly towards that design and the member wants to make it a political issue and ignore the fact that millions and millions of people are served every day so very well by the system we have in this province under this government.

What is beyond me is the idea that a group of professionals, any group, should always be required to bill a specific amount for its services. There is no question we get what we pay for in life.

I listened to the leader of the third party’s debate with Mr. Gilbert on a phone-in show; they had a debate at great length and the member acquitted himself well, I say to him, except again some very glaring holes became clear and that’s the issue of this bill we have in front of us today. The bill asks us to make it law that “the amount charged by the physician or practitioner shall not exceed the amount payable by the plan for the insured services.” By implication, the opposition is tarring and feathering every single health-care professional in this province and this government is not prepared to work with any group under those circumstances and conditions.

Efforts are being made on all sides to negotiate fee schedules as equitable as possible. A panel consisting of three members of this government and three representatives from the Ontario Medical Association is currently at work in assisting both parties to reach a fair fee schedule. That is an example of desire by this government for co-operation, not conflict.

The government is taking steps to control health-care costs and we have all been involved in those debates. The drafter of this resolution was very prominent and active in those debates that took place in the social development committee of this Legislature. We all addressed them.

The leader of the third party alluded to almost an implication that this government was going back to institutionalization and it wasn’t going in the direction to meet the increasing needs of clinics and grass roots health care and that is not so. Members from all three parties very clearly endorsed that direction and we have seen evidence of it by this government and this minister as they are moving very directly there.

In the Lakeshore debate, we saw all of that focus by members from all parties and we have seen the evidence in the funding and the mechanism taking place.

Mr. Cassidy: Who closed the St. Catharines health clinic?

Mr. Jones: Again, there we go identifying certain examples for the specific purpose of the debate and overlooking the overall system.

We have the leader of the third party come out with these inflammatory ideas, at the same time ignoring the enormous costs involved and I found he had a lot of trouble with that in his debate on the recent radio program. They make it sound like a cut-and-dried issue, as though they have our best interests at heart.

Strong-arm tactics are what he is proposing. They are not the answer. Everyone in this province has an opportunity to see the doctor of his or her choice. In this province no one will be denied medical treatment that he or she requires.

Our health-care system is already beginning to adapt to changes and challenges of an aging society, for example. No doubt the number of OHIP claims will rise and so will the costs, since the elderly do tend to receive more costly, long-term care. Doctors will also have to adapt to these changes. Our ability to meet these challenges rests on flexibility not rigidity. We have an obligation and a desire to encourage and develop the medical resources at our disposal. If we keep burying this initiative in a mass of legislation -- yet one more piece being proposed today by the NDP -- and regulation, then we are doing no one a service.

This is not, and will not become, a do-or-die situation that forces our medical community in this province to impossible decisions.

Mr. Acting Speaker: The honourable member’s time has expired.

Mr. Jones: Yes, Mr. Speaker. Coming from a riding such as Mississauga North, where we recently had our medical system all come together to answer a very large need, I saw it exemplified in an example where I resist the suggestions and attacks that keep continuing to come from that third party for political reasons, so I oppose this bill and urge all other members of the Legislature to do so too.

Mr. Conway: It is with interest that I rise to participate in this particular private members’ hour. I have noted with some degree of interest the concern, the awareness and the agitation, justifiably so, on the part of organized medicine in this province over the last few weeks with respect to Bill 168. Someone, somewhere, has very consciously generated this interest, in my view.

[4:15]

Quite often in the past few days I have been approached by my colleagues in the official opposition saying that while they were home on the weekend they had been approached by the leadership of the local

chapter of the Ontario Medical Association -- a leadership which was vitally interested in and concerned about the disposition of private members with respect to Bill 168. It became clear to me in this matter, as it has become clear to me in other matters recently, that this interest was carefully and knowingly generated. As far as I am concerned, that generation was, and can be, traced to the Hepburn Block and to the minister himself. The tentacles of that most political of ministries stretch out across this province in 1979 in an enthusiastic, partisan, vigilant fashion.

I only hope that in the final analysis those tentacles don’t recoil to choke and strangle any prime ministerial ambitions that may be resident in the Hepburn Block these days.

What was most concerning to me was the expression put by many doctors to myself and others that the government and the minister felt it important that it be understood that they could not give any assurance that this particular bill was going to be vetoed as is their regular wont in this particular part of private members’ hour. Well, we shall see what we shall see.

I shall listen with great interest to the actions of honourable members opposite when the time comes for the roll call on the first of the questions which you, Mr. Speaker, will put. I remember well the disposition of the government on June 21, 1979, when the resolution of my good and honourable friend from Essex North (Mr. Ruston) -- dealing with another aspect, another approach, to this particular matter of the remuneration of doctors in this province -- was being dealt with in private members’ hour. I shall look with great interest -- and listen with greater interest -- to the honourable members opposite at a quarter to six this evening.

What of the Lawlor bill? What can we say of Bill 168? Well, there’s no question, Mr. Speaker, that politically it is an overt declaration of war on the medical profession in this province.

Mr. McClellan: Who wrote your speech? You didn’t write it.

Mr. Conway: I am serious. Just listen.

Mr. Acting Speaker: Order.

Mr. Conway: There is no question, Mr. Speaker, that, politically, Bill 168 is an overt declaration of war on the medical profession and I think we have to reflect briefly upon one very important experience where the principle of Bill 168 was entered into by a government.

I call to your attention, Mr. Speaker, and to honourable members gathered here this afternoon, that -- in terms of the essence of Bill 168 and I think the facts support it -- this particular principle was the basis of the first initiative of the Douglas government in the Saskatchewan jurisdiction in the early 1960s which led to the very famous medical strike we all know about.

Clearly, the principle of Bill 168 is that if it is passed, opting out for purposes of extra billing will become illegal.

I, like my colleague from York Centre, found it interesting that the bill goes on to suggest -- and I think, notwithstanding what was said by the member for Parkdale, whose ideologicai consistency on these matters was maintained today -- that this particular bill in that particular

section is very serious. Not only does it suggest in the first

section that opting out for purposes of extra billing become illegal, but then, in a confusing, redundant fashion -- and if we wished to be picayune about it we could probably have the bill ruled out of order on that account -- it suggests that opting out for purposes of extra billing, if consistently entered into, is professional misconduct.

That certainly is a contradiction of what is stated early in the bill, but it’s more than that, Mr. Speaker. It is a sad comment on the good and honourable member for Lakeshore (Mr. Lawlor) who, as a very distinguished member of the bar, knows just what he is talking about. I have come to have a great deal of respect for the member for Lakeshore. I have listened to him speak eloquently in many committees about the rights of citizens in this province. For any member of the bar, much less any member of this House, to suggest that something is illegal or that it is misconduct if it is consistently entered into is, I think, an extremely important point to make.

If the honourable members opposite wish to draft a bill of some consistency and some clarity on this particular issue, then certainly I might be prepared to listen to a second debate.

What then is my position on this particular bill? For the reasons I will give, it is not acceptable to me. I feel, and I feel very strongly as one member of this assembly, that, as gatekeepers of the health-care system, doctors are an exceptionally important part of our health-care system. At present, as traditionally, they are an extremely powerful political force. I agree entirely with that great right-winger from the United States, Milton Friedman, who said many years ago that organized medicine was “the most powerful union in the United States,” or words to that effect.

I think, generally speaking, doctors are well paid. Many doctors are very well paid. I have said, and I repeat here now, we must make it clear that medical degrees are not automatic tickets to six-digit incomes. What then is the view with respect to present negotiations?

I reject the wage control being offered selectively by the members of the New Democratic Party. I reject it out of hand. I certainly think it important for government to negotiate a fair and reasonable fee. On the basis of my many months of experience in these matters of health care, I suggest -- and I only suggest -- to my colleagues on the left they might look at the debates of June 21, 1979 to see what the absent member for Oshawa (Mr. Breaugh) had to say about the principle of opting out. I suggest they read the record of that debate and others to find out just how consistent their position has been with respect to that principle.

I accept now, as I have always, that doctors should have a choice as should consumers in this province. Doctors should have the right to opt out if they so choose. Consumers and patients in this province have a like and corresponding right; that is, the right to medical services at the government rate.

Quite clearly my suggestion in this connection is let the government negotiate firmly but fairly with the medical profession. Let the government for the first time stand up and argue that it is not going to have the health-care system deteriorate in this particular regard. If some doctors want to opt out and we cannot make any accommodation with them, then I must say there are alternatives to the particular bill in question. I make no apologies, speaking in terms of the collective bargaining process, for the fact that the resolution of the member for Essex North is more attractive to me than the kind of Draconian warfare proposed in Bill 168.

Let there be no mistake about it -- and I say this without qualification -- in my view the best possible option is, as the experts would say, to buy the system closed. That is the most positive and the most sensible way in which to approach the problem -- to have government put sufficient funds into the system to bring enough doctors back into the system so we can proceed without the kind of opting-out threats that presently exist. That certainly, for me, is the optimal situation and the optimal resolution.

Mr. Acting Speaker: The honourable member’s time has expired.

Mr. Conway: I want to make it very clear that I feel very strongly such an attack as is being proposed here in Bill 168 would do this province and the consuming public substantially more harm than good. If government needs management tools that need to be applied to these kinds of discussions, then I suggest June 21 as a more attractive alternative.

Mr. Makarchuk: I rise to support the bill and to make a few comments about what is really a great problem in our province at this time. When the member for Mississauga North (Mr. Jones) says that we are ignoring the facts, I’d like to point out to him that he obviously hasn’t been talking or listening to the people either in his own riding or anywhere in the province.

One of the things the patients say they are concerned about when they go to visit a doctor now is whether there will be extra billing or double billing, or whether their visit is going to be taken care of out of OHIP. it is an area of great concern to the patients at this time and it is an area that is resulting, in many cases, in patients being reluctant to go to doctors because they fear they will have to pay extra.

The net result of that of course is that they put off a situation that perhaps could be prevented, or a situation eventually becomes serious. Then the costs go up; the whole cost of services to the province, taxpayer and everybody else increases because of those situations.

I’d like to point out that it says there’s no conflict in the health-care system. I suggest, again, that what the minister should do is talk to the health-care workers. Obviously, he hasn’t talked to any of them. Talk to the doctors, nurses, physiotherapists, occupational therapists and lab technicians; find out if there isn’t really any conflict and isn’t any care in there.

There is an element of great concern among all those people about the way the health-care system is going. In many cases, they work and operate in an element of uncertainty and fear. They can see programs being shut down and they will appear on the government’s doorsteps as a lobby or as a group wondering why the government is doing this. As an example, why are they shutting down an occupational therapy department in one area? Why are they dismissing certain people?

You hear of specific situations, Mr. Speaker. The other day the paper reported corridors crowded with patients, et cetera -- places where people are not receiving proper treatment. Further than that, the big tragedy in this situation is that almost every day in Ontario there are situations where people are not getting proper treatment. In some cases it results in death. I repeat, in some cases it results in death.

If an individual has an accident on University Avenue, the chances are that the individual will survive. If the accident happens in Orillia then the individual does not survive. Those are the kinds of problems that exist in the health-care system.

To say that there’s no conflict in there, or that there’s no concern in that system -- those guys opposite don’t know what they’re talking about. The tragedy about it is that they’re supposed to be dealing with it; they are the people who are supposed to be involved with this and administering the system.

I want to point out that there’s no question the problem has to be negotiated. The doctors should negotiate -- I think they have the right to negotiate -- what a fair deal is, what they should be paid for their services. The ministry should be responsible for the negotiations and for the fact that perhaps certain groups of physicians are getting paid less than other groups of physicians, or some physicians are making or charging too much or are getting too great a percentage of the health dollar in relation to the services they perform. I don’t think there’s any argument about that point.

Because the doctors are put on a figure, or they’re limited in what they can charge, the implication is that if one pays more, he’ll get better medical care -- or something of that nature. As the member for Mississauga North said, “We get what we pay for.” That’s nonsense.

[4:30]

The point is, Mr. Speaker, we have doctors in Ontario who are working on salary. All our medical officers of health work on salary. We have doctors in various provincial institutions working on salary and they are doing a damned good job. They are not double billing: they are not triple billing. Their pay is fixed. It’s not related to the services they perform or the functions they carry out and they do both damned