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November 26, 1987

34th Parliament, 1st Session

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Hansard Transcripts

L013 - Thu 26 Nov 1987 / Jeu 26 nov 1987

ORDERS OF THE DAY

PRIVATE MEMBERS’ PUBLIC BUSINESS

FIRE DEPARTMENTS

TRADE WITH UNITED STATES

FIRE DEPARTMENTS

TRADE WITH UNITED STATES

AFTERNOON SITTING

MEMBERS’ STATEMENTS

QUEEN ELIZABETH WAY

HOSPITAL FUNDING

YULI EDELSTEIN

RENTAL ACCOMMODATION

AUTOMOBILE INSURANCE

STATEMENTS BY THE MINISTRY

OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND SAFETY

TRANSFER PAYMENTS

RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT

RESPONSES

OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND SAFETY

TRANSFER PAYMENTS

RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT

TRANSFER PAYMENTS

ORAL QUESTIONS

WORKERS’ COMPENSATION

VISITOR

TRANSFER PAYMENTS

RETAIL STORE HOURS

FACILITY FOR YOUNG OFFENDERS

RENT REGULATION

CANCER TREATMENT

SOCIAL ASSISTANCE

GASOLINE PRICES

LOT LEVIES

VOCATIONAL REHABILITATION

NOISE BARRIER

NATURAL GAS PRICING

ONTARIO HYDRO

CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTIONS

DRINKING AND DRIVING

STUDENT HOUSING

INTRODUCTION OF BILL

GOOD SAMARITAN ACT

ORDERS OF THE DAY

SELECT COMMITTEE ON CONSTITUTIONAL REFORM (CONTINUED)

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

The House met at 10 a.m.

Prayers.

ORDERS OF THE DAY

PRIVATE MEMBERS’ PUBLIC BUSINESS

FIRE DEPARTMENTS

Mr. Faubert moved resolution 3:

That, in the opinion of this House, the government of Ontario should amend the Fire Departments Act RSO 1980, regarding and related to management rights and structure; reform of the arbitration process; makeup of bargaining units; and the revision of

definitions within fire departments to improve administration of such departments, and labour relations between management and the bargaining units.

The Deputy Speaker: The member for Scarborough-Ellesmere has read his resolution. The member has up to 20 minutes and he may reserve any amount of that time to reply at the end.

Mr. Faubert: I had looked forward with some anticipation to my first speech in this House being made as part of the process of response to the speech from the throne. However, the roster system, coupled with the time limits on that debate, determined otherwise, so this House will have to wait until another time to hear about me and my riding.

I am pleased to have this opportunity to rise in open debate on the first item of private members’ business in this 34th Parliament and on this resolution, which I feel has some importance to most, if not all, municipalities in this province. It is my hope and indeed my expectation that this debate will be initiated and this matter will be aired from a number of perspectives as openly and as rationally as possible and with the result that the government will initiate action necessary to effect the desired amendments to the Fire Departments Act, amendments which are in the interests of all parties concerned, both the employees and the employers.

By way of introduction and background, I should point out that I served on the council of the city of Scarborough for over 17 years before having the honour of being elected to this Legislature on September 10 by the good voters of Scarborough-Ellesmere. Over that time, I was elected to the board of control and sat as a member of that board for seven years, during which time I was a member of the labour negotiating team for the city of Scarborough.

I have also served as an executive member of both the Association of Municipalities of Ontario, which is known as AMO, and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, known as FCM, and so also bring province-wide and national perspectives to this issue.

In addition, over that time I have had the opportunity to observe fire services not only of my municipality but also of many national and international forces, and I appreciate the job they are called upon to do. I admire the sense of dedication and discipline necessary to react as a team in firefighting situations, and some times I truly wonder that they can do as excellent a job as they do under such extreme conditions of stress and danger. But it is the management aspect of the service, not the operational, that we address today.

By way of further introduction, it should be pointed out that the Ministry of the Solicitor General has had under active consideration for many years the question of amendments to the Fire Departments Act. Indeed, the Fire Departments Act, in its present form, dates from 1947, but its deficiencies have been the subject of resolutions and petitions for change dating back to 1968. So when it is stated that such amendments are needed -- and there is a universal consensus that amendments are needed -- that is certainly no exaggeration.

Individual municipalities, the Association of Municipalities of Ontario, the Ontario Association of Fire Chiefs and the Ontario Association of Personnel Directors have all sent briefs and resolutions asking for a review of the legislation and its procedures and stating that, in their opinion, the act requires review and needs to be brought up to date and into line with contemporary labour and management practices.

What has happened to these petitions? They always seem to disappear somewhere into Queen’s Park, because legislation with respect to the fire service has often been promised but has never been delivered.

These sustained efforts with respect to amending the Fire Departments Act have been construed by some, and most particularly and unfortunately by members of the fire service, led by their executives, as an attack upon the service and its members. This is simply not the case, for it is clearly the community’s and the council’s perception that as a protective service, that required for fire is generally held in high regard. rendering an admirably high level of service.

Indeed, where the fire service is concerned, there has been a widespread tendency to regard it as being essential and on the same plane as the police. This shows in certain arbitration awards, particularly in the area of Metropolitan Toronto, which has given the fire service economic parity with police settlements.

While I do not wish to detract from the excellent service in the performance of its professional duties, there is in Ontario, however, data available which, as to the ease of recruitment, low rate of turnover and overall lost time rate, are in sharp contrast when compared to such data for the police. But it is in the administrative structure of the two protective services that is shown dramatically the need for amendments to the act to establish a separate bargaining unit for senior officers from that of the rest of the bargaining unit.

As we know, the Fire Departments Act describes in a rudimentary form a system of collective bargaining. The system is then prescribed for all full-time firefighters as defined in the act. The only exclusions prescribed by

section 5 are the chief and the deputy chief of the department. The effect of this is that all other senior officers in the department are within the bargaining unit and are therefore represented for collective bargaining purposes by the fire departments’ associations.

This is acknowledged to interfere with their need and ability to manage. The practical, or rather the unpractical. effect of this has been noted and commented upon adversely for many years. The fact that a fire department has only two management persons makes it a system which inhibits the sound management of the departments, especially departments of the larger cities which have fire services of between 400 and 600 operational firefighters.

The submission of the Ontario Association of Fire Chiefs puts it this way: “The senior officers in the department are in fact managers in every sense of the word. Particularly in an organization such as a fire department, the chain of command is fundamental. Orders must be obeyed. Officers must have the unequivocal authority to direct that certain duties are carried out and carried out promptly. These officers must have the ability and the capacity to assert leadership, direction and control over their subordinates for the efficient operation of the department.

“In our opinion there is no effective way in which this can be done if an officer is required to serve two masters. He cannot effectively carry out his management responsibilities if, at the same time, his other loyalty is to an organization of which the men he must lead are members. It is apparent in many fire departments in the province that this is not simply an academic concern. The conflict of interest is direct and has a very practical impact.”

The Association of Municipalities of Ontario. in their brief to the Solicitor General (Mrs. Smith), addresses the same issue this way, in the rationale of part two, titled Required Legislative Amendments for the Effective Administration of the Fire Services: “It is important that a definition of senior officers clearly delineates management from nonmanagement personnel in order to ensure that no conflict of interest exists when rnanagerial authority is required.

For example, in situations of discipline it would be unfair for an individual who, by virtue of responsibilities, is required to impose disciplinary action and to require him or her to do so when that same individual is part of the bargaining unit.’’

No other collective bargaining legislation exists that does not recognize that this type of conflict of interest exists and seeks to accommodate it. As an example, the Labour Relations Act of Ontario excludes from the bargaining unit any person who exercises managerial functions.

If the comparison with the police we made earlier is an apt one, then the system of the Police Act which permits the senior officers to bargain collectively, but separately, apart from the other members of the police force, is an approach that is eminently logical and is an approach that should indeed be adopted. That approach is the one any new legislation should incorporate.

Such recommendations to define senior officers for purposes of the act and to allow senior fire service officers to become a separate bargaining unit is not without critics. This move is vigorously opposed by both the Ontario Professional Fire Fighters and the International Association of Fire Fighters, at least by the executive of those associations. Their position is simply that such a move would reduce the size of their bargaining units.

I should point out, though, using Scarborough as an example, there are 469 operational firefighters, with 14 district chiefs. This would result in a net reduction of only 14, or 2.8 per cent of the total unit. To put this in its real perspective, the city of Scarborough adds more than that number every year in hiring, just to keep up with its continued growth and population to be served.

We come to the most contentious part of any recommendation for change and that is the area that is most resisted. That is the resolution process of arbitration. The Association of Municipalities of Ontario has submitted recommendations over a period of time and should be commended for their latest brief, developed by their labour relations committee, which they describe this way:

“AMO views the role of effective collective bargaining legislation as being that which provides both parties with a constructive and neutral framework within which differences can be resolved by the parties to their mutual satisfaction.”

Their recommendation contains a proposed model which has considerable merit, for it inserts a conciliation or mediation step into the process before the arbitration process. Its supporting rationale is a compelling argument to adopt such a model.

I am aware that this fact-funding step has created discussion and some dissension, but this Fire Departments Act is the only piece of labour legislation in Ontario that does not contain some form of mediation or conciliation.

Other items which require addressing, and which have been the subject of numerous briefs and submissions, are the need for developing guidelines for arbitrators similar to those outlined in the Crown Employees Collective Bargaining Act; and second, the need to update the

definitions of job descriptions within the act.

At this time, I would like to commend the former Solicitor General, the member for Kingston and The Islands (Mr. Keyes) for taking a major step last year as Solicitor General by enlarging the panel of arbitrators, by adding 17 additional, qualified, impartial arbitrators to the original six. He took a lot of heat for that action, but the results are showing in more balanced awards presently being made.

I feel that this AMO brief and all the resolutions and recommendations that have come forward, should be studied very closely by the Solicitor General’s ministry. Although many conclusions and recommendations have been known to the ministry staff for some time, I feel that the ministry should act to bring all interested parties back to the bargaining and back to reforming this act.

The change is under way, we know that. We have seen drafts of legislation but it does not bring forward the changes necessary. That the act is outdated in its concepts and applications is well known; I would urge this Legislature to support this resolution to have this act amended, to achieve

an act that balances the rights of both sides, in a fair and equitable bargaining process.

On that note, I would like to reserve my remaining time for my final remarks.

Mr. Reville: I would like to begin by congratulating the new member for Scarborough-Ellesmere (Mr. Faubert) on his maiden address in this House. I can only regret that he has chosen such an unfortunate resolution with which to begin.

This firefighter’s helmet, which has my name on it, and which says, “Best Wishes with Your New Endeavours” was presented to me by the Toronto Fire Fighters Association on my leaving Toronto city council, and may give members a clue on how I may vote on this resolution. I will briefly put it on so you can see how handsome and brave I look and then I will deliver the rest of the speech holding the helmet in this manner and on the heart.

The member for Searborough-Ellesmere has lamented the fact that the many recommendations from the Association of Municipalities of Ontario seem to have disappeared into the bowels of Queen’s Park never to be seen again and I am delighted that they disappear, because these are particularly negative kinds of recommendations -- and in fact I will read the member some words.

For instance, in 1984 my old friend, Orval Bolton, who was then president of the Toronto Fire Fighters Association, local 113, said, “We believe the end result would be a return to the dark ages in the field of management labour relations and would make confrontation and legal challenge the name of the game.”

It was at that time that Toronto city council -- and I know the member for St. Andrew-St. Patrick (Mr. Kanter) will recall and will note with pride how he voted to support this resolution, wherein the Toronto city council supported its firefighters in respect of opposing the changes that even then were roiling and moiling around in the department of the Solicitor General. I suspect the member for St. Andrew-St. Patrick will join me in opposing this resolution.

The resolution appears to be somewhat benign in its words, but clearly the member for Scarborough-Ellesmere, in his speech to the resolution, has indicated the hornets, vipers and toads that in fact lurk beneath his seemingly harmless words. In fact, what is being proposed by AMO will gut the rights that firefighters have worked for and the rights that they deserve. It is interesting to note the kinds of issues that the AMO recommendation says are not for the purview of the arbitrator. It is hard to imagine what the arbitrator will be able to arbitrate if this AMO resolution finds its way into legislation.

Matters such as employment, appointment, complement, organization, assignment, discipline, dismissal, suspension, work methods and procedures, kinds and locations of equipment and classification of positions, promotion, demotion, transfer, layoff, reappointment, merit system, training and development and appraisal; none of those matters under this proposal will be allowed to be within the jurisdiction of an arbitrator. It strikes me that goes to the very heart of our collective bargaining process and it would be shocking if we took this giant step back into time, when workers were at the mercy of employers who clearly had other views about working conditions than workers do.

The member for Scarborough-Ellesmere points out his long service on Scarborough council and his representation on various committees and studies of AMO. For my sins, I laboured in a lonely struggle on the labour relations committee of AMO. I must say I have never encountered a group of people whose views were more antithetical to labour than those mayors and reeves in Ontario. Tories all, and long may they burn.

At every meeting, the first discussion was, “How can we take away the right to strike of civic workers?” That would be the first item. Then the second item would be, “How can we smash the firefighters?” Some of my pals kindly provided me with this helmet to wear at AMO labour relations meetings because all this vicious, anti-labour stuff kept raining out of the ceiling from -- I am trying to think whether it was the mayor of Picton who was the worst, I cannot remember.

I got the third draft of this bill that was obviously written by some scoundrels and I got the fourth draft. This goes back to 1983. This has been a long struggle, and I am thankful that it has been a long struggle. I can tell members why it has been a long struggle. It is because, for some reason or other, the Solicitor General of those times, and perhaps even the Solicitor General of this time, understand that there are one heck of a lot of firefighters out there who do not share what the member for Scarborough-Ellesmere describes as a universal consensus about the way to deal with labour relations issues in respect of firefighters.

I would urge members of this House not to be confused by the benign words of the member for Scarborough-Ellesmere. There is no question in my mind that amendments such as he is recommending will clearly not improve the labour relations between management and the bargaining units. What the resolution masks is an attempt to take away workers’ rights and to provide municipal councils with a mechanism for refusing to compensate firefighters properly for the very important work that they do in all our municipalities.

I would like to read into the record what the leader of the Ontario New Democrats, the member for York South (Mr. B. Rae), said to Mr. Ferguson who is here in the gallery:

“We accept, as you do, that it is appropriate for certain workers performing essential services not to have the right to strike. However, we take the view that where the right to strike is taken away, it must be replaced by a fair and neutral process of arbitration. The changes being proposed by AMO fail to meet this standard. We could not support them.”

I might point out as well that I spoke one time at the Redmond symposium, which is an annual event that happens in North America, at which firefighters from all over the continent gather to discuss issues of importance. Regrettably, at least for me regrettably, I was about the 15th speaker in a long line of municipal politicians and other somewhat egocentric folks. I made my little speech and I was particularly concerned at that time about the hazardous materials to which firefighters are often exposed and the lack of legislation that exists whereby it can be known what hazardous materials may be stored on a particular site.

I remember thinking that some people clearly have no shame at all in terms of what they would say to a group of workers. The last speaker was a man named Cliff Pilkey, and he stood up and said, “You should have the right to refuse dangerous work.’’ Of course, the place dispersed into this incredible applause because that was a fairly crowd-pleasing remark. I recount the story to members because I think it is important to recognize that firefighters, almost entirely alone among workers, do not have the right to refuse dangerous work. In fact, the very nature of their work exposes firefighters to incredible danger on every working day.

It seems to me that we have entrusted this important work to a group of people and it does not behoove us to begin to nickel and dime at a collective bargaining process that firefighters have earned and deserve through their work over the years. I would find it personally hugely disappointing and I think somewhat ungrateful of us if we take that approach.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Simcoe East.

Mr. Cureatz: Durham East, Mr. Speaker. You did not have the privilege of listening to my past remarks on the throne debate. Otherwise, you would be more familiar with the great riding that I represent and the specific boundary changes that I went through.

In any event, I only have a few minutes this morning as opposed to the unlimited time that we have from time to time in various addresses. I know that is much to the chagrin of those in attendance on this Thursday morning, especially to the member who has brought forward this resolution.

We have to congratulate the member for Scarborough-Ellesmere on taking the initiative as a new member on the basis of the private members’ hour. However, because he has done so I am right away a little suspicious of the motives that have taken place under this resolution. I give credit to the New Democratic Party member who very ably outlined some specific aspects in regard to the concerns that he has, albeit, as he indicated, the resolution seems a little vague and benign, and indeed it is.

The problem that I have is some sadness for the Liberal member, as much as I have respect for his past incarnations and various political endeavours, because he has come forward with a resolution, as we all well know in these chambers except for the new members who do not realize it, that is more of a policy statement. I think it is very useful and can be used. I have done it from time to time myself in these chambers.

But in regard to this specific request that he is trying to bring forward, it could very well be done by a bill, by a specific piece of legislation that could have been brought in so that we could all have examined it clause by clause. He has not taken that approach and he has taken this overall general resolution.

What does that say to me? That says that maybe deep within the member’s heart he is not actually in full support of this kind of approach. Why is he not? Because the resolution that is brought forward is what we would call the trial balloon. There are going to be a lot of trial balloons down here on the front benches in the next four years.

I feel sorry for the member for Scarborough-Ellesmere because he has been set up with the trial balloon. He is a new member, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, coming here enthusiastically with all kinds of great and wonderful things that he wants to do. Suddenly his name is drawn out of the ballot. He has to come up with something and he is scrambling. I know because I have been there myself.

Do I think for one moment that during the election campaign he has been thinking about this resolution to bring forward in private members’ hour? Nonsense. There is no way. He was knocking on doors’ much to his credit, and he got elected, but he was not thinking about this private resolution. Do members know what happened? He got in here, he got sworn in, we had the speech from the throne, suddenly his name was drawn out and someone down in the front bench -- l saw the House leader wandering around already this morning. He is smiling like a Cheshire cat because he sucked the member in. Darned right, he did.

The government wants to see what the reaction is going to be in terms of this so-called resolution. Now the Solicitor General, of whose ministry I am critic, will be able to go out across Ontario and say to AMO: “Don’t worry, folks. We have got the resolution you have been talking about for years. Not to worry, we are working on it.” She is going to put a cloud up front, a fog to dispense the idea that they are really going to be doing something.

If the front bench. the Four Horsepeople of the Apocalypse, had the nerve they would bring in the bill. They have got the majority; they can pass it. Oh, no, though. they are going to be cautious about this. They do not want to disrupt the firefighters.

I am sorry that the NDP member who spoke has left -- no, he is wandering around. There he is. He said that the reeves on the AMO committee on labour are a bunch of Tories. Well, he has made a mistake. He should not leave. Those reeves were a bunch of Liberals because, obviously, with all the petitions that have been brought forward over the years through the Conservative administration, the legislation was not brought forward because there was a realization that there was some sensitivity, that there was some concern in regard to the vagueness of this resolution that is being brought forward.

That is not to say they should not have done something, that is for sure. From time to time in caucus I was critical of my own party in terms of not moving quickly enough in some areas. They probably should have addressed this a little more closely to work out a better working relationship and to have an understanding of what is taking place down in those areas of the municipal concerns and the firefighters’ concerns.

Now that the Liberals have a majority government, now that they have their 95 seats, they could have taken the initiative. They could have brought forward a specific bill and said to the firefighters: “That’s it. The senior management is going to be considered not part of the bargaining process.” And why? Then at least their colours would have been shown and it would have been revealed that in regard to the firefighters, the right to strike would have been taken away. And in the event, why? In terms of an emergency situation, there is a possibility of what? A lockout? So that those senior management people could still run the fire departments? I do not know.

I feel a little uncomfortable about that approach. As the NDP member well put it, “The firefighters are the one occupation in which the job is dangerous.” I had the opportunity of going up to Gravenhurst in my former position as parliamentary assistant to the Solicitor General and saw the programs they have up there. I do not know if the member for Scarborough-Ellesmere has been up there. It is wonderful when one sees the kind of training that takes place.

They have a three-storey building in which firefighters have to train. They throw in mock fires and the firefighters have to put them out. It is a rough business, there is no doubt about it. In terms of looking at the press from day to day we can see not only around Ontario and Canada but also around the world that what takes place in fires is dangerous, people can get killed.

If that is the situation, then I do not think we should be taking a specific look at doing away with some of the concerns that the firefighters have. Indeed, they have a very unique responsibility. It is like that old story, I suppose, of the pilot of a jet. It is boring for 99 per cent of the time, but, boy, it is real hell for the one per cent. Likewise for the firefighters.

As a result, I think this resolution is too vague. It throws up a cloud so that the ministers, the Solicitor General and the four people on the front bench are going to be able to now go back to AMO -- I can see it all happening. They have put the stall on for four years. The heat will finally be on in about three years’ time because the mandate of this government will be running out and it will have to go to the polls. Then they are finally going to have to make a decision as to which way they are going to go. Is the ministry going to bring in some legislation? I doubt it very much. All this is is a little sop to AMO.

I feel extremely sad in the depth of my heart that the member for Scarborough-Ellesmere was hoodwinked into bringing this resolution. I feel extremely sorry for him. If he had called me up and said “Sam, you have been around for a while. The House leader has suggested I bring this in as a private member’s bill. What do you think?” I would have said: “Listen, take your name off the ballot. Get comfortable with this place. Think of one or two of your own ideas that you as a member want to bring forward and not something that the front bench want to bring forward that has already been discussed in cabinet. “

This government talks about open government. Let me say there are hidden plans and hidden agendas over there. This is one of the first signs of it coming forward. This is, as I said earlier in my remarks, the first trial balloon that is coming up. Now they are going to wait for the reaction of the firefighters out there, and if they are not too strong the AMO is going to get its way.

But if the firefighters, if I could use the pun, put on some heat, if the government realizes that it is not going to get away with it, that they are concerned about what this government is trying to do with these trial balloons -- I say to other interest groups across Ontario and all the people at home watching on television in charge of interest groups, watch out for this crowd. This government is going to be bringing in these kinds of resolutions to see what is going to happen and the reaction that takes place. If the members do not react -- as the people well know, there are not too many of us here in opposition for this time around, but there will be other times.

There are responsibilities to those concerned groups out there which they might be affected by resolutions. When these trial balloons come up, the members should be there speaking to all the Liberals across Ontario who have been elected and saying, “No, we do not like that.” Get that across to the front bench over here.

I congratulate the member for Scarborough-Ellesmere for speaking so well in his first participation in debate in this chamber. I acknowledge that obviously he has had a great depth of political experience, much more than I had when I was first elected. Unfortunately, we cannot support the resolution.

Mr. Kanter: Like the member for Scarborough-Ellesmere, I had intended to speak about the illustrious riding of St. Andrew-St. Patrick, which I represent, and some of the predecessors who have preceded me in that riding. However, in view of the changed circumstances brought about in part by the rather lengthy oration by the member for Durham East (Mr. Cureatz), I will not have that opportunity today.

I will say I am pleased to be speaking about the Fire Departments Act and I am pleased to be speaking on private members’ business because that is an opportunity, one of the few opportunities in this chamber, where members can vote their conscience. In order to do that, it is useful to actually listen to the debate. I find that extremely interesting.

I am also pleased to be speaking on the Fire Departments Act because I do have some experience as a municipal councillor, perhaps not as much as my honourable friend the member for Scarborough-Ellesmere but perhaps a little more than my honourable friend who is now represented by the fire department helmet. In fact, I have had a little experience in the labour relations field as a lawyer prior to my municipal experience.

This motion on the surface appears attractive. The member for Scarborough-Ellesmere referred to the lengthy historical precedents of the Fire Departments Act. In my research I found that its origins go back perhaps a little farther with the Fire Departments Hours of Labour Act enacted in 1920 and the Fire Departments Two-Platoon Act enacted in 1921.

Indeed, the act may be outmoded in some of its wording. However, this motion put by my honourable friend must be seen in the context of a long-standing collective bargaining relationship between firefighters and municipalities and it must be seen in the context of efforts to improve the process which are now at a very delicate stage. It is my opinion that supporting this motion is untimely and may cause unintended consequences by damaging the collective bargaining relationship by further delaying the possibility of desirable change.

As all members are no doubt aware, the Fire Departments Act governs the labour relations between all municipal fire departments and full-time firefighters in Ontario. It affects a lot of people. There are approximately 650 municipal fire departments and approximately 9,300 full-time firefighters in Ontario.

The act sets up a scheme whereby firefighters are permitted to form unions to bargain with committees of local councils, and the matter is sent to arbitration if the parties are unable to reach a negotiated settlement. If the parties are unable to agree on a choice of a neutral arbitrator, the Solicitor General may appoint an arbitrator from a roster of arbitrators.

I think it is very important that we note that while the act does not specifically preclude strikes, as a matter of fact there has never been a strike by firefighters in Ontario. I understand that the idea of strikes is totally contrary to the principles of firefighters and I think that is a principle that has stood the people of this province in good stead.

I am certainly aware of the pressure to amend the act but I think it comes primarily, if not exclusively, from one side, from members of municipal councils who act as management with respect to labour relations. In their view, and I am not suggesting they are entirely wrong or entirely right, the current act favours firefighters to the detriment of local councillors and local taxpayers.

I would like to point out that some municipalities, including the one I was privileged to serve as a member of council, have had very good relationships with their local fire departments. In the city of Toronto, we have not had to go to arbitration to determine wages or salaries for over 30 years. We have had one grievance arbitration in the last 15 years and I think this shows that at least in some municipalities, including a large and sophisticated municipality, labour relations can proceed smoothly within the framework of this current act.

It is important to note that both the Ontario Professional Fire Fighters Association and the Provincial Federation of Ontario Fire Fighters are extremely concerned about any amendments to the Fire Departments Act. They fear that amendments to the act, particularly along the lines proposed by the Association of Municipalities of Ontario, will diminish their bargaining position. In fact, the Ontario Professional Fire Fighters Association demonstrated against this proposed amendment at the recent AMO meeting which was held in Toronto in August 1987.

I did not attend that meeting. I was somewhat occupied with other matters. I understand my friend the member for Scarborough-Ellesmere did take some time out from his busy campaign

schedule to attend that meeting.

The motion presented by the honourable member for Scarborough-Ellesmere must be understood in context. It will be interpreted, rightly or wrongly, as an attack on firefighters. I would like to put into the record a letter that was received by the Ministry of the Solicitor General very recently from the Ontario Professional Fire Fighters Association:

“In our opinion, the resolution by Mr. Faubert is a backdoor approach on behalf of the Association of Municipalities of Ontario to trick the Ontario government into giving their endorsement and credence to anti-labour philosophies contained in AMO document 87-1. In light of the positive tone of our meeting on November 17, 1987, and the confidence that our association has regained through our dealings with Mr. Paquette” -- he is the assistant deputy minister in the department – “we perceive this motion is not in the best interests of the professional fire-fighters in this province.”

I am not speaking on behalf of or as a representative of the Ontario Professional Fire Fighters Association but I do want to emphasize its perception of what this motion will do, the fact that this motion is perceived as upsetting the balance of the labour relations climate between two parties.

Reference has already been made to the problems of arbitration, the question of the number of arbitrators, the action of the previous Solicitor General in increasing the number of arbitrators. That was a measure that was taken at the behest of AMO and which I think on balance has been satisfactory.

I want to emphasize the very intensive review of the Fire Departments Act currently being undertaken by the Solicitor General. Since the current minister was appointed less than two months ago, she has personally consulted with both firefighter associations, the Ontario Association of Fire Chiefs and AMO. To be specific, discussions with AMO are scheduled later today.

The Ministry of the Solicitor General is engaged at this moment in delicate discussions with representatives of all interested parties to determine whether there are inequities in the bargaining process and how it may be improved. For the Fire Departments Act to be a workable and effective piece of legislation, it must be generally acceptable to both sides. This requires a balancing of interests, tradeoffs, compromises, give and take and a sense of commitment to the process by both sides. That is very important. It is not just a question of what the Fire Departments Act says; it is also how any changes are arrived at.

I am concerned that to adopt the resolution as proposed would undermine the consultative process which is now going on by presupposing that such a process would result in a change in a certain direction. Both firefighter associations are now voluntarily and constructively co-operating in a review of the Fire Departments Act. If this motion is passed by this House, they could perceive that this House had precluded these discussions, had predetermined the results and that any further contribution by their groups would be irrelevant. This would be a serious mistake.

It would give the appearance that this matter had been prejudged when it had not. It could result in an adversarial response from labour rather than one of co-operation.

The passage of this resolution today in my view would have a detrimental affect on the intensive review now being undertaken. I want to be absolutely clear about this: it could be that after the Ministry of the Solicitor General has completed its review of the act, legislation may be proposed. That legislation may well encompass some or all of the matters referred to in the motion of my friend the member for Scarborough-Ellesmere. It is expected that the consultations will be completed shortly and that any legislative proposals will be before this House in approximately one year.

I realize this process has gone on for a very long time. The member for Scarborough-Ellesmere is correct when he points out that there have been discussions since 1968 or 1969 on this subject, but the process is now going extremely well. The minister is committed to consultation, the staff are committed to consultation and the parties are committed to consultation. There is a sense of momentum on this issue. Passage of this resolution could upset that momentum. It could lead to the withdrawal of two important parties in the process. It could lead to continued stagnation and inaction.

Therefore, I urge all members of this House not to support the motion put by the member for Scarborough-Ellesmere.

Mr. Callahan: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker: I came here, as did many of my colleagues who are in the government party, to sit and listen to the debate and I think it is tragic that of the official opposition there is one person here and of the third party there are only three people here.

The Deputy Speaker: Thank you for your point of view.

Mr. Jackson: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker: That was rather quite unparliamentary by the previous member. I ask the Speaker to check page 103 of Beauchesne’s rules, paragraph 316: “...it has been sanctioned by usage that a member, while speaking, must not:...(

c) refer to the presence or absence of specific members.” I think it was rather unparliamentary. Let us have some leadership from across the floor.

The Deputy Speaker: We agree with your judgement. That was quite correct. The member for Hamilton Mountain for up to eight minutes.

Mr. Charlton: I will just take a moment to point out to the member for Brampton South (Mr. Callahan) that perhaps our attendance on these matters reflects our caucus’s confidence in our positions and abilities on these issues.

I would like to start my comments by saying to the member for Scarborough-Ellesmere that I think we understand where this resolution comes from and what the basic concerns are. But I have to say to him very frankly that I do not think he has looked very carefully at what the real impact of what he is proposing will be. He mentioned in his comments that he has had some labour relations experience.

As one who has sat on both sides of the bargaining table, on the labour side and on the management side, I think he fails to understand one of the major flaws in management’s approach, not just with municipalities, fire departments and police departments, but in general management’s approach to bargaining units and exclusions from bargaining units right across the board.

I came out of the Ontario public service where of the 60,000, 70,000, 80,000 or whatever number we are at now in Ontario, one in every four is excluded from the bargaining unit. That is one of the major failures in the Ontario civil service in terms of its labour relations. I want to tell the member for Scarborough-Ellesmere that with the former Solicitor General and one other member of the Liberal caucus I attended the Ontario Professional Fire Fighters Association convention last year in Kitchener.

It is not just the view of the executive of the firefighters association that these kinds of things are being opposed. The membership is very strongly in opposition to the kinds of things that are being proposed here.

One of the reasons firefighters so strongly oppose what is being proposed here is the same reason that any member of any trade union opposes the continuous moves by management to always exclude more and more people from the bargaining unit. The reason labour people in trade unions oppose these moves is because it continually reduces their ability to have those who manage or supervise the day-to-day operations of a fire department, a police department or a steel mill -- it separates those who supervise the day-to-day work from those who have to do the day-to-day work. It builds a wall between those who have to have the closest relationships in the operation in question.

Do we in this House not think that it is important that the senior officers in a fire department are on a day-to-day and continuing basis aware of the concerns of the average firefighter and what he has to face in a very dangerous situation?

Do we in this Legislature not think that is probably the most important thing that has to happen in a fire department, that the person who is ordering a firefighter to do this or that particular act has to know and understand, because of the discussions largely that go on at trade union meetings or association meetings in this case, how those members feel about that thing, how they feel it should be done and what is the best way to accomplish the job in question?

Do we want to build a wall between those people who are assigning the tasks and those people who are trying to accomplish the tasks? Of course we do not, but that is the start of what happens with resolutions like this.

I would just like to take a couple of quick moments for those members who have had some labour relations experience and understand the free collective bargaining process to read a couple of the recommendations in the OMA brief, 87.1. This is on the question of arbitration, for example, where the arbitration panel will be a three-man panel, one appointed by management and one appointed by the association and one to be mutually agreed, but if they do not mutually agree on the third arbitrator within five days, in this recommendation, either of the parties can request the minister to appoint.

Now maybe one can start to understand why these firefighters are so sceptical about what would happen if this Legislature started to move in this direction. I put this in a situation where almost always the association would have no say in who the third appointee on the arbitration panel is.

“Each party shall identify to the other and submit to the board of arbitration not more than three issues in dispute between the parties or such other number of issues which the parties may have mutually agreed to.” It puts management in the position of saying, “No, we are not going to mutually agree to any more than three.” If there are 55 outstanding issues, if that is the size of the impasse, we are going to end up with three on the arbitrator’s table. Then it goes on to say, “Any other unresolved issue shall remain as the collective agreement now sets it out.”

These are the kinds of recommendations that are just ripping the guts out of the free collective bargaining process. In addition to taking away the firefighter’s right to strike, to have some leverage in his bargaining process, we are also going to rip the guts out of the very basic process that we have left him with, a process that we all understand has to be fair and balanced if it is going to work.

Several of my colleagues have mentioned this kind of approach. The member for Riverdale (Mr. Reville) and the member for St. Andrew-St. Patrick have mentioned that not only does a process have to balanced but it also has to be perceived as being a balanced process. With these kinds of words and these kinds of approaches to labour relations between fire departments and their firefighters, we will not only have, as the member for St. Andrew-St.

Patrick said, firefighters who perceive that the process is an unfair and unbalanced one, but in fact if these kinds of recommendations were ever put in place in the act, we would have a process that was extremely one-sided, a process which the fire departments of this province could abuse severely. Not all of them would, but why would we as legislators even want to consider making the potential for that to happen possible.

I thank you, Mr. Speaker, for the opportunity to speak on this resolution and I will stand to oppose it.

Mr. Faubert: It is interesting to note that I respect the standing orders of the chamber and I shall not indicate that the arguments of the member for Riverdale are about as empty as his hat that is sitting on his desk over there. It is unfortunate that he gave his remarks and left because in my opening remarks, I pointed out that I did not want this construed as an attack on the fire service. It is a service I have nothing but the greatest admiration for on a man-to-man basis.

It is interesting to note that the member for Riverdale quotes the Association of Municipalities of Ontario as the sole source of wanting change. It is true that AMO has been one of the collective sources because it is an association that speaks on behalf of municipalities across this province, but it is not the sole source. They never mention the fact that the Ontario Association of Fire Chiefs wants these changes. They never quote the Ontario Association of Personnel Officers.

I would like to quote, if I might read into the record, a comment from David Cowie, who is supervisor of the Fire Underwriters Survey, Ontario Region, which is financed by the Insurance Bureau of Canada. “These management problems result from restraints that appear to be imposed in large part by labour arbitration rulings based on the firefighters’ collective agreement and an outdated, unsuitable provincial Fire Departments Act.” They have a subnote. “Amendments to the act have been under consideration for several years,” which is an understatement.

It is also interesting to note that the member for Riverdale introduces into the debate the unfortunate tone that typified past debates and one can never get past this tone. It is a direct and honest attempt to bring this forward so that these problems can be reconciled. It is interesting to note he also quotes the member for York South (Mr. B. Rae), who is here. I am just wondering if this is the same member who is a member of Jeffrey Sack Associates, a firm that handles arbitration on behalf of the firefighters. I am just asking the question.

Mr. B. Rae: Mr. Speaker, on a point of privilege: Since the member has raised a personal point in the House, the member should know that I was at one time associated with that firm but I have not been for over a year.

Mr. Faubert: OK, that is a point of information.

The member for Durham East had an interesting argument. For some reason he puts this down as being some strange conspiracy put forward by the government House leader. I can assure the member that there is no such conspiracy and no suggestion has been made that such a resolution be brought forward. It is not flying a kite. It is something I have worked on and I am concerned about. I am concerned that there has been no action in this field and that there has been no legislation forthcoming.

I should give one last comment to the member. If he were here, I would suggest that he should have been privy to the caucus debate on the matter. He will see that it is not an issue that is uncontroversial. Everyone understands the aspects of it; they understand both sides of it. They seem to also understand some of the issues that were brought up by the member for St. Andrew-St. Patrick, but he just raises the old doubts and arguments. He has actually put nothing new here.

I am surprised, though, that as a former parliamentary assistant to the Solicitor General, he would put forward those remarks because they seem to come from the department and they are the old ones that have always come forward from the department in defence of inaction by the Solicitor General’s department.

Basically, in summation, I believe this Legislature should find that the present Fire Departments Act is in need of amendments and is deficient in the following, and I would ask the Legislature to support the resolution before them for the following reasons:

There is nothing in the Fire Departments Act similar to the requirements of the Police Act that municipalities maintain an adequate level of fire protection services. That is an interesting aspect that is not in that act. It follows that, for the very obvious public policy reasons that dictate the statutory requirements of the Police Act, a similar provision should be included in the Fire Departments Act. The officers, to at least the rank of district chief, should be, by way of amendment to the act, provided with organizational privileges similar to those enjoyed by police officers under the Police Act.

I respect the comments of the member for Hamilton Mountain (Mr. Charlton), in deference to his background in the Ontario public service and the collective bargaining process experience he has, but I point out that it is the fire chiefs themselves who are asking for this, asking that they be separated from the bargaining unit.

I would point out that the Fire Departments Act provides for mandatory arbitration without any intermediate steps. It is the only piece of labour legislation in Ontario that does not provide for a series of impasse resolution procedures such as conciliation or mediation.

Finally, I would point out that criteria should be established by which arbitrators would be required to frame their awards; that is, to be cognizant of all economic factors within the municipality they are making a decision towards, as well as criteria such as those found in the Crown Employees Collective Bargaining Act,

an act established for all provincial employees.

Yes, it is a tough decision and there are some sensitivities about this decision -- indeed, it is a very controversial one -- but it is time for this Legislature to realize there are decisions that simply have to be made, not because they are simply politically expedient but because they are necessary.

TRADE WITH UNITED STATES

Mr. Morin-Strom moved resolution 5:

l. That the government or Legislature will not approve or implement any part of the agreement falling within provincial jurisdiction;

2. That the government or Legislature will not pass any laws or orders in council to comply with the agreement if the agreement is formally signed by the two federal governments and approved by their respective national legislative bodies; and

3. That the government and Legislature will pursue every constitutional, legal and political channel to express its opposition to this free trade agreement.

Mr. Morin-Strom: This, I believe, is a very important resolution and I very much appreciate the opportunity, on the first day of private members’ business, to present it before the Legislature and hopefully to come to a vote at 12 noon, a vote that I fully anticipate will give Ontario legislators a chance to take a stand one way or another as to how strongly we are going to fight this free trade agreement. I do not think there can be any doubt that this agreement is a bad deal. It is a bad deal for Canada, it is a bad deal for Ontario and it is up to us to stand up and take action on this agreement. It is a bad deal for the future of our children.

The Premier (Mr. Peterson) has talked at length about his opposition to the agreement but to this point we have not heard any specifics from the government of Ontario, other than in one area, that the government is going to take active steps to fight this agreement.

This motion does state that the government will take action not to approve or implement any specific items within provincial jurisdiction that might be part of this agreement; that the government or Legislature will not pass any additional laws or orders in council to comply with the agreement; and that the government and Legislature will pursue every constitutional, legal and political channel to express its opposition to the free trade agreement.

At the outset, l want to state that as an economic concept free trade could be of benefit to Canada and it has been a benefit in terms of our trade relationships with the United States and other countries around the world. The access, the opportunity to exchange products back and forth between countries obviously is a benefit and no one is questioning whether we should open up trade relationships or pursue further trade relationships with the United States or on the world scene.

The issue is the perspective of the government that has negotiated this agreement and the specifics in the agreement as they have resulted. In terms of an economic strategy, this particular initiative is not a solution to Canada’s unemployment level, to improving our way of life and our standards of living into the future. It does not address the need for an industrial strategy that would give us a more balanced, more diversified economy. We still need to look at how we can develop those kinds of competitive, strong industries in market niches that Canada can and should be pursuing.

We do not have a strategy from our federal government. I do not think we have a sufficient strategy from our provincial government in terms of encouraging such things as research and development, better education facilities, more relevant education and training, infrastructure to support the various areas of our country, infrastructure such as improved transportation links.

We certainly do not utilize in particular the people potential of our country. We have an unemployment rate that is far too high and as long as we do not pursue and have as our top priority a policy of full employment, we are misusing and underutilizing our most valuable resource and that is our people.

We could be using them, and we could look at other countries such as Japan, Austria, Sweden, other countries with advanced industrial economies that are utilizing their people resource, that have a concerted plan, that are working together, workers, companies and government, to ensure that their economies are running at as high a percentage of their capability as is possible. We have not been doing that and, as a result, we have people who are not contributing in areas where they could be contributing and want to contribute. As a country and as a province, we have to do something about that.

Canada’s trade with the United States is an open one. We have the largest two-way trading relationship in the world. There is no question that we have a comprehensive trade relationship with the United States. Canada is not losing in that trade relationship. We are very successful and why the federal government would want to embark on this initiative at a time when we were running a tremendous surplus in our trade, is beyond me and beyond the comprehension of many of the people of this country.

Sure, there are irritants and many specific industries have been facing various protectionist threats from the United States. Many companies have been running scared. However, the facts are that the trading relationship continues to grow between the two countries and we continue to be running one of the largest surpluses between any two trading nations in the world.

Why we would risk our position at a time of vulnerability is beyond me.

What are the benefits going to be in the resulting trade agreement? That is one of the most serious questions. We have seen giveaways, just to stay in the agreement, over the last two years by Brian Mulroney and the federal government. We have had giveaways on cruise missile testing, giveaways on foreign investment review, giveaways on the national energy program. We have just recently had the generic drug bill passed, which will cost consumers, particularly the elderly, considerable sums in the years to come. We lost on the shakes and shingles case. We lost on softwood lumber. We have just not stood up whatsoever to the Americans in our relationship.

In return, we now have a trade agreement that has been negotiated between the two countries but it has not accomplished even what some of the major industry interests have requested in terms of these negotiations. There is no dispute settlement mechanism. It does not provide for a fair trading relationship between the two countries. We are still subject to discriminatory US rules and laws on that trading relationship.

Even the winners, for example the steel industry, which is of so much importance to my home community, has been touted as one of the industries that would gain from an agreement with the US. However, the steel industry has received no exemption from antidumping or countervailing duty legislation. There has been no rollback of the current duty on stainless steel. There has been no agreement even to eliminate the restraint import quotas that are currently in effect on a voluntary basis between the United States and Canada.

The steel industry says it anticipates continuing to have to live within the 3.5 per cent quota of the US marketplace, a steel marketplace which is declining in size, and as a result has gained nothing in terms of its export potential. The only thing they can say for the agreement is that we have maintained the status quo.

The argument against so many of the opponents of this whole free trade initiative has been that we were the proponents of the status quo. In fact, it is now the supposed industrial winners who claim they are happy because they have been able to maintain their status quo. Meanwhile, in many other weaker industries that are not as competitive and will be subject to disadvantage in terms of tariffs dropping, we have put at risk many thousands of workers.

Our own government of Ontario study has recently come out and shown that potentially 400,000 workers across the province are threatened. This covers more than 50 industries just in Ontario alone. As well, our most important and our strongest industry, the auto industry, not included in those figures, is threatened in the long run.

Sure, we have a very competitive auto industry today, but that was put in place largely as a result of the auto pact negotiated 20 years ago, which has provided the protections to ensure that the auto companies would produce here in Canada. We do not have control of that industry because we do not own that industry. As a result, we have the protections that the auto industry has assured us it will produce vehicles in Canada up to the number it sells in Canada and will include a percentage content of Canadian value added in those vehicles.

Now the auto pact has been gutted, and it has been gutted because there will no longer be any penalty whatsoever for a company which does not meet those targets. Five or 10 years down the road, if the exchange rate changes, if the competitiveness of putting the production in an Ontario plant versus putting it in a Michigan plant changes as a result of that, we could be looking at a very different scenario than today, where the auto companies, profit-minded as they are, will look at taking off the production from the Ontario plant and putting it in where the low-cost plant will be some time in the future.

The only protection we have is the auto pact and the Canadian content requirements that are in it.

One of the most serious threats is the threat to regional development. This agreement does nothing to protect the long-standing Canadian interest in protecting regional interests and ensuring that those areas of the country which are farther away from the major population bases can receive stimulus, can receive special support from our country as a whole or from specific provinces and that we can generate a better way of life, a better economy, a better standard of living for people in the more remote areas of our country. Certainly, historically, we have done a far better job of that than the United States.

Even here in Ontario, northern Ontario continues to suffer with a much higher unemployment rate than the south. We have to have the opportunity to put stimulus into areas such as the north. What does a complete free trade agreement do? It gives the United States potentially complete access to our resources, but our resources are limited. They are being utilized up to their potential at this point. Our problem is getting as much value as possible out of those resources. We do not want to see those resources going out.

We do not want to see our forest products and our minerals going out in raw form to the US in massive quantities, depleting them beyond their sustainable yields in the longer term.

What we want to do is get jobs and get value and get finished products out of those resources. We have to have the right to insist that those resources be processed in the areas where they are coming out of the ground or coming out of the woods or utilizing our water resource for hydroelectric power or other uses as well in the areas where they are.

The Americans will never shut off access to our resources. They want our resources and, as a result, the protectionist threat has never been a threat to those resource-based regions such as northern Ontario. However, those areas have gained nothing from this agreement, and in fact it has put in question the possibility that incentives and programs put in place to support new industry in those areas will be subject to countervailing action in the US and punitive duties as a result.

The Premier of this province made a commitment during the election campaign, a commitment to stand up and fight a trade deal and in fact a clear commitment that there would be no trade deal if a number of conditions were not met. The Premier stated that if regional development programs were threatened, there would be no deal. There could be no deal if agricultural safeguards were no longer going to be permitted. There would be no deal if Canada gave up the right to screen foreign investments. There would be no deal if cultural safeguards could not be maintained.

He stated quite clearly that there would be no deal if there was not a binding dispute settlement mechanism. Finally, there would be no deal if the auto pact was gutted. The Premier stated that was his bottom line.

In fact, these areas have not been met in this agreement. It is imperative upon this government and this Legislature to take a clear stand now that the Premier’s commitment that no deal will happen will be the top priority of this Legislature.

At this point, I will relinquish the floor and reserve two minutes at the end.

Mr. Pollock: I was not really figuring on getting involved in this debate, but there are a few things I would like to put on the record in regard to this particular motion.

The motion mentions “a sellout of Canada’s sovereignty and independence.” I would certainly like the member for Sault Ste. Marie (Mr. Morin-Strom) to spell that out more specifically. I really do not know for sure what he means by a sellout of our sovereignty. I know that in Europe they joined and formed a common market and, as far as I am concerned, the fleur-de-lis is still flying over Paris and the Union Jack is still flying over London.

Mr. Wildman: It is the tricolour, for heaven’s sake. The fleur-de-lis went out with the Revolution.

Mr. Pollock: Anyway, I would certainly like the member to spell that out in the few minutes he has left in his wrapup and explain that.

As far as our independence is concerned, just what does he mean by our independence? How far do we carry our independence? One minute he mentions that he likes and wants to trade with the United States. I certainly do not believe that we are going to board up our borders. We will always be trading with the United States. I know over a period of years my father, who was a dairy farmer, has sold cattle to the Americans, and at that particular time we were glad to have that market in the United States.

In the recent election campaign there was no question that free trade was a real issue. I got calls continually about it in the election campaign, people voicing their concerns about what was going to happen to supply management, to the dairy industry and to the feather industry. People stated that they were very concerned that these markets would go away.

Well, I share that concern because I still have my dairy farm, but I want to put on the record that even though all this talk was going around, the price of number 1 quota in the supply management system stayed reasonably high. The feather industry also voiced its concerns and claimed that it could not begin to compete with the United States because of the big vertically integrated plants down in North Carolina. It claimed it could not compete.

I might state that, after the election, I called up a broiler producer and had a talk with him. This was not only after the election, it was after the free trade decision was announced. Well, he said he was still quite concerned, but he mentioned the fact that under the former agreement the Americans were allowed to take 6.2 per cent of the broiler industry, but that did not include such products as TV dinners, packaged dinners, cordon bleu and that sort of thing.

Under the new agreement, the Americans are allowed to ship in 7.5 per cent of that market. He is not sure whether, under the new agreement, TV dinners, cordon bleu and those packaged dinners are covered.

Mr. Wildman: Shouldn’t we wait until we get the final wording so we know?

Mr. Pollock: Well, if they are covered, then he said the deal basically, for his industry, is every bit as good as it was before.

Mr. Wildman: But we don’t know, do we?

Mr. Pollock: No, we don’t know; we have got to wait to see the final draft.

Mr. Wildman: Why don’t we wait for the final wording?

Mr. Pollock: Of course, you fellows put forward the motion saying that this is a poor deal, so the onus kind of falls on you in that respect.

Anyway, I might also mention that Brigid Pyke and delegates from the Ontario Federation of Agriculture have met with our caucus, and I am sure that they met with people from other caucuses. She said -- and this was after the free trade deal had been struck --

Mr. Wildman: They voted against it this week.

Mr. Pollock: Not the final draft but the original announcement, and she said she was very concerned about free trade even yet and she wanted to see the final draft, but she was not about to recommend that they tear up the deal.

Mr. Wildman: The OFA voted against it this week.

Mr. Pollock: Well, that might be the majority, but that was her opinion, anyway. That is what she told us, and here is a gentleman who was right there with us who verified it.

So those are a few things that I would want to put on the record, and on top of that, as far as Mr. Broadbent or Mr. Turner saying that they are going to tear up this agreement: sure, they might tear up the agreement; it would be another thing like the Joe Clark syndrome on gas. Joe Clark came out with that policy of putting 18 cents’ tax on a gallon of gas and, of course, the people turfed him out of office because of that, but it was only a matter of time before the new administration put a 37-cent tax on gas.

I firmly believe that if this free trade agreement is torn up, they will only bring out another agreement with a few more i’s dotted and a few more t’s crossed, and it will be basically the same.

I just wanted to put those comments on the record.

Mr. Ferraro: It is a pleasure for me to rise and give some comments in regard to the motion of my friend the member for Sault Ste. Marie. I know how deeply concerned all members of the House are, and in particular the member for Sault Ste. Marie, with whom I have had the pleasure of sitting on the standing committee on finance and economic affairs which dealt, by and large, with free trade for the last couple of years.

It is important that with such an important issue -- and it is indeed an important issue; it is probably the most important issue, certainly in my lifetime and that of most of the members of this House, that we are going to have to deal with, at least to date -- it is important that, while we cannot help but speak emotionally, we look at it from a factual point of view.

The most important point, I guess, as far as my government is concerned and we are clearly on the record as saying we are opposed to this deal, but indeed, we need a free trade agreement of some sort. What we have said unequivocally, in no uncertain terms, is that this deal, quite frankly, is not acceptable and stinks.

Why have we got this deal? Well, we have got this deal because, notwithstanding the fact that Prime Minister Mulroney was against the idea of free trade prior to the federal election in light of the fact that we have had a lot of protectionist bills presented, which affect, of course, our different sectors as a country and as a province, and that the threat of the US trade omnibus bill lingers, and hundreds of other protectionist bills, we do need an agreement of some sort.

Unlike my friends from the New Democratic Party, who believe we can deal with disputes as they arise, my party believes, and I think it is safe to say the Conservative Party believes, that we do need to talk to them, to have some negotiation, to have a contract. But not this one.

Well, what is bad about this one? The most important part, the heart and soul of any agreement -- the Premier and the Minister of Industry, Trade and Technology (Mr. Kwinter) have said this on a number of occasions; most politicians have said it -- is that we need a dispute settlement mechanism. If we did not have the US launching all these countervail and antidumping laws, we would not have any problem; but the fact remains, we do. The present system of going to the international trade courts and subsequently going into the courts is too long and costly.

We have experienced that in Ontario with the steel dispute that cost us well over $1 million and a lot of time and anxiety. So we need a better system.

What did we get? This heart and soul that Mr. Reisman and the federal government have come out with, quite frankly, is nothing but a fraud. Peter Murphy, the chief US negotiator, in the spring indicated in a memo that was leaked to the public that the United States had to come up with some form of dispute settlement mechanism to save face for the Canadians in order for them to get it signed. Peter Murphy said that.

Now, that is what we are working with from day one: “We have to save face for the Canadians.” It is not: “We need a legitimate dispute settlement mechanism to solve all this aggravation, to make the relationship better.” And as a province, we do trade 90 per cent of everything we export with the United States. “We have to save face.”

So we have got a panel that is going to decide the issues on the basis of whether or not the accusation, be it from Canada or the US, conforms to that particular country’s legislation. That is all it does. It has no teeth whatsoever. It says: “Yes, you can do that according to your laws, United States,” or “No, you cannot.” That is it. If it does not conform, the US Congress can still change the legislation. Well, that is wonderful. It is useless. There are no teeth, and that is extremely sad.

So we do not have secure access, not at all. This agreement, I am told by the experts, if you will, in the ministry, states that of the five US antitrade, antidumping laws that deal with Canada, four are completely exempt and one is only incidentally changed, so the status quo remains.

Now, what do we talk about? Let us talk about the energy thing. The energy situation now is -- and I might point out that two days before, I think it was October 4 that the deal as we presently know it was presented -- two days before it was presented to the provinces and the public the premiers did not know the scope of the oil pricing agreement.

So we have this cloud of mystery, and all of a sudden what they are saying is -- and what they are saying, quite frankly, is alarming and I resent it not only as a politician but as a Canadian: “Now, Canada, you have to charge world prices for your oil.” The premise, of course, is that Canada is self-sufficient in gas and oil and the United States is not. What that means is -- and I heard the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. B. Rae) on TV and I agree with him entirely -- you have a continental oil pricing agreement where you, as a sovereign country, cannot regulate your own price, and it is Canada’s resource.

If you want to sell oil more cheaply to your own countrymen, you can no longer do it. The fat cats sitting around a table in New York or wherever are going to regulate the price. That is disgusting.

Yesterday, a Senator in the United States, quoted in the Toronto Star, said, “Canadian Oil Request ‘Insults Sovereignty’ US Legislator Says”:

“Canada’s demand that the United States halt oil development near the Yukon border is an insult, an American congressman has charged.

“The move ‘is an affront to the sovereign right of the United States to determine our own energy and national security interests.’”

There is an obvious double standard on this continent. It is OK for the United States to do what it wants, but not Canada. That is disgusting.

I can remember going down to Washington, and Congressman Dingell, I believe, a very important congressman down there, put his arm around the chairman of our committee and said -- in camera, of course -- “Look, son, what we Americans really want is a fair advantage.” There is more truth to that than rumour.

Foreign investment: Michel Côté told me they got rid of the Foreign Investment Review Agency, it was bad -- even though I think 97 per cent of everything FIRA looked at was approved. What they have got is Investment Canada. At that time they looked at 2,200 proposals to buy in Canada. None were rejected. That is good; I am not against investment. What we have in this deal is an arrangement, if it goes through in this format, that by 1993, of 7,000 corporations, 6,500 can be acquired by the Americans and we cannot do a doggone thing about it.

Again, the Leader of the Opposition and, indeed, the Premier and the minister have said that, basically, if you lose economic control of your country -- and you would, and that is the worst- case scenario, I admit -- then indeed you do lose control of your country. So sovereignty is at risk.

I want to talk about the timing. The deals presented on October 4 were promised a final text within two weeks. We are told as of today that we may get it in mid-December. We as a country have to have it approved by January 2, because that is the date the President of the United States has to sign it, it is according to the trade bill that he got approval to negotiate this deal.

We are being rushed. We do not have the final text, and that is disgraceful on such an important issue, absolutely disgraceful. One of the scenarios being presented here is, “Well, Canadians, you do not have to know;” and they do not know. Some 81 per cent of Canadians do not know what the deal is all about. That is unfortunate. Yet we have to make a decision by January 2, and we will not get the text until mid-December. That is ridiculous.

In conclusion, I have no problem with the first two clauses of the private member’s resolution. The third one, however, does give me a problem. It says quite blatantly: “That the government and Legislature will pursue every constitutional, legal and political channel to express its opposition to this free trade agreement.”

Firstly, we do not know what this agreement is. We will not get it for two weeks.

Secondly, we much acknowledge and accept -- and we do, and obviously the opposition does not -- the inalienable right of the federal government to negotiate this contract. Yes, the Premier came out during the election with a number of clauses that said, “If this is not protected, then we cannot support it.”

In the deal presented today, the only area of provincial jurisdiction is the wine area; 97 per cent of it is totally in the federal jurisdiction. The Premier has come out and said, without hesitation: “We are not going to support that. The degree of subsidy reduction in the first two years is too punitive.” On the opposite side of the fence we have said, “We are going to go to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and pursue our rights in that regard.”

I say with respect, to the opposition in particular, it would be counterproductive for this Premier, who has fought so hard to make the Meech Lake agreement strong, to build this country, then to turn around and say, “We are going to do everything we possibly can to arbitrarily negate this deal,” without knowing the deal, without saying that we are going to get rid of our cost-sharing agreements, without saying that we are not affected by any procurement policy.

I think it would be inappropriate for this government, without seeing the final context, to suggest that we are going to oppose it at this point.

Mr. B. Rae: I am delighted to participate in this private members’ hour and to comment on the speech that the member for Guelph (Mr. Ferraro) has just given. It really is astonishing because, first of all, the member states quite falsely -- I am sure inadvertently, but quite falsely -- that it is the position of the New Democratic Party that there should be no understanding or agreement of any kind reached between Canada and the United States.

It is quite interesting that it was our federal member for Essex-Windsor, the equivalent riding of Windsor-Riverside, Steven Langdon, who is our trade critic, who was the first federal member to put forward the idea several years ago that what was needed between Canada and the United States was a commission that had the capacity to bind and to deal with disputes as they arose, and that what we needed was some way of resolving disputes as they arose so that industries were not continually blindsided on either side of the border.

So in fact, it is the New Democratic Party, if I can say so, that has consistently focused on what really is, I think, a legitimate goal of public policy in this regard, and that is that there should be some understanding as to how we arrive at the settlement of disputes.

Let me also say to the member that I think it is an utter fantasy, as I have been saying for a number of years, for Canadians to expect complete, unlimited, secure access to the United States market. Why would we expect the American Congress to give us access that we do not want to give them? Why would we expect any other sovereign country to give us absolutely untrammelled access, or completely secure access, as it is stated, to another sovereign country’s market? It is a fantasy.

I can say that if, indeed, that is the Liberal Party’s pursuit, then it should be no surprise to anyone in the House that the Americans would turn around and say, “If you want to have more secure access to our market, and if, indeed, you want to have absolutely secure access to our market, there will be a price to pay.”

I think it is fair to say that the Liberal Party’s position on this question is an utter fantasy, because they come in and say: “We are all in favour of free trade. It is just this particular deal that we do not like.” It is no wonder that there is a sense of disrespect, which I think is shared both by us as the official opposition and by members of the third party, the Conservative Party, the third party.

Mr. Callahan: Say it again. Say it a third time.

Mr. B. Rae: It has a certain ring about it; I have been listening. I have been on the other end of this one for so long, I have to get it out of my system. It will not last forever, but believe me, I have been down in that corner for so long, federally and provincially, it is just such a delight to not be there, even for a brief moment.

I think there is a certain degree of respect between ourselves, certainly between the former Leader of the Opposition, Mr. Grossman, and me. We had many meetings in which we used to talk about policy, which I think is a reasonable way to conduct business, and we used to comment on the fact that even though we disagreed emphatically on the question, even though we had a very different point of view about what was in Canada’s interests and what was practical, we had an equal sense, I do not mind saying, of bewilderment and derision about the position that has been expressed by the Liberal Party in this regard.

The Liberal Party is saying it is all in favour of free trade, it is all in favour of absolutely secure access to the American market, but it does not want to sign an actual agreement that might have the effect of doing that because it would mean giving up too much. That is the position of the Liberal Party.

Mr. Callahan: That is pretty good advice, I would say.

Mr. B. Rae: Well, it has obviously been politically -- the member for Brampton South (Mr. Callahan), who is known, I gather, in legal circles as the keys to the Don Jail, for reasons that I cannot quite understand; but nevertheless I have been told this is his nickname.

Mr. Callahan: Phil must have given you that one.

Mr. B. Rae: He says it is obviously a very successful strategy, and I do not think there is any question.

Here we are, we are 19 hearty souls, as of today. Across the way we have a very large number of people, and 16 people here to my left in the third party, the Conservative Party.

There is no question that it has been a successful strategy, but it is not a strategy that is based on any sense of integrity, either political or intellectual. You cannot have secure access to somebody else’s market, particularly when their market is 10 times larger than your own, without that somebody else demanding something quite extraordinary in return, and that is what this deal is all about. That is exactly what this deal is all about.

What makes it a peculiarly bad deal is that we did not get very good access and secure access to the market, and in exchange for not getting that access, we still gave up an awful lot.

I have talked to the House many times on how I think the negotiating strategy federally has been wrong, even in terms of what they were trying to achieve as having been ill-conceived and ill-managed. I think the response from the provincial government has been politically easy, politically attractive, but in fact has not achieved the result which it claims it wants.

Now what we are saying, now that we have the bad deal -- which we told the government it was going to get and about which the Premier said, “Don’t ask me to say anything about this deal, because I don’t know what is in it.” So he said: “I’m going to play it cool all the way through these negotiations. I’m not going to insist on things being off the table, I’m not going to make a fuss about things not being discussed before they are there. I might state it publicly, but I’m not going to make it a condition for my involvement in the prenegotiation period, because I do not want to prejudice what the results of the negotiation might be.”

The result of that laid-back strategy, where public posture was not matched in any way, shape or form by a private willingness to wield some kind of leverage, has been a deal which is a bad deal.

I think the Premier of this province shares some responsibility for the fact that the deal is as bad as it is. I know there are many who will see that as simply a partisan point, but I really believe it. I really believe that the strategy that has been followed by the provincial government has not been an effective one.

If they were genuinely interested in stopping this deal, it is something that could have been stopped some time ago, if the decision had been made at the provincial level that this deal was going to be of a kind that the government of Ontario could not conceivably support and therefore the government of Ontario two years ago was going to start to move all of its powers, legal and constitutional and political, in order to stop the bargaining from taking place in a way that would bargain away Canada’s sovereignty and Canada’s economic interests.

I believe the Premier has left it awfully late. I think it is fair to say, and again it is something I feel very strongly, it is much more difficult to unravel a bad deal, precisely because it is a deal that is signed between two parties, than it is to stop a deal before it starts. Now we are in the business, frankly, of having to unravel a deal that is not in Canada’s interests and that is very certainly not in the interests of the people of Ontario.

We have been pressing for some months now, and some days now in this House since the recall of the House, to get this government to tell us precisely what it is going to do to stop the deal. They say: “Well, all of a sudden we discovered that the deal was not in our jurisdiction. We suddenly discovered that it was in federal jurisdiction.”

I would like to ask the Liberal members and the Premier -- who is not here, he is never here for debates: when in the history of this country has the auto pact been a subject of provincial jurisdiction? It was not during the election campaign, and yet it was one of the conditions which the Premier set.

When has investment been entirely within provincial jurisdiction? Never. It was not during the election, and yet that was a condition he set. That was a condition he made.

He did not go down to Windsor and say, “I’m going to do everything within provincial jurisdiction to stop this deal.” He went down to Windsor and he said, “There can be no deal if it guts the auto pact.”

Yet once he is elected with this mammoth majority which he has, he turns around and says, “Well, there really isn’t very much I can do about the auto pact, except to say that I’m very concerned about this deal.”

One might well ask, what was the election about? I will tell you what the election was about. The election was about the Liberal Party getting a majority so it would not have to do the things that it would have had to do if the minority parliament had been allowed to continue.

That is true. It is true on free trade and it is true on Meech Lake. That was the real David Peterson agenda. That is the real Liberal Party agenda. The real Liberal Party agenda was to get itself a majority so it would not have to be accountable to the people of this province on free trade or on Meech Lake. We have seen it clearly. We have seen that unfolding. There is a new conservative majority over there and that is what this election was all about.

Mr. Sterling: I did not realize we were over there. The Conservatives in fact had --

Mr. B. Rae: They are the new conservatives. You are the old Conservatives.

Mr. Sterling: We are the old Conservatives.

I was happy to hear the leader of the official opposition concede the next election, that we are at least going to be the official opposition next time.

Mr. B. Rae: You are going to be here and we are going to be over there. It is rotation. It goes this way.

Mr. Sterling: Oh, the NDP is going to be over there. Okay. At least we get one step up. I said less than that in a TV interview and I found I had conceded an election four years in advance.

At any rate, I want to make a few comments with regard to this resolution. I find it ironic that we have the member for Guelph stand up and say: “This deal, the free trade agreement, the free trade debate, needs more time and more discussion. We need more detail before we make a decision on what we are going to do.”

Yet, on the other hand, when we talk about the Meech Lake accord, a matter dealing with the Constitution of Canada, a document which will live with us in this country for years and years to come, we had a Premier sit in a room and not have the guts to walk outside of that room before cutting a deal, and he did so in a matter of hours. He did so without consulting the people in this Legislature or consulting the people of Ontario. He cut a deal which, in my view, is going to be very detrimental to this country. I hope to have more to say about that this afternoon.

We have also found out in the last few days that the Premier himself is not going to accept any amendments to the Meech Lake accord. He will not listen to discussion. We are going to have a committee that is going to study this matter for the next two, three, four months, and the discussion is going to go for naught. Why bother discussing it?

The other matter I find very much in conflict in the Liberal government’s argument is the whole argument with relation to the dispute resolution mechanism and its argument about sovereignty and independence. When a country enters into a trade agreement, be it a multilateral trade agreement or a bilateral trade agreement, that country does give up some of its prerogatives to make trade policies.

It either agrees with one other country, as in the free trade agreement with the United States, that it will not take certain actions in its law or will amend its law in such a manner that it will drop barriers as between them; or, in multilateral negotiations, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade negotiations, we agree with a number of other countries that we will give away the right to make trade law in Canada so that we can have access to other countries’ markets.

Now the Liberals, on the one hand, make the argument that the dispute resolution mechanism does not allow the binational panel, which is made up of Canadians and Americans, to change trade law in the United States and vice versa. They make the argument that they do not, and they do not have it under this agreement. But the Liberals argue they want them to have that right.

Under that particular assumption, and I see the nods of the various Liberals, etc., the binational panel would then have the right to change energy policy in this country so that we could not offer energy at a lower price to domestic consumers than to Americans; it would have to be one price. That would be at market price and that would be available to not only Canadians but Americans. Yet in the very selfsame speech the member for Guelph gave to this Legislature a few moments ago, he wanted to make trade policy with regard to energy pricing.

He wanted to have the right to give domestic consumers lower energy costs than Americans. That is not what he is arguing for in terms of the dispute resolution mechanism. He cannot have it both ways.

The other matter I would like to talk to is the threat to these particular jobs that many people have talked about in various different reports. The Ministry of Industry, Trade and Technology put out a report saying that 400,000 jobs would be in jeopardy. But when you go into the study, you find that most of those jobs are in jeopardy anyway. They are not in jeopardy from trading with the United States; they are in jeopardy when trading with, for the most part, Pacific Rim countries.

The whole particular attitude of this government in dealing with this matter and producing reports has been a farce. It produced a report dealing with the dispute resolution mechanism, drawn up by some very noted lawyers here in Toronto. The

summary of the report, according to the government, was that the dispute resolution mechanism was of no significance. Yet we hear today that another business group has had another noted law firm look at the dispute resolution mechanism and say it is the toughest that has been in place in any trading between two countries. What is one to believe?

Instead of trying to present the Canadian public, the Ontario public, with a reasonable amount of information so they can draw a reasonable conclusion, this government has undertaken a record of producing propaganda. Quite frankly, it has been silly propaganda.

I would like to say one more thing with regard to the Meech Lake accord and the free trade issue. I think Canadians are confused as to who has the right to decide whether this country enters into a free trade agreement or it does not. That confusion is exacerbated by the role of our Premier, who has gone around this country and other countries and stated his opposition to this particular agreement.

If one were looking at it from the point of view of an American or a European -- they must really be laughing at Canada. On the one hand, we have the Prime Minister of our country, the man who is supposed to be entrusted with taking on the role of making trade treaties with other countries, who in most countries has the right to make those particular decisions. On the other hand, we have a Premier who is going around to those selfsame countries and saying: “We are going to oppose it. We are going to stop it. We are going to do everything we can to stop it.”

In terms of the Meech Lake accord, what this Premier has done is to further weaken the hand of our central power to deal on issues such as this. As I say, I will be trying to speak at greater length to the Meech Lake accord this afternoon.

I had the privilege of going to a meeting with a number of General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade ambassadors with the Premier. There must have been a great deal of confusion on the part of those ambassadors about the remarks of our Premier, because our Premier was expressing his concern over the bilateral agreement. They must have been wondering and saying, “Who has the right to make these decisions in Canada?” Therefore, I think it is important that the premiers of our country take a constructive and active role in this debate, but that they be forthright in what they are doing.

During our recent election campaign, we found that this Premier was not forthright in how he and his party presented their platform to the Ontario public. They left the impression that the Premier of Ontario could stop this deal if he thought it was bad.

He says he thinks the deal is bad. Now I think he has an obligation to deliver on that promise to the Ontario public. I oppose him on his view that the deal is bad, but I tell the members that he has not dealt fairly with the public on this issue.

Mr. D. R. Cooke: First, I may say to the member for Carleton (Mr. Sterling) I am somewhat surprised he would take a look at the trade agreement and the dispute settlement mechanism in that manner. We have just been talking about countervail, we have just been talking about anti-dumping, and those are the only areas where we were seriously concerned about dispute settlement mechanisms and were asking for an agreement that would be negotiated in that manner.

Mr. Sterling: You talked about trade law too.

Mr. D. R. Cooke: All right. We are asking for an agreement that would be negotiated in that manner, not negotiated the way the Mulroney government might end up doing so.

Second and more important -- and I have only a short period of time -- in so far as the first two demands are concerned, this resolution essentially is reasonable and I can support it. The third demand in the resolution is difficult to support because of the words “every constitutional, legal and political channel” and “this free trade agreement.”

Surely the member for Sault Ste. Marie is not saying to us that we should throw away our negotiations on day care that the Minister of Community and Social Services (Mr. Sweeney) is involved in at the present time. Surely we should not be seriously doing that at this stage in the game.

Surely he is not saying that we should be abrogating our discussions on tax reform that are going on between the Treasurer (Mr. R. F. Nixon) and the federal government. Surely we should not be doing that at this stage of the game.

To what extent does the official opposition seriously wish to have us put our heads in the sand? That is basically what they are asking us to do.

The position of this party and this government has been very clear. It has been clear to the public right from the beginning that this was something that was probably going to end up, and going to have to end up, in the Supreme Court of Canada.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Mr. D. R. Cooke: The official opposition was saying basically the same things during the election campaign. They are just jealous now because they were not being listened to.

The fact of the matter is that we did not like the way the negotiations were going. We made that clear in September. We do not like the results that came out. We have made that clear since October.

I have not heard anything from any government member to the effect that we intend to do anything that is co-operative in so far as carrying out these negotiations and carrying out this agreement is concerned, but I would admonish the government that it should continue to carry out those things which provide good government for the province and for the people of Ontario, regardless of whether or not it is helpful or a hindrance to the free trade negotiations.

Mr. Morin-Strom: I find it amazing that the Liberals would stand up in favour of most of this resolution, and then when it comes to the crunch in terms of trying to do something about fighting this agreement, which they say is not a good agreement, they say they are not going to pursue every constitutional, legal and political channel to express their opposition to it. The Liberals again want to be all talk and no action whatsoever on this agreement.

This agreement is a bad one for Canada. It does not give us the binding dispute settlement mechanism. It is a bad one for agriculture, for our farming community. It is a serious threat to regional development. It guts the auto pact, our most important industry in this province. It takes away the right to establish an effective industrial strategy for Canada in the longer term.

It is time for all of us to stand up for our province, for our individual constituencies and for the people whom this agreement threatens in the longer term.

I believe in Canada. We have a great country. Let us keep it that way and do everything we can to fight this bad deal.

FIRE DEPARTMENTS

The House divided on Mr. Faubert’s motion of resolution 3, which was negatived on the following vote:

Ayes

Callahan, Dietsch, Elliot, Faubert, Ferraro, Fulton, Jackson, Johnson, J. M., Mahoney, Neumann, Pollock, Reycraft, Sola, Velshi.

Nays

Adams, Allen, Ballinger, Breaugh, Brown, Bryden, Carrothers, Charlton, Cleary, Cooke, D. R., Cooke, D. S., Cureatz, Fleet, Harris. Johnston, R. F., Kanter, Laughren, LeBourdais. Leone, Lipsett, MacDonald, Mackenzie, Mancini, Martel, McLean, Miller, Morin-Strom, Nicholas, Nixon, J. B., Owen, Philip, E., Rae, B., Reville, Roberts, Sterling, Stoner, Sullivan, Swart, Tatham, Ward, Wildman.

Ayes 14; nays 41.

TRADE WITH UNITED STATES

The House divided on Mr. Morin-Strom’s motion of resolution 5, which was negatived on the following vote:

Ayes

Allen, Breaugh, Bryden, Charlton, Cooke, D. S., Grier, Johnston, R. F., Laughren, Mackenzie, Martel, Morin-Strom, Philip, E., Rae, B., Reville, Swart, Wildman.

Nays

Adams, Ballinger, Brown, Callahan, Carrothers, Cleary, Cooke, D. R., Cureatz, Daigeler, Dietsch, Elliot, Faubert, Ferraro, Fleet, Fulton, Harris, Jackson, Johnson, J. M., LeBourdais, Leone, Lipsett, MacDonald, Mahoney, Mancini, McClelland, McGuinty, McLean, Miller, Neumann, Nicholas, Nixon, J. B., Owen, Pelissero, Pollock, Reycraft, Roberts, Smith, D. W., Sola, Sterling, Stoner, Sullivan, Tatham, Velshi, Ward.

Ayes 16; nays 44.

The House recessed at 12:17 p.m.

AFTERNOON SITTING

The House resumed at 1:30 p.m.

MEMBERS’ STATEMENTS

QUEEN ELIZABETH WAY

Mr. Mackenzie: I think it would be useful to underline for members of the House, the government, and certainly the Ministry of Transportation, a very serious problem, one that has some real, impending disasters attached to it. I am talking simply about the congestion on the Queen Elizabeth Way.

Anybody who drives regularly on that stretch from Hamilton to Toronto will know that if you leave at eight o’clock, as I did this morning, on a good day it takes an hour and a half to get here. If you do not leave before six, if you leave between six and eight, you can be anywhere up to two hours or better on that stretch of the highway.

When you take a look at the congestion along there, the way people speed, the brief open areas of that particular highway, the kind of fumes we are spewing out into the atmosphere, the costs that are involved to motorists and others in terms of stop-and-start driving, the number of accidents that are a regular occurrence -- l doubt there is a day without several accidents along that highway -- and the number of major accidents we have, given inclement weather, it should underline very clearly that the highway has reached the maximum of its potential in terms of traffic.

With the heavy trucks and the cars on it, accidents can be a real disaster, and some of them have been over the last year or two. I am not sure of all the answers, but it seems to me it makes an excellent case for stepping up the agenda we have before us in terms of the rapid transit system between Hamilton and Toronto as one of the means of taking some pressure off that highway.

HOSPITAL FUNDING

Mr. McLean: My statement is directed to the Minister of Tourism and Recreation (Mr. O’Neil). Approximately four months ago, I alerted the minister’s predecessor about the increasing number of hospitals in Ontario, including Orillia Soldiers’ Memorial Hospital in my riding of Simcoe East, that are seeking government funding for expanded or completely new health care facilities.

The minister will recall that when my party was in power, we approved $200 million in the spring of 1985 alone for hospital capital projects. The list of required hospital capital construction projects has continued to grow at an alarming rate over the past two years.

We in Ontario need expanded or new hospitals. That means creative new methods for providing hospital capital funding must be devised for the growing demand. I urge the minister, as I did his predecessor in this Legislature last June, to meet with Ontario Lottery Corp. officials to devise a province-wide lottery aimed at generating funds exclusively for hospital construction projects.

The Irish Sweepstakes was quite successful for that purpose, and I firmly believe the success and popularity of existing lotteries in Ontario and throughout the rest of Canada are a good indication that the people of this province would support a new lottery, especially when they know that all proceeds would be used for expanded or new hospital construction projects in their own communities.

I urge the minister to vigorously pursue the development and promotion of a new hospital lottery program.

YULI EDELSTEIN

Mr. Offer: As members are aware, there is an all-party Ontario Legislature Committee for Soviet Jewry. The purpose of this committee is to bring to the attention of the public the plight of those Jews living in the Soviet Union.

As co-chairmen of this committee, I and my colleagues the member for Hamilton West (Mr. Allen), the member for Markham (Mr. Cousens) and in previous years the member for Beaches-Woodbine (Ms. Bryden) have added our voices with many others in decrying the deprivation of the most basic of human rights and freedoms accorded to the Soviet Jews.

Last March, our committee met with the relatives of one Soviet Jew, Yuli Edelstein. At that time we were informed of his plight, of his imprisonment, and of he and his wife not being permitted to emigrate from the Soviet Union. Our committee, indeed the collective voice of this Legislature, indicated to the Soviet authorities our awareness of the issue and the oppressive interference of the Soviet government, and requested their release.

It is with great pleasure today that I am able to introduce to the members Yuli Edelstein, released with his wife from the Soviet Union.

[Applause]

Mr. Allen: It is with great pleasure that I stand to represent our party and to express our great pleasure that Yuli Edelstein is with us in this Legislature this afternoon.

As a Hebrew teacher and mathematician of the Soviet Union, who is among the many refuseniks who have so boldly and bravely stood up over the years in the face of much persecution of the people of their religious belief in the Soviet Union and who paid a significant penalty for that in the form of detention, restraint, harassment and what have you, it is certainly a great honour and a great delight for us to have him here with us today, freed from all that difficulty.

We are always honoured by the presence of those who come to us from such circumstances of great suffering and persecution. They are a great example to us, who endure such lesser travails for the things we stand for in our country, and we welcome them. We are glad that Dr. Edelstein is settled in Israel with his family.

We hope this is yet one more example of a growing stream of movement of the refuseniks out of the Soviet Union but, more hopefully, I think we all would wish, of a greater liberty of expression and a freedom of religious belief and practice that will come to characterize that country in future.

Mr. Sterling: I would like to associate our political party with the remarks made by both my colleagues with regard to Dr. Edelstein being with us today. I think every one of us has written letters on behalf of many people who have been seeking freedom from Russia. I am not quite sure whether I wrote a letter on behalf of Dr. Edelstein, but I may very well have, because I do co-operate, as many members of our party do, with Amnesty International in putting one more voice towards the whole principle of releasing people like Dr. Edelstein from the Soviet Union.

We are pleased that he is with us. We are pleased that you have gained your freedom, and we will be pleased to help many of your colleagues from the Soviet Union in the future.

RENTAL ACCOMMODATION

Mr. Owen: A critical housing shortage exists across the province, and it can be found in the riding of Simcoe Centre as well. Up until now, the city of Barrie has seen only 67 units built and occupied under the present programs. However, by this time next year Barrie should see 170 new units under construction, under the auspices of municipal nonprofit and air force veteran organizations.

We have waiting lists of several hundreds, but this construction should start to address the problem. During their proposal call in January, it is anticipated that an application will be made for another 100 nonprofit units.

Under Project 3000, 15 units of special needs for mental health and mentally retarded have been approved. Under the convert-to-rent program, 40 units of student housing have been developed and another 15 units are scheduled for 1988.

Under the rent supplement program, we have about 40 units of family housing in new subdivisions and a further 50 units under a conventional apartment program. The town of Bradford has no Ontario Housing Corp. projects under way, but because of its rapidly growing population, I have met with Bradford council and the Lions Club to pursue a study and likely building program there.

In recent days, opposition members have criticized the Minister of Housing (Ms. Hošek) for a surplus of $50 million unspent. The finger of criticism should be levelled at those opposition members who have failed to take advantage of these funds. Their duties are more than verbal jewels in this chamber and should extend to bringing programs of assistance to those in need in their tidings. Criticize the minister if the programs are not there, but let them criticize themselves and hang their heads in shame if they have not acted.

AUTOMOBILE INSURANCE

Mr. Swart: I hope the Minister of Financial Institutions (Mr. R. F. Nixon), or perhaps he should more appropriately be called the minister responsible to the insurance industry, has noted that the stream of cases of Ontarians who are abused by the private insurers, which I receive and bring to the attention of this House, has not slowed since the election. This in spite of the minister’s assurances and those of the superintendent of insurance that the deathbed conversion of the insurance industry is complete.

Today I relate the case of Patrick Bensen of Fenelon Falls. Last June, Mr. Bensen renewed his automobile insurance for one year and paid a premium of $831. In September, he received a notice for an additional premium of $525 because, during a check, the insurer had found that Mr. Bensen had lost three demerit points on his driver’s licence in late 1986. He has no other points against him.

Of course, even the western plans penalize people who lose demerit points, but not for the first loss of points and not at $525. He would pay no surcharge in Manitoba for those three points. If he lost another three, he would pay a surcharge on his driver’s licence of perhaps $100.

Mr. Bensen’s insurance company is called Economical Mutual Insurance Co. Economical Mutual, however, might consider changing its name --

Mr. Speaker: The member’s time has now expired.

Mr. Swart: -- although I am sure the company finds the insurance business economical and also --

Mr. Speaker: Order.

STATEMENTS BY THE MINISTRY

OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND SAFETY

Hon. Mr. Sorbara: Last night, senior ministry officials, representatives of McDonnell Douglas of Canada Ltd. and representatives of the Canadian Auto Workers union, along with myself, met from 11:45 p.m. until 3 o’clock in the morning in an effort to resolve the dispute over payment of wages to workers involved in work refusals.

That dispute has now been resolved.

An understanding was reached by the parties, providing that all workers who refused to work for health and safety reasons will be paid full wages effective from Wednesday, November 18, when the first refusals occurred.

The meeting also produced an understanding between the company and the union on two major issues of concern to the workers: health and safety training and the right to consult a physician of their own choice.

The understanding provides that every worker who requires additional training in health and safety matters will be assured of that training as a result of a comprehensive union-company initiative. In addition, all workers involved in ongoing medical surveillance programs will receive up to two hours’ pay per visit to a physician of his or her choice.

As a result of this new understanding, the number of teams investigating work refusals has been increased to 10 from three, a step that should speed up the investigation process and help to address the concerns of the workers about their health and safety.

The understanding also goes a long way towards resolving the very serious concern of workers about the health and safety conditions of the plant. It is my expectation that once the investigations are completed and the conditions of the understanding are met, the workers will be able to resume working with the knowledge that their work environment meets the standards required by law.

I want to take this opportunity as well to inform the House that the Ministry of Labour officials, in conjunction with solicitors from the Ministry of the Attorney General, are continuing to review evidence regarding the initiation of prosecutions, should they prove warranted.

The primary objective of the Ministry of Labour and of myself as the Minister of Labour is to ensure that all workers in Ontario are free to exercise their right to work in a safe environment.

TRANSFER PAYMENTS

Hon. Mr. Ward: It is my pleasure to make available to honourable members today additional information on the 1988 grants for elementary and secondary education.

As my colleague the Treasurer (Mr. R. F. Nixon) has announced, the Ontario government will increase operating grants to school boards by 6.8 per cent in 1988. This increase will build the government’s total contribution to the operation of Ontario’s elementary and secondary schools to $3,841,400,000.

During the recent summer election campaign, we pledged to dedicate new funds to important new initiatives in education. That commitment formed an integral part of our throne speech three weeks ago.

Today I am proud to announce that the government’s total contribution includes an enrichment of $61.8 million in 1988 as the first instalment of a three-year phase-in of the funding commitments for education established in the throne speech.

For the four-month period running from September to December 1988, we will provide $22.6 million as the first instalment of a three-year program that will reduce class sizes in grades 1 and 2. The proportionate amount for the remainder of the 1988-1989 school year will be reflected in the 1989 general legislative grants. This allocation is the first step in our program to reduce class sizes to an average of 20 students per teacher in those two primary grades.

To embark on further commitments for education established in the throne speech, l am today dedicating $10.4 million to the purchase of computer hardware for our children and $3 million for computer software. These funds will be available to school boards in the one-year period beginning January 1, 1988.

For the year beginning January 1, 1988, my ministry will make available $16.8 million for the purchase of new textbooks. At the same time, we will also make available $6 million for other learning materials.

To further realize our throne speech commitments, I am pleased to add that my ministry will make available $3 million to introduce new science programs for the intermediate division.

These grants for computer technology, textbooks and learning materials and intermediate science are also only the first portion of a three-year phase-in program.

These new commitments are in addition to an increase in the base operating grants to school boards of 4.5 per cent. That increase brings the base operating grant allocation to $3,586,000,000 next year.

This government has established a commitment to complete the extension of the separate school system in 1988. To fully that commitment, we are providing an additional $21.8 million in operating grants. When added to the 1987 allocation of $163.5 million and increased by 4.5 per cent, these grants bring the total allocation for separate school extension to $193.6 million.

These combined increases demonstrate this government’s intention to make the education of our children a priority. I am especially pleased that we are allocating funds that will allow us to place renewed emphasis on the early years of our children’s education, years that are critical to the development of our children.

The government of Ontario is confident that the total 1988 allocation for elementary and secondary education will provide school boards with the provincial resources to help maintain and improve the high-quality education that the people of this province expect and that our children deserve.

RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT

Hon. Mr. Kwinter: I am pleased to make available to the Legislature a report that is also being released at the first ministers’ conference in Toronto today. The report, entitled A Commitment to Research and Development: An Action Plan, proposes a framework to increase Canada’s research and development spending to 2.5 per cent of gross domestic product within 10 years.

Our proposal for a national research and development plan is one option for consideration. However, we feel that a national target should be adopted and a five-year interim target should be established. If the interim target was set at 1.8 per cent of gross domestic product by 1992, it would fall on the growth path of a 10-year target of 2.5 per cent.

The report recommends that both the private and public sectors cover the costs of a five-year incremental research and development plan and that the private sector contribution would be approximately $4.9 billion. Government funding, predominantly federal moneys, would total about $2.8 billion.

Governments in Canada should be increasingly concerned with the level of national investment in research and development. Improving productivity and increasing competitiveness are two reasons why research and development is of paramount importance to the modern economy.

RESPONSES

OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND SAFETY

Mr. Mackenzie: I am responding to the statement by the Minister of Labour (Mr. Sorbara). We are always pleased to see a settlement of the pay issue in a dispute, particularly when it took a week-long walkout to resolve the particular problem and to achieve the rights the workers thought they already had which forced them out on to the street.

It does not assure prosecution. I notice the minister keeps saying, “Prosecute, if warranted.” A reading of the orders that have b